In addition to having fun doing yoga poses for children, you can use many yoga games to work with them breathing and relaxation.
You may be clear that you would like to do yoga at home with children, but if you have ever tried it, you may have found that they often take it as a game, barely maintain the postures and are very easily distracted. All this does not have to be a problem. On the contrary, it can be an opportunity to approach yoga in a different way, a much more playful way that will surely change your vision of this practice and allow you to enjoy unforgettable moments with your children.
The benefits of yoga for children are numerous, both physically and mentally and emotionally, but yoga is, first and foremost, a tool for life and there are many yoga resources for children that allow us to practice yoga at home with them.
But where do we start? What yoga postures can we practice at home with children? How do we encourage them to do them? What other ways can we bring yoga closer to children? How can we teach them to relax with yoga?
In this article we have collected the advice of several yoga teachers with extensive experience in yoga with children to solve these and other doubts, but above all to be able to offer you simple resources and games that can be used at home easily. Find:
- Yoga postures for children that we can practice at home and how to introduce them in a playful way.
- Yoga games and other resources that can be used, both to practice postures and to work on other aspects, such as breathing or relaxation.
- Tips from experts in children’s yoga that can be taken into account when doing yoga at home with children.
Before starting, it is important to keep in mind that, for children to do yoga at home, the first thing that experts in children’s yoga recommend is that parents also do yoga. “Children learn by imitation and are eager to share with their family. The ideal is, therefore, that we start doing yoga ourselves, and that we do it together. Pretending that the child does it alone at home if we do not do it, is quite difficult, “says Elena Ferraris, yoga teacher and founder of the Elena Ferraris Yoga center in the Madrid neighborhood of Chambery.
YOGA POSES TO DO AT HOME WITH CHILDREN
In general, children can perform the same postures as adults, except for inverted postures on the head, because having the cervical still very weak are contraindicated.
The difference is in how you enter the postures and the time they are maintained, because in children you cannot expect them to keep them for a long time, and less the younger they are. That is why the postures are worked in a more dynamic way, linking with each other.
However, the postures of animals and elements of nature are the easiest for them to understand. “They are also the ones that are the most fun and, by name, more evocative,” says Madmen Duchy, actress and teacher at Yogi Kids, a yoga center for children in Barcelona.
The secret is not, therefore, what yoga postures we choose but how we encourage them to do them. “With children it is important that we enter into postures through play and imagination,” says Mamen Duch. “We can do it even through storytelling, playing to represent the animals and characters that appear.”
“Children learn by imitation. If we want them to do yoga at home, it’s best to do it ourselves.”
If we also do the postures, they will immediately understand the image and imitate us. Let’s see some of them, ideal to start:
- Tree posture: It is a great balancing posture for children, very visual and easy to understand. Younger children can lean on the wall, then they can be encouraged to lean on you, or if there are siblings, on each other… They can be told to imagine how the tree grows upwards, how it sinks its roots into the ground… which are images that are also often used in adult classes.
- Posture of the child or folded sheet: It is highly recommended to help them relax, during the day or when going to sleep, and you can give them a back massage while doing it.
- Cat posture: It is a very easy posture to understand and, if they are encouraged to do it in the morning, it is ideal to help them stretch. Another fun way to introduce it is by proposing to play “angry cat”. Like other animal postures, it is accompanied by funny sounds.
- Cow posture: We can go from the previous one to this one and it is also fun to do with sounds, mooing.
- Cobra posture: Another posture that can be accompanied by the sound of the animal. In this case, explains Elena Ferraris, “the wheezing sound of the cobra will help them work their breathing without realizing it.”
- Dog posture: It may be surprising that the little ones do the posture of the dog face down, but in reality, when children begin to try to stand up, they do so by raising their hips and leaning on hands and feet, as in Adho Mukha Svanasana. It is a physiological posture for them. “Once in the pose, you can ask them how the dog would move, or how it would pee, so that they raise their legs…”, says Mamen Duch.
- Frog posture: It is very easy to imagine how we would imitate the frog, so naturally we will do Malasana but with our hands resting on the ground. We can play jump from the posture.
- Lion posture: A kneeling posture, with your hands resting on the floor in front, which is ideal to take out anger. The little ones can support the palms of the hands; the older ones the fists. Once in the posture, it is about opening your mouth wide, sticking out your tongue and emitting a lion’s roar. “You can stand in front of the child and do it as a mirror, looking into each other’s eyes. You can even use this as a resource in case of tantrum,” explains Mamen Duch. “Very shy children may have a harder time squealing or roaring. In that case you can tell them that we are going to make the lion small, and instead of roaring we make a breath faster, ah, ah, ah … So, they are taking out and many times suddenly a good scream comes out. It relaxes them a lot.”
- Warrior posture: You can practice the different variants and you can invite children to feel their strength. Or, if they’re older, to explore how they feel in these poses, how their mood changes.
SUN SALUTATION WITH CHILDREN
The sun salutation is another of the vinyasas or sequences of postures that can be done from a very young age. It encompasses some of the previous postures to work the whole body, and not only is it fun, but it encourages the connection with nature and gratitude.
You start by opening your arms to the sun, then you become the cat, the cow, the dog, the snake… And it turns for the cow, the cat, open to the sun and close. There is even a special sun salutation for younger children, in which you stay on your knees. Then, with age, you can make a sun salutation a little more difficult, which is a little more challenging.
“It is ideal to do at home together in the mornings, looking at each other, so that the child can follow the postures by imitation,” suggests Mamen Duch. “The adult has to know the sequence well, and the child, having him in front of him, concentrates better.”
YOGA GAMES FOR KIDS AND OTHER RESOURCES
Both Yogi Kids and Centro Ferraris Yoga agree that signing up with children to a children’s yoga class in a yoga center, at least once a week, is the best way to learn resources to be able to apply them at home.
These are some games that are used in yoga classes for children that we can use at home and vary to our liking.
- Making contact upon waking: Day-to-day routines offer a great opportunity to bring attention to how we feel, how our body is, what happens around us… We can take advantage of the mornings to take a few breaths together, make a sun salutation, stretch out doing the posture of the cat or any animal … for example, asking the child, “What animal do you want to do today?” The sun salutation can be done in a fun way looking at the window, or, as suggested above, face to face, so that the child can imitate you. It can adapt even for the little ones, simply by getting up, stretching out your arms and then touching the ground, saying good morning, sun! “It’s just about kids being able to connect with their bodies, not just getting up and running to get dressed,” says Mamen Duch of Yogi Kids.
- Play “pica wall” or “English hide-and-seek”: It is an easy and fun game to do at home if you have minimal space. The adult stands against the wall and counts to three aloud before turning. While counting, the children, who start away, are getting closer, but when the adult turns, they have to be motionless in a posture, you cannot catch him moving! “Children love it and you can play with children of different ages,” Mamen Duch also tells us. “Instead of telling them we’re going to work on balance, you set up the game with balancing postures, you challenge them. With the little ones it can be done with simple postures such as the tree, the plane or the palm tree … or simply Tadasana, which is standing, straight, with open hands and feet together. When they are older, even with 14 or 15 years, they can make the eagle, the warrior 3…”
- Use stories and songs: Through stories and songs we can play to represent characters. “In many stories there are animals, or the moon rises, which is also a posture. You can tell a story practicing yoga and it’s a lot of fun,” says Mamen Duch. We can use stories that seem appropriate to us, but we can also turn to specific yoga stories. Mamen Duch herself is the author of Maya and Yoga, a story designed to do yoga with children at home. From the Elena Ferraris Yoga center, they also recommend, for example, my dad is made of plasticine or I am yoga.
- Make bubbles: Forming soap bubbles fascinates all ages and is a great way to work breathing from a very young age, because you learn to regulate the strength and volume of the air.
- Blow with a straw into a glass of water: It would be a variant of the previous game. “Normally, when they blow into the glass with the straw, we tell them not to do it, but what if instead of restricting them we encourage them to do it with conscience?” proposes the founder of Yogi Kids. “If you put little water, so that it does not come out, we can encourage you to blow soft, hard, as if singing a song … And there you are already working your breathing and concentration.”
- Blowing felt balls: Another exercise that is very good to work the breath. It can be done even freshly raised, on the carpet, on the floor. It’s about playing at blowing your balls: you pass it to mom, dad, brother… “There you are working on breathing and breath control, because to pass it to one, and not to another, you have to blow just enough,” explains Duch.
- Place a stuffed animal on your belly and observe: It is a way to bring attention to how breathing affects the body and invites you to take longer, deeper breaths. It can be a stuffed animal (the little ones usually like it a lot) or any light toy they like.
- Getting massages: It is a way to offer a relaxing sensory experience to the child. We can use our hands, but we can also play with materials of different textures: with balls, with feathers, with dolls…
- Eating together with an hourglass: Patricia de Santos, teacher specialized in children’s yoga and yoga for families at the Elena Ferraris Yoga center, proposes this mindful eating exercise for children, which consists of choosing a food and proposing to eat it very slowly, paying attention to how it smells, how it tastes … The challenge is that it cannot be finished before the hourglass is completely emptied. It can be done, for example, with a tangerine wedge.
- Use pose cards: There are many card games or cards with yoga postures, more or less childish, that can be used to introduce the postures through the game and that offer a visual model. You can also make your own set of cards. You can even choose three cards, explore the posture and then combine them with some crafts…
- Use a posture cube or an emotion cube: It is another way to introduce postures with a game. The bucket is thrown and the posture that comes out is done, or the emotion is represented with the body.
- Game of the Goose: There are many other resources of games to make postures that you can find online and download. Or you can customize them. One possibility, for example, is to set up a game of goose and depending on the box in which you fall, you have to make a posture, or express an emotion with your body.
- Relaxation before bed: Closing the day by relaxing the body and breathing and bringing awareness to the beautiful things that have happened during the day not only helps children to rest but gives them the opportunity to express themselves and end the day on a positive note. “We can take a few breaths, thank you… for example, asking what you liked about your day today or proposing to thank five things, “recommends Patricia de Santos.
SOME TIPS FOR PARENTS
Structuring a yoga session at home is much more difficult than in a class. Experts in children’s yoga recommend rather taking advantage of day-to-day routines to introduce some game or specific circumstances that arise during the day that give us the opportunity to do so.
- In the morning and evening: Waking and bedtime can give a lot of play, but also a tantrum or a moment of relaxation on the grass.
- Play and participate. Play and imagination are key. And also practice with children, because they learn mainly by imitation.
- Not to correct children, but to oneself. The participation of parents in the positions not only serves to motivate them. It is also the way that little by little they correct their postures by imitation, without having to correct them. “It’s better not to correct children, unless they’re doing something that they can hurt themselves, obviously. In general, the child learns by imitating, so we are the ones who have to correct ourselves,” explains Mamen Duch.
“If you want your child to do the pose well and be calm, do quiet yoga and work your postures well.”
- Offer resources to manage emotions. In turn, understanding that yoga is something very global, not only postures, opens a wide range of possibilities, both in class and at home. “Yoga is being attentive, that if your child has an emotion, you can validate it, that if he is nervous, you can offer him a resource just like yourself …”, says Patricia de Santos.
- Attend yoga classes with the child. This is a very good way to discover yoga resources to solve day-to-day situations. Even if you do not do yoga at home properly, they can be very useful to apply them in certain circumstances. Patricia de Santos gives as an example the exercise of the stuffed animal: if you have seen that in class the child has liked to see how the stuffed animal rises and falls in his gut with his breath, when you see him nervous you can suggest doing it: “Hey, what if we put on the dinosaur now and do it?”.
- Have cushions and mats at home. Another important aspect that highlights this yoga teacher expert in family yoga is to leave resources within reach of the child: a cushion, a mat, a boat of calm … “Maybe a child with 3 years is not going to do it, but a child with 6 or 7 years can come a time when he picks them up and sits down, even if it is only 5 minutes,” he clarifies.
- Go sowing seeds. The interesting thing is that children, although at first, they do not seem to be giving much importance to postures, are creating a body memory. “Then, when they grow up, one day they may remember that or another posture that made them feel so good, or so strong, or so calm. and apply it if they need it,” explains Elena Ferraris.