Practicing yoga can bring you more benefits than meets the eye. Sure, yoga is great physical exercise, offers the chance to practice meditation, can help you relax, and allow you to have a fun time with your friends, but adding your children to this practice can change their lives as well as their attitudes.
Yoga for children can teach many life skills. Children can learn central core values, including honesty, gratitude, respect, peacefulness and contentment, and discipline. You read that right: children can learn discipline from a yoga class!
By incorporating the lessons learned in yoga class into their lives, children can develop these values quicker than their non-practicing counterparts. Because yoga does not require rigorous study, and is merely broken up into “do” and “do not” ways of thinking, children can grasp these lessons quickly.
One of the core responsibilities in yoga is “tapas,” or discipline. These come from creating habits that promote health in life. This comes from practicing yoga on a consistent basis and taking the lessons learned off the mat. It can be relatively easy for children to apply this newfound discipline to their everyday lives.
This practice is taught very simply in yoga courses. Simply giving your child the responsibility of caring for their own mat, the routine usually falls into place on its own. This ties into the principle of “saucha,” taking care of yourself and the environment around you. This is tied to the mat as well; through the acts of cleaning and storing the mat correctly, your child can learn the worth of their possessions. This can lead to respect for the world around them as a whole, as well as the wellbeing of those around them.
As your child continues their practice, these acts become like second nature to them. Applying them outside of the yoga class becomes easier, and they are more likely to respond well to tasks brought their way. Cleaning rooms, chores, and homework become less daunting in the face of a child who practices yoga.
Seeing the changes in your child may be exciting and thrilling at first, but do not forget to check in with them to see how they are feeling about their practice. Only they can give you the insight into their lives and how they feel toward yoga and their practice. Communication is key, and they will be sure to teach you just as much as you have taught them.
