Yoga is Great for Kids' Health

River likes to do Yoga with mom

Yoga is a great form of exercise that has many physical and mental health benefits. It is easy and gentle, and you can even begin to do yoga post-partum after being cleared by your doctor.

Practicing yoga is easy and gentle, and can help you connect body, mind and spirit through the breath. Because of this, yoga provides well-rounded wellness.

Another great thing about yoga is that you can have your kids participate too. There are yoga videos and books geared specifically towards kids, in addition to mommy and baby yoga videos that you can do together.

According to The Art of Living,

Teaching yoga to kids is a uniquely wonderful way to guiding them into a healthy lifestyle. From a young age, they should be taught how to calm the mind and become more emotionally stable. Kids go through a lot of physical exertion; yoga helps them calm down and yet builds their strength. They love learning through fun and not through routine patterns, so yoga poses need to be specifically portrayed for kids to enjoy them.

If you incorporate fitness into your kids routine early, they will learn to have fun with exercise while moving their body and staying fit.

Starting kids out with fitness when they are young is a good way to make them think that fitness is fun, and that it is a normal part of their daily routine. If you wait until they are older to introduce doing exercise, kids are likely to be more resistant, because they don't see it as something fun.

There are many fun yoga videos made specifically for kids that you can find for free on YouTube.

You can have kids do fun yoga videos like this with kids, so that they can learn along with cartoon characters. It is a learning show just like Sesame Street or something similar, only for fitness.

When kids interact with these videos, they get to learn the yoga poses in a fun, kid-centered way. They pretend to be animals and get to move their bodies. Kids love to act things out that they see in books or movies, so getting to act right along with the video is perfect.

There are also videos like this where you can do yoga with a very young baby, and the baby is incorporated into your yoga routine, instead of being a distraction.

I did some videos like this when my daughter, River, was a baby. She still frequently does yoga with me now, and will even ask to do yoga without being prompted. She doesn't understand all the health benefits, just that moving her body is fun.

Since yoga has many physical and mental health benefits, being able to exercise and involve your kids in your routine makes this a more accessible form of exercise than some others. This way, you don't have to worry about getting a babysitter for your little ones when you want to work out.

Yoga can make exercise something special that you can share with your kids for years to come.

Let me know what you think, and if you have other questions about starting a yoga practice that you would like me to discuss in a future blog posting!

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To read more about the benefits of yoga for your physical and mental health:

Want to start a yoga practice? It is easy, and has many benefits.

Starting a yoga practice has numerous benefits for your physical and mental wellness.

5 Simple Yoga Poses for Beginners

To learn more about mindfulness, meditation and yoga, and how they can help you in your daily life, check out my ebook:

Practicing Buddhism in Everyday Life