Free Download! Yoga for Healthy Kids: How Can Yoga Benefit Kids?

We live in a fast-paced society and not only adults are feeling the effects of the constant pressure to keep up and perform: Kids of all ages are too. In an alarming recent study of high school kids in Irvington High School in California, a staggering 80 percent suffered moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety, and 54 percent of students showed moderate to severe symptoms of depression.

Can yoga help kids deal with stress? In this free download, child psychologist and yoga therapist Mira Binzen of Global Family Yoga talks about what she has learned in her work using yoga for children and families.

Families are under a lot of pressure today, says Mira. Yoga is a fantastic practice, and kids really enjoy doing it. Kids recognize when they are out of balance.  But they don’t know how to bring themselves back into balance. When kids experience how yoga can help them find a greater sense of balance at any time, it is very empowering to them, Mira notes.

Stress and anxiety is one of the most common issues that kids experience. Yoga can help kids deal with stress, and, it can play a preventive role too. Kids report a greater sense of ease, collection and calm. When you give people time to just be quiet and still, different choices begin to bubble up. Families starting yoga begin to take up a more healthy lifestyle. They find new ways to nourish themselves and their children and create greater connections as a family.

Yoga tools are useful not just for yoga teachers or health professionals, but for parents as well, says Mira. Almost half of the people wanting to learn more about how to teach yoga to  kids are either parents or grandparents.

Mira describes one of the approaches she uses to teach yoga to kids by using the concept of the five elements, and bringing in e.g. the earth element to create greater stability and calm.

For example, a child that can’t focus in school might not have a strong core. If you help that child develop greater core strength, you often see that all of a sudden he or she is able to focus more and becomes more calm and stable.

Also, check out Mira's course on YogaUOnline: Yoga for Stable and Calm Kids.