My top 5 Benefits of Yoga for Kids

There’s a big trend towards engaging children in yoga practices, whether at schools, in studios, or clubs (like Girl Scouts) and sports teams.  While there are many different ways yoga can benefit everyone, here are my top 5 reasons why you may want to invite the kids in your life into a practice:

1.       Develops gross motor skills: Yoga’s various poses can improve trunk and core strength, as well as balance and proprioception.

2.       Increases self-awareness: Before we can regulate our emotions or modify our behavior, we have to be aware of them, first.  Yoga helps us tap into the present moment, invites us to notice what we’re feeling, and keeps us in that awareness as we move and breathe. 

3.       Promotes executive functioning skills: Executive Functioning is a term that describes a wide array of processes that occur in the prefrontal cortex of your brain; it includes (but is not limited to) impulse inhibition, planning, organization, goal-setting, working memory, and focusing attention.  Given all those skills (plus a whole bunch more) we can agree that executive functioning is pretty important, right?  There have been several studies that show regular yoga practices have improved executive functioning skills in children and adolescents – WOO HOO!

4.       Teaches coping skills: In my school psychology work, I’ve spent a lot of time working with kids in VERY escalated states emotionally and behaviorally; and the tool I reach for more often than not in those situations is my breath; not talk therapy, not positive reinforcement systems, but just breathing. By focusing on the breath, and by slowing down the inhales and exhales, we can help hit the reset button; if kids practice ways of focusing and controlling their breath when in a regulated state, this is a tool we can prompt them to use in the moments when things begin to escalate.

5.       Improves self-efficacy and confidence. By learning new poses, kids can feel a sense of pride and achievement.  Additionally, as the skills in the items above improve, kids may feel more empowered within themselves, lending a sense of trust in their own abilities.