Yoga at home for children: postures, games and tips

Perhaps you are clear that you would like to do yoga at home with the children, but if you have ever tried it, you may have verified that often they take it as a game, they hardly maintain the postures and they get distracted very easily. All this does not have to be a problem. On the contrary, it can be a opportunity to approach yoga in a different waya much more playful way that will surely change your vision of this practice and will 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, above all, 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? In 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 from various yoga teachers with extensive experience in yoga with children to answer these and other questions, but above all to be able to offer you simple resources and games that can be used at home easily. You’ll find:

yoga poses for kids that we can practice at home and how to introduce them in a playful way.Yoga games and other resources that can be usedboth to practice the postures and to work on other aspects, such as breathing or relaxation.Advice from the experts in children’s yoga that can be taken into account when doing yoga at home with children.

Before we begin, 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 don’t do it, is quite difficult,” says Elena Ferraris, yoga teacher and founder of the Elena Ferraris Yoga center in the Madrid neighborhood of Chamberí.

Yoga poses to do at home with children

In general, children can perform the same postures as adults, except for inverted poses on the headbecause having the cervicals still very weak are contraindicated.

The difference is in how to enter into the postures and how long they are held, 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 on in a more dynamic way, linking with each other.

Anyway, the postures of animals and elements of nature They are the easiest for them to understand. “They are also the ones who they are funnier and, by name, more evocative“, tells us Mamen Duch, actress and teacher at Yogui Kids, a yoga center for children in Barcelona.

The secret is not, therefore, which yoga postures we choose but How do we encourage them to do them?. “With children it’s important that we get into the poses through play and imagination,” says Mamen Duch. “We can even do it through a story, playing to represent the animals and characters that appear.”

“Children learn by imitation. If we want them to do yoga at home, it is 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 pose: It’s a great balance pose for kids, very visual and easy to understand. Younger children can lean against the wall, then they can be encouraged to lean on you, or if there are siblings, on each other… You can tell them 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.Child’s pose or folded sheet: It is highly recommended to help them relax, during the day or at bedtime, and can be give a back massage while they do it.cat posture: It is a very easy position to understand and, if they are encouraged to do it in the morning, it is ideal to help them wake up. Another fun way to introduce her is by proposing to play “angry cat.” Like other animal poses, it is accompanied by funny sounds.Cow posture: We can go from the previous one to this one and also It’s fun to make with sounds, mooing.Cobra Pose: Another posture that can be accompanied with the sound of the animal. In this case, explains Elena Ferraris, “the hissing sound of the cobra will help them to work your breath without realizing it“.dog pose: It may surprise little ones to do Downward Facing Dog, but in reality, when children begin to try to stand up, they do so by raising their hips and using their hands and feet, as in Adho Mukha Svanasana. Is a physiological posture for them. “Once in the pose, you can ask them how the dog would move, or how it would pee, to get them to lift their leg…” says Mamen Duch.

frog pose: 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. Can play jump from the posturelion pose: A kneeling posture, with the hands resting on the ground in front, which is ideal to get angry. The little ones can support the palms of their hands; the older ones the fists. Once in the posture, it is about opening the mouth wide, stick out the tongue and emit a lion roar. “You can stand in front of the child and do it as a mirror, looking into his eyes. You can even use this as a resource in case of a tantrum,” explains Mamen Duch. “TO very shy children they may have a harder time squealing or roaring. In that case, you can tell them that we are going to do the little lion, and instead of roaring, we breathe faster, ah, ah, ah… This is how they serve and many times suddenly a good scream ends up coming out. It relaxes them a lot.”Warrior Stance: You can practice the different variants and you can invite children to feel their strength. Or, if they are older, to explore how they feel in these positions, how their mood changes.

Sun salutation with children

The greeting to the sun is another of the vinyasas or sequences of postures that can be done from a very young age. It encompasses some of the above poses to work your entire body, and it’s not only fun, it’s encourages 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 you turn to 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 salutation to the sun a little more difficult, which supposes a little more of a challenge.

“Is ideal to do at home together in the morninglooking 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, when facing him, concentrates better.”

Yoga games for kids and other resources

Both Yogi Kids and Centro Ferraris Yoga agree that sign up with children for a children’s yoga class at a yoga centerat 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.

Touchdown upon waking up: The day-to-day routines offer a magnificent opportunity to pay attention to how we feel, to how our body is, to what is happening around us… We can take advantage of the mornings to take a few breaths together, salute the sun, stretch out doing the cat’s posture or that of any animal… for example, asking the child: “What animal do you feel like doing today?”. The sun salutation can be done in a fun way facing the window, or, as suggested above, face to face, so that the child can imitate you. It can be adapted 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 pared” or “English hide-and-seek”: It is an easy and fun game to do at home if you have a minimum space. The adult stands against the wall and counts to three out loud before turning around. As he counts, the children, who start off at a distance, get closer, but when the adult turns around they have to be still in one position, you can’t catch him moving! “Children love it and you can play with children of different ages,” Mamen Duch also tells us. “Instead of telling them that we are going to work on balance, you ride the game with balance 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 to stand upright, with your hands open and your feet together. When they are older, even at 14 or 15, they can do the eagle, the warrior 3…”Use stories and songs: Through stories and songs we can play at representing characters. “In many stories there are animals, or the moon rises, which is also a posture. You can tell a story while practicing yoga and it’s very funny,” says Mamen Duch. We can use stories that seem appropriate to us, but we can also resort 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 plasticine either i am yoga.Make bubbles: Making soap bubbles fascinates all ages and is a great way to work breathing from a very young agebecause you learn to regulate the force and volume of the air.Blow through 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, but What if instead of restricting them we encourage them to do it consciously?“, proposes the founder of Yogi Kids. “If little water is put in, so that it doesn’t come out, we can encourage them to blow softly, hard, as if they were singing a song… And there you are already working on your breathing and concentration”.Blowing felt balls: Another exercise that is very good to work breathing. It can be done even just getting up, on the carpet, on the floor. Is about play pass the balls blowing: you pass it to mom, dad, brother… “There you are working on your breathing and breath control, because to pass it to one, and not to another, you have to blow just enough,” explains Duch.Put a stuffed animal on your belly and observe: It’s a way of drawing attention to how…