In this time of uncertainty, anxiety, seclusion, and fear, we all need to find ways to improve our mental health. For centuries, yoga has given practitioners the tools live in a healthy way. Now is a perfect time to find an online yoga class (you can do a search on Facebook for “Kidding Around Yoga with _______” and you’ll see several options), check out yoga and mindfulness videos on YouTube, or lead some yoga breaks at home with your own kiddos. Schools can also bring a workshop directly to their teachers through KAY’s 6 hour virtual workshop, EduKAY .

Children’s yoga programs, like Kidding Around Yoga, seek to significantly improve children’s health and well-being by training adults to teach yoga and mindfulness practices to kids. Traditional yoga practices (including movement, mindfulness, and breath work), presented in a kid-friendly manner, can help all children balance their nervous systems and stay healthy, mentally and physically. The methods taught in effective yoga classes build lifelong skills from the inside-out, teaching children to recognize their present state, label the sensations in their bodies, and build a tool chest of coping skills to choose behaviors and responses that bring them back to balance in a healthy, sustainable way.

Yoga postures:

• Yoga promotes balance in the nervous system by moving through both stimulating and calming postures.
• Students begin to recognize which postures make them feel energized and which make them feel soothed.
• Children notice how their bodies and minds react to stressful, uncomfortable sensations in challenging postures.
• Moving the body is a healthy way to release stress, to focus attention, and to feel strong and capable.
• Yoga postures build confidence and positive body image.
• Yoga postures can build resilience by helping children physically release pent up trauma and tension.

Breath work:

• Breath is our most portable form of stress management.
• Long, smooth breaths calm the nervous system, particularly via the vagus nerve.
• By experiencing a variety of simple, fun, effective breaths, children gain the coping skills to choose which practice works best for them.
• Breathing can be practiced alone or with a group, building intra- and interpersonal communication skills.

Mindfulness:

• Through mindfulness practice, children become more aware of their feelings, sensations, thoughts and emotions.
  
• Children learn to connect with and value their inner experience, rather than rely on outside stimuli.
• Mindfulness improves self-regulation and self-esteem as children learn to control their own thoughts and actions.
• With mindfulness practice, children learn to separate their feelings from their actions and choose healthy responses to outside stimuli.
• Mindfulness is learning that you are not your thoughts, that you can shift from how you are currently being/feeling to how you want to be/feel.