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Help for Parents: Relax your Child with Yoga
Many children these days are under a huge amount of press from academic pressure and social strains. Yoga is a brilliant way of relaxing after a day at school, and improves children's health no end. Here's our help for parents trying to find a way to relax and calm their children.
Pressure
As a parent, you should be aware that your child faces pressure from every angle, every day. At school, social pressures, from appearance to personality, are constantly at a high. After that there are numerous academic requirements, from homework to exams, as well as performing in sports.
There are very few ways that a parent can make these things easier for the child, and it can be hard to see them suffer. But a brilliant way to aid relaxation and prepare your child for the next day's trials is through yoga.
Yoga
By practising, a child will develop body awareness, flexibility, coordination and self-control, all of which are useful skills to possess in any environment. Yoga can even help the child to channel impulses, such as attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity, into a positive result.
The exercise combines dynamic movements, postures, breathing techniques and meditation in easy steps.
How to Practice Yoga
1) Find a specialised yoga book or begin attending classes. These will teach you and your child the basic movements and transitions between them. You can practice these independently on a weekly or daily basis, but getting the basics right is crucial.
2) Poses such as warrior pose and tree pose generate particularly positive results when practised regularly. They are known to help the child stay calm, confident and balanced.
3) The partner pose will increase a child's confidence thoroughly. Its structure requires teamwork, which will create a bond between you and the child, and fulfil some emotional need without the use of words.
4) Children who have difficulties with relaxation and sleep, and children who are naturally sleepy, will benefit from the visualization technique. They will be able to practise this by themselves whenever they feel it is necessary, once they have grasped its process.
The child should imagine that they are walking through a peaceful place, like a quiet beach or tranquil forest. They will be encouraged to visualize the beautiful plants and trees along with the birds and butterflies flying around them. By engaging senses such as smell and sight in this relaxing manner, the mind becomes much more relaxed, which can improve performance in a number of activities.
5) Sharing your experience of yoga with your child will create a social and emotional bond, which can lead to a closer relationship with them. If you attend regular yoga classes, this bond can readily be extended to the child's peers, and those around you.
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