Currently in my life I find myself focusing on 2 things: HOCKEY and RELATIONSHIPS. And now I know why Heated Rivalry stole my heart! 👨❤️👨🏳️🌈
Kids yoga is wildly helpful in supporting your children and your family in two key areas of life: sports and relationships. It is an extremely powerful added support for kids who are in competitive sports and kids who are experiencing trauma, or simply learning to navigate changing relationships as they grow up.
Read more to learn how and why kids yoga can support your family.
How Kids Yoga Supports Young Athletes
In hockey for example, yoga provides increased mobility, helping the body to recover faster between shifts, and preventing injuries. Specifically kids yoga can help open up the hips and mobilize the ankle joints to make skating strides wider and allow for tighter edging and speed.
Yoga promotes blood flow through the body which decreases recovery time. It also:
Expands lung capacity, which allows athletes to find calm quickly
Increases proprioception which helps with co-ordination and reaction times, and maybe most importantly
Improves sleep so they're at their best for the next game
How Kids Yoga Supports Talk Therapy
For kids struggling with trauma in their relationships, yoga is a terrific support to talk therapy. Many of the concepts we teach in kids yoga are also taught in traditional talk therapy sessions such as:
Breathwork skills
Sense meditations
And the processing of emotions in the body
Time in yoga class allows kids space to somatically process what they learn in talk therapy through first regulating their nervous system. When we are in the rest and digest response, our body can process what our mind has learned. Doing yoga also gives time and space for self-awareness - letting kids feel what's happening in their bodies and where the emotions lie, can deeply aid in moving those emotions through the system and thereby healing.
The benefits and reach of yoga continues to baffle me, and I'm so encouraged when I think about a world where all kids get access to these life-saving skills. (And how yoga at a young age may have affected the characters of Ilya and Shane!)
We have many ways for your family to access these skills and benefit from them whether you're in competitive sports, going through a personal trauma or anywhere in between. We offer private in-home yoga, classes through our Virtual Studio, or monthly Family Yoga in-person sessions. We can't wait to see your family on the mat!