Next Saturday, September 15 at the Pre Congress of the GYC there will be a special program for children, with yoga sessions aimed at the little ones of the house. Bringing children and teenagers to the practice of yoga, relaxation, conscious breathing, meditation or mindfulness is becoming increasingly popular in centers and schools around the world, leading to numerous success stories in which children improve their academic performance and the coexistence in the classrooms.

In this article we give you some keys for your children to introduce themselves to yoga and we review the most important benefits that they can obtain thanks to the regular practice of yoga.

According to experts, introducing practices related to yoga in the lives of children helps them to learn to relax, reduces their level of anxiety, to be more aware of their own body, and increases their capacity for learning, attention, perception and memory.

This daily mental training can produce structural changes in children’s brains, which in turn leads to an improvement in social intelligence.

For children, the practice of yoga is a playful activity. However, thanks to yoga they learn how to better assimilate possible situations of pressure or stress that appear at school or at home and learn to relax, adopting a more serene attitude.

For the restless or active child, as well as for the shy or shameful child, yoga helps channel their energy and reaffirm their self-esteem. It will help the more active to learn to relax and concentrate more, while also encouraging the quieter children to lose their fear of others and to open up.

But since we are treating with children, we must take into account some keys to successfully access this discipline, enjoy it and remain constant in the path of self-knowledge:

• To enhance concentration and maintain motivation, it is convenient that in a yoga class there are no more than 15 children. Children should feel comfortable and relaxed.
• Breathing is an integral part of yoga. Inhaling and exhaling through the nose is essential so that the child can stretch and obtain the necessary balance to start practicing yoga postures. Once the group controls their breathing, the teacher will start with the postures.
• With children, the positions have to be practiced little by little. Ideally, at the beginning, learn to breathe, relax and then concentrate.For children, yoga should be practiced as a game.
• They should not be required to repeat a position over and over again because that can become very boring to them. You have to vary the postures and movements slowly and at a pace with which children do not lose their concentration.

Experts agree that the best age for a child to enter the yoga exercises is from the age of 4. At that age the little ones already know perfectly what can be expected from them and they already have the capacity to carry out and control certain movements of the body.

As we have already pointed out, we summarize some of the most outstanding benefits of yoga for children:

• Development and agility of the motor muscles.
• Flexibility in the joints.
• Improves the posture of their spine.
• Improvement in breathing habits.
• Increase in self-esteem.
• Decrease in the level of juvenile stress.
• Development of attention, concentration, memory and imagination.
• Harmonization of personality and character.
• Channeling of physical energy.
• Better understanding and interaction with others.