Yoga's health benefits are endless, from providing a good posture to balancing metabolism and helping shed off weight. Yoga's gifts to the mind and spirit are equally beneficial and overflowing, offering everything from better emotional control to mindfulness skills. With yoga's plethora of advantages, it has become popular not only to adults but to children as well. Indeed, the practice extends to all ages and life status.
And proof that yoga has reached the young and the very young is a National Kids Yoga Conference held last September 2014 at George Washington University in Washington D.C. The founders, who lists their goals and vision in their website, conference.yokids.org, aim to "see inspired action, collective connection, and meaningful conversations towards implementing positive change in our communities and schools."
The founders add that they have "watched the practice of yoga transform our own lives, our families, and the students we serve. Creating the Conference is a labor of love for us, and a way to bring together like-minded teachers, leaders, visionaries in the kids yoga world for collaboration and connection."
The National Kids Yoga Conference is the first and pioneer conference in the United States, and it shed light on how instructors can navigate the ancient practice to fit children's needs. After all, countless research has shown that yoga can be of great help to children in reducing stress, improving concentration and focus, and managing their emotions more effectively.
According to Dr. Gurjeet Birdee of Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University, yoga "might be good for attention, there's also some preliminary research that yoga might be good for mood in children, so helping with stress, anxiety, and depression." Further research has also discovered that yoga can assist children with ADHD and other behavioral problems.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that teaching yoga to children is quite different with teaching yoga for adults. For one thing, yoga for children involves more laughter and playfulness.
