The Best Yoga Poses for Children Under 10

Yoga as a practice has too many health benefits to even mention and many men and women have flocked to yoga to help ease the pressures of daily life and to improve their fitness and flexibility. The lives of children are becoming even more hectic than many adults, with school, after school activities, sports, reading and social interactions which may shape their entire lives, there is a lot of pressure on children, especially from their parents to do well and succeed. Many children under 10 also neglect the physical aspect of development and find themselves overweight before their lives have even begun, but yoga will help them to improve concentration, flexibility and encourage them to get fit and stay active and healthy.

Children under 10 are naturally playful and have very short attention spans, this cannot be avoided and it will be a futile task to try to get your child to do all the slow rhythmic poses involved in traditional yoga. The yoga poses described will help your child to relax and learn yoga without them losing interest or complain that the yoga is too boring.

To start of a yoga session for children under 10, you should try to first warn up using a set of warm up exercises called sun salutations. These are very good at increasing flexibility and increasing blood flow throughout the body of your young child. You should then try the poses known as the shoulder stand. Most children are already familiar with this pose and will love to engage in this activity, not knowing the health benefits in it as well as the fact that it is a yoga pose. This can also follow the fish pose or the counter pose to help to vary the yoga routine and create more fun for the kids (which helps them to view yoga in a positive light rather than a negative one).

Another yoga pose that is very useful for children under 10 years old is the forward bend pose which can encourage children to become more flexible as well as helping to aid any digestive problems that they may have. The wheel pose is also another excellent yoga pose that can be used to teach kids under 10 yoga, along with the ubiquitous relaxation pose. This pose helps children to relax (hence the name) and can also relieve stress caused from the many hectic activities that children face throughout the day. These poses will also give you child a foundation in dealing with stress and other issues, along with a technique that they can use to relax and meditate as well as increase their fitness and flexibility.

References
1. http://www.yogasite.com/yoga%20kids.htm
2. http://www.anmolmehta.com/blog/2009/01/21/yoga-for-kids-kids-yoga-poses-part-1/
3. http://www.anmolmehta.com/blog/2009/01/23/yoga-for-kids-yoga-exercises/