The practice of yoga and planting seeds of mindfulness in the lives of our children is an important practice. When parents lead these practices it has twofold benefits says Kyra Willey, an award-winning kids yoga and mindfulness expert, a music artist and speaker. She goes on to say that mindfulness helps us to find calm, balance, and gratitude, even in our busiest days.
Sat Bir Khalsa, assistant, professor of medicine at Harvard medical school and a yoga researcher along with Lisa Flynn, founder of child light and yoga 4 classrooms, says that these practices are a holistic approach to learning and encourage the skills of focus, mind and body awareness, self regulation, and self efficacy.
Mindfulness helps develop our presence, in the life of our child. What this means, is that there is more focused awareness and alertness. Yoga and mindfulness, helps to enhance empathy, attention and compassion. It helps a child to get a better understanding of not only his belief and feelings but also of others. There are many physical, social and emotional benefits of yoga, besides gaining focus, attention, strength, posture, balance, coordination, relieving stress and tension, it helps with an increasing concentration to mindfully navigate our emotions. It also helps with developing executive functioning and we learn how to respond positively to challenging situations. This is why Yoga and Mindfulness become necessary tools to practice every day with our child. It is important to designate a time during the day and find a quiet spot in your home to practice mindful breathing and yoga to calm our minds and body along with our child. Peace and tranquility will help relieve stress and cultivate good habits and lead to a very strong, nourishing, joyful and happy relationship with our child.