Children and Yoga
Lately, in some of my yoga classes, mothers are bringing their children into class with them. Both times, they were girls and both appeared under the age of ten. Now mind you I don't have children of my own, but when I first saw one of the children in class my immediate reaction was "oh great, I hope she behaves herself!". How rude of me to think that way!!
I was also quite fascinated by it all. I kept my eye on the children while they were doing the poses, and I thought "wow look how easily they can do these poses, I'm so envious!". It got me to thinking that at that age I probably could do the same poses, as at that time I was into gymnastics. It made me think about how as we age, our bodies stiffen, our joints aren't as loose, we become less flexible, minor injuries all add up making it harder for us "older" people to get into poses that children basically yawn at!
However, I did notice one common similarity with both children. They both got extremely bored, extremely quickly. One even rolled her mat up and left the class to go play outside. The other, although bored, stayed in and ended up doing her own poses which I found cute, and amusing!
So in observing these children I got to thinking, that if yoga is so easy for them physically, it's obviously more difficult for them to concentrate, and to keep their focus on maintaining the poses, as well as following the instructors directions. One of the benefits of yoga for children is that it helps to develop self-discipline (it takes a lot of discipline to do exactly what the yoga teacher is telling you to do when all you want to do is roll your mat up and go outside). Yoga helps children by helping them to master their own behaviour, and by learning to control themselves, which in this society, nowadays, is difficult for young children. I was reading an article about children with challenges such as autism and learnt that yoga also helps autistic kids by teaching them techniques that help to control emotional outbursts. Those are just two out of hundreds of benefits of yoga for children.
So although I am envious at how some kids find what I feel are difficult poses, easy for them. Children in yoga have different things to learn, such as patience and self discipline. For me as an adult, I find patience and self discipline easier in yoga, but then again, I've swam all of my life and still do (and studies show that swimmers have more discipline, patience, etc). I also learned not to be so judgmental when I see a little person in class, it helped me to realize that I shouldn't put all children into the category of "oh my those kids are going to misbehave and ruin this class for me".
Yoga...it is more than just the physical....it's the emotional and spiritual learning that benefits us yogi's.
Namaste~~
