Kung Stina

The list of benefits that yoga provides is endless. It helps you find and create a moment of peace in your day. Yoga can do this for your whole family as well bringing a sense of calm to the entire family. A calm and relaxed family means a calm and relaxed home. Introducing your family and children to yoga early on will help to create a habit of fitness and make it a part of their everyday life. How can you encourage the whole family to participate in yoga?

Try incorporating it into their bedtime routines. Doing some yoga poses or a nighttime yoga sequence before they go to bed will encourage better sleep. It’s a great way to garner all the energy they have that late at night. When everything is chaos and fighting over the toothpaste, doing yoga will help to center everyone and restore calm before bedtime. There is a book called Good Night Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Bedtime Story that you could use to guide the whole family through some yoga.

Make yoga fun for kids. There are plenty of YouTube channels out there that cater their exercises to families and kids. There’s one called Cosmic Kids Yoga that is particularly good for families. The workouts are fun and encourage the use of imagination while practicing different poses. There might even be family yoga classes in your city where teachers encourage fun and also include the spiritual aspect by having people practice positive mantras and affirmations. Make your practice a visual part of the day. If you stay home or practice yoga at night, if its possible workout with your kids present in the room. Sometimes it’s easier and more relaxing to retreat to a quiet place, but if they see you practicing yoga or other exercise they may want to join in for fun, and eventually fitness will become a part of life for them as well.

Lastly, encourage a yogic attitude off the mat. Encourage your kids to say positive things about each other and other people or try and do good deeds off the mat. Encouraging a positive attitude on and off the mat will make their overall life more cheerful. The more they incorporate yoga principles into their daily lives, the more they will improve on the mat.

Yoga offers so much more than a physical benefit. By practicing as a family, you will bond with your kids and partner, learn to center yourself, and find your inner calm. Yoga will teach your kids how to channel their energy positively and learn to respect themselves and those around them. If you start early, the habit will be formed to practice daily or several times a week and they can carry this into their adult lives. Even if they take a break for a while as they figure out who they are, it’s something they can always come back to. Bottom line, yoga will help establish healthy habits for the whole family and not a whole lot of bad can come from that. Enjoy your yoga journey together!