Children’s yoga classes are a wonderful way to introduce kids to yoga poses, breathing, and philosophies. Classes can easily be modified to suit many different ages, from babies to tweens. Children can begin to feel the positive results of a yoga class, making them more likely to choose yoga as a lifelong activity. There are many different ways to keep children engaged and interested in the class. Yoga instructors can build a class around an animal theme, encouraging the children to voice animal sounds, make a game out of the poses, or create an interactive story with yoga poses incorporated throughout.
After breathing, warm up the body with a variation of the sun salutation, forward bend, or another pose that incorporates the entire body. Then you can progress to the next series of poses beginning from a seated position. Begin with the Butterfly, Cobra, Head-to-Knee, Cat-Cow, or the Bridge. Choose poses that flow easily from one to the next. After the seated poses, move to standing poses like Tree, Downward Dog, Mountain, Triangle, or Warrior.
Conclude with a few relaxing floor poses, which allow kids to still the mind and the body. Corpse pose is a classic end-of-class pose. Instructors can lead the class in a visualization exercise, asking children to visualize their favorite place, a particular color, or a person they would like to send positive energy to.