10 Ways Yoga Can Support Your Parenting

As a parent, you have your own toolbox—a personal stash of tools and tricks that help you meet your child’s needs, support their development, and sometimes just survive that trip to the grocery store. Over time you’ve honed your tools, through ongoing learning and hard-earned experience.

Yoga Ed.’s programs, classes, and resources can provide you with shiny new tools for your collection. By deepening your understanding of your child’s development, and providing you with simple, evidence-based strategies to connect with your child wherever they are, you’ll be equipped to take on whatever challenges or opportunities parenting throws your way.

Check out these 10 ways Yoga Ed. can support your own parenting journey.

1. Support your child’s learning, at home

You may not be able to help your child with their math homework anymore, but you can teach them the skills they need to overcome obstacles, retain what they need to learn, and keep cool, calm and collected on their next test. Incorporating yoga brain breaks into homework time can bolster learning readiness, by improving focus, attention and memory recall. Plus, they’ll learn concrete techniques to calm their nerves or boost their energy according to what they need to succeed.

2. Bring movement into your household

Whether you want to lead your children or teens in a yoga class, or queue up a class online through Yoga Ed. Academy, introducing your kids to yoga at home can help make movement the norm. As human beings, we are all made to move, and by including physical activity in the culture of your own family, you’ll show your kids the importance of maintaining a healthy body for life.

3. Foster Social Emotional Skills

At Yoga Ed., we know that success isn’t all about test scores, and leaders of the future require a different set of skills than simply scoring high on a standardized test. Nurturing your child’s social emotional skills with yoga can plant the seeds for self-awareness and self-management, allowing social awareness and compassion to bloom.

4. Provide homeschool P.E.

For parents who homeschool their children, Yoga Ed. is a great solution for meeting Physical Education requirements at home, and on your own time. Yoga Ed.’s curriculum meets national standards for P.E. and health, with ready-made K-12 lesson plans that do the work for you.

5. Get involved at your child’s school

If you love spending time out in the community or at your child’s school, Yoga Ed. can be a great way for you take a leading role in bringing about meaningful change, cultivating physical, mental and emotional health through yoga. In our online trainings, you can learn to effectively teach yoga to children or teens, and create lesson plans that meet the unique needs of your child’s school.

6. Promote positive self-image

Looking at the media messages being flashed before youth regarding their bodies, their beauty, and their worth, it’s painfully clear that our kids need a whole lot of counter talk, focused on encouragement, confidence, and self-love. Empowering your children with yoga tools allows them to practice non-judgement, to develop a deep appreciation for their individual identities, strengths and potential, and a respect for the innate capacities of their perfectly unique bodies.

7. Survive adolescence

While yoga is beneficial for children of all ages, teenagers encounter a unique set of challenges as they navigate the transition to adulthood—challenges that are felt at the heart of parents as well. Yoga Ed.’s mat and chair yoga classes can give your teen the space and encouragement to develop a strong sense of self, while our trainings help you help them. When you know more about what teens are going through at a biological level, you can approach their struggles and experiences in a way that will land with them.

8. Combat bullying

While you can help your children cultivate a sense of compassion and respect for themselves through yoga, the effects are not limited to the personal. Studies show that when kids are more self-aware, they are more accountable and responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions towards others as well, with the result of more compassionate and empathetic relationships with their peers (Durlak, 2011).

9. Keep the peace

The interpersonal effects that spring from greater social emotional awareness can also bring about more amiable relationships at home. Yoga helps reign in tantrums and curb fighting siblings by helping children and teens build important communication and self-management skills, so that they can work through their disputes, rather than duking them out.

10. Support your own health and wellness

Let’s face it, you can’t take care of your kids if you don’t take care of yourself (and that’s much easier said than done). By bringing Yoga Ed. tools into your own parenting toolkit, you’ll do more than simply teach your kids downward dog, you’ll actually embody the same principles you teach. You’ll come to know yourself more deeply, understand your own development and journey, and unlock tools to assist you in navigating your own day to day chaos. While you teach your children resiliency and support their health, you’ll become more resilient yourself, and work your way to your own health and happiness.

References

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405−433.