Kid's Yoga

November 17, 2018

Kid's Yoga

There was a time that I wanted to specialize in teaching Kid's Yoga. It's still very dear to my heart because of my own little "yogi" - my son, Alex. Here he is pictured in one of his first yoga poses :)))

Source; EVERYDAY HEALTH (EVERYDAY HEALTH)

Bending Energy: ADHD Kids Benefit From Yoga

By Dennis Thompson Jr.

Medically Reviewed by Pat F. Bass III, MD, MPH

Pairing a hyperactive child with a quiet, slow form of exercise may sound counterintuitive and even disastrous, but it turns out yoga can be incredibly helpful for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In fact, it's been beneficial for these kids long before terms like ADD and ADHD were widely known, according to yoga instructor Shakta Khalsa.

"I've been doing this a long time, so I've seen the evolution of labels like ADHD," said Khalsa, who founded Radiant Child Yoga, an internationally known training program for teaching yoga to kids. "In the 1970s, we didn't have these labels, but we saw kids that some people considered hyperactive. I started noticing that the yoga was helping these kids to calm themselves down. Then in the 1990s, the labels popped up, and it just seemed more and more people were coming to the training program with kids who had these labels."

Science now seems to be proving what Khalsa has known all along. At least two randomized controlled trials have found evidence that yoga is a potential alternative ADHD treatment, according to a 2013 review published in Frontiers in Psychiatry.

"The children trained in yoga showed greater improvement in areas of attention and hyperactivity as well as homework compliance," said lead author Meera Balasubramaniam, MD, a psychiatrist at the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan. "In addition, one of the studies in our review also mentions that parents were able to employ yoga techniques for de-escalation of behavioral problems in children."

Read more at EVERYDAY HEALTH (EVERYDAY HEALTH)