Yoga for children is a form of yoga as exercise designed for children. It includes poses to increase strength, flexibility, and coordination. Classes are intended to be fun and may include age-appropriate games, animal sounds and creative names for poses.
Montessori and Kundalini Yoga teacher and teacher trainer Shakta Khalsa began to teach yoga to children in the 1970s, in a Kundalini community. She states that the approach is not "just a scaled-down version of yoga for adults—it's a whole different animal." [1] She taught asanas using simple descriptions: Downward Dog pose by getting the class to make the shape of a mountain, and Virabhadrasana by asking them to be "fearless warriors". [1] She led children into pranayama with breath-awareness exercises like blowing on a feather and noticing the different feelings that came when you blew hard or gently. She discovered that the teacher had to avoid even basic terms like "inhale" and "exhale" if the children didn't know those words. [1] In 1998 she published an early guide to children's yoga, Fly Like a Butterfly. [2]
Marsha Wenig, founder of YogaKids International, has developed yoga sessions with videos suitable for children aged 3 to 6. [3] She agrees that the teaching methods are necessarily quite different from those used to teach adults. The benefits may be "stillness, balance, flexibility, focus, peace, grace, connection, health, and well-being" [4] but the challenge for the teacher is to hold the class's attention. She encourages children to "bark in the dog pose, hiss in the cobra, and meow in cat stretch." [4] Her experiences led to a 2003 book describing the methods that she developed. [5]
The benefits for children are similar to those for adults. Emotional benefits include greater optimism and a less reactive nature. Mental benefits including increased focus, concentration and improvements in the quality of sleep have been reported. [6]
Academic performance improves, along with confidence in physical abilities. Yoga is used for the treatment of children with special needs, and to aid conventional medical treatment. [7] [8] Yoga practice helps to protect boys from increases in negative behavior. [9]
Physical benefits include increased flexibility, improved coordination and balance, and increased core and body strength. Mental benefits include stronger mind–body connection, increased self-esteem, better focus and concentration, and increased ability to relax and cope with stressful situations. Social and emotional benefits include more awareness of self and others, and increased skill in problem solving and conflict resolution. [10] [11]
Some parents are worried by yoga's religious associations, believing that yoga is an offshoot of Hinduism. [11] Yoga teachers accordingly sometimes avoid Sanskrit pose names, for instance saying cat/cow instead of Bidalasana, tree for Vrikshasana, and bridge for Setubandhasana. [11] The yoga teacher and education researcher Andrea Hyde however states that yoga is not a religion and can fit into ordinary school curriculums, whatever the prevailing culture. [12] [13]
In Hinduism, Kundalini is a form of divine feminine energy believed to be located at the base of the spine, in the muladhara. It is an important concept in Śhaiva Tantra, where it is believed to be a force or power associated with the divine feminine or the formless aspect of the Goddess. This energy in the body, when cultivated and awakened through tantric practice, is believed to lead to spiritual liberation. Kuṇḍalinī is associated with Parvati or Adi Parashakti, the supreme being in Shaktism; and with the goddesses Bhairavi and Kubjika. The term, along with practices associated with it, was adopted into Hatha yoga in the 9th century. It has since then been adopted into other forms of Hinduism as well as modern spirituality and New age thought.
Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, born Krishna Rai, was a yoga guru and the founder of Siddha Yoga. He was a disciple of Bhagavan Nityananda. He wrote books on the subjects of Kundalini Shakti, Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, including a spiritual autobiography entitled The Play of Consciousness. In honorific style, he is often referred to as Swami Muktananda, or Baba Muktananda, or in a familiar way just Baba.
An āsana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose, and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define "asana" as "[a position that] is steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English.
Siddha Yoga is a spiritual path founded by Swami Muktananda (1908–1982). According to its literature, the Siddha Yoga tradition is "based mainly on eastern philosophies" and "draws many of its teachings from the Indian yogic texts of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, the Bhagavad Gita and the poet-saints." The present head of Siddha Yoga is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
Harbhajan, popularly known as Yogi Bhajan and Siri Singh Sahib to his followers, was an Indian-born American entrepreneur, yoga guru, and spiritual teacher. He introduced his version of Kundalini yoga to the United States. He was the spiritual director of the 3HO foundation, with over 300 centers in 35 countries. He was accused posthumously of sexual abuse by several dozen of his female followers; an investigation called the Olive Branch Report found the allegations most likely true.
Amrit Desai is a pioneer of yoga in the West, and one of the few remaining living yoga gurus who originally brought over the authentic teachings of yoga in the early 1960s. He is the creator of two brands of yoga, Kripalu Yoga and I AM Yoga, and is the founder of five yoga and health centers in the US. His yoga training programs have reached more than 40 countries worldwide and over 8,000 teachers have been certified.
The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is a nonprofit organization that operates a health and yoga retreat in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Its 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) facility is a former Jesuit novitiate and juniorate seminary built in 1957.
Yin Yoga is slow-paced style of yoga as exercise, incorporating principles of traditional Chinese medicine, with asanas (postures) that are held for longer periods of time than in other styles. Advanced practitioners may stay in one asana for five minutes or more. The sequences of postures are meant to stimulate the channels of the subtle body known as meridians in Chinese medicine and as nadis in Hatha yoga.
Satkirin Kaur Khalsa is a Sikh preacher and prolific Sikh Kirtan singer. She hosts a Kundalini Yoga show on the JUS Punjabi television channel.
Aerial yoga is a hybrid type of yoga developed by Michelle Dortignac in 2006 combining traditional yoga poses, pilates, and dance with the use of a hammock.
Krishna Kaur Khalsa is an American teacher of Kundalini Yoga as per the teachings of Yogi Bhajan. Born Thelma Oliver, she initially pursued a career in films and theater. In 1970, she shifted her focus to empowering others through the practice of yoga.
Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga is a style of yoga as exercise created by American yogini Sadie Nardini in 2006. Central to this style is a movement referred to as a 'wave' (softening). The structure of this practice includes a 7-step framework which is applied to each pose within a sequence. Nardini incorporates aspects of Kundalini Yoga, Sivananda Yoga, Anusara Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, and portions of movement sequences from Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. Maintaining an internal focus on joy in the moment is part of the practice philosophy. This style integrates postures with learnings from many disciplines including physics, biology, and geometry, influenced by the works of Leslie Kaminoff. It incorporates traditional yoga philosophy from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It emphasizes muscles that are deep within the body and includes the use of 'waves' in order to enter and exit poses. Examples include physical moves that activate muscles close to the spine—such as psoas and quadratus lumborum in order to build support for the body from within before generating outward expression of that movement. The purpose of deep core focused poses in this practice is to improve and deepen breathing. This perspective differs from other styles in which the purpose of deep core work is to stabilize the back. In this practice, keeping belly soft and core strong improve breathing. "Belly Bonfire" breath is one example of a deep core breath technique that involves focus and target of attention and breath with softer abs. Pelvis is viewed as the body's physical center of gravity in this system.
Yoga as exercise is a physical activity consisting mainly of postures, often connected by flowing sequences, sometimes accompanied by breathing exercises, and frequently ending with relaxation lying down or meditation. Yoga in this form has become familiar across the world, especially in the US and Europe. It is derived from medieval Haṭha yoga, which made use of similar postures, but it is generally simply called "yoga". Academics have given yoga as exercise a variety of names, including modern postural yoga and transnational anglophone yoga.
Modern yoga as exercise has often been taught by women to classes consisting mainly of women. This continued a tradition of gendered physical activity dating back to the early 20th century, with the Harmonic Gymnastics of Genevieve Stebbins in the US and Mary Bagot Stack in Britain. One of the pioneers of modern yoga, Indra Devi, a pupil of Krishnamacharya, popularised yoga among American women using her celebrity Hollywood clients as a lever.
Sexual abuse by yoga gurus is the exploitation of the position of trust occupied by a master of any branch of yoga for personal sexual pleasure. Allegations of such abuse have been made against modern yoga gurus such as Bikram Choudhury, Kausthub Desikachar, Yogi Bhajan, Amrit Desai, and K. Pattabhi Jois. There have been some criminal convictions and lawsuits for civil damages.
Frank Jude Boccio is a teacher and one of the originators of mindful yoga. He is known both for his teaching in centres across America, and for his 2004 book Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body and Mind, which describes a practice that combines yoga as exercise and Buddhist meditational practice.
The history of yoga in the United States begins in the 19th century, with the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; Emerson's poem "Brahma" states the Hindu philosophy behind yoga. More widespread interest in yoga can be dated to the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.
Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition, the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve a tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds.
Accessible yoga is a form of modern yoga as exercise with adapted asanas designed to be suitable for people who are unable to follow a standard yoga class through age, illness, or disability. It includes various forms of what has been called Chair Yoga, and has also been described as adaptive yoga.
Katie Griggs, professionally known as Guru Jagat, was an American Kundalini yoga teacher, podcaster, author, and the owner of both a fashion brand and record label.
