yoga

Our Goat Yoga Playdate Review

| Patti Webb

First playdate review of the year!!
Hear us out: Yoga… but with goats.

As our kids get older, experiences become less about laying a foundation and more about exposure. Yeah, we still want to show our kids something new; but instead of sharpening their motor skills or working with their senses, we’re also starting to integrate culture, instruction, complex skills and body control, and executive functions.

All that is to say that we want to give our kids a fun challenge. When we asked our kids to guess what we had planned, this was nowhere on their radar.

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Namaste All Day: Kids Yoga

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

By now, we’re all pretty familiar about the perks of yoga. It promotes our overall health and well-being, reduces stress, and helps us “find our center.” The practice has been trending in the past decade and schools have even implemented it to help guide children’s focus and self-regulation.

Research has shown positive outcomes from regular yoga practice, including:

  • Increased attention, decreased hyperactivity, and faster task completion in 5-year-olds who completed yoga 2x/week
  • Mental and emotional benefits in children ages 5-18 years, including decreased anxiety, boosted concentration and memory, improved confidence and self-esteem, and improved academic performance
  • Brain scans revealing reduced activation of the amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for emotions and arousal levels) in 6th graders
  • Improvements in attention as well as decreased oppositional behaviors, restlessness, and impulsivity following 20 sessions of yoga with boys diagnosed with ADHD
  • Improvements in imitation and play with peers in children with ASD following 10 months of yoga 5 days/week

Sounds good on paper, but yoga with kids can be intimidating. “Am I doing this right? Can kids even do these poses?”

It’s not just a bunch of poses and breathing. Although that notion is partially true, there’s more to it. The goal of yoga is to grow self-awareness, connecting the mind and the body to the present moment. It’s because of this broadness that makes participation in its practice easy.

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