Is Kids Yoga Supposed to be Quiet?

In a word: no.

It’s simple, really: kids are not adults. There, I said it. Too often, parents look at kid yoga classes through the lens of their own experiences with yoga. They have the expectation that their child will follow the instructions they are being given with nary a word spoken, as the adults would in their own class. But as with everything else, yoga is a little bit different when it comes to kids.

For one thing, kids want to be engaged. They are naturally inquisitive—or perhaps yours is the only child that doesn’t ask 5 million questions a day? 🙂 They want to explore and discover things on their own terms. That’s totally normal and a yoga class that is designed for children will give them those opportunities.

With the inclusion of games, play activities and songs, children’s yoga classes capture their attention in a natural and appealing way. The idea, ultimately, is to teach children that yoga is not a set of rules but that it’s fun and a skill worth learning.

As with many things, kids take in more than we think they do. With yoga classes, they either tend to sit back and take it all in or they move around a lot on their mat and in the yoga space. Parents see this as unruly behaviour, given the nature of yoga as a calming effort that requires concentration, but this is in fact how many kids learn. It’s a mistake to think that just because a child was wiggling around on his or her mat, that they didn’t like what was going on around them. The parents of the wiggly kid might find themselves surprised when they catch their child practicing some of the yoga positions at home, simply because they are most comfortable and calm in that space, and they were curious enough about it to retain it.

The physical benefits of yoga—as with any activity—for children are obvious: it improves their flexibility, balance, strength, and coordination. But what has come to the forefront recently is that, just as it does with adults, yoga can have a calming effect, balancing against an ever increasing level of anxiety and stress.

Kids today are stressed out, more than ever before. Over scheduling and information overload, among other things, are contributing to kids having less in the way of downtime; they are less able to cope with stress because they don’t have the time, or the tools, to cope with it. In fact, physicians and child psychologists have seen an uptick in recent years in stress-related anxiety and physical manifestations like insomnia and headaches.

Yoga can help with that: children can create a connection to their bodies that helps them identify when they are anxious or stressed and can give them the method for dealing with it. It helps them to develop focus and concentration while at the same time teaching them patience. And because it’s non-competitive, kids who master poses begin to learn that the effort is its own reward: a valuable lesson in today’s culture of hyper-productivity.

I can hear you asking: ‘So if yoga classes aren’t quiet, how are kids going to learn concentration and focus’? Learning about these things doesn’t have to be in and of itself quiet. One technique is called ‘storytime yoga’. In an effort to keep the pose names accessible for children, they are re-named more simply: dog, cat, bridge. To engage the kids, the instructor will tell a story and as each animal/item that is also a pose comes up in the story, the children assume the pose. They are focused on the story and then at perfecting their pose.

Another way to up the engagement is, with poses named after animals for example, that they make the animal noise while they’re engaged in the pose. That, you can imagine, can get very noisy indeed, but kids will relate to it better than forced silence.

Attempting to impose the almost silent environment of an adult yoga class on kids is sure to result in only one thing: a negative experience. Incorporating games, and yes noise, ensures that the kids walk away engaged, happier, relaxed and having had a good time.

Make sure to check out our schedule for classes specifically for children, in addition to those for the whole family!