Enjoying a moment with my boy
Want to make your little ones feel good about themselves? Are your teens swimming in self-doubt and body image issues?
Instilling body awareness and a positive self-image in your children is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting. I’ve done all kinds of activities (Mom&Me outings, attending their events, sending notes in lunches, telling my kids how wonderful they are, to name but a few) to help foster these qualities in my children. I’ve found that doing yoga with my children also helps achieve this elusive parenting goal. Here’s how:
Doing yoga will increase body awareness. Yoga requires specific placement of body parts as well as small, subtle movements to improve alignment. Over time, this will increase the personal level of comfort with your body. This can lead to improved posture and greater self-confidence. At the very least it will help with coordination and take the edge off those clumsy teenage growth years. We could all live without stumbling down the hallway right in front of the ‘cool’ kids.
Yoga also generates a sense of peace and contentment. Breathing exercises bring calm and well being, helping to deal with daily stress while enriching personal awareness and increasing self-acceptance. Discovering who you are, your talents, your limitations, your true self, is all part of the yoga experience. Most adults struggle with self acceptance, just think what a tremendous gift you are giving your child if they can tap into this in their youth.
About.com has a 3 minute video about how yoga achieves these goals for teens and tweens from Karma Kids in NYC.
Add yoga to your self-esteem building arsenal and see how well your children respond. To educate your children further about body type and self image follow this fun kids link at Kid’s Health.
I’ll be writing about the Yoga Benefits theme regularly over the next little while so be sure to subscribe to by e-mail or to my RSS Feed to receive all the posts.
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[...] yoga helps teens develop confidence and improve their self-esteem. The physical changes inherent in adolescence often lead to poor self-image. Yoga focuses on [...]
[...] yoga helps teens develop confidence and improve their self-esteem. The physical changes inherent in adolescence often lead to poor self-image. Yoga focuses on [...]
[...] yoga helps teens develop confidence and improve their self-esteem. The physical changes inherent in adolescence often lead to poor self-image. Yoga focuses on [...]
[...] yoga helps teens develop confidence аnd improve thеіr self-esteem. Thе physical changes inherent іn adolescence οftеn lead tο poor [...]