Did you know that yoga can reduce stress and heal the mind, body, and soul?
Let me explain how yoga can prevent, treat, and heal Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) and toxic stress.
In my personal experience as a Sonoma County preschool teacher, I noticed many children, parents, and teachers in our program had very high levels of stress and anxiety. We all live busy lives and tend to focus on the next activity instead of the one at hand. So I decided to try yoga.
I started doing yoga with the young children in my program (ranging in ages three to six) and found that the children were engaged, focused, and had the opportunity to exercise inside the classroom. We simply moved all furniture out of the way, used carpet squares as yoga mats, turned off the lights, and played soothing music. Each yoga practice ranged between 15 and 30 minutes each time. My colleagues and I enjoyed this activity as well. We practiced and progressed our yoga routine (which was once a week for several months). Many families started to comment on their child sharing their yoga practice with them at home. Parents would tell me how fun it was to learn something new from their own child. The teachers and I agreed that the children were much more relaxed after doing yoga and the whole environment seemed less stressful.
Yoga has the ability to improve cognitive functions like awareness and reduce stress and anxiety in the classroom and at home. We need more teachers, clinicians, and child psychologists to advocate that yoga poses, breath awareness, and mindfulness activities like this are beneficial to their students/patient's mental health, healing process, and well-being.
So try it at home! Try it at your school program! Yoga is the solution.
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