This World Health Day we celebrate the health of our families, friends, colleagues and yogis through children’s yoga!
We all know that health is the most important thing, and taking care of ourselves and our health is vital to our wellbeing and for our loved ones. We conduct our family, baby and childrens yoga classes all across the North East because we are passionate about enriching the lives of families. We know the many benefits of childrens yoga for the health of you and your family, and our ambition is to help more families adopt a healthier lifestyle through childrens yoga!
This World Health Day, we want to share with you just some of the ways that childrens yoga can help improve the health of you and your little yogi!
• Builds muscle strength – Strong muscles protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain. Children’s yoga helps you to grow stronger and more flexible simultaneously, which helps to improve your posture, balance and connective tissue health. As a result of this, connective tissue problems (such as Mixed Connective Tissue Disease), are more preventable with regular childrens yoga exercises.
• Strengthens cartilages and joints – Children’s yoga allows you to take your joints through their full range of motion, helps squeeze out fluid from your joint cartilage and allows for new nutrients to replace it. This prevents the cartilage from breaking down and exposing the bone beneath it, as well as mitigating disability and preventing Osteoarthritis.
• Protects your spine – Our spines contain a number of disks, which act as shock absorbers that can herniated or compress nerves. Backward and forward bends (such as the Downward Facing Dog pose) in childrens yoga help to keep these spinal disks supple. Resultantly, those who practice yoga are 4 times less likely to develop Degenerative Disc Disease or suffer a herniated disc compared with their non-yoga practicing counterparts.
• Increases blood flow – The relaxation taught in childrens yoga help the body’s blood circulation, especially to the extremities, such as the hands and feet. Children’s yoga works to get more oxygen to cells in the body, which results in better functioning. Twisting poses help to wring out venous blood from internal organs. Once the twist pose is released oxygenated blood can flow into these organs, rejuvenating them. Inverted poses, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it is pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. Additionally, yoga helps to boost the levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells (which carry oxygen to the tissues) and thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and reducing the chances of blood clots. Overall, this can lead to a decrease in the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
• Boosts immunity – Children’s yoga involves a fair amount of contracting and stretching muscles and moving organs around, as a person comes in and out of poses. This helps increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells), which in turn helps the lymphatic system battle infections, destroy cancerous cells, and rid the body of toxic waste products.
• Enhances your heart health – childrens Yoga can, at times, get your heart rate up. When is does, it lowers the risk of heart attacks and can help to relieve depression. However, even when your heart rate is not elevated, childrens yoga can still improve cardiovascular conditioning and improve the maximum intake of oxygen during exercise.
• Decreases blood pressure – In the UK around 1 in every 4 adults suffers from high blood pressure. High blood pressure can lead to a number of complications if not properly controlled, such as heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms and metabolic syndrome. Two studies of hypertension sufferers found that after only three months, The Savasana Pose was associated with a huge drop in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Therefore, yoga can help reduce blood pressure and decrease the chances of related complications.
• Makes you happier – A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that a consistent yoga practice improved depression and led to a significant increase in serotonin. Overall participants were shown to have greater levels of happiness and better immune function. The level of improvement also appeared greater, the longer the participants practiced yoga.
• Improves blood sugar levels – There are currently about 3.5 million people in the UK who suffer from diabetes. Those who suffer from diabetes, and even those who don’t, could benefit from lowering their blood sugar levels. Yoga has been found to lower blood sugar by decreasing cortisol and adrenaline levels, encouraging weight loss, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin. By decreasing blood sugar levels, childrens yoga can help decrease the risk of diabetic complications such as heart attacks, kidney failure, and blindness.
• Helps you sleep – We all know how important sleep is to our psychical and mental health. In our everyday lives, we are bombarded with stimulation from our environment which can often strain our nervous system. Restorative yoga, guided relaxation, mindfulness and meditation (which is taught in our family yoga classes) help to calm the nervous system and in turn, help you sleep more deeply. A better night’s sleep leads to less stress, better moods, improved mental health and less risk of getting into accidents.
visit www.kalmalifeuk.co.uk for classes