7 Tips to Engage Children Ages 7–9 in Yoga

Children ages 7 to 9 are in a golden stage of development. They’re growing rapidly—physically, emotionally, and mentally—and they’re finally ready to explore the real magic of yoga beyond animal poses and silly songs. Their improved coordination, balance, and focus make this a beautiful window to dive deeper into conscious movement, mindful breathing, and meaningful connection.

At Rainbow Kids Yoga, we believe yoga should still be fun and playful—but at this age, it can also become more intentional. Children love to be challenged. They want to be seen, heard, and celebrated. These tips will help you engage them in a more advanced, more satisfying practice that still feels joyful and free.

 

1. Let Them Know: 

Everything Is Possible!

At this age, kids have the physical ability to do so much more. Balance, strength, flexibility—they’ve got the tools, and now it’s time to build on them!

🌱 Start from where they are and guide them step-by-step into more complex poses. They’ll surprise you with how much they can do—and how much they want to show you.

✨ Celebrate their progress. Let them know how amazing they are.

 

2. Honour Their Uniqueness: 

Everyone Is Different

Differences in strength, flexibility, and coordination become more noticeable at this stage—so let your class reflect that.

💡 Offer multiple versions of the same pose. For example, Turtle Pose can be a simple forward bend or an advanced twist with the arms tucked underneath.

🌈 Show that all variations are equally valid. Emphasise that the beauty of yoga is in being yourself.

📣 Tip: Be open about your own limitations as a teacher. When I try King Cobra, my head is a few miles from my feet—but I can do Side Crow in Lotus! That makes us all feel more human and more connected.

3. Breathe More, Feel More

Kids this age are finally ready to work with the breath in a more conscious way.

🌬️ Teach diaphragmatic (belly) breathing to help them regulate their energy, reduce anxiety, and improve focus.

🧘♂️ Incorporate breath awareness into poses, games, and transitions. It helps them stay present—and it teaches powerful self-regulation skills for life.

4. Drop the Baby Talk – They’re Not Little Kids Anymore

Children aged 7–9 want to feel big and capable. They’re growing out of silly songs and hand puppets (though they may still enjoy them now and then).

🎯 Shift your tone—be playful, but also respectful of their growing maturity.

🧩 Try theme-based classes that explore concepts like strength, courage, friendship, or communication.

🌍 Move from imaginative journeys into more thoughtful explorations of values and life lessons.

5. Take the Poses Deeper

This is the perfect age to begin refining alignment and body awareness. Their proprioception (awareness of where their body is in space) is blooming, and they’re ready for more detail.

🔍 Dedicate 5 minutes per class to a “Yoga Workshop” moment:

  • How to enter and exit a pose

  • How to improve it

  • Variations

  • Partner and group versions

  • Why it helps the body and mind

💪 Kids love understanding the “why” behind what they’re doing—it makes yoga feel real and purposeful.

6. Use More Verbal Cues & Let Them Lead

Language is a powerful tool—and this is the age when you can start using it more effectively.

🗣️ Try detailed instructions during partner work like Yoga Sculptor:

One child is a lump of clay in Child’s Pose. The other is the sculptor giving verbal directions only—“Sit up slowly… move your right leg forward… reach your arms overhead…” It’s challenging, funny, and super creative!

💬 Invite kids to teach part of the class or offer positive affirmations in poses.

It boosts self-esteem and deepens embodiment.

7. Keep the Creativity Flowing

This is the age of invention! Kids want to create, perform, and share their ideas. Use this energy to make your class dynamic and expressive.

🎨 Invite them to:

  • Invent their own Sun Dances

  • Create group yoga performances

Choreograph short yoga movies or photo stories

📱 Film their sequences and share with parents or on your class page (with permission!). It gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment.

 

Final Words

 

Ages 7–9 are the bridge between playful exploration and more mature, conscious practice. These children are ready to go deeper, move bigger, and feel more.

When we meet them at this stage with curiosity, joy, and respect, we don’t just teach yoga—we help them grow into themselves with strength, confidence, and emotional intelligence.

And that’s how we change the world… one child at a time.

 

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MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE WITH YOGA AND MINDFULNESS

Rainbow Yoga trained more than 30,000 Kids Yoga Teachers since 2007. We make yoga fun for children and young people of all age groups and for the whole family too! Our yoga consists of many poses and stretches that have different physical benefits for our health and well-being, breathing, relaxation, meditation and mindfulness exercises for our minds, and social interaction, playfulness, meaning, deep life lessons and fun for our spirit.

Thinking about the impact of all those amazing certified yoga teachers, educators, parents and therapists we have trained to teach yoga to children and yoga for teens; we are making a huge difference for the next generation bringing peace, love, kindness and resilience into their lives. Education departments, schools, health programs and individuals in many countries have adopted yoga as a form of exercise and a method to decrees stress and increase wellbeing. We are the biggest and most-loved kid’s yoga teacher training in the world and we are here tp provide you with everything you will need to teach successful, exciting, meaningful, engaging and fun yoga to children, teenagers and families.

THE BEST ONLINE YOGA TEACHER TRAINING – LEARN TOOLS TO HELP KIDS AND FAMILIES FIND CONNECTION, RELEASE STRESS, INCREASE RESILIENCE AND BRING ON A SENSE OF WELL BEING AND MENTAL BALANCE

Rainbow Kids Yoga offers the most comprehensive, practical, and engaging children yoga teacher training certification in the world! Our course will enable you to deliver children yoga classes that will connects your students to themselves, each other, and the environment. Through unique and engaging practices of mindfulness and yoga your students and community will be able to find connections, enhance well-being and thrive as grounded, integrated and well balanced individuals.

At our training, all while having fun, you will become a children yoga instructor through a lot of experiential practice, insightful theory, yoga poses and sequences, mindfulness practices and relaxation. You will learn how to build fun, engaging, and fitness-level-appropriate children yoga classes for all ages, from toddlers to teenagers. At our kid’s yoga teacher training you will find over 300 videos presenting how to make yoga poses accessible and fun! Believe it or not, yoga can be extremely boring for children and for adults too… In Rainbow Yoga, we make yoga in a fun so that children learn easily and want to do more of it. Yoga is so good for you, but for children to want to want to do yoga you will need to learn to spice it all up and this is what our kid’s yoga online teacher training is for!

This is the perfect resource for yoga teachers, parents, educators and therapists to find and discover hundreds of yoga poses, yoga games and mindfulness practices for children in a way that makes it is easy to learn and easy to enjoy.

Yoga poses for kids: Yoga encourages a positive and healthy lifestyle for the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of children as it helps in the development of strength, stamina, and endurance, high levels of positive energy, resilience, focus, self-awareness, and awareness of our environment.

Yoga for children empowers them with increased concentration, calm, peace, and contentment at a mental level leading to inner and outer peace and harmony. The Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training includes a digital manual (a hard copy that can be purchased) as part of the course. This is specialized online yoga teacher training. Here we will focus on how to teach yoga to children and teens, and how to help them release stress, relax, stretch, energize – All in creative and fun ways while taking into consideration their unique needs, whether they are physical, social, mental, or emotional. 

You will learn to teach the youngest yogis and those with emotional and mental challenges techniques to assist them with impulse control and self-regulation. Our courses provide a platform and a foundation to promote the healthy development of the hearts, bodies, and minds of young individuals.

The Rainbow Kids Yoga Training is the largest and most well-regarded Kids Yoga Teacher Training in the world. Our graduates teach everywhere using our diploma including schools, kindergartens, daycare centers, early learning centers, Yoga studios, gyms, fitness centers, birthday parties, private and group classes and more.

 

AFFORDABLE LEARNING AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Join our Yoga Revolution and become a kids’ yoga teacher today through our online yoga teacher training or in-person yoga certification courses. You will be left with a smile on your face, a wealth of knowledge and an ignited spirit to spread the love and joy of yoga.

For our online training, you can allow 24 hours to receive your access and for physical products such as the Rainbow Kids Yoga Book, you can allow 2-4 weeks to receive it by mail. The books are printed on demand before being shipped, but it is worth the wait 😊

HISTORY OF RAINBOW YOGA

Rainbow Yoga is a fun and constantly evolving family mission and lovingly born in 2007, to give people the tools to teach fun, engaging, and creative in=person and online yoga classes for kids, teens, families, partners, and communities. Rainbow Yoga is interactive and social and all about connection; we touch, hug, move, breathe and co-create together our yoga magically and playfully.

Rainbow Yoga offers a variety of unique and comprehensive teacher training certification courses all over the world offering a well-rounded, in-depth learning experience through a combination of play, practical theory, and fun.The Rainbow Yoga Teacher training is renowned for being captivating, dynamic, loving, and life changing. It is condensed with a lifetime of knowledge and hands-on experience from the Founders of Rainbow Yoga, Gopala, and Angel Yaffa. Delivered by world-class faculty around the world.