Balance for Kids is Always Better Together!

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To be able to balance is not just impressive; it is also an essential skill that young children need to gain as part of their development. You might think that they will obtain this skill on their own, but there is a direct relationship between children’s activity and their level of development: kids who are physically active will develop faster than sedentary kids.


Young children under the age of 3 cannot balance on one foot on their own… But they definitely can with a friend, teacher or a parent!


It is amazing how much more we can do when we do it TOGETHER!


Holding hands or supporting each other with arms over shoulders or waist, we can balance in poses while facing each other, standing side by side, back to back or one behind the other. It’s easy!


And it is not cheating… Our balance does improve immensely when doing yoga together. All while we learn many other important skills such as working together, communication and safe gentle supportive touch.


One of the leading principles we use in our classes is “success builds success”. If children feel successful in one achievement, it gives them the self-confidence they need to be more successful in their next endeavour.


Balancing with a friend or with mom and dad builds self-confidence and so it gives children the assurance they need to try even more daring yoga feats. It also helps children develop trust in their friends or parents, and it is an engaging way to deepen our connections without even needing to talk much.


But most importantly, balancing together makes yoga FUN! 


Kids learn best through fun. And when yoga is engaging, interactive and fun, they want to do much more of it. And yes, it is always more fun to do yoga together!


Even older children might find it challenging to balance on their own in a pose like the Tree Pose, Dancer or Airplane for more than a few seconds. But if we start from where they are and build their confidence gradually, there is no limit to the incredible yoga tricks we can perform. 


You might think that tricks and performance have no part in yoga, but for older children many time yoga is not interesting enough on its own, and making the class fun is just not enough… it has to be COOL!


So when standing in Tree Pose gets way to easy, we start balancing on top of each other spicing up the yoga class with some Acro-Balance and Human Pyramids. This is uber-cool! 


And it is yoga. It increases our balance and flexibility, our coordination… and of course our balancing skills!


Yes, it is a bit risky… But it is not as dangerous as you might think. In the circus they say “no risk, no trick”, and besides, do you know what is the greatest risk in life? It is to take no risk. If we don’t take any risks, we stay stuck where we are.


When doing more acrobatic yoga in pairs or groups, we always assign an additional person to be the Mini Teacher. The Mini Teacher’s job is to make sure that everyone is safe. They are there with their hands ready to assist and to slow down the fall if anyone loses their balance. There is a lot to be learnt about caring for others and being present while being the Mini Teacher.


Kids fall all the time, even when they don’t do yoga. So it is a very small risk to try some more challenging balances and partner and group balances during a class while learning in a supportive environment.


Falling down has its benefits too… it teaches us to get up and try again. If we overprotect our children, hover over them and scaffold their development so much that they never fall; they simply don’t learn how to get up. Then every little tumble becomes a big emotional tragedy that they find hard to rise from.


I always try to pass on my very wise grandfather in-law’s motto “you fall, you get up”.


As parents, teachers, and as Mini Teachers, we don’t want to overprotect our yoga friends while they balance. If we hold on to them tightly while they are in a Headstand or a Handstand for example, they will never be able to find their own balance.


Keeping everyone safe is always our priority, and there is a wonderful technique we use to strike the right balance between safety and over helping… we call it Hot Potato. 


In Hot Potato we never actually hold our friends when they balance because again it will inhibit them from finding their own balance. They are a “hot potato,” so they are too hot to hold on to. Instead, we just touch here and there, touching with our fingertips for a moment and letting go, without ever holding our friends. Try it, and you’ll be amazed at how fast your children or classmates will improve with their yoga balance!


Here is another awesome method you can try at home or in your classroom. It is the Protective Circle. We do it in a group of three and it can be done with most balancing poses, as an example lets try the Headstand. 


As one friend prepares to come up into the Headstand the two others stand on either side of her and form a “wall” behind her by reaching toward each other and holding each other wrists.  They can then hold onto the head-stander ankles and lift her up, or she can jump up into the Headstand Pose. The two standing partners now form the ‘Protective Circle’ around the head-stander legs by joining each others hands at the wrists. The head-stander stays safe from falling inside the Protective Circle while their legs bounce off her friends’ arms until she finds her own balance. It works!


The communication skills we can learn by balancing in yoga together with our parents or friends in the relaxed atmosphere of a yoga class can go a long way in helping us keep our cool and our connection to each other as we try to find balance also off our yoga mats and into our everyday beautiful lives.


Hold on to each other, it’s going to be soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much FUN!


Want to be a kids yoga teacher? Take the full journey with us!

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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.