The Best Practices Are The Ones Kids Keep Doing

A practice needs a way into a child’s life

Adults are wonderfully talented at designing things children should do. We can put them in a curriculum, laminate them, colour-code them and explain their long-term benefits with a diagram of a brain.

Children bring an inconvenient additional question: Why would I want to?

That question is useful information. It tells us something about the bridge between our intentions and their experience.

For a skill to become available beyond a lesson, children need opportunities to learn it, revisit it and discover when it helps. A breathing exercise that exists only while a teacher is counting has a different place in a child’s life from a familiar pause they choose before asking a friend to try again.

This is the teaching principle behind “The Best Practices Are The Ones Kids Keep Doing.” By “best”, we mean safe, appropriate and meaningful practices that children can make their own. Repetition alone cannot establish quality; children can repeat unhelpful things too. And enjoyment alone cannot prove a health benefit.

But when our hope is a lasting relationship with movement, attention and care, a child’s willingness to return is part of the work.

We need to ask two questions together: What is this helping the child learn? And what makes the child want to come back?

The research has a rather useful plot twist

The evidence is more interesting than “yoga is good, therefore children should do yoga”. It asks us to look closely at the experience we are creating.

There is an equally important reality check. A 2023 meta-analysis of nine out-of-school physical-activity studies based on self-determination theory found no statistically significant pooled improvement in physical activity or the motivational outcomes examined. A promising theory still needs effective teaching, a workable setting and good evaluation. Read the out-of-school review.

Mindfulness research makes the question of participation especially vivid. In a 2023 analysis from the MYRIAD trial, researchers studied 4,232 students aged 11–13 who received school mindfulness training. Most did not establish regular practice outside the lessons. Responses varied considerably: some young people valued it; others had reservations. Better observed teaching quality was associated with more practice and greater responsiveness, and the researchers recommended considering curriculum co-design with students. Read the MYRIAD participation study.

A 2024 randomised study, with 142 adolescents in its final analysis, offers another clue. Those taught informal mindfulness within everyday activities were more likely than those taught formal practice to intend to continue frequently or daily. That is an intention, not demonstrated lifelong use. The follow-up was short, and these were teenagers rather than younger children. Still, the study raises a valuable teaching question: Does the practice fit the life of the person we are asking to practise? Read the formal-versus-informal mindfulness study.

Yoga research deserves the same honesty. A 2025 review of 20 school yoga trials involving adolescents judged every included study to have a high overall risk of bias. That limits what we can confidently claim about effects. Read the 2025 yoga review.

My teaching conclusion is to take children’s experience seriously, offer practices thoughtfully, and keep checking what actually helps. The studies above did not test the Rainbow Yoga activities below. Those are practical teaching suggestions, informed by our approach and by the questions this evidence raises.

A lesson plan can tell us what we offered.
Children can tell us what it felt like to receive it.

Five ingredients that make returning more inviting

01 Give children a choice that changes something

“Would you like to do exactly what I planned, or exactly what I planned?” is a choice with a very small imagination.

Try two or three real possibilities: “Shall our forest be windy or sleepy?” “Would you like to make your tree standing, sitting, or with your hands?” “Do you want to lead, join in, or watch this round?”

Then allow the answer to alter the experience. If children choose the sleepy forest and we deliver the windy forest because it was next on the laminated sheet, they have learned something about our consultation process.

Choice works within a clear container. We keep bodies safe, protect personal space and stop actions that hurt. Children can help choose the journey while adults remain responsible for the conditions.

02 Make progress something a child can feel

A child does not need to win the international championships of standing on one leg. They need a next step they can reach.

Offer a tree with both feet on the ground, a hand resting on a wall, a seated version, or a small balance if comfortable. Invite children to notice what changed: “Did that support help?” “What made it easier to begin again?”

Give feedback with useful detail: “You found a way to steady yourself.” “You noticed you needed a pause.” “You changed your plan when your partner needed more space.”

There is room for challenge here. An activity can be enjoyable and difficult. Children can wrestle with a problem, practise a movement and feel frustrated without being left alone in the struggle. Adjust the challenge so another attempt feels possible.

03 Make belonging part of the activity

A room can contain twelve yoga mats and still leave one child feeling there is nowhere to stand.

Start with an activity everyone can enter without being selected by a friend. Try a whole-group mirror game: one child offers a simple movement; everyone explores their own comfortable version. Rotate leadership, welcome a pass, and make observation an ordinary way to begin.

Offer partner, solo and no-touch options without a public explanation of who “needs” which one. Shared practice should make space for different bodies, different energy levels and different ways of communicating.

Belonging includes the child who adores a roaring lion game and the child for whom thirty roaring lions are a perfectly reasonable reason to leave the building.

Ask what fun feels like to this group. It may be a loud adventure, a quiet mystery, a familiar song, a satisfying challenge or a moment beside a trusted person.

04 Give the movement a story worth entering

“Raise your arms ten times” is an instruction.

“The lighthouse has gone dark. Can your arms send a signal to the lost boat?” gives that movement a purpose inside a story.

A good adventure has someone to care about, something that happens, a choice that matters and an ending children help create. The boat finds the harbour because the children listened, moved, cooperated and made a plan.

Let their ideas have consequences. If someone suggests asking the owl for directions, meet the owl. If the first plan fails, work together on another. Imagination becomes much more interesting when children can influence the world they have entered.

For a week of short practices, keep one story growing: meet the lost dragon, discover his problem, try a solution, face a new difficulty, ask for help, find the way home and celebrate what everyone learned. Let each chapter contain a satisfying event of its own. Tomorrow can be interesting without making today feel unfinished.

05 Make the beginning easy to find again

Choose a moment that already exists: after putting away school bags, before story time, or at the beginning of your class. Offer a brief, familiar invitation there.

“Before our story, shall we stretch like the character and listen for one sound?”

A short practice gives you somewhere manageable to start. It can grow when children want more. There is no magical number of minutes that makes an activity effective, and a five-minute example is a teaching choice rather than a scientifically established dose.

When a day is missed, make returning easy: “Lovely. We can begin here.”

No guilt ceremony required. The dragon is very relaxed about attendance.

Give your next class one small experiment

Keep one familiar practice. Change the invitation. Add one genuine choice. Give it a meaningful purpose. Then ask:

Accept pointing, drawing, a quiet conversation or no answer. A show of hands in front of everyone will miss some children’s experience. And follow through: “You asked for quieter music. Today we are trying that.”

Notice more than completed poses. Who initiates? Who returns? Who adapts a practice for themselves? Who remains on the edge? Ask about barriers before interpreting absence as lack of motivation; transport, cost, fatigue, disability access and family demands also shape participation.

Keep checking learning and wellbeing alongside enjoyment. A child asking for the dragon story is evidence of interest. It is not, by itself, evidence that anxiety has improved. A quieter room does not tell us whether its children feel safe or heard.

We can be enthusiastic teachers and careful observers at the same time.

The cause is bigger than getting children to do yoga

We want children to discover that movement can be a source of pleasure, that attention can open a door, that resting is allowed, that other people can make life richer, and that their own ideas belong in the room.

That asks something of adults too. Join the game. Model a pause. Apologise when you rush. Make a boundary clear without making a child small. Let the lesson change when a child shows you a better way in.

There will be wobbles, interruptions, shy beginnings, unexpected masterpieces and a dragon called Kevin who has strong opinions about the ending.

There may also be a child who tries again because yesterday’s attempt felt possible. A child who invites someone in. A child who discovers a practice can belong to them.

That is the Rainbow Yoga invitation: connection, co-creation, imagination and meaningful movement, with room for every child’s way of joining.

LOVE, PEACE AND ROCK N’ROLL has room for stillness. It also has room for children.

The best practices are the ones kids keep doing.
Let’s make them worth coming back to.