Love, Touch, Breathe… Family Yoga

What makes a family?  It is not necessarily our genetic constitution, but rather the connection and integration we feel with each other.  It is how much we merge into each others lives, and how we support and inspire each others growth.
Yoga means unity. Ideally there is no social unit more united than a family.  
There is a gradual evolution in social life that moves us to expand ourselves.  We grow up protected and guided by family and friends. Then we go out in the world to build our own “individual” and “independent” life and we try to be self-sufficient and care for ourselves.  Next, we fall in love and our heart expands to include another. When we have kids we are made to expand even more… much more.
This is the natural progression of life from self-centred to altruistic, a journey from separateness to unity.  It is a path of expansion and wider connections. It is yoga. Having a family is more yoga than doing yoga poses. It can be very intense, but also a supportive environment in which to to discover


Yoga and Family have many unexpected similarities, and are the perfect partners for true connection and expansion.
When we do yoga poses or meditate, we go within to find our center, our yoga.  But going within and focusing on one’s self is not the only kind of yoga. Being out there in the world, expanding ourselves is a path that is just as valid.
We are mirrors of each other, and living in close proximity to others, as in a family, provides countless opportunities to work on our patience, focus, compassion and many other noble yogic qualities. We can work much more deeply on our emotions, impulses, instincts and intuition when we see them reflected by our partner or kids.


We are mirrors of each other, and live in close proximity to others, within our family. This provides countless opportunities to work on our patience, focus, compassion and many other noble yogic qualities.
Love is the most noble yogic quality. Love is when we feel so close to another that we are almost one. Love is when you never want to be separated. Love IS unity. Love IS yoga.
By bringing the awareness and mindfulness of yoga to our family life, we can make love more yoga, and yoga more loving. 
The tools that we can learn while in the relaxing environment of a family yoga practice can go a long way in helping us to deal more calmly with the stressful parts of family life.  The deeper connections we nurture, being peaceful together, and the communication skills we learn while doing yoga together, are recipes for a happy and united family.
Here are some points we can emphasise to deepen our family yoga practice:


Eyes, we can see so much in the eyes. Our feelings, our fears, our love.  By looking into each others eyes we take the time to connect and be present together with no agenda.  It is us time now.
It can be at the beginning or the end of the practice, or even while in the poses.  We soften our eyes, and silently look into each other for as long as we need to. Something magical always happens if we are sincere and patient enough with this practice.


Something special happens when we gaze into each others eyes.[/caption]
Synchronising our breath while doing yoga together creates a joint rhythm and a greater awareness of both the poses and of each other.
We breathe in when we extend or open up in a pose, and we breath out when we fold in or relax. We make the breath rhythmical, equalising the length of the inhalation and exhalation. These rhythms induce calmness and serenity.
The breath is also a way to communicate; breathing in together we get ready, and breathing out we go into a pose.
If we see that our partner is holding their breath, it probably means that they feel tense.  We should then slow down and pull them less into the pose.
When assisting each other in the poses, the exhalation is when we bring our partner a bit deeper into the pose since this is when their body lets go and releases tension.


Synchronising our breath while doing yoga together creates a joint rhythm. There is a greater awareness of the poses and of each other.[/caption]
Touch is the most ancient form of communication and the most powerful way to show love.  We need safe and loving touch just as much as we need food and water, and children and adults who do not receive enough safe and supportive touch develop a variety of psychological and social issues.
In a family yoga class we try to touch each other as much as we can.  We join our yoga poses by holding hands or doing them side by side, back to back, and even one on top of the other!
While in the poses, and before and after the practice, we pat each others back, ruffle each others hair, massage each other and just stay as close to each other as we can.
Touch connects people, and it can help bridge gaps that verbal communication cannot.
Laughing and talking are most welcome in a family yoga session, but it is nice to have some silent parts when we communicate without any words.  We can even use hand squeezes or tapping to communicate to our partner if we would like them to ease the tension in the pose or take us farther into it.  One squeeze or tap means less, and two squeezes or taps mean more.
Touch connects people, and it can help bridge gaps that verbal communication cannot.


When we practice yoga together it provides us with the time and space to connect and to bond, and to heal any disconnection or discord from before. We love each other dearly, but sometimes we are not mindful of the others needs and feelings or we are too much in a rush to notice them at all.  Here we take the time to truly be with each other and do nothing else.
While doing yoga together it's best to do nothing else. No mobile phones, or emails, or toys, or delicious dishes cooking in the oven. Doing yoga together is sacred (And playful too of course). Our family is sacred. When something is sacred we treat it with extra care, we give it special attention.
When doing partner or group poses, we are likely to hurt each other if we are lacking in communication and awareness skills.  It’s a learning process, but the secret of both staying safe and enjoying the practice more is doing it SLOWLY.


Moving together, we stay attentive to how it feels to have everyone included.
We move slowly, we breathe slowly, and we become aware of our bodies and our connections. We try to be equally aware of ourselves and our other family members. When we feel tension in their body we know that they are communicating to us that we need to accept them for where they are and let them open up slowly and gently. No rush. We are here for each other, forever. 
Rainbow Yoga Founder
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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.

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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. 

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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.

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