Why You Should Sign Your Kids Up For Yoga

Yoga has gone from being a relatively unknown spiritual practice to a competitive, available activity for people of all walks of life from all over Australia and the world.

Now it’s time to sign your kids up as well.

Well at least that’s what Radha Babicci, 35, thinks. She is the teaching director at Emmerick Street Community Preschool in Lilyfield, a suburb of Sydney’s inner west. She was nominated for the Australian Scholarships Group’s National Excellence in Teaching Award just recently, and picked up an award in the leadership and development category at her school. She says that one of the things that makes her a great teacher is daily yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices.

Ms Babicci organises meditation and mindfulness sessions with her students every single school day, as well as running a weekly yoga class on Wednesday afternoons.

“We do a different meditation every day. Once at 11am, before lunch, and again at 1.30pm before story time,” she told news.com.au.

“We start with belly breaths, then it might be listening to sounds, or we focus on happiness and think about the people that make us happy.”

In the weekly yoga class, Ms Babicci admits that, with her young students, you can’t really compare the session to one that adults might do.

“It’s more physical and fun and sometimes it gets loud.”

“We act out different animals, we dance through the emotions “” we dance ‘happy’, dance ‘sad’ “” and it always ends with quiet time. Then they get to feel relaxed at the end and I guide them through a meditation,” she said.

Although you might be thinking that parents couldn’t be that keen on their children doing yoga and meditation during school hours, Ms Babicci said that the response has been really positive, with many parents seeing the value.

Judy Kynaston, the general manager at Early Childhood Australia, agrees. She says that yoga and meditation can be very helpful in the process of children learning to manage their emotions.

“Some children handle large group situations well, but others are a bit more anxious. It might be more frightening for them, so doing something like yoga helps to sort through those emotions and help them figure out what they might be feeling,” she said.

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