Health Tips

The best place to practice yoga with your family is right at home, in bite-sized chunks that will fit in with your family routine. Yoga provides an astonishingly diverse range of practices that can engage and challenge the minds, bodies and spirit of parents, babies, toddlers and children. In fact, it is a fantastic way for family members to learn from each other and grow together.

There are many yoga experts who believe that the initiation of your child to yoga could start even while the baby is in the womb. Rhythmic full yogic breath and resonant humming and chanting have a powerfully calming effect on the wriggler. Integrated mother-and-baby yoga practices, where the adults and baby move together, are a hugely enjoyable way to deepen and develop bonding and understanding.

As your child moves from the infant stage to that of the toddler, the relaxed intimacy that's fostered through shared yoga sessions can provide parents and child with a firm and healthy foundation from which they can step into a world that demands equally from both parent and child.

Family yoga on the one hand gives you the chance to develop strength, speed and stamina and on the other, the opportunity to relax together in a calming environment.

Postures like the classical surya namaskar (salutation to the sun), strengthening practices such as backward bending sequences (cobra, snake, bridge) leave parents and children feeling energised.

Swinging and rolling yoga fun for toddlers not only develops parents' strength and co-ordination, but nearly always promotes chuckles and delighted smiles from the children.

So, get your whole family into the yoga act. Chant together, let the cymbals clash and let the little bells ring. Although these are not usually sounds associated with yoga, as we know it, it serves the same purpose. Create harmony together. After all, that is what yoga is all about.

Regular practice of asanas helps to keep our body fit, controls cholesterol levels, reduces weight, normalises blood pressure and improves heart performance. Asanas also strengthen the mind and give it the tenacity to withstand pain and unhappiness stoically and with fortitude. In this way, they lead to mental equilibrium and calmness. Pranayam re-educates our breathing process through the correct breathing technique. This helps us manipulate our energies. It helps release tension and develop a relaxed state of mind. It balances our nervous system, thus reducing the need for sleep. It encourages creative thinking and increases the amount of oxygen to our brain. This improves mental clarity, alertness and physical well being. Yoga Nidra is a wonderful way of relaxing. It is a type of meditation, done while lying on our backs in Shavasana. It relaxes our entire physiological and psychological system, thus completely rejuvenating the body and the mind. It thus helps us to relate better to people and things around us, giving us a sense of well being.
Regular practice of Nidra help prevent disorders and ailments such as diabetes, blood pressure, heart conditions, asthma, varicose veins, digestive disorders, arthritis, arteriosclerosis and chronic fatigue. A person who practises Yoga can consciously control autonomic or involuntary functions, such as temperature, heartbeat and blood pressure.Yoga creates a balance in the nervous and endocrine system which directly influence all other body systems and organs. There is no doubt that Yoga is an effective curative and preventive medicine. Yoga is a holistic remedy that combines the faculties of mental peace and improved concentration and power, with a relaxed state of living, good relationship and harmony with people.