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.