Baby Yoga
What is baby yoga?
Our ‘Yoga babies’ course is based on Hatha yoga – the union of balance of body and mind – and incorporates massage, soft stretching and gentle movements to make it appropriate for babies, ensuring a fun and rewarding experience for both carer and baby.
The origins
The exact origins of baby yoga are not certain. Certainly, it has been practiced in India for hundreds of years, but it is not clear whether it began as a separate discipline to adult yoga or whether it originated from instinctive movements which mothers practiced with their babies after birth. Today, even in the West, yoga is not just practiced and available for adults. The routines and postures have become adapted for young children and babies. This is not intended to mean that parents attempt to contort the child’s body into odd shapes. Nor do they try to force the baby to perform in a class room on a yoga mat. Baby yoga is an interactive routine performed with a baby and its primary care givers. The movements may include gentle stretching of limbs and may also practice correct breathing by encouraging the babies to imitate their mother’s breathing patterns. Music or calm singing may also be used during sessions to help calm and soothe the baby during the exercises. Aside from the bonding and flexibility that baby yoga may impart, yoga also has other benefits for babies.
Yoga can help babies become aware of their own body’s younger in life. Yoga also aids in strengthening the spine, improves muscle condition, imparts flexibility to their joints, improves breathing and oxygen intake, helps them with balance, improves organ function, and helps prevent illnesses. Baby yoga has been proven to be safe. Yoga is beneficial to the growth and development of babies.
Top 5 reasons why babies are natural yoga students (yogis)
- Like yogis, babies prefer to breathe through the nose
- Like yogis, babies are only concerned with the present moment
- Like yogis, babies love unconditionally
- Like yogis, babies practice non-violence
- Like yogis, babies practice yoga postures naturally as part of development.
The benefits of baby yoga
Yoga helps to release blockages of tension in the body. Tension can block the flow of energy and cause the body to tighten and become painful. For example, a colicky baby may have tension in the digestive system.
Practicing baby yoga has many benefits for babies, some of these benefits are that it:
- Improves relaxation, encouraging longer sleep duration for infants
- Helps to relieve the effects of colic, constipation and wind
- Stimulates all a baby’s major systems: co-ordination, respiration, digestion, learning
- Ability and language development helps strengthen the bond between parents and child
- Relaxes both parent and child
- Helps balance, co-ordination and motor skills
- Allows babies to move freely
- Strengthens their bodies and develops reflexes
- Improves learning and social development
- Aids bonding, trust and social interaction
- Stimulates the brain
- Develops physical confidence and spatial awareness
- Improves muscle development
- Promotes better quality of sleep
- Enables bonding with baby on an emotional and physical level
- Promotes confidence in handling baby
- Offers a great opportunity for Dads as well
- Provides a great social environment for mother and baby
Katherine your instructor is an accredited baby yoga instructor (RCM/CThA), and she will take you through a range of full body moves each week to build strength, coordination and mind-body connections in a fun class. Baby yoga is the ultimate developmental tool for your baby.
