Changing The World with Family Yoga

Are you ready to make the world a better place with family yoga ? By Gopala Amir Yaffa

In a world where parents and children are so busy, family yoga provides a wonderful place to spend healthy, happy, quality time together.

No mobile phones, no iPads or TV, no other duties, it’s just you and your children. You might be surprised, but that does not happen often in the 21st century!

Family is so important, and time and care are needed to nurture it and make it work; yoga is perfect for this! Children, parents, and even grandparents get to enjoy practicing yoga together and strengthen their bonds while they support each other and have fun.

It’s great for parents and children to do together. In many children’s extra curricular activities, the parents simply drop them off and come back after an hour, or they just sit and watch. There is no parent/child interaction at all. Well, family yoga is different!

The importance of play

In their constant struggle to juggle all of their responsibilities with the numerous things they need to do to care for their children — making sure that they eat and sleep, get to school and other activities on time, organising their social schedule, watching that their children don’t hurt each other — parents have become almost like policemen and policewomen.

Being so busy with telling the children what to do and what not to do, many parents have become way too serious!

I am exaggerating, of course — but only just a bit!

So this is my favourite thing about family yoga time together; it teaches parents how to play.

The most common response I hear from parents after a few family yoga classes is that things are different at home now, and everything is more playful and fun.

Maybe it’s time to give it a try?

Bridging the gap

Family yoga is a rare opportunity for both parents and children to observe and learn from each other and a great way to bridge the huge age difference between them.

While playing yoga together as a family, we exchange rolls a lot.

Parents get to see how their children learn and how they interact with other children and adults. And children get to see their parents as learners, something that doesn’t happen very often.

Until a certain age, children think that their parents are superhuman; that they never get tired, never run out of time or money, and that there is nothing they can’t do. It’s good for the children to realise that their parents are not perfect.

There are many poses that the children can do and the parents can’t, and some activities that the children can do better than the parents. This humanises the parent and eases the pressure that their children’s expectations can create.

In addition to all of the other great benefits of yoga, these gestures help to relieve tension in the parent/child relationship.

Teaching a family yoga class

When you teach a family yoga class, emphasise the following:

Bring people together

To feel alive and nurtured, to feel that we have found our place in this world, we need to feel connected.

Sometimes we are so far apart, even when we are seated next to each other; have you seen family dinners where everyone is on their mobile devices?

We need family yoga to help us reclaim our closeness. That’s your mission in family yoga: to connect people!

Group & partner poses

It is all about the connections! Do as many group and partner poses as you can! Don’t waste the precious time parents and children have together in doing individual poses. Make sure that they physically touch and connect in every pose. It’s transformative and it is always more fun to do yoga together!

You can find ways to connect in all poses; facing each other, one behind the other, back to back, side by side, one on top of the other, or holding hands.

In most poses, it is easy to adjust the size differences between the parents and the children; be creative. Some poses where we are one on top of the other might only work with children on top.

Two parents and a grandparent can join in with one child or one parent with four children. Most poses can be done in little groups or you (the teacher) can partner with a parent or a child if there is an odd number.

Loving gestures

Bring as many loving gestures into the class:

Looking into each other's eyes

Coordinating the breath

Physical contact

Holding hands

Massaging each other

Sharing experiences

Positive feedback

Teaching each other

Supporting each other in balancing poses

Helping each other stretch

Laughter and smiles

During the final relaxation, the children can lie down side by side with their parents, holding hands, or even on top of their parents

Waking each other from relaxations with hugs and kisses

Whispering beautiful things in each other ears

The communication skills and loving connections we develop during the safe and relaxed atmosphere of the yoga class will go a long way in serving the family during stressful times. Family yoga is a great gift to the world!

Don’t neglect the parents

Parents are people too; they want to be appreciated and recognised as individuals. Make sure to cherish them and value them, they deserve it. Parents work so hard and rarely get the recognition they deserve. Praise them and fatten up their ego, it will be a breath of fresh air for them in a world where they mostly just get criticised.

Here are some ideas of how to care for the parents:

Call them by their own name, never by their child’s name (e.g. Amanda and not Zoe’s mum!).

Tell them how beautiful they are progressing in their yoga, and how awesome they are for coming to yoga with their children. Parents don’t usually get enough positive feedback from anyone. They will be all yours if you keep telling them that they are doing a good job!

Show them ways to help and support their children in the poses.

Give them variations in the poses to make it more comfortable/challenging to fit their abilities.

Tell them a lot about the benefits of the yoga poses so that they’ll know how great it is for them and for their children.

Help the parents to be calm and playful; this will go a long way in facilitating the same feelings in their children. It’s fun to be silly, and it provides a great release for serious adults just as much as it does for children.

Focus a lot on the interaction between parents and their children, complimenting the parents about how wonderful it is to see the family so close together.

Creating a community

Becoming a mum can be an isolating experience. Sometimes it involves moving to a new place, having a new job or no job, everyone around you is busy and you are double busy now with children. Family yoga is an opportunity to meet other parents and create a new community of likeminded people.

People come to your class not just for the yoga, but also for the social part of it. Investing time and effort in connecting with the people in your class is a worthwhile investment.