Yoga for Children with Additional Needs
Not just any yoga…yoga for children with additional needs. By Gopala Amir Yaffa
Reading time: 3 minutes
Rainbow Yoga is all about connecting people through yoga. This is our why and it's our how when we teach!
In Rainbow Yoga we expand our hearts and minds to include all that are around us…and the feeling is often ecstatic.
Children with additional needs have as much need for connection as any of us, and they often get fewer opportunities than others to fulfill this need because they are often in relative isolation or in environments (including hospitals and other specialist centres) that are more sterile and provide less opportunity for connection.
Or when children have a condition that makes verbal communication challenging, working with the elements of conscious touch and human connection becomes even more important, more transformative, and more healing than anywhere else.
In most team sports and organised activities, the coach may put the emphasis on being aggressive and competitive, as in professional sports. The goal is to win, and not to get together or have fun.
With an over-emphasis on performance and winning, children with disabilities may find few opportunities to be included in school, after-school, and weekend team sports. This is where yoga is so awesomely cool for these amazing children, allowing them to connect and interact with other children on a platform that doesn’t make them feel inferior.
Yoga is so important for children with additional needs as it both helps to release tension and helps keep them more mobile.
Motion is Lotion
Motion keeps the body healthy and full of vitality. It improves circulation and digestion, it is grounding and mood-enhancing. And even more so when we do it together, as with each other’s help we can do so much more and for longer, stretching further, balancing in ways we cannot on our own, and warming each other’s hearts with our eyes, our words and our hands.
Our goal here is not to ‘heal’ the child, but to improve their quality of life and bring connection and joy wherever possible. When the person feels uplifted in this way, healing occurs from inside of them, irrespective of how they may appear from the outside.
Shift from fixing to connecting
By shifting from ‘fixing’ to ‘connecting’ we allow the child the safe space to discover the skillset they need to achieve through their own efforts.
People are much more complex than machines. ‘Fixing’ a person is not like changing parts or tightening screws. The brain and the body are amazing, magical and miraculous creations that can ‘fix’ themselves given the time, the space, the nurturing, the support and the love needed. If we connect to our students through presence, excitement and mindful care, we create the space for their own bodies and minds to do the fantastic things they were made to do. This is Rainbow Yoga!
Gopala Amir Yaffa is co-founder and wizard at Rainbow Kids Yoga Training (rainbowyogatraining.com)
Om Magazine
First published in November 2009, OM Yoga magazine has become the most popular yoga title in the UK. Available from all major supermarkets, independents and newsstands across the UK. Also available on all digital platforms.
