Time spent with your loved ones is some of the richest in life. Adding yoga to these times is a way to add new joy and bonding opportunities with your family. Whether your family consists of your partner, children, parents, siblings, or your cat or dog, you can include them in your yoga practice.
Let’s start with your partner. Many books teach partner yoga you can do with your spouse, sibling, or any other person you choose. One of my favorite partner poses is the Tree pose. You and your partner stand side by side and place one arm around each other’s waist. While supporting each other, bring your outside leg up and place the bottom of your foot flat against your opposite leg, either at the bottom of the leg, near the ankle, or higher up your leg as is comfortable. When you feel balanced, bring your free hand up and out to make an open V. Hold the pose as long as you both feel comfortable. This pose brings strength, trust, and balance to the body and the relationship.
Doing yoga with your children is a special gift to them and to yourself. Bringing yoga to their morning wake-up routine through big stretches, hugs, and deep breaths awakens them in a happy, positive way. Yoga added to their bedtime routine through guided relaxation and spinal twists helps them sleep, adds to the quality of their lives, and provides an easy way for you to enjoy special time with them. Child-rearing has no guarantees, but I hope to accomplish the following in teaching yoga to my own children: that yoga introduced to them at a young age, no matter their response, will stay with them and eventually become a fond family memory—like the special meal you cook for them on their birthday each year.
One of my student’s mothers was very happy to tell me about an event that helped her realize that yoga was really becoming a part of her daughter’s life. One night her 10-year-old daughter made an area in her room to do yoga by herself and excitedly told her all the poses she did. Then she invited her mother to her “yoga space” to do some poses together.
To make yoga a positive experience for your children, you need to tailor it to their age group. Babies can lie on your stomach in Rest pose, and toddlers can copy for a few seconds the poses you do, with great delight.
Butterfly pose is a toddler favorite. While sitting on the floor, place the soles of your feet together, open your legs out, and bring your feet in towards your body. Begin to move your legs by flapping your knees up and down. Add words and stories about the butterfly and bring in pretend play by saying, “Let’s be butterflies and make the butterfly fly. What place are we going to fly to?”
An added benefit to doing yoga with toddlers is that you may find the child in you again! You also may discover some things you did not expect from your toddler when they choose which favorite place or person they will fly to.
Age 5-7 is a very playful age. For yoga to be interesting to this group, you need to focus on teaching yoga through play by adding games, imagination, and stories to the practice. Children in this age range do not wait for the demonstration—they want to jump right in and move. You must be fast-paced yet calm amidst the chaos! As singers we tend to be very goal oriented. Try to let this go when you are doing yoga with your children. Just be open to whatever happens and you may learn a lesson or two from them!
You must have very high energy when teaching yoga to children ages 8-10. The children will wait for you to show them a pose, but you need to demonstrate quickly to avoid boring them. Stories still engage them at this age, but the stories need to be carefully constructed for their age group. This age group usually loves to lie down next to mom or dad for relaxation pose.
When teaching yoga to ages 11-13, many children wish to really learn the poses and can understand the benefits of yoga for their lives. I teach yoga at my 11-year-old daughter’s school. Recently, 30 girls came to class and the amount of focus they achieved in a short time surprised me. Perhaps because their minds are not so filled with the endless details of life, children this age (I should say girls—I do not have much experience teaching 11-year-old boys) have a gift of entering the yoga faster than adults. They do have their fair share of stressors, so the breathing and relaxation techniques are of great help to them.
Teaching yoga to teens depends on the teen. They might not want anything to do with you at one moment or crave time with you the next—you never know. Through my now 15-year-old daughter’s teen years, I have found that bringing a group of her friends together is the best way to include yoga in her life. Also, doing a yoga retreat in which you have a teacher, a group of people, and fun things to do in the free time (like shop or swim in the ocean) works very well. I teach yoga to the girls’ volleyball team at the high school and my daughter now requests sessions from me at home. Nothing like having the coach help you bring yoga into your home!
Doing yoga together with the entire family is a challenge, but it can be done. The different ages of your children may help or hinder. You may have success with an older child by asking them to help a younger child with the poses. With children in the same age category, you may ask them to pick a favorite animal and then do the poses of that animal. Add storytelling, and make your family a yoga zoo for a while. You can also find yoga games so you can add yoga to your family game night. Any amount of yoga brought into the household strengthens the community of your family.
I also have found that an outside teacher helps greatly, making it a special family event like going to a sporting event or concert together. The introduction of silence while together is a very positive aspect yoga has added to our family. Bringing yoga into your family life does not just mean Hatha yoga, the physical branch of yoga. The eight types (limbs) of yoga include the yoga of giving and the yoga of serving. This requires deeper study, and you may find a way to include other forms of yoga into your family life.
If you would like to introduce yoga to your parents and they are older, you might consider chair yoga. This is a true gift to them, and to you, because yoga can change the quality of an older person’s life even more dramatically than that of a younger person. In some cases, it can actually enable an aged person to walk without a cane as opposed to needing a cane for mental or physical support. You can help your parent’s life be a better life in 10 years by doing yoga with them now.
Yoga with your pet is extra fun since many of the yoga poses come directly from them—the Cat, Downward Dog, and Upward Dog poses, for example. If you have a dog, you can find a variety of books that teach you how to do yoga with your dog. I know of a class in New York City where students take their dogs to yoga and do poses with them. Yoga with your cat (at least with my cat) includes whatever she dictates at the time, which is mainly lying in the sun while I try to acquire the attitude of peace she exudes.
The goal of yoga is to bring the practice into your whole life, so anything you can do with your loved ones is an important step on the yogic path. Namaste.
