The Most Important Thing to Remember Teaching Kids Yoga

George Gustafsson sharing yoga with high school students in Auckland, New Zealand

“All play means something”— Johan Huizinga

In this article we share a few top tips for teaching yoga to kids and gifted teens.

The first principle of teaching yoga to kids is to make it fun. The mood of a children’s yoga class can be akin to that of a game, a storytime session, or improv theater, albeit organized around a logical sequence of yoga asana, including pose-counterpose. 

Think about the asanas that you already know–warrior, standing on tippy toes, squats, jump-throughs, bridge–and how you can transform them into story elements. A standing twist, for example, with the arms extended. What is that? An airplane flying over our hometown; a bird above the open seas; or a food processor blending up a delicious smoothie. 

Once you’ve landed on a metaphor you can build a story around it. Before the twist, why not spend some time in the garden collecting ingredients for the drink: kale, banana, apple, celery, parsley and coriander. Standing sequences become a fruit-picking party. Kneeling poses take the whole class down into the vegetable patch. 

Many of the tools of Yoga are naturally there in these scenarios, such as: movement, stillness, breathing, stretching, visualization, and the likes. But they are not there as isolated methods or mind techniques; rather, as moments of fun, play and poetry. A good class contains all the opposites of human expression: movement/stillness, noise/quiet, creation/destruction, silliness/sincerity. 

The class can move from one scenario to the next: from the city, to the sea, from the sky, to outer space. Or the whole sequence can have a unifying theme. “In the Garden,” for instance. Use your imagination to turn the asanas that you already know into garden-themed postures: virabhadrasana (chopping wood), uttanasana (smelling flowers), malasana with jumping (frogs jumping down by the pond), and savasana (watching the clouds as they roll across the sky). 

Age Appropriate: At some point children naturally evolve from absorption in imaginative play to wanting something serious and more adult. This may happen as early as 8 or as late as 12. You will be able to tell if the children will seem too cool for the yoga storytime. Change your approach when teaching older kids, instead giving them an interesting range of challenging asana linked with the breath. A mixed age class is very difficult. 

Tip on Teaching High Needs Teens: School departments who take care of high needs or disabled teens often have an interest in developing their students’ body awareness skills. A good approach in these cases is to go slow and take time to emphasize the sensations of the postures (e.g. really feeling into the ground with the feet). Balancing asanas are good. And also postures that involve moving one side of the body differently to the other. In cow pose, for example: inhale right arm goes forward and the left leg extends. You can challenge the kids to coordinate their body in quite specific ways. Watch them get better and better over the weeks you teach them. 

A Note on Music: Finally, bringing a musical instrument to a kid’s yoga class is always a good idea. You don’t have to be an accomplished musician. Simple stringed instruments are good, or sound bowls, triangles, chimes, kalimba, keyboard, flute, drums, anything!

Have fun sharing Yoga with the kids.

This article is an edited excerpt from the Yoga Education in Schools Facilitator Training Manual, a resource within the Y.E.S. Online Training starting Thursday April 13th. The course covers everything you need to know to teach teenagers and children in school settings. Sign up here!