How does Yoga Improve Emotional Regulation in Children?
Emotional regulation (ER) is a skill that we learn as we grow up. It is not an inborn skill or trait. Emotions are all about fears and rewards. ER teaches your kids to judge emotions and then act as per them. It teaches us not to get influenced by emotions. ER teaches us to manage our emotions in the right way. ER teaches your children to remain calm and in control of their feelings and thoughts. It helps your children manage their emotions and moods.
In this blog, we will explore what ER is. We will also learn how it helps in child growth. We will also look into ways to improve ER through yoga and other means.
Table of Content:
- What is ER?
- Why Teaching ER is Essential to Children
- ER in Children – Benefits
- The Right Time to Develop ER in Children
- ER in Children – How to Teach?
- How Yoga Helps Improve ER in Children
- Group of Yoga Poses that Improve ER in Children
- Yoga Poses that Target Specific Emotions
- Deep Breathing for ER in Children
- Final Thoughts
What Is ER?
ER is the skill to monitor and control your emotions. It is the skill to manage, influence, and express your emotions in the right way. It is the skill to resist reacting badly to unpleasant situations. It is the skill to calm yourself down. It teaches us not to throw tantrums when we are upset, but to find a solution. Learning ER is a key milestone in child growth. Start ER in your children early to get its benefits early. These benefits include good grades and a healthy mind. Other benefits include getting along well with family, friends, and others as well. With ER, your children are not bound by their emotions. They are the masters of their feelings and emotions. ER shapes your kids into well-adjusted adults. It helps them thrive in this complex world now and in the future.
Why Teaching ER is Essential to Children
We face hundreds of situations daily that set off different emotions. And these emotions require a response from our side. Children react in different ways to these situations. Some kids show intense emotions instantly. While some children build their emotions up and react with more vigor later on. Teaching ER to your children helps them handle their intense emotions. It helps them modify and express these emotions in better ways. ER also helps your children connect to other people. Managing their emotions helps your children in their studies too. It helps them focus more and not get distracted by emotions.
Teaching ER to children helps them manage fear, anger, and other negative emotions. The way your children feel affects what they think, decide, and the way they act. ER teaches your children to judge and balance their feelings and emotions. They do not fall prey to mood swings. It teaches your children to imagine what can be the results of their actions. This helps your children make better decisions. They are not swayed by negative emotions.
Emotional Regulation in Children – Benefits
ER teaches your children to zoom out of situations. It helps them look at any problems from a third person viewpoint. Your children think about the situation before reacting to it. It helps them settle their emotions and form the right response. Here are some of the ways ER helps your children.
- Friends and Family
ER helps create a strong bond between family members and your children. Children with good ER skills manage and control anger and other negative emotions. Your children do not throw tantrums and connect with you and their siblings. ER helps your children control their feelings and develops social skills. This helps your children make new friends and develop strong bonds with them.
- Success in Life
ER skills of your children help them succeed in life. Your children do not suffer from stress and anxiety during exams. They manage their emotions well and focus on their studies instead. With ER, your children focus on their long-term goals. They know that good things take time and require hard work. And this is the learning that lasts for a lifetime. And helps your children become successful in life.
- Good Mental Health
ER helps your children cope well with stress and anxiety. It helps them handle any adverse events and bounce back from trauma. ER makes your children’s minds and will strong. ER protects them from mental issues and disorders.
The Right Time to Develop ER in Children
Teach ER early to your children so they develop a strong base for it. They are in that phase where their minds and bodies are starting to grow. This is the optimal time to teach them ER skills. Young age is a critical period where they grasp and learn ER skills quickly. And for that matter, any other skills. This is the right time when your children get mastery of ER skills. This is also the right time when they gain the most out of it. Yes, it is possible to teach ER skills at a much older age. But it will take longer and be harder to teach.
Emotional Regulation in Children– How to Teach?
Parents and families play a central role in teaching ER skills to their children. Along with that their teachers, and schools, can help too. Here are some of the ways to teach ER to your children.
- Model Yourself
Your children observe and follow your every move. You are their primary role model. So, if you model the ER skills yourself, your children will do so too. Do not scream, yell or shout in front of your children. Your children will follow you and do the same. If their demands are not met, they will throw tantrums, and cry and shout. Resolve any conflicts with each other without being rude and abusive. Again, your children will follow the same pattern as you. If you are calm and composed during trying situations, your children learn that too. When faced with a similar situation, not to their liking, they will remain calm. Your children will find ways to work around the problems and find the right solutions.
- Teach Your Children to Think First and Then Act
Teach your children not to react instantly to emotions during trying situations. Teach your children that their actions have outcomes. Any rash acts when swayed by emotions, may have bad results. Ask your children to imagine the results themselves. Teach them to hold back for a while. And judge the situation with a cool head. Ask your children to count backward till they are in control of their emotions. This delay allows the fight-or-flight response to settle down. And prevents any rash decisions.
- Teach About Emotions
Teach your children about emotions. Teach them to point out and name emotions. This way, your children can explain what they are feeling. When they know that you understand their emotions, your children calm down. You can create a chart with the names of emotions. Add a section to it depicting emotions through pics or art. This helps your children point out any emotions they are feeling. And makes your job easier.
- Teach Your Children to Detect Triggers
ER makes your children self-aware and in control of themselves. There are some specific situations, and people, that create stress in your children. This stress nudges them to act out and throw tantrums. Work with your children to pin down these things. Then find ways together to detect and resolve these triggers.
- Right Parenting Style
Follow a warm, loving, and accepting parenting style. Show empathy to your children and do not talk down to them. Do not ignore or dismiss their emotions. Do not punish your children for their emotions, even if they are negative ones. Create a safe space for your children and their emotions at home. Notice, accept and validate your children’s feelings, whether positive or negative. Talk about different emotions with your children. Teach them to put into words and speak what they feel. Ask your children to find solutions to these problems. Then help them decide on the right one.
- Teach Self-Care and Coping Skills
Teach self-care in daily life to your kids. It helps them cope with all types of emotions. These skills teach your kids to be healthy and fit inside out. Working out, doing yoga and deep breathing are essential parts of these skills. Learning how to relax and meditate, proper rest and sleep also come under these skills. Yoga helps manage and control emotions and improves ER in children. Let’s look in detail at how yoga does it below.
How Yoga Helps Improve Emotional Regulation in Children
Yoga teaches us how to meditate along with deep breathing. Yoga is all about slow, steady, and even poses. These poses calm, relax and heal the mind and body. Yoga includes techniques that reduce stress and anxiety and improve focus. Yoga helps children and teens improve their yoga skills. Yoga works on and develops neurons in the brain. This engages the parts of the brain that help your children manage their emotions. Yoga connects minds and bodies, which helps shift energy and control feelings. Yoga and deep breathing help your children manage and release negative emotions. Yoga releases chemicals in the brain that mimic anti-anxiety drugs. These are natural with wide-ranging benefits. Thus, doing yoga reduces stress and anxiety in your children. And that plays a major role in improving their ER. Here is how yoga helps in improving ER in your children.
- Improving Cognitive Skills
Yoga combines body poses with deep breathing and meditation. This teaches your children to focus on one feeling at a time. Doing this helps your children pinpoint their emotions. This makes it easier for them to process their thoughts and manage their emotions well. Further, it helps your children think about their thoughts. Let us make it more clear for you. Your children can now think and decide whether their thoughts are negative. It helps them decide if these thoughts are not helpful to the situation. It helps your children modify their thoughts and make them positive.
- Be Kind All-Around
Yoga teaches your kids to be mindful and self-aware. It helps your children be more aware of their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It helps your children learn to think about others too. Your children become kinder and more helpful towards others. This in turn develops their empathy and ER.
- By Improving Focus
Yoga teaches your children to be mindful and improves their focus. Yoga teaches your children to still their minds and control their senses. It enhances their mental clarity and improves their focus. Your children are not distracted by negative emotions and focus on their goals and tasks. This helps your children manage themselves and their emotions too.
- Meditation Changes the Mind
Learning to meditate is an essential part of yoga. And it improves emotional regulation in children. It makes your children’s brains flexible and improves the bond between the neurons. This in turn calms their minds, reducing stress, anxiety, and negative emotions.
- Connects Body and Mind
Yoga connects body and mind that relaxes the body and calms the mind. Yoga nudges your children to focus on their breathing during every pose. The combo of slow poses and deep breathing makes your children mindful. They focus on their present and manage and control their emotions.
- Skill to Self-Sooth and Manage Stress
Yoga equips your kids with the tools to manage stress and anxiety. It helps manage the fight or flight response during stressful situations. Deep breathing is an essential part of yoga. It helps your children self-soothe. Deep breathing slows down the heart rate and calms the body and mind. It helps them during times of high anxiety. Deep breathing protects your children from negative emotions.
- Mindful and Present at the Moment
Worrying about the future and blaming oneself for past actions lead to negative emotions. It raises stress and anxiety in your children. Yoga teaches your children to be mindful. It teaches them to be aware of themselves and be in the present. Your children do not judge themselves or others. They accept themselves and others just as they are. Your children manage their emotions better and are calmer. This helps lower anxiety about their past and the future. It also helps your kids pinpoint their negative thought patterns. It helps them curb these negative patterns from the start.
- Mastery of Self
Yoga is not about winning or losing. It is about helping each other become better. Yoga teaches your children not to judge others. Yoga teaches your children to be grateful and kind to others. With yoga, your kids are healthy in body and mind and gain self-confidence. They learn more about themselves and become self-aware. This, in turn, builds a positive self-image and improves their ER skills.
- Through Yoga Poses
Yoga poses have positive effects on our feelings and emotions. Simple poses like back bending poses make our core strong. At the same time, they uplift our mood. Cat-cow pose lower anger and fear. Downward facing dog stretches and relieves tension from the body and mind. It is a great pose for relieving anxiety and stress. All these poses are connected to the mental well-being of children and adults alike.
Let’s look in detail at how certain yoga poses help improve ER in children.
Group of Yoga Poses that Improve Emotional Regulation in Children
Yoga poses have a positive effect on our emotions and feelings. Doing these yoga poses makes your children healthier. And also improves their ER skills.
- Forward Bend Poses
Forward bend poses with deep breathing stretch the back and lowers the feeling of fear. Doing these poses helps your children control their emotions. These poses also calm their minds, and make them more self-aware.
- Backward Bend Poses
Backward bend poses stretch the chest area. Doing them clears pent-up emotions. It helps your children be more open and look forward to life. Your kids learn to express their emotions in the right way. They develop a positive self-image and learn to do things on their own.
- Balancing Poses
Balancing poses bring calm, clarity, and a sense of balance to your children’s life. Balancing poses connects and balances the left and right side of our minds. The left side of our mind is the creative side. It deals with emotions and past issues. It is also called the moon side in yoga. The right side of our mind is the logical side. It deals with the practical and the present. It is called the sun side in yoga.
Balancing poses help connect both sides of our minds. That in turn balances our emotions. By doing these poses daily, your children develop a calm, steady, and strong mind.
- Twisting Poses
These poses are where you rotate your torso along with the spine. These poses stretch both sides of the body. These require effort from the left and the right side of the body. And the front and back, along with inside and outside of the body. Doing so balances the body as well as the emotions. Twisting poses also improve self-confidence in your children.
- Inversion Poses
Inversion poses are upside-down yoga poses. This helps change our negative thought patterns. Doing these poses helps your children be more aware of their emotions. Doing these poses helps release negative emotions too.
So, these are some yoga poses that help improve ER skills in children.
Yoga Poses that Target Specific Emotions
Along with the group poses above, certain poses target specific emotions. These poses reduce negative emotions and boost positive ones. Let your children first pinpoint their emotions. Next, ask them to do specific poses that help manage their emotions.
- When Feeling Annoyed, and Upset
As per yoga, negative emotions, if not released, will manifest in the body. These can be in the form of tension, pain, or illness. To relieve these emotions, ask your children to do neck stretches. And cat pose, and arm pulls as well. Reclining twists and supine spinal twists also help.
- When Feeling Angry
Unchecked anger in children can cause many issues and problems. To release anger and calm themselves, ask your children to do corpse and boat pose. These two poses relieve negative emotions and body aches that come with them. Doing these poses lower anger in your children and uplifts their moods too.
- To Raise Energy and Courage
Bending poses are your best bet to boost energy levels and courage. Good and clean energy gets us through the day. So instead of colas and sugary drinks, ask your children to do Sun salutes. Children and adults alike need the courage to face up to issues and problems. Teach your children backward bend poses like Cobra and bow poses. All these three poses raise their energy levels and also buildup their courage.
- To Release Anger, Pent-up Emotions, Lower Ego, and Calm the Mind
Anger and ego are negative emotions. The buildup of these emotions leads to anxiety, and headaches and disturbs sleep. Inversion poses lower these emotions and calms the mind. Whenever your children are feeling angry, child’s pose will calm them. The “Folding legs plow” pose and “Legs up the wall” pose are equally helpful. These poses let your kids see the world from a different angle. It helps lower their ego and anger. “Roaring lion pose” releases the buildup of negative emotions in your children. Growling like a lion releases all these emotions. As a result, your children feel light and are happy and calm.
- To Be Open, Embrace Change and Reduce Anxiety
Twisting and inversion poses relieve anxiety. These also prepare your children to be open to change. Pond pose, tortoise pose, and sleeping bound angle pose calm your children. These poses also make them more accepting of other people. These poses help your children manage their emotions. By doing these poses, they can face tough situations without getting stressed. Shiva twist, and belly twist are effective twisting poses. Inversion poses like plow pose; shoulder stands and head stands are also effective. These poses help your children embrace change. These poses help them to accept, adapt and welcome changes with open arms.
Deep Breathing for Emotional Regulation in Children
Mindful breathing is essential to yoga poses. Deep belly breathing relaxes the mind. It also relieves stress and anxiety and lowers blood pressure. Here are two related breathing workouts to teach your children. Whenever your children are swamped with emotions, ask them to do these. These breathing workouts push your children to be in the present. And help improve their ER skills.
- Counting of Breath
Ask your children to close their eyes and start counting slowly. Ask them to inhale till the count of five. Next, let them stop for a second. Then ask them to count to seven while they exhale. This helps your children focus on their breathing and not be swayed by emotions.
- Shifting of Breath
Ask your children to close their eyes. Then ask them to place one hand on their chest and the other on their bellies. Ask them to take deep breaths. Next, ask your children to notice the difference between their chest and belly movements. This improves focus in your children and calms their anxiety.
Final Thoughts
Your children are growing and evolving in many different ways. Their bodies are growing and so are their minds. At this stage, they need your help to deal with emotions and other childhood issues. Yoga helps improve emotional regulation in children. With its help, your children develop self-discipline and become self-aware. They can self-soothe, manage their emotions, and take care of themselves. Yoga helps develop ER and other lifelong skills in your children. This turns them into well-rounded and successful adults in the future.
How does Yoga Improve Emotional Regulation in Children?
Emotional regulation (ER) is a skill that we learn as we grow up. It is not an inborn skill or trait. Emotions are all about fears and rewards. ER teaches your kids to judge emotions and then act as per them. It teaches us not to get influenced by emotions. ER teaches us to manage our emotions in the right way. ER teaches your children to remain calm and in control of their feelings and thoughts. It helps your children manage their emotions and moods.
In this blog, we will explore what ER is. We will also learn how it helps in child growth. We will also look into ways to improve ER through yoga and other means.
Table of Content:
- What is ER?
- Why Teaching ER is Essential to Children
- ER in Children – Benefits
- The Right Time to Develop ER in Children
- ER in Children – How to Teach?
- How Yoga Helps Improve ER in Children
- Group of Yoga Poses that Improve ER in Children
- Yoga Poses that Target Specific Emotions
- Deep Breathing for ER in Children
- Final Thoughts
What Is ER?
ER is the skill to monitor and control your emotions. It is the skill to manage, influence, and express your emotions in the right way. It is the skill to resist reacting badly to unpleasant situations. It is the skill to calm yourself down. It teaches us not to throw tantrums when we are upset, but to find a solution. Learning ER is a key milestone in child growth. Start ER in your children early to get its benefits early. These benefits include good grades and a healthy mind. Other benefits include getting along well with family, friends, and others as well. With ER, your children are not bound by their emotions. They are the masters of their feelings and emotions. ER shapes your kids into well-adjusted adults. It helps them thrive in this complex world now and in the future.
Why Teaching ER is Essential to Children
We face hundreds of situations daily that set off different emotions. And these emotions require a response from our side. Children react in different ways to these situations. Some kids show intense emotions instantly. While some children build their emotions up and react with more vigor later on. Teaching ER to your children helps them handle their intense emotions. It helps them modify and express these emotions in better ways. ER also helps your children connect to other people. Managing their emotions helps your children in their studies too. It helps them focus more and not get distracted by emotions.
Teaching ER to children helps them manage fear, anger, and other negative emotions. The way your children feel affects what they think, decide, and the way they act. ER teaches your children to judge and balance their feelings and emotions. They do not fall prey to mood swings. It teaches your children to imagine what can be the results of their actions. This helps your children make better decisions. They are not swayed by negative emotions.
Emotional Regulation in Children – Benefits
ER teaches your children to zoom out of situations. It helps them look at any problems from a third person viewpoint. Your children think about the situation before reacting to it. It helps them settle their emotions and form the right response. Here are some of the ways ER helps your children.
- Friends and Family
ER helps create a strong bond between family members and your children. Children with good ER skills manage and control anger and other negative emotions. Your children do not throw tantrums and connect with you and their siblings. ER helps your children control their feelings and develops social skills. This helps your children make new friends and develop strong bonds with them.
- Success in Life
ER skills of your children help them succeed in life. Your children do not suffer from stress and anxiety during exams. They manage their emotions well and focus on their studies instead. With ER, your children focus on their long-term goals. They know that good things take time and require hard work. And this is the learning that lasts for a lifetime. And helps your children become successful in life.
- Good Mental Health
ER helps your children cope well with stress and anxiety. It helps them handle any adverse events and bounce back from trauma. ER makes your children’s minds and will strong. ER protects them from mental issues and disorders.
The Right Time to Develop ER in Children
Teach ER early to your children so they develop a strong base for it. They are in that phase where their minds and bodies are starting to grow. This is the optimal time to teach them ER skills. Young age is a critical period where they grasp and learn ER skills quickly. And for that matter, any other skills. This is the right time when your children get mastery of ER skills. This is also the right time when they gain the most out of it. Yes, it is possible to teach ER skills at a much older age. But it will take longer and be harder to teach.
Emotional Regulation in Children– How to Teach?
Parents and families play a central role in teaching ER skills to their children. Along with that their teachers, and schools, can help too. Here are some of the ways to teach ER to your children.
- Model Yourself
Your children observe and follow your every move. You are their primary role model. So, if you model the ER skills yourself, your children will do so too. Do not scream, yell or shout in front of your children. Your children will follow you and do the same. If their demands are not met, they will throw tantrums, and cry and shout. Resolve any conflicts with each other without being rude and abusive. Again, your children will follow the same pattern as you. If you are calm and composed during trying situations, your children learn that too. When faced with a similar situation, not to their liking, they will remain calm. Your children will find ways to work around the problems and find the right solutions.
- Teach Your Children to Think First and Then Act
Teach your children not to react instantly to emotions during trying situations. Teach your children that their actions have outcomes. Any rash acts when swayed by emotions, may have bad results. Ask your children to imagine the results themselves. Teach them to hold back for a while. And judge the situation with a cool head. Ask your children to count backward till they are in control of their emotions. This delay allows the fight-or-flight response to settle down. And prevents any rash decisions.
- Teach About Emotions
Teach your children about emotions. Teach them to point out and name emotions. This way, your children can explain what they are feeling. When they know that you understand their emotions, your children calm down. You can create a chart with the names of emotions. Add a section to it depicting emotions through pics or art. This helps your children point out any emotions they are feeling. And makes your job easier.
- Teach Your Children to Detect Triggers
ER makes your children self-aware and in control of themselves. There are some specific situations, and people, that create stress in your children. This stress nudges them to act out and throw tantrums. Work with your children to pin down these things. Then find ways together to detect and resolve these triggers.
- Right Parenting Style
Follow a warm, loving, and accepting parenting style. Show empathy to your children and do not talk down to them. Do not ignore or dismiss their emotions. Do not punish your children for their emotions, even if they are negative ones. Create a safe space for your children and their emotions at home. Notice, accept and validate your children’s feelings, whether positive or negative. Talk about different emotions with your children. Teach them to put into words and speak what they feel. Ask your children to find solutions to these problems. Then help them decide on the right one.
- Teach Self-Care and Coping Skills
Teach self-care in daily life to your kids. It helps them cope with all types of emotions. These skills teach your kids to be healthy and fit inside out. Working out, doing yoga and deep breathing are essential parts of these skills. Learning how to relax and meditate, proper rest and sleep also come under these skills. Yoga helps manage and control emotions and improves ER in children. Let’s look in detail at how yoga does it below.
How Yoga Helps Improve Emotional Regulation in Children
Yoga teaches us how to meditate along with deep breathing. Yoga is all about slow, steady, and even poses. These poses calm, relax and heal the mind and body. Yoga includes techniques that reduce stress and anxiety and improve focus. Yoga helps children and teens improve their yoga skills. Yoga works on and develops neurons in the brain. This engages the parts of the brain that help your children manage their emotions. Yoga connects minds and bodies, which helps shift energy and control feelings. Yoga and deep breathing help your children manage and release negative emotions. Yoga releases chemicals in the brain that mimic anti-anxiety drugs. These are natural with wide-ranging benefits. Thus, doing yoga reduces stress and anxiety in your children. And that plays a major role in improving their ER. Here is how yoga helps in improving ER in your children.
- Improving Cognitive Skills
Yoga combines body poses with deep breathing and meditation. This teaches your children to focus on one feeling at a time. Doing this helps your children pinpoint their emotions. This makes it easier for them to process their thoughts and manage their emotions well. Further, it helps your children think about their thoughts. Let us make it more clear for you. Your children can now think and decide whether their thoughts are negative. It helps them decide if these thoughts are not helpful to the situation. It helps your children modify their thoughts and make them positive.
- Be Kind All-Around
Yoga teaches your kids to be mindful and self-aware. It helps your children be more aware of their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It helps your children learn to think about others too. Your children become kinder and more helpful towards others. This in turn develops their empathy and ER.
- By Improving Focus
Yoga teaches your children to be mindful and improves their focus. Yoga teaches your children to still their minds and control their senses. It enhances their mental clarity and improves their focus. Your children are not distracted by negative emotions and focus on their goals and tasks. This helps your children manage themselves and their emotions too.
- Meditation Changes the Mind
Learning to meditate is an essential part of yoga. And it improves emotional regulation in children. It makes your children’s brains flexible and improves the bond between the neurons. This in turn calms their minds, reducing stress, anxiety, and negative emotions.
- Connects Body and Mind
Yoga connects body and mind that relaxes the body and calms the mind. Yoga nudges your children to focus on their breathing during every pose. The combo of slow poses and deep breathing makes your children mindful. They focus on their present and manage and control their emotions.
- Skill to Self-Sooth and Manage Stress
Yoga equips your kids with the tools to manage stress and anxiety. It helps manage the fight or flight response during stressful situations. Deep breathing is an essential part of yoga. It helps your children self-soothe. Deep breathing slows down the heart rate and calms the body and mind. It helps them during times of high anxiety. Deep breathing protects your children from negative emotions.
- Mindful and Present at the Moment
Worrying about the future and blaming oneself for past actions lead to negative emotions. It raises stress and anxiety in your children. Yoga teaches your children to be mindful. It teaches them to be aware of themselves and be in the present. Your children do not judge themselves or others. They accept themselves and others just as they are. Your children manage their emotions better and are calmer. This helps lower anxiety about their past and the future. It also helps your kids pinpoint their negative thought patterns. It helps them curb these negative patterns from the start.
- Mastery of Self
Yoga is not about winning or losing. It is about helping each other become better. Yoga teaches your children not to judge others. Yoga teaches your children to be grateful and kind to others. With yoga, your kids are healthy in body and mind and gain self-confidence. They learn more about themselves and become self-aware. This, in turn, builds a positive self-image and improves their ER skills.
- Through Yoga Poses
Yoga poses have positive effects on our feelings and emotions. Simple poses like back bending poses make our core strong. At the same time, they uplift our mood. Cat-cow pose lower anger and fear. Downward facing dog stretches and relieves tension from the body and mind. It is a great pose for relieving anxiety and stress. All these poses are connected to the mental well-being of children and adults alike.
Let’s look in detail at how certain yoga poses help improve ER in children.
Group of Yoga Poses that Improve Emotional Regulation in Children
Yoga poses have a positive effect on our emotions and feelings. Doing these yoga poses makes your children healthier. And also improves their ER skills.
- Forward Bend Poses
Forward bend poses with deep breathing stretch the back and lowers the feeling of fear. Doing these poses helps your children control their emotions. These poses also calm their minds, and make them more self-aware.
- Backward Bend Poses
Backward bend poses stretch the chest area. Doing them clears pent-up emotions. It helps your children be more open and look forward to life. Your kids learn to express their emotions in the right way. They develop a positive self-image and learn to do things on their own.
- Balancing Poses
Balancing poses bring calm, clarity, and a sense of balance to your children’s life. Balancing poses connects and balances the left and right side of our minds. The left side of our mind is the creative side. It deals with emotions and past issues. It is also called the moon side in yoga. The right side of our mind is the logical side. It deals with the practical and the present. It is called the sun side in yoga.
Balancing poses help connect both sides of our minds. That in turn balances our emotions. By doing these poses daily, your children develop a calm, steady, and strong mind.
- Twisting Poses
These poses are where you rotate your torso along with the spine. These poses stretch both sides of the body. These require effort from the left and the right side of the body. And the front and back, along with inside and outside of the body. Doing so balances the body as well as the emotions. Twisting poses also improve self-confidence in your children.
- Inversion Poses
Inversion poses are upside-down yoga poses. This helps change our negative thought patterns. Doing these poses helps your children be more aware of their emotions. Doing these poses helps release negative emotions too.
So, these are some yoga poses that help improve ER skills in children.
Yoga Poses that Target Specific Emotions
Along with the group poses above, certain poses target specific emotions. These poses reduce negative emotions and boost positive ones. Let your children first pinpoint their emotions. Next, ask them to do specific poses that help manage their emotions.
- When Feeling Annoyed, and Upset
As per yoga, negative emotions, if not released, will manifest in the body. These can be in the form of tension, pain, or illness. To relieve these emotions, ask your children to do neck stretches. And cat pose, and arm pulls as well. Reclining twists and supine spinal twists also help.
- When Feeling Angry
Unchecked anger in children can cause many issues and problems. To release anger and calm themselves, ask your children to do corpse and boat pose. These two poses relieve negative emotions and body aches that come with them. Doing these poses lower anger in your children and uplifts their moods too.
- To Raise Energy and Courage
Bending poses are your best bet to boost energy levels and courage. Good and clean energy gets us through the day. So instead of colas and sugary drinks, ask your children to do Sun salutes. Children and adults alike need the courage to face up to issues and problems. Teach your children backward bend poses like Cobra and bow poses. All these three poses raise their energy levels and also buildup their courage.
- To Release Anger, Pent-up Emotions, Lower Ego, and Calm the Mind
Anger and ego are negative emotions. The buildup of these emotions leads to anxiety, and headaches and disturbs sleep. Inversion poses lower these emotions and calms the mind. Whenever your children are feeling angry, child’s pose will calm them. The “Folding legs plow” pose and “Legs up the wall” pose are equally helpful. These poses let your kids see the world from a different angle. It helps lower their ego and anger. “Roaring lion pose” releases the buildup of negative emotions in your children. Growling like a lion releases all these emotions. As a result, your children feel light and are happy and calm.
- To Be Open, Embrace Change and Reduce Anxiety
Twisting and inversion poses relieve anxiety. These also prepare your children to be open to change. Pond pose, tortoise pose, and sleeping bound angle pose calm your children. These poses also make them more accepting of other people. These poses help your children manage their emotions. By doing these poses, they can face tough situations without getting stressed. Shiva twist, and belly twist are effective twisting poses. Inversion poses like plow pose; shoulder stands and head stands are also effective. These poses help your children embrace change. These poses help them to accept, adapt and welcome changes with open arms.
Deep Breathing for Emotional Regulation in Children
Mindful breathing is essential to yoga poses. Deep belly breathing relaxes the mind. It also relieves stress and anxiety and lowers blood pressure. Here are two related breathing workouts to teach your children. Whenever your children are swamped with emotions, ask them to do these. These breathing workouts push your children to be in the present. And help improve their ER skills.
- Counting of Breath
Ask your children to close their eyes and start counting slowly. Ask them to inhale till the count of five. Next, let them stop for a second. Then ask them to count to seven while they exhale. This helps your children focus on their breathing and not be swayed by emotions.
- Shifting of Breath
Ask your children to close their eyes. Then ask them to place one hand on their chest and the other on their bellies. Ask them to take deep breaths. Next, ask your children to notice the difference between their chest and belly movements. This improves focus in your children and calms their anxiety.
Final Thoughts
Your children are growing and evolving in many different ways. Their bodies are growing and so are their minds. At this stage, they need your help to deal with emotions and other childhood issues. Yoga helps improve emotional regulation in children. With its help, your children develop self-discipline and become self-aware. They can self-soothe, manage their emotions, and take care of themselves. Yoga helps develop ER and other lifelong skills in your children. This turns them into well-rounded and successful adults in the future.
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