Fun and educational, utilising stories, music, props and teaching age appropriate breathing techniques, kids YOGA and meditation.

Kids Day Retreats will be all about exercise, play and connection with the inner self.

Kids YOGA Benefits

Awareness of the breath

Awareness of the breath can energize kids or encourage relaxation. Different games and techniques help kids connect to how their bodies feel as a result of deep breathing. Focus increases, as does their breathing and lung capacity. Stress is naturally reduced and healthy hormones are released.

Strengthening and energising

Kids think that yoga is great for stretching, yoga is for building strength too. Talking about the different muscles used in poses and incorporating games and sequences will help build strength as well as body awareness and coordination. Bodies that are strong digest food better, maintain a healthy weight and can support the stress of carrying heavy loads, like a backpack. Bodies will also breathe better, work more efficiently and protect the more fragile joints.

Balancing

Balancing poses teach children that with increased focus, you can increase attention naturally, even in kids who struggle with different attention challenges. Poses and games focused on balancing skills, develop an intrinsic strength, evoke a meditative feeling, and promote stillness and quieting of the mind. This can help kids deal with the stress of living in a chaotic world where constant stimulation is a regular part of life.

Stretching and lengthening

It’s great for kids to be strong, but a body that’s only based on strength has no way to yield under pressure. Strong muscles without accompanying flexibility can’t move quickly, pulling on bones and joints. Yoga poses stretch muscles and through integrating breathing and movement, muscles become warm and become more flexible. They can yield when they need to, and support tender joints in a more functional way.

Awareness and focus

Awareness and focus helps create awareness in the body through deep breathing and movement. It gives kids a way to express themselves, build a strong connection between what they hear and what they do. Children that have healthy body awareness are more confident and stronger, have better posture, breathe better and have a sense of quiet strength.

Flowing, connecting and integrating

When we string poses together, we give kids a taste of what it means to move with ease. It also helps them build the awareness that all our movements are a series of coordinated efforts between muscles, bones, joints and nerves. Older kids are more able to isolate different muscle groups and get more sophisticated about movements; things like keeping the arms lifted in Warrior 1, while at the same time, dropping the shoulders to relax them. All these things together increase a child’s sense feeling integrated.

Meditation and relaxation

Yoga is meditative by nature. So, whether a child is holding a balancing posture, sitting in meditation or moving through a series of poses, there’s going to be a calming, soothing quality. Giving younger kids something to do as they rest on their mats will help with their attention, such as suggesting they think of a favorite colour or toy. Older kids will find it easier to rest longer with less structure.

There are lots of tools we use to teach yoga to children. The young ones like games, doing poses from yoga books for children and singing songs with big, expressive movements. Older children love to create their own poses, be challenged by balancing and learn about the muscles and other aspects of anatomy.

Meet Tereza Andjelic

Tereza has been a holistic therapist for over 15 years.

Having helped so many teenagers and adults with anxiety, stress, depression and suicide, Tereza has moved her life from the Sutherland Shire in Syndney to the Hinderlands of Byron Bay to start “Whistling Hill Retreat” for a place of healing for all.

Tereza is an Internationally recognised Meditation Instructor and Mentor, who also holds her Masters in Holistic Counselling amongst her valuable qualifications.