When self-regulation is a struggle, simple yoga activities can help. These centering activities for the whole body are a great way to calm down in stressful situations. When your child needs to regain control, suggesting yoga poses can stop the spiral fast. First, your child needs to know how to do the yoga poses. Practice yoga poses using our free printable Yoga Bingo for kids. Spend ten or fifteen minutes on this activity daily for long-term rewards as they help your child regulate his or her sensory, vestibular, proprioception, and tactile sensory systems.
Yoga poses are just one tool in your “calm-down” arsenal. At The Chaos and The Clutter, we are all about arming kids with the tools they need to gain control and self-regulate on their own. Your goal is to help your child become an independent adult who can navigate tricky emotions and stressful situations successfully on their own. You’ll find ideas for sensory bins, strewing, and games to help your child learn self-regulation throughout this website.
The Benefits of Yoga for Children
Vestibular System Function. The vestibular system is one of the sensory systems that helps create a sense of balance and spatial orientation to coordinate movement with balance. Yoga provides direct feedback and practice for this system.
Proprioception. Understanding one’s place in space is not as easy for some children as you might expect. Neurons in the muscles, joints, and tendons help a body feel grounded and aware in any environment, able to experience and understand self-movement, force, and body position. Yoga provides practice for all of three of the components of proprioception.
Tactile Sensory Play. The sense of touch may seem normal to you, but what is normal? Not everyone experiences touch the same way. Tactile play can help children who struggle with touch to interpret those brain signals more effectively. Sensory bins or bags are another great way to incorporate tactile play into your day. Yoga, especially when moving through different environments, provides direct tactile feedback for the body.
Physical Strength. Yoga is well known for building core strength and developing the muscles of the limbs as well. Children with sensory disorders often lack muscle strength because of avoidance of certain types of feedback. So any time you can participate in strengthening activities that don’t feel threatening, it’s a good thing. As an example, basketball practice builds physical strength, but because I am no good at it and it’s all about competition, it’s a very threatening experience for me. Yoga, on the other hand, is a competition with yourself. Can you do that pose better today than you did last week? That’s progress. That’s a win. As long as you keep yoga fun and low-key, it won’t be a threatening experience at all.
Grounding. There are two types of grounding. Grounding for mental health is the process of providing your brain with a distraction. Anything that uses the left brain will help take your brain away from the emotional right sphere and regulate your response. Yoga can be a left-brained activity. Counting, deep breathing, marching to a beat, and naming items in a list are other ways to engage the left brain. The other type of grounding is the process of connecting with gravity or the earth’s electrical energy. There are many theories on this, but yoga outside in the grass would qualify as grounding in this way.
How to Use Yoga Bingo for Kids
As soon as you download this printable, I recommend that you print at least one copy and laminate it so that it will survive the mom purse. Carry it with you as you are out and about with kids, and keep a copy handy at home, too. Make Yoga Bingo a habit with your kids, and they will learn all of the poses quickly and be able to take the pose when asked. Try to fit in ten to fifteen minutes of yoga per day in non-stress situations. Practice when everything is low-stress so that it is an easy ask during high-stress situations. Deep breathing in mountain pose can be done almost anywhere as long as you have practiced.
Finding Time to Fit Yoga into Your Day
Once you have a laminated copy to keep on hand, you can start working yoga training into your day. As you start making yoga bingo a habit, you will find ways to get more and more creative while out and about. Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Standing in line at the grocery store? There are actually several yoga poses you can practice while waiting in line. Start with the mountain pose, and then try the tree pose. Once your children complete a pose, have them mark it off on the chart with a dry-erase marker or removable sticker. Then, look for another pose you can do without disturbing others in line. Once you learn them all, it gets easier!
- Waiting between appointments? Find a grassy area in the parking lot where your kids can get a little more elaborate. Here, they can practice and learn the cat-cow pose, the downward-facing dog pose, and the camel pose. Bonus: These poses all have animal names, so you can also practice animal sounds and sing Old McDonald Had a Farm, depending on the ages of your kids.
- Does your wait have to be in a carpeted room? Try some of the seated or floor-friendly poses like the frog pose, boat pose, or the seated forward bend pose. Some of these can even be done in a chair!
Make Yoga Bingo a Game
Keep it fun and low-key so that yoga is never a chore. If competition is a positive thing, you can give each child a card and have them work towards an individual bingo for the win. But, if competition is threatening or unpleasant for any of your children, work towards a family bingo instead — everybody wins, and as long as everyone participates, you can enjoy a group reward. It doesn’t have to be something you announce, and it doesn’t have to cost money. Just some form of encouragement. Here are some ideas for encouragement when everyone participates in family yoga bingo.
- group cheer
- high fives or fist bumps all around
- group hug
- a stop at a local park
- pizza night (for bigger wins, like a week or month of consistent participation)
So, to recap. Print your copy of yoga bingo for kids right away so you don’t forget about it. If you have a laminating machine, get it laminated for protection, and consider making a copy for each of your kids. Practice yoga for ten to fifteen minutes per day to make sure everyone in the family learns the poses in a short period of time. Make it a game, but don’t make it a competition unless that is good for everyone. Reward positive behavior. When you are ready, encourage yoga poses in stressful situations when appropriate.
Download and print your Yoga Bingo for kids: