• Simple poses allow kids to participate in yoga.family maditation image by Cherry-Merry from Fotolia.com
  
  Yoga has the potential to help kids with body image and mental health. It fosters a greater awareness of their physical and mental states, and it can help improve both. Yoga keeps kids flexible and in shape, and combined with relaxing or meditating elements, it offers kids the ability to enhance self-confidence, focus and overall health.
  
  

Simple Positions

• When teaching kids how to do yoga positions, starting with some of the easier poses can help build their confidence and and familiarity with yoga and their bodies. The mountain pose provides a starting point as it allows kids to slow down and begin to listen to their bodies. Other easy and kid-friendly poses include the tree pose and corpse pose. The child's pose also is a good calming tool to use at the end of a children's yoga practice as it might entice them to relax more than trying to lie still in the corpse pose. These simpler poses offer an opportunity to encourage kids to visualize elements of the pose, such as a tree with its roots firmly in the ground during a storm, that will improve focus and relaxation. Poses such as the warrior's pose, and its variations, and the sun salutation sequence can help channel kids' fidgety energy, and these poses also are relatively simple to explain to children.
  
  

Animal Positions

• Young kids especially benefit from trying yoga poses that resemble their favorite animals. The added visualization of the animal will help kids to immerse themselves in the poses. The cobra pose, downward dog, cat/cow poses and lion's pose all have imagery and stories that can go along with the pose instructions and help kids get excited about yoga. Adapt other poses to have animal-like qualities--for example, call the tree pose the "flamingo pose" or call the bridge pose the "spider pose." Animal poses also teach kids character lessons, such as having the strength of a lion or the patience and grace of a flamingo.
  
  

Meditative Positions

• Restorative yoga poses combined with breathing techniques can teach kids the benefit of using meditation with yoga. Even if you call it quiet time or relaxation, the benefits are the same. Use poses such as the corpse pose, easy pose or hero pose with deep breathing and guided relaxation to help kids learn focusing skills as well as reduce stress. Meditative poses help hyperactive children to slow down and focus, and they can help all children develop a healthy self-image.