Clever? Yes. Sustainable? Questionable.

I’m impressed and grateful for the factual and flavorful reporting at New York Times Parenting. Recently, they recommended kids yoga as support during COVID-19.

They highlighted Cosmic Kids, a theatrical approach to kids yoga. Now gone viral, it’s a great entry point to kids yoga. We’re delighted because more kids doing yoga is good! However, we’re concerned that this style and much of kids yoga lacks the quality elements required to make it effective, sustainable and ultimately to yield its life-long benefits beyond a fixed story.

I wonder if kids yoga is being reduced to an entertainment-based “fun phase” in childhood rather than a lifeline that evidence-based research indicates it can be.

Over the last 15 years of teaching the IYK® Signature System, we’ve found that kids are their own creative geniuses! We employ an interactive co-creative approach to yoga. Arguably, it’s more advantageous to the developing brain than acting out someone else’s fantasy. With a solid foundation in yoga, including breath, movement, and stillness, the possibilities are endless and they grow with the body and brain in each stage of development.

With this spiral learning approach, kids yoga doesn’t phase out at age 9 or younger and instead becomes a life long skill set that kids need in middle school and high school when things really get tough academically, socially, athletically and even artistically. Further, at these ages when kids need the benefits of exercise and mindfulness most, research shows children’s physical activity drops sharply from age 9 to 15. Let’s keep kids having fun moving and breathing with proven practices for body, mind and heart at EVERY age!