Baby Yoga
Baby yoga is a gentle form of exercise that will enable your baby to experience stretching and moving their arms and legs in a number of different ways, helping to aid development and heighten their mood, increasing wellbeing and preparing them for a happy and healthy life.
Benefits
Babies benefit from movements that strengthen and stretch their muscles, relieving them of tension and increasing relaxation. The benefits of relaxation are well known, ranging from improved sleep, to better digestion.
Practicing yoga with your baby needs to be done with care and responsiveness to your baby’s cues. Choose yoga postures that seem best suited to you and your baby.
From the very first touch your baby should feel like they are at the center of all the movements, which are best accompanied by song, and a relaxed atmosphere. Here are just some of the benefits of yoga for your baby:
Enhanced Bonding
Enhanced bonding You can become more attuned to your baby’s wants and needs. Your baby’s physical development requires times of unfettered expression and times of peaceful stillness. Yoga brings both these qualities to physical movements.
Slowing down and noticing your baby’s responses to the yoga postures and giving them time to respond and cue for more or less activity helps build your sensitivity to their needs. Your baby will notice the congruency between your actions and their needs, thus enhancing their sense of trust.
By playing with your child, physical contact, affectionate words, singing and encouragement, your relationship with your child will be deepened and enriched.
Improve Digestion
Touching your baby and soothing their tensions with physical contact like massage can be helpful to switch off the stress response which can become overly active in a young baby.
Stimulating the skin will slow down the production of stress hormones and help increase the relaxation hormones.
Your baby will digest their milk much better when they are in a state of relaxation, feeling safe and peaceful.
Yoga postures, known as the wind releasing sequence (ie. bringing your baby’s knees to their chest and circling gently in a clock wise direction) can help activate their digestion and reduce symptoms of colic.
Growth and Development
You can be involved with your baby’s physical development by helping them learn in a playful and safe environment.
You can help them tone up their muscles, develop correct posture, encourage and anticipate their search for balance. You can prepare your baby first to master the sitting position, and then for standing upright.
When your baby does tummy time, it will improve their upper body and neck strength. In the beginning, your baby may find tummy time stressful until they build up their strength. You can assist them by applying gentle massage strokes along their spine to encourage body awareness to the activity. They sense your touch, and will raise their head as the spine contracts. This mind-body connection creates positive activity in the part of the brain that maps the body.
Taking 10-15mins of your day to move your baby through different positions (yoga postures) will over time increase strength and development. It is important you do not hurry or force your baby, and instead simply follow their natural inclinations. By adding in a short baby yoga sequence each day, you will be happily surprised with the results.
Babies Ages
Practicing baby yoga will not over stimulate your baby, but instead give your baby confidence in themselves as they have gained confidence in their bodies.
Care is to be taken when practicing yoga with your baby.
For young babies up to four months, introduce smaller and slower movements based on relaxation. Arm and leg movements prepare your baby for rolling over. Up to four months, relaxation is important, as your baby’s body is very stiff with their arms and legs bent, and their fists clenched. After the exercises, your baby’s limbs will loosen up and your baby will sleep better.
Keep in mind that babies do not have adequate control of their heads until about 6 months of age so make sure you support your baby’s head with your hands during active yoga movements.
For older babies up to nine months, it is a period of introducing acrobatic movements and strengthening exercises to prepare for sitting and crawling. About 5% of babies have hypermobile or tight joints, so overstretching is a risk for these children. Avoid moving your baby’s limbs into extreme extensions and the activity should be performed for 10-15 minutes at a time.
Most of all, enjoy your baby’s excitement of having your sole attention.
Good Morning Stretch
Lay your baby on their back. Help them extend their arms overhead and their legs straight out in front. Hold the stretch for a breath or two and then let them release and move naturally.
Wind-Relieving Pose - Bulldozer Pose
Lay your baby on their back. Gently press on the bottoms of their feet and ease their knees toward their chest. Allow your baby to accept the movement. Hold the squeezed-in pose for a few breaths, then allow them to release.
Knee-to-Chest Pose - Riding a Bike
Instead of coaxing both knees into his chest, do just one at a time. Again, you’ll lay your baby on their back and gently press one knee in toward their chest. hold for just a breath or two, release and then switch legs.
Older Babies
After about 5 months of age, a baby has a little more control over his body. There likely holding up their head, rolling over and propping up into Cobra pose on their own!
Encourage them to explore poses that come naturally, that help build practical strength skills. Upper-body strength gives them the power to push up into all fours and to even begin crawling. Getting accustomed to putting weight on their feet prepares them for taking their first steps in toddler-dom.
Bridge
A baby naturally moves into Bridge around 5 months of age. Encourage them to do the pose by having them lay on their back, bend their knees and plant their feet into the floor. Gently help them lift their hips up, so it creates a ramp from their knees to their shoulders. Celebrate with coos and claps. Let them stay in the pose as long as they like.
Downward-Facing Dog
This pose is a natural for older babies as they explore how to crawl. Place your baby on their belly and encourage them to get into all-fours, if they are willing to follow directions. Encourage them to lift their buttocks up toward the ceiling as they press their hands and feet down. Their most likely will naturally go into the triangular shape of the posture.
To encourage your baby into either of these poses, put them on a blanket or mat next to yours and play a little monkey-see-monkey-do. It’s OK if they pops up for just a second or two — it’s about the strength and play, not long, deliberate yoga holds.
Baby Arm Strength Exercises
Although those rolls of baby fat are adorable and squeezable, even young babies need to build muscle. You don’t need to take baby to the gym, but you do need to make sure have ample opportunity to pump up those baby arms and start developing the muscles they need to push themselves up and eventually crawl and pull to a standing position.
Cycling yoga pose
This baby yoga pose will allow your baby to become aware of the movements their body can make. This position can be done either by sitting or lying down, and you should ensure your baby is sufficiently supported as they do so. Once they are completely comfortable and fully supported, gently hold the lower part of their legs and carefully move them up and down in a cycle motion.Â
This pose allows you to bring your child’s legs up to their abdomen and back down in opposite, cycling movements. While this yoga pose is as straightforward as it sounds, it’s important not to move your little one’s legs too fast and to ensure your baby is comfortable with the speed you’re moving their legs at. Make sure you control the legs and keep them in line with their body to prevent frog legs
Helpful Tips
Baby yoga is not yoga in the traditional sense it uses various poses to promote baby’s development as well as their health and wellbeing.
The postures and positions used in baby yoga provide babies with flexibility, beneficial stretching which can improve muscle tone and co ordination. Postures can also help to promote postural control and body awareness.
Promotes tummy time – In baby yoga the use of active play in the form of swings and dips help to develop baby’s prospective and vestibular system.
Songs & Rhymes – Music and singing nursery rhymes is used to help develop baby’s sense of rhythm and promote language development and communication between parents and baby.
Touch – Helps to create a happy secure trusting relationship between parent and baby assisting in bonding. The release of endorphins in both mother and baby’s body can help to promote relaxation and wellbeing.
Relaxation – This is a benefit for both parent and baby. It is important that parents can relax and enjoy the experience, this will help baby to learn that there are times to simply relax and unwind. A relaxed parent helps to make a relaxed baby.
