10 Minute Yoga Class for Kids

We wish we had practised Yoga as kids. The benefits we’ve felt as adults would have been great to have earlier in our lives. Benefits like: mindfulness, patience, compassion, empathy, self awareness and stress management.

It makes us so happy to see and hear when our MerryBody Members get on the mat with their kids and families. We don’t have specific Yoga classes for kids inside MerryBody (except the one we will share with you today) but the overall feedback is that kids LOVE the regular MerryBody classes too. Here’s a super cute photo of MerryBody Member Preeti and her daughter Ava!

Parents LOVE the positive messages that are filtered within our MerryBody classes. You see, at MerryBody, we don’t do before and afters. We don’t count calories, we don’t teach with a focus on what the body looks like. Instead, we teach with a focus on how the practitioner feels.

We can clearly remember fitness classes we attended as teenagers (and adults) where the teacher would say derogatory comments about bodies or link exercise to punishment. Things like: “work that muffin top” or “let’s burn off that Christmas pudding” or “sweat is your fat crying”.

These comments are not beneficial to anyone. In fact, they make your workout feel like a chore as well as a punishment. They are not inspiring, in fact, they are said in order to create shame.

The thing is, for a long time we thought exercise HAD to be done in this way. We wouldn’t bat an eye when we’d hear the teacher say such things. And trust us, we weren’t the only ones. Just ask out thousands of Members and they will agree that they too felt the same about exercise. They too felt that exercise had to be a chore and something that made them feel even more self hate toward themselves.

That was of course until we found a way of moving our bodies that made us feel good from the inside out. A way of moving our bodies that focussed on presence and mindfulness, a way of moving our bodies that allowed us to feel joy. For us, the AHA! was when we combined Yoga and Pilates movement WITH the mindset work of self-acceptance, self-belief and joy.

It was a complete 180 from how we used to move. We used to move with self-loathing in mind. We used to move with the intention to only lose weight and to burn off calories.

This all shifted when we decided to move with the intention of accepting ourselves just as we are.

This was such a powerful practice for us as individuals, actually a life-changing practice, that we then created what is now known as the MerryBody App.

Instead of our daily movement being something we hate. Instead of our daily movement being something that reminded us of how flawed we were… we turned our daily movement into something that reminded us of just how amazing we are. A practice that reminded us of how amazing our bodies are!

So if you think this is a message you would like your kids to grow up with, try out this 10 minute Yoga class for kids. It’s a bit of fun (and actually, even our adult members love this one!).