We’ve had a couple of yoga sessions in the house during this stay-at-home work cycle and they were pretty fun. Basically around here, all you have to do is grab one of the laptops, find some space, and get to it. If you don’t want dogs or kids joining in, then find a door to hide behind.
Knowing that our kids could benefit from some yoga practice we started to look around for resources to share that might start a conversation on yoga and other ways to stay healthy and start a regular fitness practice as a family.
Yoga is a great way to start a fitness routine because you can learn it together, there are a lot of resources out there, you don’t need equipment, and there’s plenty of room for fun.
For instance - this link had different poses in it
We thought it might be fun to take pictures of each of the poses with different props and/or different backgrounds. While doing your yoga photo shoot, you can introduce newbies to the basic poses and some of the other yoga words and concepts they might hear in later yoga sessions. Two person poses can make for some fun and amazing photos.
Once you’ve introduced everyone to some of the ideas
Have some quiet, more focused sessions too. Breathing exercises, stretching, and doing things together are all great stress relievers. We’ve had the best luck with quiet sessions earlier in the day.
If you're looking for ideas on session videos to kick things off, we recommend Yoga with Adrienne for groups with beginners. Her Rainbow Yoga or Yoga For Complete Beginners are great places to start and we’re not just saying that because we met Adrienne in Austin after college. She genuinely has a kind, helpful, inspiring, welcoming way about her that makes the yoga more approachable and fun.
Then make it a habit
Put yoga on your daily calendar along with walks, baths, and everything else. We think making certain sessions repetitive is good. You can work on breathing and perfecting poses (or sitting with them a little longer at least). Some sessions should be creative and some exploratory. This will introduce everyone, whatever their skill level is, to some new ideas and build excitement, community, and fun into the practice.
Your Yoga Playlist
If you haven’t already, you can build a little library on YouTube of your favorite videos. Cosmic Kids Yoga and Yoda Ed. are good places to start for kid content. Building a musical playlist around your yoga can also be fun. We found one on Spotify called Osmun Family Yoga that has a lot of folk in it so it's kind of perfect for reeling dad into the yoga thing. There’s another one called Family Yoga 4/8/20 with some fun songs if kids are joining and Rooh Yoga compiled one that looks like it really does have something for everyone.
Before we finish with the links …
If you’re a Pinterest person, here’s a pretty good board to start exploring. and this article form the Chopra Center is a great resource with straightforward information you can use including story books with yoga sessions built into them and a yoga flow you can start with as you build different sessions for your family.
What do you think?
Are you going to give it a try? What else are you going to add to your family's fitness routine? Have you heard of any other fun ways to turn fitness time into fun? Do people still play hide and seek or has it all changed to zombies and brains? Let us know in the comments and we’ll keep the conversation going.