4 Essential Ways to Help Young Children Breathe More

Now more than ever, we need to teach ourselves and our young ones more ways to self-regulate and cope.


It’s a crazy world out there, and sometimes a few deep breaths can make a big difference in our tolerance levels and in our reactiveness to everything that life throws at us.


Breath is life! We can live without food for about 40 days, without water for a week, without sunshine for a while, without sleep for a couple of days…but we cannot live without the breath for more than a few minutes.

 

Blowing Dandelion Breathe Breath Rainbow Yoga Training

Photo by nine koepfer on Unsplash  

 

Just breathing deeply is boring for kids and yogic breathing exercises are usually too complex… But if you decorate the breath with interesting movements and sounds, imagination and fun games, they will practice breathing for longer than you probably can!


For the youngest kids, the term “breath” just doesn’t mean anything, and if you use it, you won’t really get a response.  Instead, try using words like smell or sniff, which the kids understand and to do, they need to breathe in deeply.  Exaggerate your breathing or smelling enough so that it will be heard -- only then will you see some change in the kids’ breathing. Tell the kids you want to hear their breath!


With children under the age of 6, your goal is simply to help them breathe more and to breathe more deeply. Here are 4 ways to help them do just those:


  1. Using visualization:
blowing bubbles rainbow yoga training
Photo by Paul Wolke on Unsplash
  • Butterfly smelling flowers: try it in Butterfly pose bringing your nose to your toes!
  • Smelling flowers and blowing candles: cup your hands to smell the flowers from and then make candles to blow on with your two index fingers.
  • Bubble Breaths: breathe deeply, and imagine that with each exhalation you are blowing bubbles of peace or happiness or love into the room.  

 

  1. Have the breath make a sound:
 Using Your Body: Using Props:
  • Om-ing
  • Flutes
  • Humming
  • Trumpets
  • Snoring
  • Whistles
  • Yawning
  • Side whistles
  • Sighing
  • Sneezing
  • Dog's breath
  • Lion's breath
  • Bee's breath
  • Snake's breath
  • Elephant's breath
  • Bunny's breath
  • Horse's breath
  • Car breath
  • Train breath
  • Whistling or trying to
  • Darth-Vader breath (like Ujai)

 

And one more…

  • Waves breath: block your ears with your fingers or thumbs and listen to the sound of your breath. It sounds just like waves in the ocean. When you breathe in, the waves come closer, and when you breathe out, the waves withdraw back into the ocean.
  •  

     

    1. Have the breath move something:
    scraft breathing breath rainbow kids yoga training
    • Scarves, Sheet of paper or newspaper: blow on it holding it in front of you, blow it up in the air, blow it to each other in pairs.
    • Ping pong balls breath pass: in front of each other or in a circle pass the ball using your breath – use straws to help little kids create the right shape to blow with their mouth.
    ping pong ball
    • Cotton balls distance breath: how far can you blow the ball? Compete against yourself bettering the distance every round.
    • Cotton balls across the room: compete against yourself trying to bring the ball across the room with fewer breaths every round.
    • Feathers: make them move using your breath. Try blowing from your mouth, or nose (easier with one nostril blocked), or blow them up in the air.
    • Fly, Little Bird, Fly: organize the children into groups of three. Give each group a long piece of string, and a paperclip with paper attached to it for wings. Two of the students will be standing trees, holding the string across the classroom. The other is the wind. Thread the bird onto the string. It’s the wind’s job to blow the bird from one tree to the other.
    • Suck it up: inhale through your mouth to draw your hand closer to your lips until it is totally sucked in against your mouth. Stay here for a short moment and then forcefully blow it away from you. Practice with other body parts such as your shoulder, knee or leg, or even suck in and blow away your friend’s body parts or their whole body from across the room!


    1. Combine the breath with movement:
    angel breath rainbow kids yoga training

    • Angel’s breath: start with your arms by your sides.  When you inhale, lift your angel wings (your arms) up, and when you exhale bring them back down. 
    • Washing machine breath/Helicopter breath: place your hands on your shoulders and start twisting your upper body from side to side. Breathe in as you twist to one side and breathe out as you twist to the other side. 
    • Elephant Breath (can also be a Woodchopper breath): standing with feet apart, inhale through your nose and lift your trunk (your hands with interlocked fingers) up, and exhale through your mouth, dropping your trunk and body down.
    • Reach and Pull: inhale and lift your arms to reach up, exhale and with a pulling motion (as if you are pulling something) bring your arms back down. Repeat a few times.
    • Stand and Squat: inhale standing up and exhale coming into a squat.
    • Breathe and Pass Twists: sit back-to-back with a friend and pass a ball or any other prop from one to the other by twisting from side to side. Give and receive with both hands. Inhale while receiving and exhale while giving.
    • Rainbow Breath – on a whiteboard or on paper, inhale and draw up and then exhale and draw down. Use different colours to make it more beautiful!
    • Breathing and Moving: stretch your arms to either side of you and start with small circular movements moving only your fingers while breathing very gently. Slowly make the movements and the breath bigger and bigger until your whole body moves with the breath.
    • Personal Hug Breath: inhale and spread your hands to the sides, exhale and hug yourself placing your hands on your opposite shoulders or even shoulder blades. Repeat as many times as you want.

    Here is one more cool exercise for the winter, which makes the otherwise invisible breath real for children:


    Window Painting: get the students to pair up and breathe through their moths onto a window. The glass will fogs up. One student stands in a yoga pose against the window while the other traces their yoga shape in the condensation.  

     

    By breathing more deeply we can help alleviate many problems like fatigue, depression and anxiety. Sometimes all we need is more oxygen. Breathe deeply and see the results for yourself!



    There are so many more fun ways to breathe to learn with us - Join our Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Trainings today!

    IN-PERSON | ONLINE | LIVESTREAM

    Become a kids yoga teacher

    Leave a comment

    MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE WITH YOGA AND MINDFULNESS

    Rainbow Yoga trained more than 30,000 Kids Yoga Teachers since 2007. We make yoga fun for children and young people of all age groups and for the whole family too! Our yoga consists of many poses and stretches that have different physical benefits for our health and well-being, breathing, relaxation, meditation and mindfulness exercises for our minds, and social interaction, playfulness, meaning, deep life lessons and fun for our spirit.

    Thinking about the impact of all those amazing certified yoga teachers, educators, parents and therapists we have trained to teach yoga to children and yoga for teens; we are making a huge difference for the next generation bringing peace, love, kindness and resilience into their lives. Education departments, schools, health programs and individuals in many countries have adopted yoga as a form of exercise and a method to decrees stress and increase wellbeing. We are the biggest and most-loved kid’s yoga teacher training in the world and we are here tp provide you with everything you will need to teach successful, exciting, meaningful, engaging and fun yoga to children, teenagers and families.

    THE BEST ONLINE YOGA TEACHER TRAINING – LEARN TOOLS TO HELP KIDS AND FAMILIES FIND CONNECTION, RELEASE STRESS, INCREASE RESILIENCE AND BRING ON A SENSE OF WELL BEING AND MENTAL BALANCE

    Rainbow Kids Yoga offers the most comprehensive, practical, and engaging children yoga teacher training certification in the world! Our course will enable you to deliver children yoga classes that will connects your students to themselves, each other, and the environment. Through unique and engaging practices of mindfulness and yoga your students and community will be able to find connections, enhance well-being and thrive as grounded, integrated and well balanced individuals.

    At our training, all while having fun, you will become a children yoga instructor through a lot of experiential practice, insightful theory, yoga poses and sequences, mindfulness practices and relaxation. You will learn how to build fun, engaging, and fitness-level-appropriate children yoga classes for all ages, from toddlers to teenagers. At our kid’s yoga teacher training you will find over 300 videos presenting how to make yoga poses accessible and fun! Believe it or not, yoga can be extremely boring for children and for adults too… In Rainbow Yoga, we make yoga in a fun so that children learn easily and want to do more of it. Yoga is so good for you, but for children to want to want to do yoga you will need to learn to spice it all up and this is what our kid’s yoga online teacher training is for!

    This is the perfect resource for yoga teachers, parents, educators and therapists to find and discover hundreds of yoga poses, yoga games and mindfulness practices for children in a way that makes it is easy to learn and easy to enjoy.

    Yoga poses for kids: Yoga encourages a positive and healthy lifestyle for the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of children as it helps in the development of strength, stamina, and endurance, high levels of positive energy, resilience, focus, self-awareness, and awareness of our environment.

    Yoga for children empowers them with increased concentration, calm, peace, and contentment at a mental level leading to inner and outer peace and harmony. The Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training includes a digital manual (a hard copy that can be purchased) as part of the course. This is specialized online yoga teacher training. Here we will focus on how to teach yoga to children and teens, and how to help them release stress, relax, stretch, energize – All in creative and fun ways while taking into consideration their unique needs, whether they are physical, social, mental, or emotional. 

    You will learn to teach the youngest yogis and those with emotional and mental challenges techniques to assist them with impulse control and self-regulation. Our courses provide a platform and a foundation to promote the healthy development of the hearts, bodies, and minds of young individuals.

    The Rainbow Kids Yoga Training is the largest and most well-regarded Kids Yoga Teacher Training in the world. Our graduates teach everywhere using our diploma including schools, kindergartens, daycare centers, early learning centers, Yoga studios, gyms, fitness centers, birthday parties, private and group classes and more.

     

    AFFORDABLE LEARNING AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

    Join our Yoga Revolution and become a kids’ yoga teacher today through our online yoga teacher training or in-person yoga certification courses. You will be left with a smile on your face, a wealth of knowledge and an ignited spirit to spread the love and joy of yoga.

    For our online training, you can allow 24 hours to receive your access and for physical products such as the Rainbow Kids Yoga Book, you can allow 2-4 weeks to receive it by mail. The books are printed on demand before being shipped, but it is worth the wait 😊

    HISTORY OF RAINBOW YOGA

    Rainbow Yoga is a fun and constantly evolving family mission and lovingly born in 2007, to give people the tools to teach fun, engaging, and creative in=person and online yoga classes for kids, teens, families, partners, and communities. Rainbow Yoga is interactive and social and all about connection; we touch, hug, move, breathe and co-create together our yoga magically and playfully.

    Rainbow Yoga offers a variety of unique and comprehensive teacher training certification courses all over the world offering a well-rounded, in-depth learning experience through a combination of play, practical theory, and fun.The Rainbow Yoga Teacher training is renowned for being captivating, dynamic, loving, and life changing. It is condensed with a lifetime of knowledge and hands-on experience from the Founders of Rainbow Yoga, Gopala, and Angel Yaffa. Delivered by world-class faculty around the world.