On the lush and beautiful island of Bali, an innovative program is giving hope and skills to Balinese youth, and having a ripple effect on their families. Moving their bodies, learning meditation and breathing practices, local Balinese children are taking part in regular yoga classes with a local master Kundalini yoga teacher based in Ubud.
The yoga classes are a balm for the soul of kids who are having an increasingly tough time being peaceful children in the world today. Children are growing up in a planet where there is a pending sense of doom and ever increasing stress. Each day a new statistic about the state of the environment looms heavy on the horizon. There’s another coal or CSG mine to fight and yet another animal going extinct. Many kids feel pressured to find solutions and save the world they’re inheriting, along with their wounded parents.
Statistics also show that children have more depression, anxiety and struggles with insomnia than ever before. The pressures of our modern day busy lifestyle are coming home to roost in our children. More than ever they need tools to support them to deal with life.
Yoga is a balm for the soul of kids to remain peaceful in the world today.Kelly Moore is the founder of Give Kids Yoga and she has been living as an expat in Bali, Indonesia for a few years now, and has been running the program for over a year. She says the program has had a profound effect on the children on all levels.
Their performance at school has gone up and they demonstrate a better capacity for coping with challenging emotions. They also have a level of focus now that I’ve never seen in kids this age.
The children showed improved resilience, physical strength and overall balance.Yoga can develop your skill and also your knowledge. Now that the children learn yoga, they calm down and they have better control of their emotions.
Increasingly, children are overstimulated, bombarded by stress and the pressure to achieve in a world flooded with information. Yoga is an amazing tool for life that teaches them somatic ways to release stress and bring their body back into equilibrium. With the latest research showing that young adults are the most stressed out age group in the USA, learning simple and fun techniques to combat stress at a young age, is a tremendous way to prevent later breakdowns and anxiety disorders or depression. Yoga builds strength, confidence and resilience, and a strong body is able to digest food well, breathe better and withstand stress. The practice of yoga can help children to self-regulate and is a wonderful aid to mental health conditions and attention disorders. Physically, yoga enhances coordination, it has a powerful effect on brain development, and brings heightened focus.
“After two years I feel very healthy and happy. I also getting better at school.” – DinoThe focus of our efforts this year have been to develop a yoga mat for these kids that would also be in alignment with our environmental and social obligations. The initial yoga class that has inspired our efforts has had a tremendous impact on these kids lives. We can in no way take credit for this. We provided this class, Dewa’s class, with their uniforms to practice in and we are currently now producing their new yoga mats.
The project involves giving kids cotton yoga rugs made by Balinese women.At first it was just about getting mats to these kids and supporting Dewa’s efforts but it has since grown into so much more. When we started to look at the environmental impact that buying conventional yoga mats was going to have, we had to explore other options. The environmentally friendly options for mats that were available didn’t have the grip for safety and they just break apart too easily for the needs of kids practicing on concrete and rough surfaces. The kids will go through these mats so fast, so we wanted something more durable that would also not contribute to the already problematic waste disposal issue in Bali.
Yoga has been shown to reduce stress and help children to manage stress through giving them experience and skills like breathing, awareness, meditation, movement and connection. While children’s supple young bodies are still growing, the power of yoga at a young age is that it develops body awareness and good postural alignment, strength and a deep nervous system wellness. The children learn how to be in a group and cooperate, listen and develop morals and ethics.
Give Kids Yoga
This wonderful program is sculpting young minds and bodies, giving tools that will enhance and support these Balinese children to be balanced, creative, and calm individuals with a strong sense of who they are in relation to the world. The benefits of the ancient practice of yoga, such as the encouragement of self esteem, concentration and body awareness can be already be seen in these young children.
If you feel motivated to participate in this wonderful program, you can click this link to donate money to help buy these kids some beautiful eco yoga mats and clothes to practice in. You can also look into yoga programs offered for children in your own communities and see how you can help them provide this opportunity to more kids.
You don’t need a yoga mat to do yoga. A towel, folded blanket, small rug etc., will do. I’m sure there are plenty of these in Bali.
There are probably more people in Bali doing without education, health care, water, food, etc., than there are doing without yoga mats.
Yoga mats were invented so corporations could make, and sell, more yoga mats. This is a typical feel good “charity” to raise money for the person running the charity, not those who allegedly benefit from it.
A 100$ for a handmade Batik yoga mat? Are you serious? Get a yoga mat for 4$ at Dollarama.
If Kelly Moore truly feels for these children, she can use a portion of her own money to buy them yoga mats. And she didn’t go to Bali just to teach yoga to poor children: I’m sure living the good life in a tropical paradise is part of her motivation.