BABY YOGA & SOFT STRETCHING. "The study of Baby Yoga and Baby Massage can have enormous benefits for parents and baby both physically, emotionally and socially. Both help support baby in reaching important physiological milestones and can help baby’s development. For parents, classes offer the opportunity to spend special time with their baby enhancing and continuing the bonding process. They also provide gentle exercise and the opportunity to share ideas with other parents.”(Body Basic 2005)
There are three main aspects to a course of baby yoga - Breathing, Stretching and Relaxing.
Yoga helps to release blockages of tension in the body. Tension can block the flow of energy and result in painful conditions like colic, wind, constipation, stress.
"Top 5 Reasons Why Babies are Natural Yogis (yoga students):
1. Like yogis, babies prefer to breathe through the nose
2. Like yogis, babies are only concerned with the present moment
3. Like yogis, babies love unconditionally
4. Like yogis, babies practise non-violence
5. Like yogis, babies practise yoga postures naturally as part of development"
(Helen Garabedian, Author of “Itsy Bitsy Yoga”)
The exact origins of baby yoga are unclear, but it has certainly been practised in India for hundreds of years. The style of baby yoga I use in my workshops is based on yoga poses and uses similar principles to traditional yoga, but combines massage, movement and soft stretching to make it relevant to babies and to capture their attention and increase their enjoyment of the practice.
BABY MASSAGE has been used since time began throughout many wide-ranging cultures, from Russia to Nigeria and Nepal, for example.
Parents or carers do not need to have special qualifications to massage their baby. Everyone is able to touch and massage their child.
Baby massage has many benefits for baby and parents. It:
- offers the parent a way to get to know and understand the baby
- helps to ease the baby’s transition from womb to world;
- helps stimulate the baby’s development in terms of the baby becoming aware of the location and feeling of his or her body parts and limbs;
- can promote a happy and confident relationship between baby and parent
- offers the parent the opportunity to communicate their love, security, comfort and much more to help the bonding process.
Baby massage is taught either one-to-one or in a group workshop set-up, usually over a six week period.