Yoga to Reduce Child Violence

By Sangeetha Saran 

One of the most important and significant lessons that a Yoga instructor teaches his or her students is the healing potential of Yogic methods. By healing potential, I mean the ability to transform one’s negative situation. That could be a feeling, mood, emotion, thought or physical pain. Yoga has proven itself to be an effective means of exercise, spiritual rehabilitation tool, stress reducer, and a great method of reducing one’s negativity. However, in addition to transforming negative emotions or thoughts into positive ones, it also has the ability to help children at many levels.

 

Why Yogic Methods Reduce Violence

The way in which Yoga can help children is by curbing or reducing violence. In general, children have a lot of energy and Yoga has a great way to take negative and angry emotions out of the system by means of stretching exercising and controlled breathing. Furthermore, controlling exercises in Yoga allow a child to concentrate and redirect the energy into a more calming and positive state of mind. This is helpful and important to our world for a many reasons.

Solutions

First of all, children are less likely to cause violence when a turbulent situation is null or removed from their environment. This seems like overstating the obvious, but take a moment to think about what it means. In short, if a child is in a playground situation that is becoming tense and permeated with a lot of strong emotions, a child could strike or act violently. However, if a child does is not surrounded or encouraged by violent emotions it is less likely to strike.

 

For example, Yoga removes aggression and therefore an aggressive child will less likely be inclined to incite violence. Now, you cannot control every child nor would you want to. It is unreasonable to instruct a kid to practice Yoga at every onset of a violent reaction or emotion. To a child, this would equate Yogic techniques as a form of negative reinforcement.

Yogic Violence Prevention

However, if Yoga was introduced into the school systems as a means of daily activity, children would be calmer and violence would be significantly reduced. When was the last time you heard of somebody murdering, robbing, bullying or inciting violence after participating in Yoga training?

 

To be sure, reducing child violence is not an easy task. Yet, there are ways to reduce negative emotions and feelings, and Yoga has been proven to do just that. It is a trusted method and can be adaptable to meet the needs of children. This is a relatively new idea in the landscape of human thought and child behavior, but could be a great and positive way to see violence changed among children of all age groups.

© Copyright – Aura Wellness Center – Publications Division

Do you want to learn how to become a yoga instructor? See our selection of affordable yoga instructor training intensive programs.