Bedtime can be a frustrating time in parenting.  Parents are tired from a long day of work, whether in the home or out.  Children seem to still have boundless amounts of energy or are overly tired making cooperative behavior sometimes challenging. Kids yoga before bedtime can be a solution benefitting both parents and child.

Photo credit: Chickpea. via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Bedtime can be a sweet time for children and parents to reconnect before a sweet night of dreams, but often this is a time of conflict.  Patience can be thin.   Personally, I look forward to the “me” time after my children are in bed when I can enjoy a glass of wine and read or watch TV.

We’ve shared with you before the benefits of bedtime stories, as well as the yoga benefits for all children.   Sometimes children’s bodies are not ready to rest at bedtime. Combining the benefits of kids yoga and bedtime stories is an effective way to settle little bodies and minds for sleep.

Kids Yoga and Bedtime Routines

Any children’s book can be used to combine kids yoga and literacy.  If a book mentions a tree, then pause and do vrksasana together.  If a book mentions a dog, then practice adho mukha svanasana.

There are many books specifically designed for kids yoga, such as YogaBuddies Bedtime Stories, Babar’s Yoga for Elephants, and My Daddy is a Pretzel.  We were sent to review a kids yoga book designed specifically for bedtime:  Yawning Yoga by Laurie Jordan.

YAWNING YOGA is kid-tested (and parent approved!). It is truly and uniquely a book designed specifically to help kids sleep. The books’ careful sequencing makes it the perfect sleepy time book and helps a child establish a bedtime routine that is proven to work.

THE TOP 10 BENEFITS OF YAWNING YOGA:

1. The book’s 15 poses are designed to be done in sequence from most “active” to most soothing. Poses help release excess energy, tension and stress while calming the child’s body and mind and helping her move towards stillness.

2. Enables parents to interact and bond with their kids in a positive and healthy way that they will enjoy.

3. Parents can get a higher quality of sleep in addition to reaping all of the rewards that their children will receive from making Yawning Yoga a part of their bedtime routine.

4. Parents can get their kids to sleep with greater ease.

5. Enables kids to fall asleep faster and achieve a higher quality of sleep.

6. Empowers kids to be less reactive and more at peace with themselves by providing tools for stress management.

7. Helps reduce irritability, crankiness and hyperactivity.

8. Lays the foundation for a lifetime of health and well-being.

9. Stimulates the imagination and keeps children entertained.

10. Helps develop coordination and balance, strengthens breathing and massages internal organs.

This book is currently out of print, but there are still copies available on Amazon.

What I really like about this book are the sweet rhyming text descriptions, especially the one about kissing each finger and feeling gratitude for what our hands have done for us that day.

The back of the book has photographs of each asana and step by step instructions.  This provides the clarity the rhyming texts and illustrations may lack for the first time read.

I think this is a sweet book that would be enjoyed over and over again by children and parents.  It establishes a sweet bedtime routine of gratitude, imagination and safety.