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Today, Giselle has brought Kids Yoga Stories to share The Guide to Using Yoga for Emotional Regulation 5 Easy Ideas That Actually Calm the Nervous System. Our thanks to you Giselle because you shared your expertise with us!
OT became an accepted routine in the lives of my neurodivergent daughter and I visited regularly after providing my child with initial therapy. Waiting in those waiting rooms, I saw another child after another walking through the doors with heavy loads on their shoulders–anxiety, dysregulation, stress that was way too heavy to carry.
You may also see this in your work with children as an occupational therapist who sees the child as being mired in a sort of fight or flight.
By working with Kids Yoga Stories, I had the chance to connect with so many occupational therapists in our community who had the same concern: these children require help connecting to a sense of calm, but where do you begin?
In good news, you do not need to redesign your whole way of doing things in order to be in a position to assist these children to make a significant change.
You can practice simple yoga and mindfulness exercises that can be easily integrated within your current sessions and offer children effective tools to have control over their emotions. These implements stimulate the Parasympathetic nervous system- the rest and digest part of the nervous system that assists them feel secure and anchored.
The given evidence-based practices supplement traditional interventions. They provide pragmatic means through which the interlacing of strategies on regulations can be done without necessarily altering the entire plan.
Why These Calming Practices Are Effective in the Emotional Regulation?
The stress responses take over the nervous system of children when they become dysregulated.
Various breathing exercises, secure body movements, and earth activities engage the vagus nerve that we are going to explore. The shift restores the nervous system to a healthy level.
These approaches are even more effective as they empower children with its control over their emotions. They enable children to gain power to know that they have tools that accompany them everywhere they go-tools that need no equipment and are part of them.
5 Easy Tasks to destroy the nervous system
1. The Body Awareness Check-in:
This is the easiest practice that makes children acknowledge how they feel and what sensations their bodies give at the beginning of a session. Think of it as training kids to be detectives of their own bodies–making them aware of what goes on inside their bodies before those feelings get so big they are hard to deal with.
How it works: Initiate sessions with children stopping and paying attention to what is going on inside of their bodies. Ask questions such as:: How do you feel in your tummy? How? how does your heart feel? Is it racing? Are you tense inPriority Meyre questioning tone Don t hurry them through to an answer.
Why it helps: Most children have become externally oriented that they have forgotten to pay attention to their internal clues. The practice trains them to identify the signs of dysregulation early enough to prevent the development of full meltdowns.
The connection to the OT goal: This directly helps to address sensation processing and self-regulation goals by increasing the ability to become aware of what is going on within the body- interoceptive awareness is key to emotional regulation and having a mind-body connection. Employ this in the first part of sessions to set a baseline and in movements between activities when you can see a child becoming dysregulated. It is particularly beneficial to those children who cannot be aware of their feelings or body sensations.
2. Deep Exhalation Breathing Breathing Exercise:
Long exhale breathing practices focus on increased exhalation in order to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. It is one of the quickest ways to move a child out of the state of anxiety and into a calm state, and the fact that he/she can use it anywhere is the most remarkable part as the child does not require any equipment.
How it works Take three to five counts inhaling through the nose and then in a slow, six- to 10-second exhalation through the mouth, doubling the exhalation time as compared with the inhaling. You may even make them use imaginations of inflating a balloon as you breathe in slowly and allow the airflow out with a sigh. This physiological reaction can change a child in the span of a few minutes who was anxious to calm down.
The benefits to occupational therapy: This therapy promotes self-regulation objectives and may serve as a sensory break transition task or a task before a difficult challenge. It works especially well on the kids with anxiety, issues with paying attention or sensory processing disorders. Put it into practice prior to fine motoring activities, use it as a sensory break, or when a child is overloaded with sensory experiences.
3. Childs Pose Balasana:
This yoga posture has its base and this base is deep pressure and emotional safety. This pose will be able to provide anxious children with both. The key is a calm-down cave for kids: a special place where kids can go and rest in order to feel better when things are getting too exciting or simply too much.
How to do it: Keep the child kneeling on the floor and touching his/her big toes, resting back on his/her heels. Afterward the forehead is extended towards the ground (or a pillow) and the arms are placed in front of the body or to the sides of the body. They may remain here 30 seconds, to several minutes breathing deeply. Children that do not have the ability to get on the floor can do a variation of this by folding forward over a therapy ball.
What it does:This positioning offers proprioceptive stimulation with some compression and parasympathetic activation. It gives a natural feeling of cocoon that most anxious children feel calm with.
Connection to Childs Pose: Childs pose is therapeutic to sensory processing. It gives soothing proprioceptive experience and assists in self-regulation. It also may be given to create a safe space in times of overwhelmingness Apply it in between sensory activities, sensitivity to hard tasks, and also to a child who needs to relax. It is particularly beneficial with children that have an emotional difficulty, or require deep pressure.
4. Breathe 5 times: trace with your hands
This is a breathing practice in which you have that sense of touch combined with the breath awareness. It provides fidgety or anxious children with something concrete to remain focused on, during times when their nervous system needs to settle down. It works perfectly with children who cannot follow simple instructions such as breathe because not only will their hands and mind have an activity to focus on.
The way it works: Ask the child to hold one hand in front of him/her like a starfish. With the usage of their other index finger, trace along the external edge of the thumb towards the inside and vice versa along the edge of the inside as you breathe slowly in through your nostrils respectively. Keep following each finger up and down- up the pinky (inhale), down the pinky (exhale), up the ring finger (inhale), down the ring finger (exhale), etc. First hold up the five fingers and breathe 5 full breaths.
Why it helps: The sensory input of both breath awareness and touch offer feed-back regulation in two domains. The look and feel of the structure combined with the aspect of counting enable the child to concentrate and have a tangible idea to hold on to whenever they are feeling anxious.
The connection to OT: This activity involves several sensory systems (tactile, proprioceptive, and visual) and develops bilateral coordination, as well as contributes to the goals in the area of attention and self-regulation. Use it in between transitions, when you want to do a fine motor activity, or when you want the child to be able to focus. It is especially accommodating with children with ADHD or those who have anxiety or sensory processing needs as it provides the multiple senses needed to remain calm.
5. Instant Listening Practice:
This sweet sound activity can assist children to emerge him/her the whirlpool of anxious thoughts and sink into the calm present. This is ideal when you want your children to have awning they can use to slow their minds down because the whole world around them can be confused.
The projection: a small chime or singing bowl or even phone app that has chime sounds. Ask the child to close his/her eyes (if it is comfortable to do so) and concentrate until the child can no longer hear it. Make them stretch a hand in the air when the sound disappears totally, then be silent some longer. This can be repeated 2 or 3 times with child making slow, deep breathing through the silence.
Why it helps: The activity breaks the anxious way of thinking and puts children in touch with their present sensory perceptions. The direct listening deactivates the nerve system and prepares children that the present day is safe.
Have fun T connection: This auditory processing task helps work on attention and self-regulation objectives, as well as, offering a sensory restorative activity. Use at the beginning of sessions to assist kids to focus, transitioning, or when there is a lot of background noise. It is especially helpful in children who become easily overstimulated by noise or lack the auditory processing ability.
The trick is to begin small and to gain confidence, both yours and your kiddos. The evidence-based activities are meant to supplement existing interventions of the patients and not substitute them.
Requested tips:
Just start with one: Pick the activity that feels the most comfortable to you and start trying it in your sessions. When you are satisfied and the children you are serving comfortable, you may add more.
Allow the availability of the resources: Have breathing cards, simple props (such as a chime) and visual reminders ready and in an accessible place. Proper preparation enables you to be flexible when a child requires regulation assistance.
Get kids involved: When kids are aware of these techniques and methods they can choose what pose or breathing technique they feel good about that day. When the control is kept with the children, there is a higher likelihood that the children take it up without being told to.
Have faith in the matter: Developing confidence as a regulator is a long process. Congratulate minor successes and keep in mind that it is better to achieve consistency than perfection.
Carryover: Take notice of signs that your children are aiding these tools outside your sessions. This is the best indication that indeed they are making use of the skills in their real lives.
Raising Secure, Controlled Children:
Needless to say, we would like children to be present and in the ground during our sessions to achieve the results together. These are fabulous activities to aid you to do just that! But what makes them so powerful indeed… it is that it becomes a tool which helps one develop emotional resilience towards life.
As children learn how to listen to their own internal signals, how to consciously utilise their breath, and how to tune in to their bodies, along with bringing mindfulness into their lives, they will be practicing skills that will help them throughout school, home, and every relationship they will ever have.
And the best of Question? They build on rewards on top of everything you are doing! The practices provide the complete aspect in which children can reach their full potential.
These five activities can serve as a painless, successful means of ensuring that the children move gradually into a place of refuge where they are not overwhelmed, but have access to confidence.
No matter whether you will work with a child who experiences explosions, during which he or she becomes extremely anxious or lacking emotional intelligence, these science-based interventions will help. They provide a good start point in the development of the internal tool kit every child must have.
Want to introduce something new to yoga and mindfulness in a school or within your therapy practice?
My friend Giselle of Kids Yoga Stories has developed an amazing Yoga in School system- it is a step by step guide to creating your own yoga and mindfulness and breath work program in the school or community.
This 6 weeks program provides you with all you need, video lessons, workbook guides, templates, live expert support and real-world examples. Only spring and fall are offered and there is no prior experience needed.