Baby Yoga and Story Massage
Babies are naturals at yoga and it can really help in developing your baby’s gross and fine motor skills. Yoga for babies can help to improve sleeping patterns, aid digestion, constipation, relieve gas and colic and it promotes bonding.
“Practicing yoga together gives you the space to relax and provides a lovely opportunity to bond with each other, connect to the body and breathe.”
Weaving positive and nurturing touch into well loved stories and nursery rhymes, you’ll learn simple touch strokes on the back, arms and hands. Nurturing touch helps children and their parents bond, creating closer relationships. As your baby grows, you can enjoy giving your child a bedtime story massage on the back or tummy, which calms a young child and improves their sleep. Research (taken from the NAC) has proven that children who learn healthy views of touch and are provided with tactile experience by a parent or carers are more likely to grow up with a healthy self image, a sense of appropriate boundaries and long lasting intimate relationships.
Babies and parents enjoy the fun, creativity and interaction of positive touch through story massage.
Baby Yoga creates balance between strength and flexibility in developing bodies, so babies grow strong and maintain the flexibility they are born with. Healthy habits learned early in life become healthy habits later in life.
You don’t need to practice yoga or even know anything about yoga to get started. Children respond positively to the stimulation of movement and touch together from birth and baby yoga includes a wide range of different practices that can be combined to suit the needs of each child through their individual development.
Over the length of the course, we’ll practice:
Yoga moves adapted for babies (mini twists, mini stretches, upper and lower body movements, diagonal movements). These moves have been transmitted through generations in India for at least 2000 years.
Playful moves with rhymes and songs.
Transitional practices (head control, sitting, crawling, standing, early steps, first jumps and balances).
Joint parent/baby relaxation (walking relaxation, instant relaxation, relaxation to sleep, feeding relaxation).
Story massage allows parents to continue to offer (or learn) nurturing massage that can be used as your child grows. It is a life-long skill that you can use for many years.
All my classes are baby/child led. Responding to your baby promptly and sensitively is acknowledged to be a way of supporting the bonding process.
