Yoga for ASD kids

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Hello everyone. I am wondering if any of you tried yoga for ASD kids and how it worked for you? I am doing kids yoga teacher training soon and I would love to use my experience with ASD kids on my yoga classes.

I go to school for asd and they have a yoga class.

never even heard of it. Sounds like my developmental cordination would muck it up. I mean balance, I posses none.

I only do ones where I'm sitting or laying down.

Thinking about trying out some yoga sometime, actually. Maybe on the weekends...

I can't cope with yoga. Perhaps it's the addition of ADHD. I feel itchy staying still for too long and it takes ages to go away. Makes me quite upset. I could certainly do with the strength that comes from it though as I have very poor posture owing to poor fine and gross motor.

Never mind the balance! You also need an obscene amount of flexibility to do yoga successfully. I have the flexibility of a marble slab. Both as a kid and now. Which made gym classes a nightmare; imagine me trying to do the bridge (lying supine, then pushing up on hands and feet).

You don't need balance or flexibility to do basic yoga. All you need is a willingness to move your body. In beginner yoga, especially for kids, there is not wrong or right. There's just movement exploration.

I've done this with autistic kids and its good fun! Don't expect order in your classroom, lol.

A turning point in my life was walking into my first yoga classroom and discovering the most wonderful teacher. She was the first person who taught me that I could cooperate with my body. I could enjoy it as it is. In her classroom, I experienced being a success at something physical for the first time in my life. She complimented me! I'm sure I was totally awkward, but she told me I was doing great and that was a whole new world. Also, I discovered the sensation of being "grounded" when I did downward dog. So I started to go into bathrooms and do downward dog every time I started to get overstimmed. lol. Also awkward. But it was my first experience in consciously shifting my emotional state. (That didn't involve pretending to be Vulcan and getting beaten by a grown-up, but that's a long and irrelevant story.) It's because of this experience that I choose to leave education and go into alternative medicine.

Have a look at cosmic yoga online, she does lovely yoga sessions for kids. Might give you some tips on how you could weave in particular storylines, both my kids loved her sessions from about 3 years old.

You may find Vinyasa yoga a better fit for you. It's a faster, free flowing, fitness style. The poses are not held. Instead they transition through a sequence.

I teach yoga! I hear so many students say they're stiff. That's why you come, you don't start yoga because you're already a Zen master who can throw their legs over their head.

To anyone thinking of trying it or who is already practicing it, you'll progress much faster if you give yourself permission to not be perfect. And never force. Sometimes yoga makes you feel like s**t, temporarily, that's just old stuff coming up. Once it's out, you'll feel much better than ever.

And last but not least, everyone on the spectrum needs to make releasing the psoas muscle first priority before moving onto anything else!

How do people do it? I know how to do it on horses I know a fair bit of equine bodywork. Human, not so much.

Basically you want to target the sides and front of the torso, and the part at the upper thighs where the legs and torso meet. Postures that stretch the side of the body, like side warrior and triangle are good. Also lunges. Upward dog and bow are good for this too. Reclining camel is a really good Yin posture to hold for a few minutes at a time. And to soothe the vagus nerve, Ujjayi breathing is fantastic, and it can be done just about anywhere anytime. I'm doing it right now!

Yoga is also nice for kids and adults as a social outlet. You can have friends, community, and support, but are not required to talk to each other to do so.

Whoever wrote a few years ago that yoga requires an insane amount of flexibility needs a new teacher. Yoga for kids is about using breath and movement as a way to focus. Most styles of adult yoga are a balance of strength and flexibility.

I suck at yoga. I don't have the body flexibility and I get tired easily and it always hurts to sit on my back or butt because of the bones and having my knees touch the floor or my elbows without bruising them. I use pillows now to sit on if I do any such work outs that would be painful.

It's impossible to suck at yoga! I always tell my students to just go to the point where they can feel it, but not where it hurts. So even if you can hardly bend forward, just go to the edge of your resistance without forcing, and stay there, allow your head to soften forward as the weight of your head helps you to sink deeper into the posture over time, and breathe through it. Yogic breathing techniques are the best way anyway to soothe the vagus nerve and turn off the fight or flight response, which then helps a lot with coping with challenges.

My theory anyway is that the bad manifestation of autism is sick and not functioning in the world, but with the right tools and the right way to turn off our fight or flight response, we can easily be MORE successful than most neurotypicals! We think outside the square in a way neurotypicals only wish they could.