Yoga Professional Development (PD) Courses for Educators

Yoga has been around for thousands of years. However, yoga for children and teens have only started being recognised in the West in the last few years. Bringing yoga to children through incursions in Early Learning Centres (“ELCs”), Sessional Kindergartens (“Kindergartens”), and Primary and Secondary Schools (“Schools”) have increased in popularity over the last few years.

Yoga can help children and teens self-regulate, instil a sense of calmness, build self-confidence, resilience and optimism. Children and teens are calmer, happier and centred. Yoga gives children and teens techniques that they can use anywhere and anytime. Yoga can also help enhance flexibility and strength while refining balance and co-ordination.

Having qualified children’s yoga teachers run incursions on a regular basis is a fantastic way to help children with their wellbeing. These incursions, when delivered properly by an experienced, engaging and qualified children’s yoga teachers can be an enjoyable and life changing experience for the children and the Educators.

However, having regular yoga sessions or once off incursions for wellbeing themed curriculum events are sometimes not enough.

Like many practices, to see the benefits, consistency is the key. To ensure consistency, the key is embedding short and impactful yoga practices in the children’s day.

Research has shown that yoga is more effective when embedded into the daily routines and when there is educator buy in. Namaste Yogis’ professional experience has also shown that ELCs, Kindergartens and schools who integrate short yoga practices into their curriculum on a consistent basis, have children / students that are calmer. When children / students are calm, they are more receptive to learning, they establish better relationship with their peers and the environment and have better decision making skills.

In addition, not all centres / kindergartens / schools have sufficient funding for regular or once off yoga incursions and some centres / services / schools may have children who need assistance with emotional regulation more frequently. In addition, there is an increasing pressure on Educators to expand their capacity to help children with their wellbeing.

The Yodicate^® course, a combination of the words “Yoga” and “Educate” was developed specifically to arm Educators with basic knowledge and skills about children’s yoga and mindfulness that can be utilised and embedded into their day.  The aim is to help Educators guide a child / student or a group of children / students through impactful yoga and mindfulness experiences that can be as short as 5-15 minutes, either regularly as part of a planned curriculum, or when required, such as when a child needs assistance with self-regulation.

The Yodicate^® course draws on Namaste Yogis’ extensive experience from teaching thousands of children’s yoga classes in ELCs, Kindergartens and schools, feedback

Yoga Class Incursions

Namaste Yogis highly recommend supplementing your ELC / kindergarten / school yoga and mindfulness practices with yoga class incursions from Namaste Yogis. These incursions can enhance the integration of the yoga practices learnt in this course into your curriculum as the children experience a yoga class that is engaging, interactive, fun and most importantly, relaxing. A yoga class ran by our qualified and experienced children’s yoga teachers can help inspire Educators on how to creatively embed yoga practices throughout the day.