Yoga is becoming a popular choice of exercise all over the world for children and teenagers as it has beneficial effects on their physical and mental growth. Yoga asanas or poses help to develop a teenager’s stamina, strength, coordination and flexibility. It also helps to relieve the body stress and reduces the risk of getting injuries while doing physical sports. In general it helps a teenager to develop a stronger and healthier body. Yoga helps to improve a teenager’s personality as well. Besides physical endurance, yoga more importantly helps to develop a teenager’s confidence, self-esteem, imagination and creativity. Moreover the teenagers get to meet new friends when attending yoga classes and this further develops their social skills.


Besides this there are several other physical benefits of yoga for teenagers as it helps to build the strength of muscles and bones, it increases the mobility of joints as it lengthens the muscles, it gives an ideal postural alignment as it develops an understanding of body mechanics and healthy movement patterns, creates the awareness to physically relax as it develops the skill of non-action, it acts as a tool to elicit relaxation and focus and draws attention to the breath as a reflection of state of mind, it develops co-ordination and prevents injury as it provides physical experiences that ask the body to continually re-establish balance, it controls hyperactivity and revitalizes low energy.

The mental benefits allow teens to provides techniques for redirecting thoughts and calming the nervous system and experience a sense of space around their concerns including what others think, it teaches teenagers to make choices that respect themselves as well as others, it develops the teens ability to focus through practical disciplines of bodywork and breath, it provides them with a strengthened internal perspective that helps their self-image develop free of media and other cultural influences, it enables teens to let go of the tendency to be critical of one’s self and judgmental of others and this cultivates gratitude for what the body can do, it makes them curious and provides a healthy way to experiment, explore the body and take risks in a controlled environment.

Yoga also has spiritual benefits for the teenagers as it opens them to greater qualities of non-violence, compassion and kindness, it helps to cultivate the inter connection between themselves, others and the natural world around them, it cultivates emotional connection and heightens the awareness while combating both drama and numbness.