Yoga for Teens: How to engage teenagers in yoga

As we know yoga is fun and makes you feel great, but it is also about discipline, self-control and learning how to respond to discomfort or tough times. Being a mum of teens and a trainer in teen yoga I know kids have these reserves but need great encouragement to dig deep and source them. 

Tuning into teen yoga, means tuning into teens, that’s the fun of it, so get creative with lesson plans and think outside that adult yoga box! 

Using Quotes, Songs and Poems

This is often my starting point when I am lesson planning for a group of teens. You can use quotes from inspiring yogis, artists, influential thinkers, singers, poets, philosophers. How about tuning into the wisdom of contemporary poets like Kate Tempest, introducing human-rights inspirers like Rosa Parks, or work an ecological connection theme by quoting some Greta Thunberg. 

Teamwork is dreamwork

Partner or group work is great yoga for teens. Just by encouraging a pairing or a team you are breaking down boundaries and encouraging community, collaboration, confidence, and fun! Practise simple acro-yoga, supported trees, chains of warrior threes or even human mandalas! A great way to promote support, understanding and bond through practise. 

Get Outdoors! 

There is never anything better than feeling breeze in your hair and sand or grass under your feet when doing yoga. Bring senses alive with tuning into sounds of birds, waves, streams or bring awareness to the body with the temperature of the air or movement of the wind and encourage connection with the outdoor prana! 

SUP Yoga or Surf Yoga

My daughter lost interest in asana at the age of 14, then she discovered surfing and rediscovered asana inspired by surf yoga! This form of yoga really works the shoulder girdle and the core. Inspired by using your mat as a surfboard, you can finish on some uplifting and soul-inspiring beach visualisations.

Aerial Yoga 

What could be better than having fun with yoga whilst dangling upside down! Get in with the circus and festival vibe and promote fun movement, strength, and flexibility too. We ALL loved being upside down when we were little, the problem with the transition into adulthood through our teenage years is we forget! So, remind your teen yogis it is cool to fling your body around, have fun, get some blood flow to the head, and boost your circulation all at the same time with an aerial practise. 

Salutations and Vinyasa Flow 

In general, the meditative flow of vinyasa and salutations suit teenagers as sitting in hatha or yin can be quite an ask with brains firing off synapses at the astonishing ‘rate of youth!’. Sun and moon salutations and vinyasa flow can ease them gently in a more focused mindful way from one asana to the next and can bring awareness and attention to breathwork too. 

Inversions

The teenage years are when we struggle the most with the will to let go of the ‘inner child’ but still with the desire to hang on to it! Inversions encourage this sense of fun! Inversions can also be challenging so they also encourage a sense of personal achievement and a sense of control over our own bodies – something much needed during the teen years.  Downward facing dog, clown, crow, shoulderstand and headstand are all great challenges when they are taught safely and with encouragement of ease. 

Balances

Balance can be a challenge when there is so much thought whizzing through the mind. Balance brings calm, encourages steady, aligns stability – all the attributes’ teenagers need, but can be lacking in their biological and psychological fluctuating minds. Tree, dancer, eagle, warrior three, these are all going to encourage increased focus, stability, strength, self-control, and self-awareness. A GREAT way to build useful, productive neural pathways for a calmer more positive mind-set. 

Checking in

Teach your teens how important it is to check-in throughout the day on how they are doing and to notice shifts and changes, it is an invaluable skill. Humans are often under the illusion that we are fixed beings, and that once we make up our mind about something it must be rigid, unchanging. It gets us into all kinds of problems! The truth is we are fluid, changing, beings. Encourage your teens to learn how to observe this as it happens, to not judge it, but to befriend it. 

Breathwork 

When we slow our heart rate down by using deep breathing, physiologically our heart rate slows, our breathing deepens, and healthy, happy endorphins are sent into our bodies promoting good health and a calm state of mind.  Breathwork is great for exam stress too! Practise noticing and steadying the breath, take gentle control, breathing in, pause, breathing out, pause. Commit to riding the breath with full focus.

Shavasana and Yoga Nidra

Encourage a mindful single focused practise. Encourage your teen yogis to be aware of their body on the mat, bring them to a flowing yoga nidra, or use the senses as focus by playing a piece of music and ask them to bring awareness back to it whenever their mind drifts off. Ask them to notice how often the mind flickers here and there, and without judgement, just encourage them back to the practise, mindfully learning how to take control of thoughts.

Meditation

Encourage your teens to observe the tugging, nagging, emotional thoughts, to notice where they came from, watch them, and release them. Ask them to see thoughts for what they are, someone else’s expectations, exam pressure, envy, fear. Ask them to realise they are not ‘tied’ to them and simply observe them, then cut the ties, release the thoughts and experience the freedom that brings.  

Self-Kindness 

Sometimes when we are really being bothered by a situation we may be in, it is a really good idea to look at it, as if you were your own friend. If your friend made a mistake and they felt sad, or ashamed, or guilty and explained to you how they felt, would you be horrible to them? would you punish them?  No. You would support them, ‘hold’ them, comfort them. Once we can learn to treat ourselves in the same way we treat our friends, our own inner space becomes a happier place to be and we can be friends with the most important person of all, with our self. 

You can book Jackie Heffer-Cooke to train school teachers in ‘yoga and mindfulness for teenagers’ with zenkids.co 

If you are a parent, school worker, youth worker, health worker, yogi or bodyworker you can train in ‘kids and teen yoga’ with her yoga teacher training school ZenMuma and ZenKids - zenmuma.co.uk

You can also book a kids, family or teen yoga retreat with Jackie at freedomyogaandretreats.com