Does Your Child......
Does your child.....
fidget and find it hard to sit still or to focus?
crave moving their body into upside down, sideways and crazzy, funny positions?
or
find balancing hard and often tumbles over or bumps into things
often feels disorientated
It could be that your child is in need of some more exploration of movement to strengthen and exercise their Vestibular and Proception sensory systems.
Here is why.....
The Vestibular sensory system utilises information from the liquid chambers in your ears. when the liquid moves messages are sent to your brain allowing the body and brain to calculate how your body is positioned in the world.
Your proprioception system is similar but works through muscles and tendons. The body detects changes in muscle length/contraction and force traveling through the tendons. This information is delivered to the brain and explains how our body is moving and what parts of our body are moving. In fact awakening your propreceptors can help to clear and calm the mind! (one reason why people make better decisions after doing some excersise is because they have fired up the propreceptors creating a filtering system in the brain).
Yoga is a great way to strengthen these senses as your mind and body work together to complete the poses.
How exercising their Vestibular System/Sense could help
The vestibular sense is linked to your body and minds awareness of gravity, safety, survival, arousal, and can affect attention (or lack off).
The more you allow your body to explore and strengthen this sense through physical experiences of movement the stronger it becomes. The affect that the vestibular system has on our body and mind is huge and for children having an under developed or under active sensory system can lead to feeling unsafe, cortisol levels can rise and the fight or flight instinct will rev up. This can then lead to what seems like 'bad behaviour' or fidgeting etc.
Why Yoga is a good option to help this....
Yoga encourages us to think about ourselves as individuals which is really important for children and parents. We all have varying individual levels/strength in our vestibular system as well as varying levels of tolerance to what does and doesn't feel comfortable. Some children will need to take time to build up to certain movements that may feel overwhelming to them.
Feeling your own body weight through your limbs, going upside down, side ways and just moving your body and connecting to it can work wonders for your sensory system (not to mention all your other body functions which need a zillion separate articles/blog posts to explore hahah).
Check out the video I am posting with the super duper 'BAT POSE' asana that works both systems and is super fun!
xx
Colette
Check out the next classes here http://www.littlelotusbaby.co.uk/classes
