The benefits of yoga are far reaching. It is a form of mindfulness, which research suggests helps build our ability to concentrate and focus, stay calm even when adversity strikes, think flexibly, and remember. Yoga has been used successfully to help alleviate symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression. Yoga can build strength, increase flexibility, teach body awareness, motor skills, directional and positional concepts, and improve balance. Yoga can be practiced with children in creative, imaginative and fun ways that build community, social- emotional skills including empathy, and even literacy and numeracy skills.
If you can breathe, you can do yoga! There are modifications that can make a yoga practice accessible for persons with all body types and abilities.
For those who are blind or visually impaired some accommodations that may be helpful in learning yoga or following along with a yoga class include:
- Provision of language that carefully describes how to assume a pose.
- Feeling someone’s body as they demonstrate a pose.
- Feeling a tactile illustration of a pose.
- Having someone physically assist you in doing or refining a pose.
- Advantageous positioning in a class to make the most of your vision.
- Teacher positioning and dressing to provide best contrast.
Very young children or those with additional challenges may benefit from one on one support and direct teaching of language, movements and poses prior to joining a class.
This video introduces the listener to an un-modified Sun Salutation C, which is a sequence of poses done together to honor the sun and energize the yogi.