Children's Movement - South Africa

Yoga has been found to be of great benefit to young people. It has the positive effects of improving memory, mental power, concentration, co-ordination and physical posture. It improves one's strength, flexibility, health and vitality. It helps one feel happy and more content and generally gives one a greater understanding of nature and the world in which we live. We have also noted that children in India that practice Yoga, become active members in their communities and take on social initiatives that help uplift humanity. We believe yoga perfectly complements the ideals and vision of the Children's Movement.

The Children's resource centre has begun to introduce yoga classes for the Children's Movement. In association with SevaUnite, the outreach organisation of the Satyananda Yoga Centre Cape Town, classes have been running at the Guguletu and Factreton children's groups as a pilot scheme. Both areas have been met with a very positive response. In just a few classes the yoga students have begun to learn yoga techniques like the physical postures, breathing and relaxation techniques. It is our aim to start with these two children's groups and hopefully begin to spread the techniques to the other groups by training up young yoga teachers, and provide them with support. Ultimately we would like to see the children teaching other children and developing their own personal practice of yoga.

At the moment we’re busy working out a long-term plan to broaden and strengthen the Yoga-programme in all our regions.

In 2009 the Children's Yoga Movement published a Yoga booklet consisting of a daily practice program.

Yoga Booklet part 1 (456KB),

Yoga Booklet part 2 (417KB)