Breathing Games for Children

Breathing games in yoga are a smart way of making breathing ‘’fun’’ for our children. Bringing the fun element to breathing makes our yogis want to engage with their breath and by engaging with their breath, the mind body connection fires up. Often after our breathing games our yogis will say they feel ‘’calm’’ or ‘’happy’’. Two feelings we would love our yogis to know how to tap into in their everyday lives.

Here are two of our favourite games we use to make breathing ‘’fun’’ for our Yogi Bears:

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Rainbow Breath

Children can use a printable rainbow breathing activity in the comfort of anywhere they would like. It is a simple breathing game, with one figure follow the rainbow colour by colour from the ‘’breathe in’’ side to the ‘’breathe out’’ side. Repeat this as many times as the children would like, the more the better.

Hand Breathing

The hand breath is simple and you can do it in the comfort of anywhere you like. All you need is your hand. It is a beautiful tool to help us teach children how to breathe deeply and it is a great tool to help them (and us) reset in times of chaos. Below we have broken the breath down into steps to make it easy to follow.

1.     Take your pointy finger to the base of your thumb

2.     Breath in move to the top of the finger

3.     Breathe out and move down

4.     Inhale up the finger, exhale down the finger

5.     One hand equals 5 breaths

6.     Repeat as many times as you want

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What breathing activity is your favourite?