There are great benefits to be reaped when storytelling and adventure are made an active part of children’s daily lives, especially when combined with yoga for kids you will get a cocktail of Zen for everyone involved.
A good story makes the reader or listener think and creates room for pondering and learning. However, it is very important to create the right conditions to tell and communicate the story. Whether it is at home, in the classroom, or in a hall, you have to make sure to use the available facilities, so coziness will be at the forefront. Use great lighting, blankets, and pillows, draw the curtains and let the story unfold in a setting where many senses are stimulated.
In my passion for the development of children and self-insight, I have found that yoga for kids is the perfect platform to deliver a good story. The children get to use their energy and find Zen within their bodies. This opens the mind to stimuli, and we can dive into the adventure with the themes that we find to be important for the child or the children. Furthermore, you can link the story and the yoga together by incorporating the yoga characters or philosophies behind in the narrative universe.
A good story teaches us about life and each other, and it can increase their understanding of intercultural differences. Stories can give the children access to well-known dilemmas they are dealing with themselves and open up for valuable conversations. They can also make the children experience worlds and moral values that they haven’t yet run into. As a storyteller and communicator, you are in possession of a treasure chest of gold that you can freely pick from and sprinkle over your story to make it relatable, instructive, and captivating.
There are undeniably great emotions at play throughout life, and being able to navigate and react to them in a healthy and rational way as early as possible is, in my opinion, crucial for how a child will cope later on in social contexts and in times with adversity and challenges. A good story will help the child reflect and think about values and great emotions.
As a storyteller, you are also helped by being aware of how any good story will benefit the children.
A myriad of benefits will be added to the toolbox belonging to the child and the class by the use of sensory stimuli.
In family and school dynamics, there are always ebbs and flows, and we alternate between countless tasks and chores, and we want both as parents and educators to guide the children in the best possible way. When time is set aside for spending time with each other through storytelling, you will gain new experiences together, and we slow down the pace and enjoy a shared activity.
According to the WHO, stress is the biggest disease burden in the western world in 2020, and many children are suffering from cognitive disorders due to excessive states of stress in the brain. Being stressed, anxious, and in imbalance presents cognitive difficulties such as keeping their concentration, maintaining an overview of situations, and remembering things.
This only fuels the fire when it comes to the argument that adults should prioritize shared experiences with children to a higher degree through good stories and de-stressing.
Stories have been proven to train children’s ability to concentrate and remember. They expand their vocabulary, and it promotes the desire to read. This strengthens their reading and writing skills as well as their knowledge of different genres. The imagination and the child’s creativity are also parameters that are improved when we involve them in our stories.
Personally, I like to combine my adventure for children with yoga and several other sensory stimuli. As mentioned previously, I have experienced that you create even better conditions for telling a good story and giving the children the space to immerse themselves into it when you have a relaxed mind and sharpened senses.
I include sound therapy, massage therapy, art, and dramaturgy in addition to yoga as my communication tools. Of course, this is not something everyone can do, and it is perfectly fine to do it on a small scale. The effect will still be really positive.
By collaborating with an actor who is recording the story, I have taken my adventure to a level I am not skilled enough to reach on my own in a dramaturgical sense. The sound therapeutic part with the underlying hertz promotes relaxation when the adventure of the day ends. This along with sound effects that emphasize the story’s plot is not really within my skillset either, so I have also gotten help from a professional to achieve this. As I also want to visualize my stories, I collaborate with an illustrator to communicate the yoga and the magic in a visual way, so the universe is made even more accessible to the children.
I then combine these initiatives with massage therapy that I can communicate in a way so that the children can choose whether they want to massage each other while listening to the story or enjoy the Shavasana and the story in peace.
There are so many good reasons to tell a good story and so many ways to do it, so this post is to help you get inspired and to give you insight into what we also can do to communicate our stories to children in an even better and more fun way.
Let the adventure unfold and give the children peace to immerse themselves in a good story.
