Benefits of Yoga and Exercise for Children with Autism

Autism identification is growing and according to the CDC or Center for Disease Control reports, almost 1 out of every 68 children is affected by this neurological condition. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD typically face big challenges in communication, understanding social cues, self-emotions and emotions of others, and sensory integration deficits. Yoga and exercise have thus emerged as one of the best therapies for children with autism.

Studies suggest that yoga can benefit those with ASD in ways you cannot imagine. To get yoga-inspired products to infuse yoga into the daily lives of your autism-affected kids and yourselves, you can get the latest Yogaoutlet coupon. Yoga will not only boost your children’s balance, strength, and coordination but also improve their communication and language skills, focus and concentration.

How Yoga And Exercises Will Help Your Autistic Child:

1. Better Communication Skills: Studies have proved that yoga and regular exercises will improve your child’s imitation skills. It is known to improve communication behavior and cognitive skills in ASD children. Those practicing yoga on a daily basis have better eye-contact, better receptive communication skills, and sitting tolerance. The autistic child learns the yoga poses and develops better breathing by imitating adult behavior. This, in turn, improves his attention span which is usually a huge challenge for the ASD child.

2. Better Emotional Expression: While yoga can make your kid more aware of social cues like actions and social behavior or facial expressions, it also helps him understand how to own emotions better. This is a huge advantage because autistic kids usually have a lot of difficulty in expressing themselves, and they often act out these in inappropriate ways. Breathing techniques enable them to release their feelings of anger or frustration through healthier or more constructive ways.

3. Lessens Anxiety: Children with ASD tend to experience exceptionally high-anxiety levels and yoga is known to help. When children with ASD are anxious, it affects their mood, sleep patterns, and overall health. The anxiousness usually develops because of sensory integration deficit and many other associated challenges. Breathing techniques will calm them down and soothe their nervous systems.

4. Reduces Challenging Behaviors: Due to limited communication skills, children with ASD experience challenging behavior. Through studies on such challenging behavior, it was seen that yoga intervention could improve the situation considerably. When ASD-affected kids are made to practice yoga on a regular basis, the postures help to lessen anxiety levels, allowing them to enhance their coping skills. Sensory integration basically refers to how we can use and process environment-generated external stimuli and human body-generated internal stimuli. But ASD children have trouble coping with these because they have difficulty in self-regulation. Yoga teaches specific postures and breathing techniques to relax the children and enable them to develop these missing skills of self-regulation and sensory integration. This will, in turn, stop the kids from behaving aggressively and acting out on occasion.

5. Increased Body Awareness: Kids having ASD have little knowledge of their body parts, but yoga trains them to understand the functions of different body parts. For instance, directions like up and down, or left and right, can help kids with autism understand their bodies better.

6. Increased Positivity: Yoga, when done regularly, will help kids with autism develop a greater level of self-confidence. Standing and balancing postures are challenging for the children, and exciting at the same time too. Poses can also be modified to help the child cope with it so that his self-esteem gets a boost.

7. Visualization: Educators of autistic children harp on the value of visualization. Cue cards can be used for educating kids about the yoga poses they must do. Using this visualization method, the kids can imitate physical behaviors and actions successfully. So, for kids who cannot speak at all, looking at visual cards can help them to respond. Many children also have difficulty in motor planning, making fluid sentences and focusing; seeing visual cues can help them overcome this.

These benefits of yoga and exercises show you why it is important to include these in a child’s school and home routine. Practicing yoga with ASD kids will not only help them feel less anxious and more confident but also help the adult create a relaxing and positive environment for the child to flourish. So, get your latest coupons from Don’tPayAll and find peace and strength through yoga.