Dad’s, you may already be well-informed of the steps to your child’s development. As their habits and subconsciousness are being formed, a child’s parents are the key information-givers for their development. You’ll teach your children how to respond, react, listen, share, … basically how to be a human being and excel in this world!
As a Yogic Dad, you have the desire to help your children develop a greater sense of how to react and respond to the different events and aspects of life. You wish to share your gathered wisdom in order for them to absorb and apply it towards the advancements of their lives to eventually achieve personal success.
After interviewing several yogic dads, yoga and meditation practitioners, I have found there are some pretty cool methods that dads have used to teach their children yoga, that if anything, inflate the coolness factors of your role in their lives.
Discover opportunities or things you or your loved one might already be doing to teach yoga:
Yoga is a Lifestyle
Understanding that yoga is more than spiritual gymnastics, you’re well aware it can also be taught throughout everyday life as well. Your demeanor illustrates the effect yoga and meditation have on you, so the coolest and easier way to teach your kid(s) yoga is to practice application towards your everyday life. They’ll notice and replicate as they learn how to tackle their own everyday life/lives.
How You Respond is Everything
Incorporate yoga into how you respond to their questions and how you react to their reactions through your calm, positive, and present demeanor. By revealing the inner peace you have been continually working towards, they will also learn to react the same way you do seeing how your reactions impact your happiness and overall quality of life.
Dealing with Difficulty
As a situation of difficulty arises such as bullying, poor performance, or conflict emerges, a cool yogic dad keeps his own temper under control and approaches the situation with humor. Surprising? Finding a way to lighten the situation or laugh it off a little bit, also has helped dad’s form a solution that won’t “feed the fire.” They diffuse the situation and remember what’s truly important.
What they Watch You Do
As you lay out your mat or sit on your meditation cushion, prepping the mind to receive space for lightness and wholeness . . . they watch. They observe and study the cause and effects of life through you and their surroundings. Your daily practice is absorbed and respected as they transcend into the same type of lifestyle. You teach them initially what life is about, what it means, and what’s important.
Teaching them Oneness
“Imagine endless peace, harmony, and unconditional love. Imagine no fear and equality in all things. This is Oneness.” - Roger Gabriel (Raghavanand)
No one should live in fear. This discovery was said to be a bit easier for yogic dads, as children are known for having a keen sense of oneness as they develop and grow; an invisible state of mind. “It’s almost like they lose it at a certain stage in life or after the experience. That’s when are the time comes to reteach something they were born knowing, to know they are held,” one of the dad’s explained.
Keeping them in touch with nature is key for them to grow up with a backbone sense of calmness and understanding of the bigger connection to the planet and the universe. Our planet came first after all, and how incredible it is to understand how perfectly designed it was for human beings to survive and live on.
Inversions & Balance
As you switch directions of your body, remaining calm and at ease, there’s a certain understanding that even I have felt where you believe in a larger sense of possibility.
Moving through a tough power flow, and remaining calm and happy with the breath, teaches balance.
Balancing all aspects of your own lives, retaining the same sense of calmness in the yogic mind, illustrates to your children when to feel overwhelmed… when to reject certain aspects of life.
Teaching them to work is stressful, or marriage reveals anger or even grocery shopping is a burden (which it can definitely be) are lessons they absorb and reflect out into their own lives. They live the way you teach them to, with natural states of rebellion, but they’ll never forget their roots as they mature and start to return back to what’s right.
Remaining in a Positive Light
Naturally, it’s inhuman to always feel comfortable and happy in all aspects of your life. Tragedy, hardship, and overwhelming times in your life will come and go as intended.
It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to express yourself. It’s okay to let the walls come down every once and while to process and release what your body needs to let go of. Actually, this has to happen or your body will hold on to pain and negative emotions until they bubble up to the surface.
“Remaining positive is, in circumstances of tragedy, means to react to feelings of grief, anger, and hopelessness with an allowance of time to process and let go.”
-Anonymous
Again, how you react to each aspect of life is remembered and learned by your children. It’s a large responsibility, as you are well aware of yogic dads, but it’s good to know a lot of you already know and practice all of the cool yogic ways above.
“ The real man smiles in trouble,
gathers strength from distress,
and groves brave by reflection.”
-Thomas Paine