Doing Yoga Can Help Calm Kids Down

Posted: November 19, 2009

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In Columbia, Missouri, mom Sarah Wells Kohl heard about yoga for kids and enrolled her 9-year-old, Dakota. She had been struggling for months, trying every alternative arts program she could find, to address her son's exceptionally high energy. "He couldn't settle himself, he was just very high-strung and bored with everything," she said. "But, wow, yoga opened something in him. Pranayama breathing (slow, steady deep yogic breaths) put him in his space. When things get too tight, rough and crazy, do his own little Eagle pose.

"I once found him in his bedroom chanting," she said. "It almost seems like we put him on a yoga mat instead of putting him on medication."

By Ashley Fantz, CNN.com, November 13, 2009