Yoga Promotes Positive Body Image
It is fairly common these days that children are exposed to various media outlets on a daily basis where a strong emphasis on body image exists. Let’s face it, young adolescence viewing model like images might start comparing themselves and emulating this sort of perfection. Even though media has done a better job at displaying people of all shapes and sizes, these images of “perfection” still exist. How can we teach children not to always emulate what they see, comparing themselves to an idealized image but, instead accept that they are perfectly fine the way they are?
Here comes YOGA.
The practice is of yoga doesn’t aim at focusing on perfecting the physical body, instead it focuses on building a reservoir of confidence, strength, and endurance within. A regular yoga practice can increase your overall confidence and help you feel more comfortable in your own skin. As a teenager, I often struggled with body image and was constantly striving for perfection. At 18, I started practicing yoga, and I not only started to notice a shift in my body’s strength, flexibility, and balance, I felt more confident in my own skin. Yoga allowed me to tune into myself, and fine tune my inner strength and confidence so that I no longer compared myself to others but, instead celebrated all parts of myself.
Unlike other forms of activity, yoga does not ask us to perform, win, strive, or prove ourselves. Instead, yoga is more about a personal experience that can cultivate inner harmony, strength, and calm. Some yoga poses allow us to get quiet and still enough to feel certain sensations throughout our bodies. Other poses challenge us to look at things from a different perspective, whether it’s in a half moon pose, plank, arm balance, or tree pose). The challenges we face on our mats can often be a metaphor for our lives. When we can confidently do yoga poses on our own, we start to build up our strength and confidence to face difficult moments off our yoga mats.
According to the 2017 Dove Global Girls Beauty and Confidence Report, which interviewed 5,165 girls aged 10 to 17 across 14 countries, low body esteem is associated with isolation from social activities and pressure to strive to meet beauty and appearance ideals. This is just one study out of many now being conducted on the effects of negative body image on physical, mental, and emotional health in both boys and girls, men and women (YogaJournal).
We need to start the conversation about body image with young girls and boys. Taking up a Yoga practice with children can help build that inner strength and confidence and positively make a difference in them as they go through different stages of their lives’. There’s no need to play the comparison game when children feel strong, confident, and grounded in within themselves. Yoga can certainly have that effect.
4 YOGA POSES FOR INNER CONFIDENCE & STRENGTH:
Downward Facing Dog
Warrior I
Warrior II
Warrior III
