Yoga can help overweight children

Children cannot easily understand the virtues of yoga or anything that relates to health. The generation brought up on fast food is too mesmerized by the burger and chips marketing gimmicks to pay heed to good advice about “boring yoga”.

Unfortunately even my own daughter, Diya, calls yoga “boring”.

I was appalled to see that 30% of the children at my daughter’s school were overweight, and some even obese, so I arranged a meeting with the headmistress to see how we could discourage the kids from eating so much fast food.

She issued a circular to the children to discourage fast foods and asked me to address the issue directly to the parents at the next parents-teacher meeting. She wanted me to prepare a module on yoga and how it can help the young and wanted me to tell the parents about it.

This is what I proposed:

First thing in the morning the parents are asked to wake their children up to flute music as a call to the yoga session. The parents themselves must get in the habit of rising early and are asked to give kids more than two hours of time before they leave for school.

The day must begin with the intake of water – in the beginning even a few sips will do and kids are asked to go to the toilet to inculcate a habit of evacuation as soon as they get up. Parents must also do as they preach else their instructions will invariably fall on deaf ears.

Next the children should brush their teeth and fill their mouths with water. Holding the water in their mouths while splashing some water into their open eyes 3-4 times will improve eye-sight and helps improve the health of the eye. This is very important as computers increasingly become widely used tools of education.

With the flute music playing, do the following:

1. Sit down cross-legged on a thin woollen or silken mattress in a quite place of your house.

2. Eyes closed, start with deep breathing – deep inhalations and exhalations slowly without exerting, just for one minute.

3. Keep sitting in the same position and start blowing your nose rhythmically – one blow a second, again without exerting too hard; one should be able to hear the quick exhalations as you blow air out of your lungs, without minding the inhalations which will happen involuntarily. As you blow your nose it will be accompanied by an inward pull of your stomach. Hence, a nose blow and an inward pull of the stomach have to be done for 2-3 minutes without break. You can take some rest as initially you may find it exhausting.

4. The above exercise has to be done 2-3 times with some rest every 2-3 minutes.

5. Thereafter, lie down on your back. Lift your head and feet at about 30 degrees with arms stretched straight along your body. Hold it here as long as possible. Repeat this 4-5 times.

6. Sit straight with your legs stretched as much apart as possible. Hold your arms stretched too and parallel to the legs. Place your right hand on your left foot and left hand to the right foot in slow successions. Do it for 10-20 times, about 2-3 minutes.

7. We stop here. Just lie down on your back, eyes closed, arms placed along your body, back of the hands touching the mattress, legs straight and open, and feet comfortably spaced. Just try to go into momentary sleep for 2-3 minutes.

8. Take your weight if you have the machine handy or do it when you go out. Chances are you will have lost between 250-500 grams. You can lose inches over a period though. But for today even before you check your weight again you feel light. That’s the promise of yoga.

9. Reduce the amount of fast, fried and spicy, and high-starch foods, long hours watching TV and staying back home when you have time to play out.

Add comment August 3rd, 2006 Written By: lalitgambhir