Excellent day at our yoga and relaxation group

Our children and young people can experience stress and anxiety just like adults can. However, they tend to show it in different ways. Yoga is an excellent way of releasing stress and anxiety and it is something that the whole family can take part in. That's why we recently held a yoga and relaxation group at our Barnsley hub for our children and young people to promote National Stress Awareness Day on 6th November. The idea behind the group was to show children techniques to manage their stress and anxiety. Four young people and one of our foster carers attend with three members of staff. A qualified yoga instructor with a wealth of experience led the session working with the young people directly. We provided yoga mats for each young person participating, as well as some light refreshments. The session started with some relaxation techniques before moving on to some basic yoga poses. The young people settled into the session quite quickly and listened well to the instructor. As the session progressed and the poses became more complicated and difficult to master but they all had lots of fun and laughter and everyone was keen to stay on task. Towards the end of the session, the instructor encouraged the group to get into pairs and do some balance exercises, which the young people appeared to really enjoy, and were given lots of praise for their concentration and efforts. The instructor ended the session with some relaxation and thanked everyone for attending. Despite the small number of young people attending (due to after school activities) overall, it was a success, as all the young people expressed that they had enjoyed the session and agreed that they would come again if we ran another group. Therefore, we are delighted to announce that we will run the group again later this year, next time and we look forward to welcoming even more carers and children.