What is Yoga Therapy?

Yoga is an ancient system of exercise in which breath awareness comes together with body movement.

In yoga therapy, sensory integration is used to organize the central nervous system to increase control over the physical and mental state.

Yoga poses help with development of
gross motor skills, the mastery of which
can lead to improved fine motor skills,
physical health and increased self esteem.

Yoga helps children with sensory modulation issues by providing structured sensory input. Yoga poses offer proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile input.
 Poses that move the body in space provide proprioceptive information helpful in learning body recognition/ awareness.
Standing balancing poses or seated poses calling for stability require co-contraction of synergistic key muscle groups and joint stability. These pose requirements provide opportunities for increasing proprioceptive information.
 Some poses, such as head inverted poses or active moving pose series also offer vestibular input. Yoga poses that incorporate pressure, such as a twist or an arm balance, provide tactile input.

Yoga therapy brings movement and sensory integration together to address:
 coordinationawareness of body in space self awarenessemotional awareness alertnessphysical strength balance learning gross and fine motor development visual-motor development motor planning