Effects of Children’s Yoga from a Parent’s Perspective: A Qualitative Study

Yoga is a teaching that contributes to the maturation of the body, mind, emotion, and soul. It enables the individual to build a bridge between their body and mind, while also providing them with a source of positive energy. The aim of the research designed based on this is to determine the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial effects of yoga on children, the reasons for their participation in yoga, and their opinions and suggestions in line with the opinions of parents. This research was conducted within the scope of qualitative research and phenomenological design was used. The research group consists of 20 parents, three of whom are male and 17 are female, who agreed to participate in the research on a voluntary basis. The research group was determined by criterion sampling, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview form created by the researchers was used in the research. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and questions were directed to the participants, and audio recordings were taken with the approval of the participants after information was provided at this stage. The obtained data were analyzed with the content analysis method. As a result of the content analysis, a total of three main themes were obtained. These themes are reasons for participation in children’s yoga, benefits of children’s yoga, and parents’ suggestions. Under the title of reasons for participation in children’s yoga, the participants gave the following answers: socialization, self-confidence, and putting phones/tablets away; under the theme of participation in children’s yoga, the participants gave the following answers: physical development; gaining flexibility, balance development and body awareness; cognitive development; attention and focus, knowing and introducing oneself; psychosocial development; being able to imagine, self-suggestion, expressing emotions, self-confidence development, interaction with peers; under the theme of parental suggestions, giving importance to children’s yoga, making long-term planning. As a result of the research, it was determined that parents wanted their children to participate in the yoga program for reasons such as self-confidence and staying away from technological devices and that they observed that yoga had positive effects on their children in terms of physical, mental and psychosocial aspects.