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DO YOU EVER wonder how much activity is too much activity—and if your children are overscheduled or have enough unstructured playtime or downtime to unwind mentally and physically? Between after-school activities, sports, lessons, youth clubs, and weekend commitments, it can be easy to overload—and overwhelm—your children. Sometimes, despite parents’ best intentions, enriching children’s lives can easily turn into depleting them, leading to burnout for the whole family.
Ayurveda considers exercise an important component of children’s daily routines that provides the mental and physical benefits needed to grow up strong and healthy. Exercise enhances immunity and digestion, aids detoxification, improves mood through the release of endorphins and serotonin, lowers the risk of chronic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes, strengthens muscles and bones, improves sleep quality, and enhances overall confidence and feelings of self-esteem. Exercise also improves cognitive function and brain health and balances the doshas.
Balance in Motion
The key to unlocking these benefits, however, is balance—something that can be tricky for busy parents to achieve while keeping up with the hectic pace of everyday life. Ayurveda clearly conveys that exercise and activity performed beyond optimal requirements based on age, constitution, and other factors can lead to depletion and degeneration for both children and adults. We will explore the different ways Ayurveda can help you determine how much physical activity and exercise your child needs to stay healthy throughout this chapter, but just remember your intuition is key. When you notice signs of mental and physical stress, they may be overdoing things—and you may be too! Following simple Ayurvedic principles can help you customize an optimal plan of physical activity that will support your children’s talents and help them develop stamina, strength, and stability.
Exercise should be performed based on your child’s constitution, current imbalances, and the following considerations:
•Age: All children are in the kapha stage of life and need activities specific to their kapha age versus the elderly who are in the vata stage of life and prone to more degenerative disorders like arthritis.
•Strength: While exercise is important for building strength, it’s important you follow your child’s constitutional guidelines for stamina and endurance to avoid overexertion.
•Physique: Honor your child’s natural body type; some children are petite, others are well-built.
•Habitat: Be mindful of the effects of the doshas where you live. Increased activity levels and water sports may be ideal near a beach, but in drier locations, you may have to be more mindful about vata aggravation and counterbalancing exercise and activity with nutrition and massage, for example.
•Season: Adapt your child’s activity levels to the seasonal cycles of the doshas.
Ayurvedic Guidelines for Exercise
1.Intensity: As a rule of thumb, Ayurveda recommends exercising to half of one’s capacity at a maximum, also called balaardh, which helps maintain energy without undue stress or injury to any of the joints or body systems. Breaking a mild sweat is a good indication of just about enough exercise.
2.Breath: Emphasize to children they should always breathe through the nostrils and exercise with awareness to calm the nervous system. Deep breaths, abdominal breathing, and yogic breathwork support exercise routines. As endurance and tolerance increase, it will become easier and easier for your children to catch their breath during strenuous sports. When children find it difficult to breathe through their nose, this can signal physical overexertion.
3.Time of day: The ideal time to exercise is during the kapha period of the morning from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. when the body feels stable and strong. Physical activity during these hours brings clarity and enhances strength and digestion. Also, the qualities of exercise counterbalance qualities of kapha like sluggishness and bring warmth and lightness to the body, especially important for children prone to weight gain, congestion, and sluggishness. Ideally, Ayurveda recommends avoiding exercising during pitta and vata times of day (10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.). However, this is the time many children participate in after-school sports and evening games. You can help balance the effects of activity during these hours by making sure your children properly cool down, shower, unwind, and relax at home in a calm, supportive environment. Evening is a time for light exercises and stretching that promote sleep, and all strenuous exercise should be avoided.
4.Where and how often: It is generally considered best to exercise outdoors in the fresh air, exposed to nature; just be mindful of allergies and extreme temperatures. Ayurveda considers a daily, consistent exercise routine healthy for everyone, rather than irregular starts and stops. However, vata individuals can take breaks in exercise, and to a lesser extent, so can pitta types.
5.Exercise for prevention and disease management: Ayurveda uses exercise as a therapeutic tool in the recovery process of many disorders such as type 2 diabetes or depression. Anytime there is a constitutional imbalance or injury, for example, it is important to correct the imbalance, or wait for the injury to heal before your child resumes their exercise schedule. Ayurveda’s overarching principle is always to first consider and manage any medical conditions your child may have like exercise-induced asthma.
6.Times to avoid exercise: Exercise should be avoided anytime your child feels thirsty, dizzy, has indigestion, and just after eating. Your children should never exercise when they feel emotionally upset about anything. Be mindful that exercise can increase vata and should be avoided with certain vata-related illnesses; however, some conditions like constipation and anxiety can be eased by dosha-appropriate exercise. Girls should avoid strenuous exercise during their period if possible because it can throw vata-pitta out of balance. Always exercise on a light stomach or wait two to three hours after a meal.
Exercise for Your Child’s Dosha
While excessive exercise is contraindicated for young children, otherwise moderate exercise is essential for your child’s growth and development and can be tailored to constitution along with other daily routines.
vata
Vata children need activities and sports that tone their mind-body systems and won’t lead to overexertion and burnout. They may show variable energy, overexercising at times and underexercising at others. Often, they are drawn to creative activities like dance. A routine in terms of both time and intensity would help them. Focus on grounding, strengthening bones and muscles, preventing injury and form rather than speed.
Vata children are well-suited to slow, balancing yoga practices, walks, dancing, martial arts, lunges, squats, and sports like badminton. They should balance aerobic exercise with strength training. Rest days to unwind and recuperate are key! Oil massage and nasya (nasal application of a drop or two of sesame oil) is found to be very rejuvenating.
pitta
Pitta children require moderate activity. They are naturally energetic and enjoy competing with others but have to be mindful not to push themselves beyond their physical limits or they can become irritable and “heat up” in an effort to achieve perfection. These children can become irate and often get upset with their teammates and may need to cool off more often than other children. Their exercise routines should be fun and relaxing! They should avoid exertion in hot, humid conditions and try to exercise in the morning or when it cools down in the evening.
Pitta types are well-suited to gardening, swimming, surfing, hiking, cycling, and sports like tennis and hockey. A relaxing yoga practice and rest days will help balance tendencies to push themselves too far and cause imbalances.
kapha
Kapha children have steady energy, high endurance levels, and great physical strength. They can withstand high-impact athletics and generally excel in team sports because of their warm, friendly nature that motivates and inspires teammates. Consistent, outdoor activities will improve metabolism, enhance body reflexes, and counterbalance tendencies to gain weight. Making sports fun and relieving monotony are key!
Kapha types are well-suited to gymnastics, running, cycling, rowing, and aerobic sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, and football. Signs of imbalances include lethargy, congestion, and laziness.
Seasonal Guidelines
Following seasonal variations supports your children’s exercise and activity levels. Vata dominates fall and early winter, a time to slow down and fall back. Encourage your kids to take nature walks and participate in lower-impact sports like badminton and golf along with strengthening exercises. Always make sure your children bundle up against the cold qualities of vata and kapha during the late winter and early spring anytime they exercise or play outdoor sports. Spring is a time to go out biking, hiking, and play active sports. Summer marks the pitta season; enjoy water sports like swimming and recreational sports and activities that won’t overheat your children. Overall, Ayurveda recommends you increase activity levels during the kapha seasons of late winter and spring, while they can be reduced a bit in other seasons.
Exercise Contraindications and Imbalances
Heavy exercise is contraindicated for children as their tissues are suppler than adults to facilitate growth and development. Intense exercise can cause overuse or repetitive stress injuries that can lead to early hardening of the tissues and have other effects on the body such as musculoskeletal disorders. Children who undergo intense training for high-intensity competitive sports may develop joint issues, exercise-induced asthma, sleep issues, fatigue, anxiety, and other vata-related disorders. This is especially true for children with vata or vata-pitta constitutions as these children are generally slender with comparatively weaker tissues. Rest and recuperation are essential for all sports-related activities and exercise programs your child participates in to prevent depletion and exercise-induced health problems.
Excessive physical activity can lead to altered taste, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, thirst, cough, dyspnea, weight loss, and heatstroke. This is particularly true in camps or boot camps where children may overexert themselves or not be carefully supervised. Adequate first aid must be provided in such places.
overactivity
Do your children consistently come home from school telling you they’re exhausted? Maybe they don’t want to get into the car or complain of aches and pains—or say they just want to play? Do you wonder if you might be pushing them too hard to keep a schedule that requires a spreadsheet to track daily lessons, practices, and multiple sports teams? You can easily determine whether your child is overscheduled and engaging in too much activity by observing signs like weight loss, physical exhaustion, mental fatigue, exercise-induced asthma, dehydration, menstrual imbalances, and regular aches and pains in the body, especially in the joints.
Ayurveda offers specific guidance and simple home remedies to manage symptoms of excessive activity:
1.Rest is the most important way to recuperate.
2.Proper nutrition and hydration are the foremost remedies for recovering from excessive activity. Many children get frequent headaches from dehydration, something that can be easily avoided by drinking adequate amounts of water based on constitution and activity level. You can also try coconut water, which aids rehydration—or Ayurveda’s equivalent to a sports drink: lemon water with Himalayan pink salt and sweetened to taste with unrefined cane sugar.
3.Warm milk, bone broth, and soups are some food items that can support faster recovery. Turmeric milk with a pinch of black pepper can also reduce inflammation.
4.The application of sesame oil or traditional Ayurvedic herbal oils (see chapter 16) like Murivenna oil followed by a warm shower is found to be supportive for exercise-related aches and pains.
5.Physical therapy, yoga, or Marma therapy can help recovery.
If your children are involved in high-intensity athletic exercise or part of a competitive sports team that practices three or four times a week and plays games on the weekends, it’s a good idea to add a rasayana (rejuvenator) herbal supplement to their diet like Chyawanprash, brahmi, yashtimadhu, or guduchi. However, these herbal formulations should not be taken without the advice of a vaidya, or traditional Ayurvedic professional.
signs of too little activity
It’s important to note that too little activity is unhealthier for your child than too much activity. When your child’s activity level is inadequate for their age and constitution, it can lead to problems such as obesity, lethargy, laziness, depression, metabolic and digestion-related issues, and slowing physical, mental, and emotional development. This can also lead to chronic disorders later in life.
According to Ayurveda, the triad of health is nutrition, sleep, and balanced living. For children, the third aspect, vihara, means lifestyle practices, including rest and activity. Building exercise into their routine along with ensuring they do not overexercise so they can stay balanced is vital. This will help your children’s health today and in the years to come. Remember that as parents, modeling good lifestyle habits for your children is essential.