Toddler Yoga. Cue Giggles.

I never thought I’d have a 2-year old daughter who loves to do yoga. There. I said it. I must seem super hipster to be encouraging my daughter to do yoga.

There’s a good reason for it: her regular gym classes were full when it was time to register a few months ago. #alarmfail

So I put her in a class at the YMCA that had a free spot: toddler yoga. She did okay with it, but then something about it seemed to stick. Maybe it was because she liked showing off tree pose, or maybe her daycare did it once in a while.

Either way, when I found a YouTube yoga series aimed at kids, I decided to give it a try.

She loves it!

Now, if you are imaging a toddler calmly and patiently flowing through poses, I scoff at your naivety. Toddlers, at least mine, isn’t that calm. If you watch some of the videos below, you may get a sense of the flow. These videos have kids going through the poses but not with the same relaxed focus that an adult may want from a yoga class.

These are very different rhythms of yoga, for adults and for kids, and that’s fine as far as I’m concerned. My daughter has a field day following these yoga adventures — yes, adventures, they follow a plot led by Jaime from Cosmic Kids.

After about 10–12 minutes, my daughter’s attention wanders, so set your expectations for a 2.5 year old to engage for maybe 10 minutes at a time.

Ideal times to try this:

1. It’s raining outside and the wee one has a lot of energy.
2. You just want to sit for a few daggum minutes please please please.
3. You’re videochatting with the grandparents. This keeps the kid in one place, and it’s hilarious for the grandparents to watch.
4. Just because.

Cosmic Kids Yoga is my daughter’s favorite yoga series so far, so maybe given it a go. Hey, if it fails, you’ve only wasted a few minutes. If it succeeds, you can laugh at your ability to say “my kid does yoga.”