Emotional Regulation Through Exercise
Emotional regulation is the ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience. When children become dysregulated they sometimes aren’t able to appropriately respond to their negative emotions, which can lead to over-the-top reactions.
Many of us begin our days with exercise. It helps to get us moving and start our days more
focused. Exercise has also been shown to reduce stress levels and help us to manage our emotions. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that exercise can also help our children. In order to maximize the benefits, these exercises should be done in short intense bursts and ideally in the morning.
This workout can be done anywhere. For this workout you will simply need an interval timer. You can use the app Interval Timer.
Set your timer for 7 rounds of 45 seconds of work and 15 seconds of rest. Do as many repetitions as you can in the allotted time and be ready to exercise with your kids. It is great for them to see you model the technique, and exercise is always more fun together!
- Frog jumps—Jump across the room like a frog
- Bear Walk—Put your hands and feet on the floor with your hips and butt in the air. Take two stepsforward and two steps back.
- Gorilla Shuffle—Sink down into a low squat and put your hands on the floor between your feet. Shuffle to the right and to the left.
- Starfish Jumps—These are jumping jacks with your arms and legs spread wide like a starfish.
- Crab Crawl—Sit with your knees bent and place your hands on the floor. Lift your body off the groundand move forward and backward.
- Cheetah Run—Run in place as fast as you can.
- Elephant Stomps—Stand with your feet hip width apart and stomp, raising your knees up to hip level.
Specific information on how exercise works to calm us down and other related information can be found at the website below.
Source: He’s Extraordinary