How to Teach High Lunge Pose for Kids: Building Strength, Balance, and Confidence Through Play
Note: This post was updated in November 2025 with new tips, research, and activity ideas to help you teach kids yoga and mindfulness with confidence.
TLDR: High Lunge Pose for kids builds strength, balance, and confidence through imaginative play. This full-body movement supports posture, coordination, and emotional regulation — making it perfect for brain breaks, transitions, and classroom mindfulness.
Are your kids feeling overwhelmed?
Need to help your students build steady strength and focus?
Looking for a strong full-body practice for your classroom?
Step into High Lunge!
High Lunge Pose, also known as crescent lunge, is a dynamic, full-body kids yoga pose that builds strength, focus, and energy while giving kids a sense of grounded power.
This isn’t just a stretch. It’s a confidence-builder, a balance challenge, and an invitation to stand tall in our own space. This pose builds energy, creates focus and provides a smooth and steady transition into other standing poses like Warrior and Triangle.
High Lunge is found in many traditional yoga sequences and provides a full-body exercise suitable for all levels of practice. Let’s have some fun in High Lunge!
Why High Lunge Is So Powerful for Kids?
Between sitting at desks, carrying backpacks, and navigating big emotions, children need chances to move that engage both body and brain. High Lunge does exactly that…it’s an active pose that works muscles, joints, and focus all at once.
In child development terms, high lunge:
Strengthens core, legs, and glutes, improving coordination and posture
Opens the chest and shoulders, counteracting slouching and screen time
Stretches the hips and psoas (hip flexor), essential for kids who sit for long periods
Builds balance and proprioception key for sensory integration
Fosters emotional regulation because movement + breath = grounded calm
When we ask kids to step into High Lunge, we’re helping them step into themselves both literally and figuratively. High Lunge Pose improves balance and stability while strengthening core muscles, making this stretch perfect for movement and brain breaks in between classroom learning activities.
When we practice high lunge, we also expand our chest and shoulders, combating the slouchy posture that develops as we spend too much time on electronic devices.
While it is a foundational yoga pose, high lunge can be a tricky balance. Encourage children to keep trying and to stay in the pose by turning it into a fun animal like a moose or a unicorn. Let’s be rainbow unicorns with Rachel!
How to Teach High Lunge Pose for Kids
Start simple. From Mountain Pose, have children take a giant step back, wide enough that both feet feel steady.
Front knee bends above the ankle and the back heel lifts
Reach arms high like a superhero, palms facing each other or bring palms together (like a unicorn horn!)🦄
Encourage kids to find their balance by pretending to reach for the sun, their favorite color, or even an imaginary cloud.
Take a deep breath in as arms rise.
Exhale reach back through your back heel and feel your feet root into the ground.
Want to make it playful? Let them become something: a moose, a unicorn, or a dragonfly taking flight. When imagination leads, focus follows.
Stay 3-5 breaths and then switch to the other side!
More Tips for High Lunge Pose With Kids
Foundation is important. Make sure your feet are straight with toes pointing forward. Feet should be hip-width distance apart for easeful balance. If you need, you can always widen the stance but don’t narrow it.
Keep the back leg engaged for power in this pose. Continually reach through the back heel and lift the back of the thigh toward the ceiling.
Don’t let your front knee wander forward or sideways. Keep your knee over the heel, tracking toward the second toe of the front foot.
Distribute the weight evenly between both legs and notice if you are sinking back or lurching forward. Draw the feet toward each other without moving them to create isometric strengthening.
Relax shoulders away from the ears even as you extend the arms long.
Soften the jaw, face, and neck as you hold this pose. Practice engaging strength without adding unnecessary tension.
Kid-friendly High Lunge Pose Variations for Every Learner
High Lunge is easily adaptable for different settings and abilities:
Knee-Down Lunge: Great for beginners or wobbly moments. Builds core strength and stability safely.
Lower Arms: Keeping hands on the hips or front thigh can help with balance and tight shoulders.
Chair Lunge: Perfect for classrooms, shift to the side of your chair and extend one leg behind you.
Playing with the positioning of the back leg and arms strengthens our proprioception (the sense that tells us where our body is in space) and helps with sensory integration.
Once you find a stable foundation, there are many fun things to try with your arms. Bring palms together at the chest, interlace fingers behind the back, or widen the arms into a cactus position.
With each arm variation, ask kids to notice if the feeling of the pose changes. Is it easier or more challenging, does the balance shift or breathing pattern change?
Fire up the core with Extended High Lunge variation to Warrior 3!
Draw your torso forward over the front thigh.
Extend arms forward beyond the front foot, creating a straight line from the back heel through the fingertips.
Reach forward so much you lift off the back foot and fly into Warrior 3.
Try combining High Lunge and Warrior 3 in this fun Moose Goose kids yoga activity!
Add Mindful Language and Affirmations
Pair movement with mindful affirmations to nurture both body and mind.
Inhale: I am strong.
Exhale: I am grounded.
This simple connection builds emotional vocabulary and inner confidence, key components of mindfulness for kids.
When students speak their strength out loud, they embody it. Ask students to stay with that feeling, repeating the affirmation silently as they breathe. Or welcome them to come up with some positive statements of their own.
Try this affirmation yoga sequence, which combines High Lunge with several other yoga poses and powerful affirming statements.
Invite students to practice this Affirmation Yoga whenever they need a boost! Whether studying for a big test, gearing up for a performance, or getting ready for a big game, this sequence provides perfect inspiration.
Once you’ve moved through these poses a couple times, be sure to take a few minutes to rest in child’s pose or relaxation pose, allowing the body and mind to integrate all the benefits of the practice.
Why Educators Love This Kids Yoga Pose
Teachers tell us they love High Lunge because it’s:
A quick reset for restless energy
A full-body movement that reawakens focus
A confidence-builder that makes mindfulness active, not abstract
Best of all, it fits beautifully into transitions or “brain breaks” with no mats required.
Ready to bring mindful movement into your teaching?
If you’re ready to integrate High Lunge and other mindfulness for kids strategies into your teaching practice, check out our online Kids Yoga Teacher Certification. It’s designed for educators, therapists, and parents who want to make movement, music, and mindfulness part of every learning day.
You’ll learn how to bring musical yoga and evidence-based mindfulness tools into your classroom and be supported by a vibrant community every step of the way.
READ NEXT: More kids yoga & mindfulness for kids resources
FAQ: High Lunge Pose for Kids
High Lunge Pose is a standing yoga pose that builds strength, balance, and focus. For kids, it encourages coordination, posture, and emotional regulation while providing a fun and imaginative way to move and reset.
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