Baby Spa Sessions & Core Stability

The core consists of a group of muscles found deep in the back, abdomen and pelvis that are responsible for stabilising the spine, maintaining proper posture and basically keeping all body parts aligned. Core muscles are important for children to maintain an upright posture while standing and sitting unsupported. A strong core allows for better force transfer and recruitment of muscles. It ensures the body works efficiently and undue stress is not placed on surrounding structures. It functions as the 'corset' of the body.

The development of gross and fine motor skills in babies and toddlers rely on a stable, strong core. These skills are of utmost importance in order for a child to complete tasks of daily living such as rolling, crawling, walking, writing, feeding oneself, cutting, buttoning a shirt, tying shoelaces and more.

Good postural control ensures a child is able to stabilise their head which in turn can assist concentration and attention. A weak core can impair how the rest of the body functions which could have a knock-on effect on concentration and learning.

One of the benefits of regular baby spa sessions is that it assists in core development in babies. It has been shown that deep water immersion (immersion into water up until neck level without the feet touching the surface) results in 100% activation of the core muscles. The level of activation is not necessarily at a high intensity but these muscles have been found to be constantly activated during a deep-water immersion session. This means that when bubs is floating for a period of 20 minutes, their little core muscles are being recruited throughout their spa session. The more sessions bubs does, the better they will become at maintaining a balanced postural alignment (i.e. shoulders above the pelvis, above the knees, above the ankles).

This, along with all the other benefits, makes it unsurprising that bubs sleeps like a bomb after a spa session! It truly is a full body workout.