Life skills training with yoga in schools
Researchers believe that improved self-regulation is one of the reasons people experience a wide range of health and well-being benefits from yogic practices. Children need to learn these skills, too, as part of growing up and to help manage behavioral health issues.
Here are a few more ways yoga is being incorporated into classrooms, giving kids from preschool to college coping tools to last a lifetime.
As this article notes, yogic practices support students partly through physical effects including
- Improved balance
- Stronger bones
- Decreased back pain
- Reduced inflammation
- Effects on chronic pain, especially important for student athletes
Schools with specific student populations are also incorporating yoga into the curriculum to address particular needs like stress, trauma and anxiety, as well as violence and grief. Children on the autism spectrum at a London special educational needs school, for example, enjoy weekly yoga, and
“There’s also a lot of research about mindfulness and student reflection and how that can support their learning throughout the day,” says one principal who has incorporated yoga into the physical education program at her elementary school.
Check out a couple of additional recent news accounts of school-time yoga:
The practices have a place after class ends, too, as at a center that serves mainly low-income students—there, brief meditations begin the after-school programs, bringing comfort and setting the stage for the learning to come.
