Yoga Calm for Children: Educating Heart, Mind, and Body

By Lynea Gillen and Jim Gillen

Filled with photos, illustrations, lesson plans, and an extensive quick-reference bibliography, this detailed manual is an indispensable guide for introducing yoga in public school and therapeutic settings, as well as a great handbook for parents who would like to share yoga with their children. Easy to use and appropriate for children and teenagers, it includes information on integrating the Yoga Calm technique with regular classwork, modifications for specific classroom situations, alignment and safety principles, anecdotal examples from the authors' direct experience, and emotional first aid tips to help young people maintain a calm center when they most need it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Three Pebble Press, LLC
• Release date: Sep 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780979928963

Book preview

| 1 What Is Yoga?

What Is Yoga Calm?

Yoga, Yoga, Yoga!

Yoga seems to be everywhere these days—from celebrity interviews and magazine covers to workplace classes. Even McDonald’s—yes, McDonald’s!—has offered instructional DVDs with some of its meals. This exploding popularity of yoga in the West is no accident. Its stress-reduction and health-promotion benefits are widely recognized by health care practitioners and laypeople alike as a seemingly perfect antidote to our demanding modern lifestyles.

But beyond a good hamstring stretch and respite from the world, what exactly is yoga? An online search or perusal of your local bookstore will reveal an astonishing array of practices, beliefs, and philosophies. While a bit overwhelming to the novice, this diversity of expression is one of the keys to yoga’s longevity and effectiveness. It is a living tradition that has evolved and adapted over thousands of years to meet human needs.

At the heart of this tradition is the desire to be healthy and whole, to integrate the various aspects of our human nature. In fact, the very meaning of the Sanskrit word for yoga is to yoke or unite. This is commonly translated as the integration or harmonizing of the body, mind, and spirit, and as a comprehensive approach to well-being, yoga typically includes systematic training in five basic areas:

Breathing—to relax and rejuvenate the body and mind through the development of healthy breathing patterns and techniques that increase energy and release tension

Exercise—to regulate the nervous system, develop strength, improve circulation, release tension, and increase flexibility through the practice of physical poses

Meditation and Positive Thinking—to develop focus, gain self-control, and cultivate inner peace

Lifestyle—to grow aware of the effects of the choices we make and learn to choose wisely, knowing that all we do and experience contributes to our overall health

Relaxation—to calm the emotions and nervous system, integrate, and give the body a chance to recharge

No one knows exactly when yoga began, but it certainly predates written history. In the Indus Valley, stone carvings dating back 3,500 years or more depict figures in yoga positions. This puts its origins even further back than the beginnings of Hinduism—a fact that puts to rest the common misconception that yoga is rooted in Hinduism. On the contrary, Hinduism’s religious structures evolved much later and incorporated some yogic practices. Since then, many other religions and organizations have also incorporated practices and ideas related to yoga. But yoga itself is not a religion.

Yoga probably arrived in the United States in the late 1800s, but it did not become widely known until the 1960s, as part of the youth culture’s growing interest in the East. As more became known about the beneficial effects of yoga as a means of stress management and improving health and well-being, the practice gained more acceptance and respect. Since the 1990s, it has absolutely exploded in popularity. Today, approximately 16.5 million Americans are taking classes in Hatha yoga—the branch of yoga that combines physical poses, or asanas, with breathing techniques, or pranayama. These classes meet in a wide variety of settings including yoga studios, health clubs, businesses, churches, physical therapy clinics, and hospitals.

An estimated 2,000 studies of the health benefits of yoga have been conducted since the 1920s, with much of this research taking place over the past fifteen years. Arguably, it was Dean Ornish’s landmark 1983 study that spurred Western medicine’s adoption of yoga within the realm of what’s commonly called complementary medicine. The Ornish study showed that yoga training plus dietary changes were associated with a fourteen-point drop in serum cholesterol levels and greater heart efficiency in just three weeks’ time. Such studies—and many others that have supported and built upon Ornish’s work—have encouraged physicians to recommend yoga practice not just for patients at risk of heart disease, but for those with back pain, arthritis, depression, and other chronic conditions.

Today, approximately 16.5 million people are taking classes in Hatha yoga.

Yoga Brought into the Schools

Before the 1990s, most yoga training and practices in the West were adult-oriented, emphasizing physical poses, mental relaxation and meditation techniques, and some breathing techniques. The relatively few children’s yoga classes that existed then were typically outside the school environment and focused on simple physical poses and games. But due to a convergence of forces around the turn of the 21st century, this began to change.

As awareness of the health benefits of yoga grew among adults, it was only a matter of time before educators and children’s health providers would apply it to the needs of youth. As mentioned above, American schools and families today face daunting challenges: low academic achievement; increasing rates of autism, depression, anxiety, asthma, and obesity; unfunded mandates to increase scores on standardized tests in regular and special education; reductions in state and federal education budgets; loss of physical education, sports, music, dance, and art programs; and big-budget advertising by multinational companies selling high-fat, high-calorie foods. Schools also deal with attention-challenges, violence, and a decline in parent involvement.

These factors, and the mainstreaming of students with various physical and behavioral disabilities into the classroom, have increased the responsibilities of teachers to provide not only academic training, but also special-needs adaptations, physical fitness training, and emotional support services. In some cases, teachers may even function as frontline social workers. The resulting stress for teachers and students alike is taking its toll. According to a 2002 Washington Post report, Even without the pressures of a violent crisis, teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.

As these forces converged with public awareness of both the physical and mental health benefits of yoga, teachers, administrators, social workers, and psychologists began to apply some of the more common principles and practices of yoga to address the challenges of educating children today. That these efforts have been successful is borne out by numerous research studies from around the globe, including a noteworthy 2007 study from Purdue University. Looking at K-5 student outcomes at six U.S. and Canadian schools that had incorporated the Yoga Kids Tools for Schools program, the research team found significant positive effects on the children’s academic achievement, personal attributes, relationships, and general health. Other key recent research is summarized below.

From School-Based Yoga Supports Academic Achievement and Student Wellness

by Karma Carpenter, LICSW, RYT

Reprinted by permission

Academic Performance

In 2000, cardiologist Herbert Benson led a research team to study the relationship between exposure to a relaxation-response curriculum and academic achievement among middle school students. Teachers were trained to teach their students relaxation exercises and self-care strategies. Those who had more than two semesters’ worth of exposure to the relaxation curriculum earned higher marks in GPA, work habits and cooperation, than students who did not, and maintained this improvement for at least two years.

The Accelerated School (TAS) in South Central Los Angeles is a flagship school which integrates yoga with its teaching. According to co-founder Kevin Sved, "Unless you’re fully engaging the minds and bodies of the children, they’re not going to be as productive" (emphasis added). The results of the TAS approach bear this out. Between 1997 and 2001, TAS saw an amazing 93% increase in Stanford Achievement Test scores. Attendance averages 94%—very high in the LA Unified School District. In May 2001, it was recognized by Time magazine as Elementary School of the Year.

Self-Esteem, Discipline, and Physical Fitness

A 2003 study of the YogaEd program at TAS found that yoga class participation not only helped students improve their attitudes toward themselves, but their behavior also improved, as seen in the vastly lower rate of discipline referrals. These students also ranked as more physically fit, with more than 23 percent more TAS students meeting the standards for physical fitness than students at other schools in the district.

Oppositional and ADHD Subscales and