Yoga in Schools

While a global pandemic has opened up wider opportunities for people to work from home, to spend time with loved ones and establish a better work/life balance, for others it has been a testing and challenging time. Some people have hated working from home and were glad to return (me!) while others have found a new flow which is suitable for them. What is undeniable is everything has changed - whether that’s for the better or worse.

Children and young people have lost out on so many opportunities over the last 2 years. Young people have missed rights of passage, social events, school trips, exams, awards and so many other things. I think of all the students I have taught in school who were working so hard towards their exams with the promise of a prom to celebrate their end of time in school, just one or two of the events they’ve missed out on.

Students have returned to school with more anxieties and less hope than I have ever experienced while working in secondary schools. Teenagers feel a total sense of loss for what the future holds for them. Don’t get me wrong, this is not all teenagers but there is an increase of students experiencing anxiety, stress, depression, self harm and overall ill mental health.

Supporting young people to be able to integrate into society and be able to manage life's difficulties is what we hope for as educators. We hope they leave school with the qualifications that they require to go onto their next step in work or further education as well as being resilient, kind, empatic, curious, confident and successful people. We want them to be able to cope with the big stuff and manage their own emotions. How do we do this? While there are lots of different ways to help students become these wonderful things - one amazing option is yoga. If yoga were to be introduced as a regular occurrence we could expect to see the following positive outcomes:

1. More mindful young people
2. Meditative practitioners
3. Understand ways to manage stress and big emotions through awareness and breathing techniques
4. Develop a positive relationship with movement
5. Develop self acceptance and self love

You may think that this list is a bit far fetched but just keep reading and you’ll understand why.

1. More mindful young people:

Practising mindfulness is something we suggest to people all the time to help manage stress or to calm the mind, but how can we suggest something and just expect our young people to understand? We have to teach them and show them how this can be done. As a part of a typical yoga class - students would become aware of breath, of sensations and feelings. Yoga encourages participants to be curious and check in with different areas of the body, the breath and the mind.

2. Meditative practitioners

Ending a yoga class with meditation enables the students to rest and relax. The teacher guides the students through guided meditations to help students still the mind and focus in on different areas. Meditation is not an easy thing to do but by introducing this to young people early on, we can support them on their path to becoming meditative practitioners.

3. Understand ways to manage stress and big emotions through awareness and breathing techniques

Pranayama, breath control is a part of yoga. Deep breathing techniques, practised regularly can increase the level of oxygen in our blood, clear stale air from the lungs, increase movement of the diaphragm and calm our autonomic nervous system. Breathing with intention can give a sense of calm. Why wouldn’t we want our young people to experience instantaneous calm and be able to reach for healthy techniques to help them in difficult times?

4. Develop a positive relationship with movement

Movement is vital to a healthy body and healthy mind. Excess sitting is linked with many diseases and conditions, hypertension, back pain, cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression. What do our students do for a lot of their day? Sit. It is unavoidable in a classroom setting but can bring more movement into our curriculum by introducing weekly yoga classes or 5 minute movements in class for students and staff. PE is where our young people get their movement and for the ones who dislike PE (that was me), yoga is a really great alternative that can be made really inclusive to students with mobility issues or disabilities.

5. Develop self acceptance and self love

There are 8 limbs to yoga, and movement is only one of them. At the beginning of my own yoga journey I discovered the 8 limbs of yoga. The first two are Yama and Niyama. These are essential in our yoga journey. There are a lot of subsections to each of these but some of these include; self discipline, contentment, truthfulness and non-violence. These are all to be practised before we even step onto our mats. Helping our students to live lives that lead them to being content within themselves and with others is essential to supporting our young people.

Imagine a school where yoga is available for students and staff regularly throughout the week. I think we’d have happier adults and happier young people.