Yoga has gained a strong and steady presence in the lives of many adults. Yoga exercises help bodies stay limber, stretching muscle groups. Yoga helps adults relieve stress, improving focus in other life areas. The physical and mental benefits of practicing yoga exercises have been documented and lauded for many years. Results of a newly released study have shown that doing yoga exercises through a simple, school-based yoga program has significantly improved behavior and social interaction behaviors in students with autism.
The study compared children with autism who did yoga each day at school to kids who followed a typical routine instead. Those who participated in the stretching exercises exhibited significantly less aggressive behavior, social withdrawal and hyperactivity.
The findings published this month in The American Journal of Occupational Therapy offer tremendous promise for the growing population of children with the developmental disorder, researchers say.
The study focused on children with autism at a public school in the Bronx who participated in a yoga program called “Get Ready to Learn.” The 17-minute daily regimen includes deep breathing, yoga poses, tensing and relaxing muscles and finally singing, all led by the classroom teacher.
Researchers monitored the students for 16 weeks as they participated in the program and compared their experiences to those of a control group who did not do yoga.
“We found that teachers’ ratings of students who participated in the daily yoga routine showed improved behavior compared with teachers’ ratings of students who did not,” said Kristie Koenig, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at New York University who led the study. “Our research indicates that a manualized systemic yoga program, implemented on a daily basis, can be brought to public school classrooms as an option for improving classroom behavior.”
The yoga program Koenig and her colleagues studied is already being implemented with kids with disabilities in over 500 classrooms in New York. What’s more, teachers are using the routine in general education classrooms in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont, researchers said.
Get Ready to Learn was first impemented in NYC in 2008. he project was developed by Anne Buckley-Reen, OTR, RYT, in collaboration with NYC District 75 Deputy Superintendent Barbara Joseph. The program’s success has spread to schools across the US, unifying classroom teams and creating classroom environments that truly support learning.
Additionally, the program outcomes have been qualified and quantified by our Research colleagues at NYU School of Occupational Therapy, under the expert direction of Dr Kristie Koenig, PhD and Satvika Garg, MS, OTR.
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