Benefits of Bringing Onsite Yoga Classes into High Schools for Teens and Young Adults
When it comes to yoga, the activity is often associated with adult audiences due to its effectiveness in reducing stress and anxiety in the workplace, home, and general life (Industrial Psychiatry). What many people fail to realize though, is that kids and teens can get just as stressed. Writing this as someone who graduated high school only two years ago, I can attest. High school was hard. It’s the time where you try to find yourself. It’s where you find your group of friends, find your activities, etc. Although, no matter how good of a support system you have, there’s still stress looming in the back of your brain. Not only did I have to deal with stress about getting an A on my calculus test the next day, but there was always a sense of social stress. But I don’t need to go too far into that. I can’t lie and say that I don’t get stressed now, because I do. The difference is that now I know how to handle the stress better. And for me, that’s through yoga and meditation. That isn’t just a personal story, however. Recent studies have shown that the benefits of yoga are not limited to a certain age demographic, and can positively influence the lives of teenagers as well.
Yoga Helps to Decrease Stress in Teens and Young Adults
Not only can yoga classes alleviate stress for students, recent studies have shown that the implementation of daily yoga can improve their academic performance as well. A 2018 study conducted introduced one hour of yoga a day for seven weeks in adolescent classrooms. It found that bringing yoga into academic environments noticeably decreased students’ stress surrounding schoolwork. The students with daily yoga performed better “in overall academics as well as in their separate subjects than those students who did not experience the yoga module” (Singh 2018). This further proves the positive impacts of integrating yoga into classroom environments and suggests that it should become a regular feature in schools.
What Grow Mobile Yoga Can Do For You
It’s important to realize that you can’t just tell every teenager to start doing yoga. It’s unrealistic to believe that they all have the time and resources to begin a practice. However, organizations and companies like us are working to make yoga widely accessible by bringing classes into schools. At Grow Mobile Yoga, we are working to bring certified local yoga instructors from all around Pierce County and the surrounding areas to high school campuses in our communities. By reducing students’ stress and anxiety, yoga offers a space to decompress and let go of the worries surrounding both their academic and non-academic life.
Written by Ella Denman.
