Guest post by Brian Jenkins

Why should college students practice yoga?

Yoga can provide college students with many benefits such as stress reduction, emotional wellness, flexibility, improved strength, enhancement of the immune system, and improved balance and postural alignment. Those are good things! Yoga is actually easy for anyone to practice, and you don’t have to be able twist into a pretzel!

Yoga Improves Concentration

The meditative practices of yoga will improve the ability of college students to concentrate. Focusing on studying and ignoring distractions such as a television, conversations, and loud music will, of course, result in better grades. According to a Time magazine article, due to advanced brain scanning technology, researchers are beginning to show that meditation directly affects the structure and function of the brain – changing it in ways that seem to increase attention span, improve memory, and sharpen focus. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, said, “Attention is the key to learning, and meditation helps you voluntarily regulate it.”

Yoga Enhances Mood

Wellesley College faculty yoga specialists co-authored a study examining the psychological benefits of yoga. The authors of the study found proof that yoga improves mood and decreases anxiety. This study looked at a neurotransmitter in the brain known as y-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. The authors determined that decreased levels of GABA correlate to depression and anxiety. They also report that the medical community is interested in learning how to increase GABA in order to combat depression. One of the researchers, Liz Owen, stated, “Yoga, just the practice of yoga, increases GABA levels.” She also said, “Yoga breathing practices are so easy and simple. You could be sitting in a stressful classroom situation and you could just take a yoga inhale, do a yoga exhale, and it might make a difference.”

Yoga Strengthens the Body

Another recent yoga study of college-aged men and women (between 18 and 27 years of age) who participated in two yoga sessions every week for eight weeks saw a 19% to 31% increase in arm strength and a 28% increase in leg strength.

Yoga Relieves Stress

According to some experts, stress is the #1 trigger of ailments in peoples’ physical, emotional, and endocrinal systems. Practicing yoga is a great way to reduce stress caused by academic pressures. Yoga helps college students avoid stress-induced eating and it helps them sleep better. It can give students a sense of balance and mental clarity.

By practicing yoga, college students will improve their mood, strengthen their body, relieve stress, and concentrate better. This will certainly help them make the most of their college experience!

Brian Jenkins has been writing about various career and education topics for BrainTrack.com, including careers in fitness training, since 2008.

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Guest post by Edward Stern

It is no secret that life is stressful for children. Peer pressure, academics, and trouble at home, coupled with a busy extracurricular schedule, scarcely give kids a second to breath let alone decompress. Stress builds up overtime, and very few children are actually given the tools to deal with the stress of school and being an adolescent.

Yoga provides a perfect outlet for stressed out youngsters and gives them the tools to deal with stress in the other facets of their busy lives. At the very least, it is a time out of a given day to focus on their own physical and emotional well-being and put negative feelings on the backburner.

Many parents feel athletics are a good stress reliever for their child, and in many cases they are, but oftentimes the competition from other players and their coaches only adds to stress. Yoga is a non-competitive way to do a healthy physical activity without adding stress.

Yoga also provides the tools students need to deal with stress outside of the studio. They learn to meditate and learn breathing exercises for calming. Students can learn to find a quiet classroom and perform these rituals to take a second for themselves, away from all the pressures of school, academics, and other students.

Students who learn yoga and its ways of dealing with stress get a head-start in life. A large part of the battle of growing up is learning how to manage oneself in a healthy manner that strikes balance and finds ways to achieve emotional and physical well-being. A healthy body inspires a healthy mind and vice versa. The lessons learned in yoga will be ones seldom found elsewhere — teachers do not have the time to teach stress management in their classrooms, which are already stressful environments, and guidance counselors are overloaded and often undertrained.

Yoga classes offer something schools cannot: a true peace of mind, and a way to return to this peace of mind amongst times of stress, disorder, and unease. Yoga gives children a leg up by teaching them how to release complex emotions, ones made more difficult by the sheer act of being inexperienced in the world. The teachings of yoga are time-tested and have been helping adults manage their stress; now, it is time for children to receive the same tools.

Edward Stern is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on Accredited Online Universities for Guide to Online Schools.

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Calm Your Class in One Minute with a Breathing Sphere

guest post by Jim Gillen

Because breathing patterns have such a profound effect on our general health and mental states, breath awareness is at the heart of almost all yoga practices. Breathing interacts with and affects the cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal and muscular systems. It also has general effects on sleep patterns, memory, energy levels and concentration.

Watch a baby at rest, and you’ll see a good example of healthy breathing. The pattern is relaxed, slow and wavelike. Every bone, muscle and organ moves with each breath. Unhealthy breathing, by contrast, is rigid or inappropriate to the situation and often exhibits excess muscle tension.

While abnormal breathing patterns vary, they’re often high in the chest, overly fast and shallow. Often, there’s no pause at the end of the exhalation. There may even be breath-holding or gulping. Such habits reinforce feelings of tension, agitation and anxiousness. By contrast, a healthy breathing pattern elicits a relaxation response, shifting the nervous system from fight-or-flight mode to a state of relaxed alertness.

One of our favorite ways of teaching and encouraging children to breathe healthfully is by using a Hoberman breathing sphere – a popular children’s toy that’s basically a geodesic dome made of jointed segments. By lightly pushing or pulling it on opposite sides, you can make it expand or contract, accordion-style. The movement serves as a visual model for the type of breathing we want the kids to imitate by helping them see and synchronize their breath with movement.

How to Use A Hoberman Sphere

The teacher or other supervising adult may lead the group or – something we like to do – encourage one of the kids to lead, establishing the breathing rhythm. As the leader slowly expands the sphere, all inhale deeply and slowly through the nose, from the belly. The leader then pauses, emulating the short, natural pause that happens at the “top” and “bottom” of each healthy breath. As the leader contracts the sphere, all exhale through the nose just as slowly.

This efficient diaphragmatic breath is like watching the waves at the beach, with each breath swelling up from abdomen to chest and back down again.

The expansion-contraction cycle may be repeated as many times as necessary, but we find 5-10 cycles to be effective for helping the group calm and focus through this simple breath work.

Rhythm and slowness are two keys to using a breathing sphere effectively. By  consciously  slowing  our  breath, especially the exhalation, we can  facilitate the relaxation response even more and develop some control over how our nervous system responds to our environment.

In the classroom and school environments such breath work lends itself readily to focus and mindfulness, preparing students to learn. Speeding thoughts slow. The body as a whole relaxes. Body and mind become centered, grounded. Thus, many teachers, counselors and administrators start their classes off by leading students in breathing with a sphere. Some schools have even used these breathing practices at assemblies or over the school intercom to calm and focus their students.

With the powerful visual representation of a healthy breath, no other words or descriptions are necessary. This tool can be effectively used by teachers who have no yoga experience and is particularly useful for second language learners, visual learners and children who struggle with anxiety and self regulation.

Synchronized breathing in a group exercise is also useful for developing a sense of community and safety as the group’s energy coalesces by breathing together. Simply, we are affected by each other’s breathing patterns. Conversely, it’s hard to relax and concentrate when we are around stressful breathing patterns. And when teachers learn, practice, and model healthy breathing, their classes become calmer and more productive, with corresponding benefits to everyone’s health and well-being.

Jim Gillen, RYT-500, is the cofounder of Yoga Calm, director of Still Moving Yoga in Portland, Oregon, and co-author of numerous education articles and Yoga Calm for Children: Educating Heart, Mind, and Body

Breathing spheres are available through the Yoga Calm Store.

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Object Lesson Shows How the Body is Like Spaghetti

This object lessons uses spaghetti, a favourite food for most kids, to demonstrate the difference between what the body feels like when stressed and worried, and what it feels like when relaxed and calm.

Cooked Spaghetti

Hi, this is Donna from Yogainmyschool. Today we’re going to talk about spaghetti.

Here is a piece of raw spaghetti. How does it feel? Strong, stiff and hard. Now here is a piece of cooked spaghetti. And how does that piece of spaghetti feel? It’s kind of flexible and bendable. It moves all over.

Do you know what it feels like to be tense and worried and scared? It kind of feels like a piece of uncooked spaghetti. How does it feel to be relaxed and calm and peaceful. It kind of feels like this piece of cooked spaghetti.

Can you tell the difference with your body? Let’s try and make our bodies stiff like a piece of raw spagetti. Can you make your hands stiff, your shoulders and your face even. And now relax and become like a piece of cooked pasta, warm and soft. Isn’t that lovely.

So anytime that you are feeling stiff and scared, and worried. I want you to take a few deep breaths and change into a piece of cooked spaghetti.

Hopefully that will teach you an easy mindfulness technique for changing your concern into calm relaxation. Thank you very much.

For more information on yoga for kids and mindfulness activities please visit Yogainmyschool.com. Namaste.

photo by Identity Photogr@phy

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Children benefit greatly from learning basic breathing techniques. This particular exercise helps to calm children through focusing on lengthening their inhalations and exhalations. It will also help to reduce stress, improve oxygen intake, and provide a refuge from a sometimes chaotic world. 

When speaking with a special education expert he mentioned that this technique is self-employed by many of his students when they are feeling worked up. They simply say, “I’m gonna Take 5″ and retire to a quiet corner to spend a few minutes breathing and calming down. In this way children learn to recognize stressful situations and find a more productive way to dealing with the stress than thru tantrums, panic, aggression or meltdowns.

I will often use Take 5 at the beginning of a yoga class to teach how to take a complete breath and to prepare all participants for their yoga practice. Once children have learned this breathing technique, a simple reminder “How about you Take 5″ is often all that is needed for them to realise their emotions are taking over and they need to remember to breathe. 

Take 5

Sit comfortably. Lift one finger at a time as you breathe in through your nose and count in your mind: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Pause for a second. As you exhale, count backward (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) putting down a finger for each number. Repeat 2 or 3 times.

At first younger children may find it very difficult to count all the way to five, so start with counting to three and build from there. Kids may also find it hard to control the exhale, wanting it to explode out, instead of gradually releasing the breath. Keep trying and Take 5 will get easier with practice.

Question: What techniques do you use to help your children to handle stressful situations, meltdowns and tantrums? How do you handle the same situations?

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Recently I was fortunate to be able to interview Lori Lite of Stress Free Kids and Shark Tank fame. She is an amazing woman whose life work is to reduce anxiety, stress and anger in kids, while building self esteem and promoting a peaceful sleep.

Visit My Interview with Stress Free Kids Author Lori Lite to listen to the entire interview.

We talked about how vital it is to help children reduce the stress in their lives. Kids today are more aware of what is happening in the world, are victims of violence, live with the repercussions of divorce, and have greater stress and anxiety than ever before.  It is vital that we teach children the skills they need to combat these stressors. Lori’s books and CD’s use well known and effective stress management techniques in an engaging and age appropriate manner. During the interview we discussed four different techniques and how useful they are in reducing anxiety and stress.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Becoming aware of your breath is vital. Once you become aware, your breath deepens and evens, and the mind becomes calm. Children need to learn how to breathe properly and diaphragmatic breathing is the first step in reducing stress. It is easy and is how babies breathe naturally, using their belly instead of their chest.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Active & Passive

Focusing, in turn, on specific parts of the body and tensing, then releasing (active) or simply willing the stress to leave (passive) are commonly used relaxation techniques during savasana (corpse pose). These techniques help to dissolve tension and teach the body what it feels like to be relaxed. Children can then recall that sensation during times of stress or use the techniques themselves to reduce anxiety and promote calm.

Visualizations

Taking a mental vacation is a method of stopping the chatter in your mind. Guided imagery and visualizations provide a focal point that replaces the mental chatter with the imagination to heal the body. These often involve colours or scenes such as the beach, park, etc. to encourage the body to relax.

Affirmations

Affirmations are extremely powerful at improving self-esteem. These are personal positive statements that help empower and relax children. Children can create their own affirmations to help them throughout the day which they can use anytime, anywhere. The words we think and say influence how we act, feel and live. Affirmations are a potent tool in the battle against stress.

For more information on these techniques listen to My Interview with Stress Free Kids Author Lori Lite.

You can learn more about Lori Lite or her many books and CD’s which help kids reduce stress and anxiety by visiting her website Stress Free Kids.

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