Kids Get Stressed Too: How Yoga, Meditation and Relaxation Skills Can Help

Kids get stressed too. This is particularly true for inner city youth who face poverty, family and neighborhood violence, and drug abuse on a daily basis. The Transformative Life Skills (TLS) program, offered via the non-profit Niroga Institute, was designed to help.

The TLS program uses yoga, breathing exercises, and meditation to help disadvantaged youths to reduce their stress and increase their resiliency. The program involves 18-weeks of instruction, typically in the classroom. To date it has been offered in inner city schools and juvenile detention facilities.

There is growing evidence that this approach works according to researchers at the Prevention Research Center at Penn State, and the Niroga Institute. Preliminary studies have found that students enrolled in the program show “lower levels of perceived stress and greater levels of self control, school engagement, emotional awareness, distress tolerance, and an altered attitude towards violence.”

You don’t have to be a certified yoga teacher or even a yoga practitioner to learn TLS. It is available to anyone who has an interest in helping children and adolescents to succeed.  

Headed by B.K Bose, PhD and Executive Director of the Niroga Institute, trainings are offered several times a year, and are typically conducted in 2, 3-hour modules according to organizers at Niroga. The first module emphasizes personal focus, and the second examines the application of TLS for clients, students or staff. CEUs are also available for educators and mental health professionals.

Trainings receive high praise according to Niroga’s website. “This was the absolutely best session I’ve ever attended. I was able to learn techniques to help the students as well as myself,” cites one attendee.  “Thank you! This work is inspiring, hopeful, and revolutionary,” states an attendee from Alameda County Health Services.

All you need to do is look in your own home or community, and there is a good chance that you will discover children, adolescents, and even adults who could benefit from the life skills that are part of the TLS program. Programs like this and many others that build on the rich traditions of yoga are being found to have great physical and psychological health benefits.

More information can be found on the Niroga Institute website.

B Grace Bullock, PhD, E-RYT 500 is a psychologist, research scientist, educator, author, yoga and mindfulness expert and creator of BREATHE: 7 Skills for Mindful Relationships. Her mission is to reduce stress, increase health and wellbeing and improve the quality of relationships. She offers classes, workshops, writing and research that combine the wisdom of applied neuroscience, psychophysiology, psychology and contemplative science and practice. Her goal is to empower individuals, groups, leaders and organizations to reduce chronic stress and increase awareness, attention, compassion, mindfulness and effective communication to strengthen relationships, release dysfunctional patterns and unlock new and healthy ways of being. Dr. Bullock is a Certified Viniyoga Therapist and Faculty at the Integrated Health Yoga Therapy (IHYT) Training program. She is the former Senior Research Scientist at the Mind & Life Institute and former Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. For more information see www.bgracebullock.com