A summary of the main research into yoga for adolescents undertaken by the Teen Yoga Foundation.

Yoga is a mind-body intervention incorporating physical postures, breathing techniques, meditation, relaxation and practical yoga philosophy interwoven with posture sessions, aiming to help people deal with anxiety, stress and depression.

There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the physiological, cognitive and psychological benefits of yoga and meditation on stress management in children and adolescents who face a host of social expectations, school demands and exigencies of social media, and in school teachers for whom multiple sources of chronic stress, including workload, young people and parents, can result in low morale and burnout.

Yoga can improve reasoning, working memory, self-confidence, resilience, mood and self-regulation skills pertaining to emotions and stress, hence provide lifelong skills. Offering yoga as part of the secondary school curriculum can facilitate universal coverage, thus reducing inequalities and contributing to improved wellbeing for young people.

The Hippocampus project developed a yoga-based intervention with multiple components to support disadvantaged young people (n=600) in five European countries. In the UK, this was conducted in a deprived school in Somerset where teachers first received weekly sessions of adult yoga classes over a period of 10 weeks followed by the pupils receiving the 10-week teen yoga.

Teachers were also encouraged to teach the young people techniques they had learnt. These sessions were delivered during lunch times, before and after school. research. For both staff and young people there was a statistically significant improvement in wellbeing, reduction in perceived stress and reduction in sleep related problems. In addition to this clarity of thinking, optimism confidence, calmness and energy all increased, while nervousness and stress, anger and a sense of overload due to lack of control were all reduced.

The findings also suggested improved self-regulation across the cohort.  The results are very positive and though Hippocampus especially dealt with a larger sample size, there is a need for more research to be done, to provide the evidence that would back up the extensive experiential evidence of the benefits of yoga for young people, particularly as a mental health prevention approach.