School-based yoga intervention increases adolescent resilience: a pilot trial

Background: Youth often experience stressors leading to negative long-term outcomes. Enhancing social-emotional attributes is important to foster resiliency to face these challenges. Yoga may enhance social-emotional resiliency among youth. However, research replicating such results in school-settings is limited. This research details an investigation of the effects of the Kripalu Yoga in the Schools (KYIS) intervention integrated into a physical education class among a racially/ethnically diverse student population. Method: Middle school sixth grade students (n = 23 students; 52% female; mean age = 12.1 years) were either enrolled in physical education class that included KYIS (n = 9), or were enrolled in art and music (control condition; n = 14). To evaluate effects on student characteristics, self-report questionnaires of social-emotional competence and problem behaviour were administered pre- and post-delivery of the curriculum. Results: Students receiving the intervention increased in social-emotional competence over time relative to the control condition. Although promising, results should be interpreted with caution, as students who received the yoga intervention scored significantly lower on social-emotional competence than students in the control group at pre-intervention measurement time point. Conclusions: Yoga may improve social-emotional competence among youth and future research should explore the utility of yoga curricula in school settings.