CHAPTER 13: SCHool-BASEd YogA PRogRAMS • 305curriculum focuses on physical, social, emotional, and attentional self-regulating strategies
and skills. This includes 67 yoga and mindfulness-based activities that are divided into six
categories: Let’s Breathe, At Your Desk, Stand Strong, Loosen Up, Imagination Vacation,
and Be Well (see http://www.yoga4classrooms.com)..) Each activity is illustrated and includes dis-
cussion points, sub-activities, and ways to tie in the educational curriculum. The program
provides a blend of yoga postures, breathing exercises, visualizations, mindfulness activi-
ties, creative movement, and community building games. Intentionally, the activities were
designed to not overly rely on yoga poses and stretching in order to be more suitable for
the classroom space. Many activities can be done standing beside or sitting at desks (www
.yoga4classrooms.com). The psycho-educational content is based on wellness, positive psy-
chology, nutrition, and meditation principles.
Trainings include an in-service professional development workshop, which is a
6-hour interactive workshop held on-site for educators/school professionals, a program
manual download, a note-taking guide download, and a certificate of completion (www
. yoga4classrooms.com). There is also leader training that includes 3-1/2 days of education,
support, planning, and teamwork. There is also a residency program that typically follows
the in-service professional development workshop for the school staff. According to the web
page, the residency training consists of 10 or 18 in-classroom lessons of 30 minutes each (i.e.,
5 lessons of 45 minutes for middle school/high school). There is also a parent education
component. According to the program information, there are short- and long-term consult-
ing options and multiple trainers throughout the states (www.yoga4classrooms.com). There
is also additional training for those who wish to be consultants. Consultants partner with
Yoga 4 Classrooms and have a background working in the school setting as well as experi-
ence presenting training or consulting. According to the program information, consultants
must have attended, at minimum, the Childlight Yoga's basic training (www.childlightyoga
.com/basic-level-training), the Yoga 4 Classrooms’ 1-day workshop for educators, and the
Yoga 4 Classrooms’ IMPLEMENT Leader Training, and have extensive experience using,
sharing, and growing the Yoga 4 Classrooms program at their school.
The Yoga 4 Classrooms program is comprehensive and well organized. The web page
is easy to navigate and provides a base of research support for the rationale, a section on
alignment with educational standards, and transparency in the organization sharing infor-
mation about the of board of directors, trainers, and founder. Fees are clear and accompa-
nying materials are detailed. Yoga 4 Classrooms founder Lisa Flynn (2013) also authored a
wonderful set of cards, “Yoga 4 Classrooms Activity Card Deck,” filled with activities for
the classroom. The deck is very affordable, colorfully illustrated, organized into activity
categories, and easy to use. Yoga 4 Schools has collaborated with researchers at University
of Massachusetts–Lowell and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Medical School to conduct a
study of effectiveness. The study found that second graders showed improvement in social
interactions with classmates, attention space, ability to concentrate on work, ability to stay
on task, academic performance, ability to deal with stress, confidence, self-esteem, and over-
all mood (Butzer et al., 2015). Third graders showed improvement in creativity, ability to
control behaviors, and anger management. Interestingly, the second graders, not the third
graders, showed a decrease in salivary cortical concentration, a potential biological marker
for stress, from the beginning to end of the Yoga 4 Classrooms intervention (Butzer et al.,
2015). Note that the study was small (18 second and 18 third graders) and was not controlled
or randomized. Without a control group, it is difficult to determine if results are based solely
on the yoga intervention or if they are related to other factors (Butzer et al., 2015).