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Holistic Exercise Offers Multiple Benefits for Exceptional Youth
By Thomas Henderson
Yoga. Everyone is doing it! From yoga courses and studios to mats and apparel, DVDs and books, yoga is all the rage as more and more people are discovering the activity’s physical and emotional benefits. And now, centers across North America are increasingly offering yoga programs that cater to exceptional children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADD/ADHD, Down syndrome, learning disabilities, dyspraxia, cerebral palsy, and a variety of other special needs.
The word “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit word Yug, which means union or joining. Yoga consists of a wide variety of activities, including person-centered exercises that incorporate breathing and meditation techniques, aimed at improving all aspects of being: emotional, psychological, physical, and social.
Yoga provides an effective set of exercises to benefit the whole body. Muscle tone and flexibility are honed through systematic stretching and maintaining of postures. Movement sequences, called vinyasa, are taught, with visual support, to improve praxis (motor-planning), coordination and bi-lateral functioning of the body. Another important aspect of the program is body-awareness. Adapted-yoga participants are encouraged to experientially discover their body: its functions, sensation, and anatomy. Yoga poses also benefit alignment, balance, strength and support healthy posture. With increased body awareness and fitness, comes self-confidence and openness to learning.
As a pursuit that’s therapeutic, non-judgmental and non-competitive, yoga is an ideal approach to help address a gamut of personal issues and goals. For exceptional children and teens, an adapted yoga program may not only address a variety of their unique concerns, but also serve to promote self-confidence and social communication. Moreover, adapted yoga provides an incredible opportunity for participants to build their self-esteem while interacting and enjoying an activity with peers. It also enables them to be proud of their achievements, gain a sense of mastery and to “own” an interest.
For many families, finding extra-curricular activities that their exceptional child can successfully participate in is challenging. The highly structured and repetitive nature of most yoga classes provides kids and teens with a predictable, secure environment and routines that encourage participation and are conducive to learning. This structure is supported by schedules, visual supports, and even the physical boundary of a yoga mat, which helps to define and organize participants’ use of space.
Among other benefits, yoga instructors find that movement activities help to stimulate language acquisition and expression. The students also experiment with a lot of the non-verbal skills inherent in communication: posture, expression, proximity (the concept of personal space) and gestures. In my own adapted yoga program, I also attempt to inspire participants’ creative thinking by revolving each class around a different theme and incorporating discussions and creative group projects like drawing and acting.
Perhaps most remarkable, is yoga’s ability to minimize the specific challenges of exceptional children, including those around sensory processing, self-regulation and anxiety-management.
Sensory Integration
Children and adolescents with ASD, as well as those with other developmental disabilities, often experience sensory processing challenges, which manifest in either a heightened or under-responsive reaction to sensory stimuli. Yoga postures and movement sequences provide a deep source of stable proprioceptive input. By holding postures, the child's body starts to recognize and make adjustments based on sensory signals. Accordingly, the muscles, joints, and tendons “teach” awareness of body position. The central nervous system is also affected, allowing the participant to process and modulate sensory information in a more organized and appropriate way. Another important aspect of yoga class is balance. The vestibular systems of many exceptional people are also often hypo- or hyper-reactive, resulting in either apprehensive and fearful responses to movement or, on the other end of the spectrum, a search for intense sensory experiences. Controlled balancing activities and postures involving inversion (upside-down positions) have shown to be very effective in this regard.
Self-Awareness, Emotional Regulation and Anxiety Management
Self-awareness and emotional regulation are supported and taught by using a cognitive behavioural approach in yoga class. Students learn to self-regulate using metacognitive, behavioural (physical), and language strategies. Since children and adolescents with sensory processing difficulties often experience highly fluctuating arousal levels, a combination of physical exercises that provide sensory stimulation and relaxation techniques can really help to stabilize these fluctuations.
Breathing is a very important aspect of any yoga class and directly affects anxiety management. Participants are instructed in a variety of deep breathing techniques, key to self-regulation. They also learn how to identify even low-level feelings of anxiety or agitation and employ meditation, visualization, systematic relaxation of specific body parts, self-massage and still-resting (called savasana: lying supine on the floor with eyes closed) to self-regulate their levels of arousal and anxiety.
As ASD and other developmental disabilities are increasingly diagnosed, there is a growing need for therapeutic interventions that target the whole exceptional child and allow him or her to participate as an equal, rather than merely as a “client” or “patient”. By definition, yoga is an excellent example of such a program. Because of its potential to address a person’s multiple facets (physical/emotional/social), participants’ parents report a high-degree of generalization of their children’s skills across different environments, both academic and social. Yoga is multi-disciplinary and encourages overall personal development. Students experientially learn and grow alongside peers in a safe, fun, and non-competitive environment that provides a true sense of belonging and success.
Thomas Henderson is the Social Skills Specialist and Training Coordinator for Giant Steps Montreal, a school for kids and teens with an Autism Spectrum diagnosis. He has been working with people with autism for more than 20 years.
As featured in Exceptional Family, Vol. 1 No. 4
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