Learning to Meditate and Practice Yoga Can Help City Kids Cope With Stress
Once considered a New Age fad in the US, yoga and meditation have become a key strategy in Baltimore's inner city to help kids deal with the stress of growing up in impoverished and violent neighborhoods. Researchers have known for a while that learning to meditate and practice yoga can help adults reduce stress, and the popularity of these practices has surged in recent years as a theory for everything from cancer to depression.
However, the effect of these practices on children has not been rigorously studied. Experts have noted the increased stress levels that are present in many inner city kids, and so they wanted to look at ways of giving them some coping strategies. What they found is that a 12-week yoga program targeting fourth and fifth graders in Boston did make a difference in the students' overall behavior for the better.