Life without stress is unheard of, but there is a way to reduce the overwhelming amount of stress most face today.  Yoga is a proven way to reduce stress and anger, especially in adolescents, as starting at a young age can be extremely beneficial.  Recently, adolescents have been faced with more challenging and stressful situations whether it be at school, with friends or with family.  This increase in stress levels is leading to aggressive and hostile behavior toward others. Studies have been conducted in multiple schools to test if yoga and meditation actually provide some positive effect in the reduction of aggressive behaviors and stressful scenarios.  Yoga and meditation are linked as sometimes during yoga, there is breathing exercises much like meditation. Both of these exercises are helpful in relaxing the mind and body as well as making the individual in tune with themselves as a whole. Yoga should be implemented in schools to help relieve stress and increase the overall wellbeing of adolescents.  

           Since I was a baby, I have had a lot of health problems.  For starters, I was a premature baby and they were worried about my health since the second I was born.  As I grew up I was in the lowest percentile for weight and doctors always tried to make me gain weight to be healthier.  No matter what I tried, I could not gain weight so doctors eventually said it was fine as long as I was still eating. A few years ago I was having pain in my arm and chest and the doctors sent me to the hospital where they claimed it was my stress and I must have been worried about something.  I took up the practice of yoga and my life has been changed forever. Yoga has not only helped some of my health problems such as the pains I have been feeling have been diminished and I do not get headaches as often, but I have become less stressed overall. Of course there are some days that are stressful as life can throw things at you when you least expect it, but yoga helps significantly in lowering the toll stress has on your body.  Yoga has many positive effects including sense of awareness which can lead to “[Students being] able to address mental distractions, anxiety, stress, depression, frustration, or many other negative emotional states in effective ways (Goldberg 2004, Cohen 2014).” (Eggleston). By implementing yoga into the school systems, most importantly elementary schools and middle schools, adolescents will have a healthier body and mind. Yoga is beneficial at any age as stress will be diminished and a sense of wellness will be acquired, however, it is better for yoga to be in schools for students at a young age (Cohen).  Yoga at a young age will help these children in the future by decreasing the chances of experiencing stress related sickness, mentally and physically.

           I decided to interview Lisa Barner, who has spent most of her life focusing on the holistic healing method of yoga and meditation for those going through loss/death.  When Lisa was seventeen years old, her dad passed away at the age of 44. Dealing with loss is very difficult for any age that you might be, but losing a parent is extremely hard for younger children as it is not a normalcy.  She started work on a manuscript of a book with loss, healing and holistic wellness. She claims that “…yoga has been proven to help people with physical and mental benefits through the combination of breathwork, physical conditioning and benefits of meditation” (Barner).  Yoga programs have been implemented in school programs around the world with positive results and Lisa offers “…mindfulness programs and classes to children and teens in my practice with workshops and groups as well” (Barner). The most important aspect in Lisa’s mind is to live life in a meditative way as much as possible and to try her best to focus on her heartbeat and breathing in order to stay relaxed in stressful situations.  She understands from a personal stance that loss is very hard to deal with and by teaching yoga to others, her goal is to help these other children as much as possible to deal with difficult situations and to move forward with their lives.   

           Adolescents might have hostility and abnormal amounts of stress due to many factors including family life, the environment in which they are growing up, school, friends, etc.  It is imperative that young kids are helped with the problems they might face as these issues can cause greater problems later in life. Yoga is the most beneficial way in attacking these problems each individual carries.  Although not all problems are the same amongst all kids, yoga is proven to help the majority of cases relating to physical health, mental health, and anything in between. This is due to the fact that when somebody practices the art of yoga, “[They] become calm and serene, experiencing increased body awareness, clarity of thoughts, and control over emotions, thus correcting physical, mental, and emotional dimensions” (Setty A.G.).  A trial was conducted to see the effect of yoga in relation to physical education in schools in Bangalore. The students who took yoga showed decreases in their beliefs supporting aggression and an increase in there being alternative ways to cope with aggression (Setty A.G.). However, the students who took physical education had the opposite results, they had a significant increase in their views supporting aggression and a decrease in alternative ways to cope with aggression.  If adolescents are experiencing aggressive thoughts and actions, there is a large chance that these behaviors will carry through with them their entire lives because “childhood aggression largely continues and stabilizes across different age points like juvenile conduct problems, adolescent relational problems, and adulthood antisocial behavior” (Setty A.G.). Implementing yoga into this specific school system had an impressive change in aggression of adolescents which can prevent lack of sociality in the future.  

           Stress is a common feeling in everyday life and small amounts of stress are normal.  It is good to be a little stressed about small things as stress can help accomplish different activities, but high levels of stress can cause learning issues.  “Chronic stress can impair a learner’s ability to pay attention, use short-term, long-term, and declarative memory, and determine what is (and is not) important…” (Frank).  At a young age, students are supposed to be the best learners because it is easier to remember things when you are younger. If these high levels of stress continue for adolescents, their learning becomes impaired and they will be less likely to learn as easily as they should.  The learning disadvantages from chronic stress can follow these adolescents as they grow into teenagers and then adults making it harder to learn at the same pace as others their age. Not only is learning affected by stress, but also “…physical and mental disorders such as depression, binge drinking, eating disorders, insomnia, and underdevelopment of the brain (Benson et al., 2000; Deckro et al., 2002; Sapolsky, 1998)” (Frank).  The amount of stress faced by today’s children is an overwhelming amount and it is proven to be very detrimental to learning, health, and growth.  

           In attempts to reduce some of the stress on adolescents in today’s world, a study was conducted in Massachusetts.  Participants attended two or three yoga sessions per week for eleven weeks where they learned “…yoga postures, breathing exercises, visualization, and games…development and training in the cognitive skills of mindfulness and self-awareness and a yoga-based psychological and philosophical attitude” (Khalsa).  A questionnaire was given to students before the yoga sessions and after eleven weeks of participating based on stress, feelings, school, etc. The control group participated in regular physical education like most schools give their students, and they were also given tests before and after eleven weeks to compare the results amongst adolescents.  Some differences were not significant amongst groups but for the ones that were, the students taking yoga classes had the favored results. “The maintenance in resilience by the yoga participants…suggest that yoga may promote the kind of equanimity and personal resources that are associated with successful coping with stress and adversity and a protective/preventive effect of yoga on mental health” (Khalsa).  Yoga can help students deal with their stressful situations and create less of an effect on the individual. This is extremely important as it can reduce mental and physical disorders in the future and help students maximize their learning.  

           Even with the overwhelming studies showing the positive effects of yoga on adolescents when implemented in schools, there are still those that disagree with the addition of yoga rather than physical education.  Those that disagree with yoga in school districts claim that there is not a decrease in the levels of stress students face, mental and physical health is not helped and students still have trouble learning “…we did not find any significant group differences on measures of general positive and negative affect or somatization…” (Frank).  Although the differences may not be significant, there are still differences and that is the important part of this experiment. If there are any differences at all, no matter if they are big or small, as long as they are positive differences, that is beneficial to students. Everybody is different and responds in different ways to the same events, however, yoga is proven to be a relaxing exercise for most people who partake in this activity.  “Although the reasons for this are not entirely clear, related studies examining the effects of yoga on youth mental health outcomes have had similar difficulty detecting effects in general mood or affect (Khalsa et al., 2011; Mendelson et al., 2010)” (Frank). This may have been the case but now that yoga programs have been the newest addition to schools everywhere, this statistic has changed. Yoga does have significant effects on children’s moods and hostility towards others.  There are chances that yoga does not help everybody to the same extent but there has yet to be any evidence proving that yoga can be harmful to mental health, physical health, stress, etc. So, whether or not yoga helps every person in the program, no child will be harmed from taking a yoga class and each student will most likely have a positive change in at least one aspect of their lives.  

           Sense of wellness is very important because it makes the individual happier and healthier.  An increase in stress and hostility is unhealthy and can lead to serious physical health problems.  It can also damage your mental health since you are constantly angry and hostile, you might become depressed or not feel up to doing anything.  Yoga is not the end all cure for all these problems amongst adolescence, but it is a step in the right direction. This exercise has a proven effect on an individual’s mood and how each person responds in stressful situations.  Responding positively in a bad situation helps your body to not break down when something does not go as planned. The ability to take a stressful situation and turn it into something that can be fixed improves sense of wellness including the mental and physical health of each person.  This is why it is extremely important to implement yoga based programs into schools for children starting at a young age. If children are introduced to yoga when they are young, it is more likely that they will continue with yoga in the future and it can prevent an abundance of problems many adults face today from stress or traumatic life experiences.  Yoga is proven to help individuals of all ages and having this program in school will help these children grow up to be happier and healthier adults.