Your Therapy Source Magazine for Pediatric Therapists April 2016 | Page 6

Self Regulation, Yoga and Preschoolers

A recent year long study was published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies on 29
children ages 3-5 to evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based yoga intervention on selfregulation skills. Sixteen of the preschoolers participated in a mindful yoga intervention group
taught by the classroom teacher. Parent reports and assessments were completed on
children’s self-regulation (i.e., attention, delay of gratification and inhibitory control). The
results indicated the following:
1. the assessments showed significant effects of the mindful yoga intervention on all three
indices of self-regulation.
2. some evidence showed that the children who were most at risk of self-regulation
dysfunction benefitted the most from the mindful yoga intervention.
Read Self Regulation Activities for 6 fun games to encourage self regulation http://yourtherapysource.com/blog1/2009/06/19/self-regulation-activities/. Check out all these
yoga resources for children to make it super easy to introduce yoga into the preschool
classroom - http://www.yourtherapysource.com/yoga.html.
Reference: Razza, Rachel A., Dessa Bergen-Cico, and Kimberly Raymond. “Enhancing
preschoolers’ self-regulation via mindful yoga.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 24.2
(2015): 372-385.

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