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About

Why Yoga 4 Classrooms?

Learn why over 60,000 educators and hundreds of schools have chosen to implement Y4C.

The 5 Program Pillars

Our program pillars provide the foundation upon which Yoga 4 Classrooms was developed and continues to serve educators and school communities.

Simplicity

Empower school communities with mindful strategies that are easy to learn and implement in a few minutes or less in a typical classroom space – no mat or experience required.

Inclusivity

Provide a trauma-informed, Tier 1 intervention designed to be inclusive of, and accessible to, the entire school community.

Impact

Demonstrate positive outcomes in the areas of focus and attention, social and emotional learning, behavior, academic success, teacher resilience and effectiveness, classroom climate, and more.

Cost-effectiveness

Ensure an exceptional value with minimal investment.

Sustainability

Provide a program delivery model that encourages internal leadership development to ensure sustainable, schoolwide implementation.

What our community is saying...

Program Goals & Objectives

Yoga 4 Classrooms goals are:

  • To create and provide education and resources to support educators and schools in creating inclusive, positive, peaceful, productive learning environments.
  • To support the development of a culture of compassion for self and others.
  • To promote social, emotional and physical development and student success.
  • To enhance the well-being of the entire school community.
  • To provide students (and educators) with a “toolbox for resilience” that will support them at school, at home and throughout their lives.

A few of Yoga 4 Classrooms® objectives for teachers, students and schools include:

Teachers:

  • To learn and utilize simple tools that support classroom, school and district educational and wellness objectives.
  • To create a calm, harmonious classroom.
  • To offer students healthy ways to express and balance their emotions.
  • To promote a more relaxed, comfortable state of being – the perfect state for teaching and learning.
  • To bring students full awareness into the present moment, the most basic requirement for learning.
  • To encourage community and connectedness among and within the students themselves.
  • To create an atmosphere of confidence, enthusiasm and non-competitiveness, where everyone can succeed.
  • To empower students to support their own health and well-being, in and out of the classroom.
  • To be inspired to focus on his/her own health and wellness through the process of education and modeling of the Y4C activities with their students.
  • To use their own creativity to adapt the program as needed, and to utilize the many resources provided for further knowledge and expansion.
  • To enhance their own self-awareness and self-understanding, identify their own needs, and practice self-care.
  • To have the ability to monitor the impact of the program, as desired.

Students:

  • To enhance self-awareness and identify one’s needs.
  • To have opportunities for beneficial motor breaks throughout the day.
  • To ease anxiety and tension (such as pre-test or performance jitters).
  • To enhance focus, concentration, comprehension, and memory.
  • To have opportunities for reflection, patience and insight
  • To improve self-regulation ability, reducing impulsivity, reactivity and potential problem behaviors
  • To engage in character building activities and reflections that support social and emotional learning.
  • To improve mindful listening skills.
  • To energize sluggish minds and minds as needed.
  • To enhance creativity.
  • To enhance executive functioning and communication skills.
  • To improve posture, writing muscles while preparing to sit comfortably.
  • To enhance motor skills, balance, and coordination.
  • To improve mind/body awareness and connection.
  • To improve confidence and self-efficacy.
  • To enhance respect and compassion for oneself and others.
  • To gain understanding of, and ability to integrate wellness concepts such as healthy eating, positive thinking and having gratitude, which ultimately support development of the whole child
  • To develop the ability to tie-in and integrate the concepts learned to daily life in and out of the classroom

Schools:

  • To support the physical, social and emotional health and well-being of students and teachers
  • To support a school culture that promotes respect for others, the self and the environment
  • To support bullying education and prevention
  • To support co-curricular objectives, including literacy, math, social studies, science, health and physical education
  • To support social interaction, team-building and a sense of community within the student body and teaching staff
  • To create a school culture where everyone shares a common language of wellness, creating a sense of community and harmony within the school. For example, when we feel anxious, we practice Balloon Breathing to help calm and center ourselves.
  • To provide long-term program sustainability. Once implemented, Yoga 4 Classrooms is self-sustained as teachers continue to use the program with future groups of students, while the concepts are reinforced as students move up through the grades of the school.
  • To have the ability to monitor the impact of the program, as desired.

Whole-Child Focus

The main Y4C curriculum includes 67 foundational activities (“mindful moments”) in six categories, all of which are suitable for the typical time and space crunched classroom – shoes stay on and no mats, equipment or experience is required. Activities include a variety of brain-boosting movements, breath exercises, visualizations, mindful focus activities, creative movement, and community-building games and discussions. Wellness and character-building discussion points such as the power of positive thinking, nutrition, and being a peacemaker support the development of the whole child.

Let's Breathe

Conscious breathing is an empowering tool for self-regulation. Let’s Breathe activities help students learn to calm and center, or empower and energize as needed.

At Your Desk

Seated stretches help provide physical relief from long periods of sitting, improve focus, and keep the body and brain functioning efficiently, leaving students and teachers feeling refreshed and ready to focus on classroom instruction.

Stand Strong

Stand Strong activities provide simple, structured opportunities for students and teachers to stand up and stretch, balance and strengthen using only a few feet of space near one’s desk.

Loosen Up

Loosen Up activities can dispel stress through energetic release or introspection and focus, build community, and cultivate problem-solving, collaboration and sense of responsibility for the classroom and each other.

Imagination Vacation

Guided visualizations, relaxations and mindfulness practices encourage students to bring their awareness to the present moment while offering an opportunity to “rest and reset” the body and mind.

Be Well

From getting enough sleep to gratitude to being a good citizen, Be Well discussions and activities support character development and encourage healthy habits. Use them as themes of the month, areas of study, or on their own as morning meeting topics.

data chart of impact of classroom yoga

Benefits & Impact

Hundreds of testimonials, dozens of success stories, and the outcomes of a variety of published and unpublished studies that include Y4C as an intervention, demonstrate a notable and inspiring impact.

Educational Standards Alignment

Through alignment with a variety of educational standards and initiatives, the Y4C program supports goals for academic progress, health and fitness, safe and healthy school climate, mental health prevention, social and emotional learning, and personal and career development.

Yoga 4 Classrooms meets national standards for health and fitness education, including National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) standards and the CDC’s National Health Education Standards (NHES). Healthy students lead to healthy school performance. Yoga 4 Classrooms is designed to support physical fitness objectives; to provide children with information and skills to make and sustain healthy lifestyle choices; to teach strategies to improve student attentiveness and reduce anxiety; and to foster a healthy social environment within classrooms and schools – all of which better enable schools to meet their academic objectives.

The Yoga 4 Classrooms program supports schools in meeting National School Climate Standards. A positive, safe and supportive school environment is critical to students’ social, emotional and academic development. Yoga 4 Classrooms engages students in community-building and conflict-resolution skills in order to reduce incidents of physical violence and bullying, create a cooperative and supportive classroom environment, and enhance overall student performance. Click here to learn how our activities support school climate standards and to review school climate-related performance outcomes of the Yoga 4 Classrooms curriculum.

Y4C facilitates learning readiness, which can improve student achievement in core learning as required by state and national curriculum standards. By addressing the issues that impede an educators’ ability to educate – inattention, anxiety, social conflict and poor physical health – students become more receptive to learning. Y4C is committed to helping students become successful learners.

Y4C supports goals set forth in the Student Mindsets and Behaviors Standards for Student Success by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) which describe the knowledge, skills and attitudes students need to achieve academic success, college and career readiness and social/emotional development.

Yoga 4 Classrooms supports development of the five social and emotional learning competencies as identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL): self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Yoga 4 Classrooms curricula and activities promote the development of these competencies and the foundational skill of mindful awareness.

Pie chart of social & emotional learning of classroom yoga

Continuing Education Credits

Yoga 4 Classrooms trainings are often used for earning continuing education hours as well as graduate-level semester credits to support salary advancement and/or to renew credentials for teachers, counselors, and other school professionals.

Des Moines School District Success Story | Yoga 4 Classrooms

Sustainable Program Model

To help ensure effective, sustainable school wide implementation, our program delivery model focuses on empowering schools from the inside.

The Y4C IMPLEMENT™ Leadership Training is our advanced train-the-trainer program for school-based teams and individual school professionals who have experience using Y4C in their own classrooms and wish to expand the program as a schoolwide initiative to support physical, social and emotional health and well-being, learning-readiness and a positive school climate. This model promotes a collaborative and sustainable approach to implementation as School IMPLEMENT Leaders develop an action plan that supports their own school needs, goals and structures. Finally, ongoing costs are minimized as dependence on external program providers is eliminated.

Y4C becomes self-sustaining as educators continue to use the program with future groups of students, while the concepts are reinforced as students move up through the grades of the school. Once implemented schoolwide, Y4C has the potential to positively impact the well-being and success of the entire school community while supporting the development of a culture of mindfulness and compassion.

Simple Success Path

We keep it simple. Our 6hr. Yoga & Mindfulness in the Classroom training and activity cards empower individual school professionals or entire school communities to get started right away.