Supporting Schools
Teen Yoga is dedicated to bringing the benefits of yoga-based practices into education. The increased focus and calm that yoga brings can improve academic results.
However to ensure success it is vital to ensure that yoga is introduced in ways that fit the context.
We help schools decide how to integrate yoga-based practices into their activity, providing bespoke solutions and strategies to suit their needs.
Supporting yoga in schools across the UK since 2016
Though the benefits of yoga in schools are clear, there are many different ways to approach its integration. Teen Yoga supports schools in finding the best way to approach it in each context, and in designing strategies for its roll-out. We can train staff or provide teachers, or help you with the selection process. Over the years we have worked with more than 100 secondary and primary schools, and a wide range of contexts (from SEN through to PRU) and a wide variety of formats, from one-off wellness days to whole year groups, to weekly classes within school curriculum, to enrichment clubs for students and staff, to one-to-one focused delivery.
Our research has shown that yoga enhances focus, calm, social cohesion and general wellbeing.
Our experience shows that schools who bring in yoga will find improvement in behaviour as well as academic results.
Many schools have also reported fewer referrals to CAMHS after they introduced yoga.
Graduate, 2025
“A transformational shift in purpose. This course shifted my entire understanding of what yoga for young people can be. It’s not just movement. It’s nervous system literacy, compassion and embodied presence. The therapeutic approach changed the way I see my role as a teacher”.
Why do yoga in schools?
Yoga provides powerful ways of dealing with stress in personal, family and social lives, reducing tension and increasing calm, so that young people can achieve the balance and focus they need for their academic, personal and social development. The key is that yoga helps young people come to calm without the need for a professional session. This capacity to self-regulate that yoga helps them to develop gives them greater autonomy in relation to their mental health, and this is transformational leading to improvements not just in individual student outcomes, but also in overall school atmosphere .
A review of over 45 research studies of yoga in school settings concluded that “the published evidence to date suggests that school-based yoga interventions hold promise for enhancing student mental state, health, performance, and positive behaviors…The widespread implementation of yoga in schools could have substantial implications not only for student health but also for society as a whole”. (Khalsa, S. and Butzer, B. 2016).
Our “Rationale for Yoga in Schools” sets out some of the research we have carried out which supports these conclusions. Watch a BBC South piece about yoga in schools and have look at some of the highlights below.
Improved behaviour
Research
At Foxwood Academy, Nottingham, in the autumn term 2020, a short series of yoga-based practices was implemented within each class for ten minutes after lunch. Behavioural incidents during the term dropped by 52% on the previous year. This improved class and school atmosphere
Increased wellbeing
Research
As part of a BBC programme looking at ways of reducing stress for young people (BBC Ouch 2018) we were able to see how doing yoga reduced the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body over a session, but how yoga also sustained this reduction over time.
Increased cost-effectiveness
Healthcare and disciplinary costs
A CAMHS referral costs the NHS around £14000 over the life of the referral, without factoring personal costs to the child and the school prior to the referral as the child mental health steadily worsens. At Ralph Allen School, the yoga for a group of 15 had an overall cost of £850 so the estimated potential saving to the NHS of that single ten-week yoga course is around £195,000. In addition to this, within schools, the reduction in behavioural incidents indicates a potential for a 50% reduction in the staffing costs relating to these incidents, in addition to other costs relating to reduced teacher absence due to stress, etc… A calmer environment is simply less expensive.
In the EU-funded Hippocampus project (2017-2019) we provided a yoga intervention for 750 students and teachers in 5 EU countries. The results showed reductions in stress, improved wellbeing and sleep, and increased social cohesion. We applied an instrument used by Public Health England to calculate the social impact at £286000, which was £100000 more than the total cost of the project. These calculations indicate substantial potential for social impact if yoga can reach larger numbers of young people across the UK.
Improved mental health
Research
At Ralph Allen school in North Somerset, a groups that had 14 CAMHS referrals in Year 9, dropped to 0 in Year 10. According to the vice-principal, who was in charge of the monitoring of the cohort, there had been no other new activities or changes, so he attributed the drop to the yoga.
Improved focus and concentration
Research
In addition to the behavioural effects, the students at Foxwood showed substantial improvements in their focus and concentration; 100% of the teachers affirmed that their students’ “readiness to learn” was better, much better or excellent.
“We thought it would be hard for the less mobile students… when actually it was a great leveller.
They all found something for themselves in the project. One made choices about where he wanted to move to find new freedom on the floor… another responded to the music, sang to himself and danced, others took to the warrior story with great enthusiasm, pushing themselves and acting it out… so much more came out of this than physical activity than we ever anticipated: choice, master of challenge, unlocking hidden talents.”
~ Lucy Wawrzyniak, Deputy Head