HEAL Series: Test Anxiety? Try Yoga
By Paula Baniotaite, Healthier Jupiter Intern
Mental health is a key element to a person’s overall health. It plays an equally important role as healthy eating and active living to ensure people live their healthiest life. To help make sense of mental health’s role in healthy living, Healthier Jupiter worked with a student intern from Florida Atlantic University’s John D. MacArthur Campus to research various topics related to mental health and healthy eating or active living. In the HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living) Series, read about promising interventions encouraging people to engage both mentally and physically in healthy behaviors. The following blog post looks at mindfulness and yoga’s impact on elementary school and adolescents’ school related anxiety.
We hear about mindfulness from television ads to cell phone apps. The practice has been well known for many years, but its rise in popularity is most apparent now. Mindfulness has recently swept in the educational field in order to aid students in self-awareness.
The concept of mindfulness has been well documented to show reductions in levels of stress and anxiety, especially before test taking. Not only has mindfulness and yoga been shown to reduce stress for students, it also has positive effects on the teachers. A special education supervisor in Pennsylvania claimed to have much lower teacher turnover rates after implementing yoga into their program (Stapp & Lambert, 2020). The study conducted by Stapp and Lambert, (2020) wanted to examine the effects of mindfulness-based yoga interventions on fifth grade students.
The researchers examined three different math classes consisting of differing math skill levels; they employed guided breathing exercises, stretches, and finding a comfortable personal space for the students. In all three classes, boys showed an average decrease of 2.22% in perceived anxiety levels, and an average decrease of 20.63% in perceived stress levels. The males in the remedial class showed the biggest changes when it came to decreases of perceived anxiety. While girls in the remedial class reported an average decrease in perceived anxiety levels, girls overall showed a 5% increase in perceived anxiety levels following the mindfulness intervention (Stapp & Lambert, 2020).
These results show that remedial classes benefited the most from the mindful exercises; the teachers also concluded that all the students appeared less anxious when it came to test taking. While studies on mindfulness continue, schools should begin to consider widely implementing mindfulness practices in their teaching programs.
Likely partners to address some of these practices may include tutoring or education focused organizations as well as adolescent focused associations.
The HEAL Series focusing on mental health’s connection to healthy eating and active living is part of an internship opportunity with FAU John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter student Paula Baniotaite. Paula holds a Bachelor's in Psychology.Strong advocate for mental health and spending time in nature. Animal lover. Avid hiker and camper. Dedicated to spreading the message about healthy eating habits and living an active life. Proud vegan. If you are interested in interning with Healthier Jupiter, please contact joanna.peluso@jupitermed.com.
READ MORE IN THE HEAL SERIES
Sources:
Stapp, A. C., & Lambert, A. B. (2020). The Impact of Mindfulness-Based Yoga Interventions on Fifth-Grade Students’ Perceived Anxiety and Stress. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 12(5), 471–480.