Friday Q A Research on Yoga for Children with Autism

Q: I was wondering if you have any research on yoga for children with special needs especially autism? This is my area of expertise and I teach yoga to children with special needs but also as an behavioural therapist would be great to support my work with research. Many thanks.

A: Yes! There is a growing body of research in the field of yoga therapy in general. An estimated 500 peer-reviewed studies have been published to date. A fraction of them address yoga for children and, as is the case with all research in this field, larger clinical trials are needed. But it’s fun to peek into this emerging field and see that there is indeed research being published to support our valuable work with children. 

There are a few papers specifically on yoga for children with autism, or what is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The International Journal of Yoga Therapy published a paper by Molly Kenny in 2002 Integrated Movement Therapy™: Yoga-Based Therapy as a Viable and Effective Intervention for Autism Spectrum and Related Disorders. In this paper Kenny states that her approach “…has had especially consistent and remarkable results with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders.” Read more about her methods and findings here: samaryacenter.org/assets/ijyt2002.pdf.

A study published in November of 2011 is Relaxation Response-Based Yoga Improves Functioning in Young Children with Autism: A Pilot Study. In the conclusion, the study reports, “Robust changes” and, “Unexpectedly, the post-treatment scores on the Atypicality scale of the BASC-2, which measures some of the core features of autism, changed significantly (p=0.003).” Many other papers cited this paper, so those who are interested can find themselves down a rabbit hole of research. 

Kristie Patten Koenig, Anne Buckley-Reen and Satvika Garg published a research article in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy in September 2012 Efficacy of the Get Ready to Learn Yoga Program Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Pretest–Posttest Control Group Design.  Children in this study received this specific program daily for 16 weeks as part of their standard morning routine. In the abstract they report, “This study demonstrates that use of daily classroom wide yoga interventions has a significant impact on key classroom behaviors among children with ASD.”

And finally, a study published in the International Journal of Yoga in January of 2010 Application of integrated yoga therapy to increase imitation skills in children with autism spectrum disorder indicates similar positive benefits. Children with ASD tend to socialize less, make less eye contact and imitate others less than their typically developing peers. This study looked at yoga as a modality for improving theses skills. They concluded from this study that their particular program of yoga “…may offer benefits as an effective tool to increase imitation, cognitive skills and social-communicative behaviors in children with ASD. In addition, children exhibited increased skills in eye contact, sitting tolerance, non-verbal communication and receptive skills to verbal commands related to spatial relationship.”

For those interested in further research, type in “yoga” and “autism” and “children” into either pubmed or scholar.google.com. It can be tedious to read through dry academic publications, yet it’s also inspiring to see how much attention is being given to these three words together.

Each child is unique and there is no “one-size-fits-all” formula to be captured in a study. However, these research papers from the field show that there is interest as well as benefit in yoga for children with autism.

—Mira

Mira Binzen is a registered yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level (E-RYT, RCYT) and a certified iRest Yoga Nidra teacher, and is a professional Integrative Yoga Therapist (1,000-hour level certificate). She holds a degree in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development, with specialized study in Communication Disorders. As co-founder of Global Family Yoga, she he has been training people to teach yoga to children since 2002. For more information about Mira, see her website mirabinzen.com.

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