How do Art of Living programs help youth?

This seems to be the most asked question by educators, since past methodologies have not “scored” well with the academic demands placed upon students, as demonstrated by New York City’s 50% four-year graduation rate. The Art of Living Foundation proposes to combine its knowledge and experience in the areas of stress management techniques, personal development and community service to open up new dimensions in learning that will produce unequivocal positive and measurable results in students’ learning, testing, self esteem, inter-personal relationships, team work, sense of responsibility and global perspective.

One of the greatest inhibitors to learning is stress. “Unmanaged emotional reactions to stress not only lead to behavior problems in young people, but also create physiological conditions that inhibit learning and potentially increase the risk of disease later in life” (McCraty, Atkinson, Tomasino, Goelitz, Mayrovitz 1999). For adolescents, stress comes in many forms, such as dysfunctional families, peer pressure, depression, violence, drugs, low-income status, poor nutrition, academic pressure, work, and others. For education it is first necessary to lower the stress level in students.  A study conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of South Florida noted “it is well known that intense and prolonged stress can produce cognitive impairments and hippocampal damage and increase noradrenergic activity in humans.” www.hvsimage.com/papers/PMID-%2011750896.htm. In other words, a person’s ability to learn may be hampered by overactivation of the fight or flight response and the increase of excitatory neurotransmitters and stress hormones. 

In the past educators and social workers have attempted to change the student’s external stress factors to increase their academic performance, (e.i. federally funded school lunch programs, school social workers and psychologists). Although all of these programs serve to alleviate a student’s risk level for failure, it is the student’s perception and reaction to his environment, his coping skills, which determine the impact stress factors will have upon his performance.  The Art of Living Youth Programs provides skills to improve these factors through stress management, human values, and service.

Stress Management Techniques

SKY (Sudarshan Kriya Yoga) stress management practices use breathing techniques to lower the stress level in students and enable them to increase their learning abilities as well as coping skills for academic achievement and daily living. How SKY practices may help to create the ideal mental state for learning is currently being studied.  In a recent analysis of SKY techniques, Dr. Richard P Brown, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry for Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Patricia L Gerbarg, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at New York Medical College have proposed a neurophysiological model to explain how yoga breathing stress management techniques may impact the nervous system. They state, ”Although the scientific exploration of [SKY] by Western medicine is in its infancy, these breathing techniques have the potential to relieve anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and many stress-related medical illnesses. In addition, they may provide new approaches to the treatment of behavioral disorders of children, attention deficit disorder, violence, alcoholism, and the rehabilitation of prisoners.”  

How it Works

Dr. Brown and Gerbarg postulate that SKY techniques stimulate the vagus nerve, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which affects the release of anti-stress neurohormones and the activity of pathways to higher brain centers. Neural pathways from the vagus nerve affect the functioning of the limbic system, thalamus, and cerebral corex and counterbalance the stress response system. Areas of the brain affected by these pathways and hormones control sensory processing, memory, learning, behavior, attention, alertness, positive and negative emotion, cognitive performance, social bonding, pleasure, stress reactivity, fear, anxiety, and depression. 

The Art of Living course improves social bonding, sense of responsibility, and general well-being. It increases the capacity of the SNS (sympathetic nervous system) to respond to acute stressors without becoming rapidly exhausted of its reserves.

Teenage depression is of great concern today. The suicide rate in teenagers has tripled since 1970. Statistics show that slightly over 50% of those students suffering from acute depression in their teenage years go on to attempt suicide at a later date. Dr. Pepper notes, “Paying attention to children who are depressed or anxious becomes a national priority.” In a study of childhood depression, Dr. Richard Harrington (July 2000) notes that depression “could be associated with effects of social and cognitive functioning” and that “symptoms such as loss of concentration and psychomotor retardation may interfere with the process of learning. This in turn might lead to low self esteem, a reduced sense of academic competence and further academic failure.” 

Another study of adolescent and childhood disorders notes that the price of non-treatment is the tendency to “self-medicate” depression or anxiety by using drugs or alcohol. Since the majority of stress factors affecting youth in schools today parallel the psychosocial difficulties noted by research consistent with depressed youth, and because the rate of depression in youth is increasing, any serious educational endeavor must address these issues. Three open studies have shown that SKY can significantly improve depression. Refer to medical summary page. “73% of patients showed  improvement following SKY (techniques) therapy. SKY... was effective in depression regardless of the severity of depression or the severity of the patient’s biological dysfunction.  

(Refer to Art of Living Foundation, Sudarshan Kriya Medical Research Summary Page for references of studies).

SKY techniques create a state of calm alertness and focus that is considered optimal for learning. Studies at AIIMS (New Delhi, All India Institute of Medical Sciences) show that the practitioners of SKY exhibited higher beta wave activity (associated with focus) than the control group comprised of medical doctors and researchers. In addition, the SKY practitioners simultaneously maintained a higher level of alpha wave activity, suggesting that they were both alert and relaxed, the ideal mental state for learning.

Meditation