Introducting Yoga into the School System as part of Curriculum

OP’s profile shows no activity since the minute she made the post 40 hours ago. Looks like she wasn’t interested in actually reading any of the replies.

Maybe she has a cramp.

The best way to introduce yoga to middle and high school students is to just make it a unit in PE class. I mean, I don’t know what kids study for PE these days, but when I was in high school many years ago, we could take archery, weightlifting, tennis, basketball, swimming, etc. I would have loved to take yoga as a PE option.

I think when my son was in high school, it was more like first quarter is basket ball; second quarter soccer, etc. So they could just make the curriculum for one of the quarters.

That’s a good idea, but is there any benefit to doing half-assed yoga twice week for 3-4 weeks and then stopping?

As much benefit as half-assed volleyball or whatever. Maybe some kids will find a healthy activity that they enjoy, which can become part of their lives. Isn’t that the point of having kids try lots of different activities?

Unlike the many life longs benefits of 4 weeks of half assed basketball?

That’s cool. But there isn’t really any health benefit though, right? As an activity kids can try to see if they like it, sure I’m cool with that. I was never against it anyway.

I always thought that half-ass volleyball and half-ass basketball and whatever were to have kids play a fun activity, not to have life-long health benefits.

Depends, if it sticks there are. If not, then yes, its like all the other school activities we push into our children that go in one ear and out the other. I don’t think my son got a darn thing out of reading The Great Gatsby,

Agreed. When I got to take step aerobics in gym, I liked it so much I started taking classes at the Y. Probably more benefit than the other segments (archery and badminton, IIRC.) So there can be a benefit to introducing kids into a variety of activities.

Sure there’s health benefits to yoga. It can improve flexibility, teach mindfulness and mediation techniques, strengthen muscles.

And volleyball and basketball were absolute torture to me in high school PE classes. I’d have infinitely preferred yoga. Or jogging. Or cycling. Or any other non-team non-ball sport.

I was actually thinking about this the other day, as I read an article about obesity and how it mentioned that exercise is a luxury now, even in school, as P.E. dwindles. And that’s the thing; like many other school classes, nobody explained how or why P.E. was beneficial to my future adult life. To kid me, it consisted of being forced to play games I didn’t want to play. We had very little choice, and no reason was ever given why except, “you have to”. So as I was thinking about P.E., I considered: you know, if they had told me that learning to like exercise would have lifelong impacts on my health; that heart disease is a leading killer; that a lack of exercise is literally bad for you, and we’re in P.E. to find you something you like that keeps you active and healthy, I’d actually have probably listened. Because that would be far more than the standard “because you have to” dismissive response I heard out of every teacher on why we had to learn anything in high school.

So anyway, if someone started a yoga class for high school me and actually explained how it would have any damn impact on my life, you’d have won me over. Wow, treating me like a real person with real concerns on why you’re potentially wasting my time? Sign me the heck up.

I don’t get this. To me, even though I wasn’t really good at most of the things I did in gym, it was something fun to do instead of sitting in a class.

To me, there is no fun about it and sports are nothing but an uninteresting, stupid worthless waste of time. In my senior year, instead of doing sports that I bitched about and refused to actually make the most minimal effort at the coach had me do cleaning work every day during the class–sweeping the gym, mopping the locker rooms, scrubbing the medical hot tub thingy. I suppose that she thought I’d choose to actually do sports rather than that, but doing real honest work was at least actually useful, and I stuck with it as the better option.

“Varsity Yoga: An Iyengar-aunteed hit with today’s ‘cool kids’.”

And for me, gym was something painful and humiliating that we were forced to do when we could have been actually learning something worthwhile. Just reading about someone who got nothing out of The Great Gatsby sets my teeth on edge. I think Macca26 has the right idea about gym being tied to future health to make it meaningful.

The point is that everyone, including high school students, has different interests and needs. Offering yoga as a P.E. alternative just gives one more group of students (the non-competitive, highly stressed, academic ones who are never going to want to participate in traditional team sports) a healthy option.

Just noticed this, and now I’m wondering what you are supposed to hit with the club. (It must be like that Olympics thing where you ski for a while then shoot stuff.)

No real health benefits to taking 4-6 weeks of any particular sport. I think the health benefits of PE come from an hour of activity once a day. Changing that activity every so often gives kids a chance to find something they enjoy.

Ugh! Fun? How about a chance to be made fun of? A chance to be reminded you were definitely NOT in the popular group. Team sports mostly sucked for me. The only sports I really enjoyed in PE were tennis and archery, and I was really good at those. I would have loved yoga or Pilates or strength training as an option.

Why would he? He asked for suggestions on names, not a debate whether yoga should be added to gym or not. And it seems some school already has yoga as part of gym class, so if he’s just expanding to a different district, or moving up from middle to high school. It wouldn’t be that hard of a pitch.

And how would she* know what kind of replies she has been getting if she still hasn’t read any of those replies? Post made 02:04 PM 09-18-2018.
Last activity 02:04 PM 09-18-2018. That means that she hasn’t been back since posting to read any of the replies (at least logged in.)

*I’m not assuming “she” becuse it is about yoga–the Gmail address in her profile leads to other (mostly empty) social media accounts using her real name.

See, all my school had in gym were basketball, football, baseball, volleyball, and running in big circles outside in 90+ degree humid Southern weather. If we had had archery or fencing or kendo I would have been all over that.