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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Friday Q&A: Autism and Yoga

Hidden Flower by Brad Gibson

Q: I am a Yoga therapist in Minnesota. A family member has been given a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I found very little on the IAYT publications and I also found little references on your blog for this problem. She is a 14-year-old girl who is very gifted with eye-hand coordination and physical activities, so I have few worries about doing postures and easy pranayama.

But before I design a practice regimen for her, I am wondering if any of your professionals have any advice or can blog as to contra-indications and concerns as I found not much reference to these on any of the established yoga sources I currently have access to?

A: This is a topic we have not previously addressed here at YFHA, and as for my practice, I have not worked with any individuals with this diagnosis, and I am not aware of any incidence of my fellow writers at YFHA working with this either. However, it would still be worth defining what this condition is and taking a look to see if there is any information about using yoga as a tool for improving the function and quality of life for those affected. The NIH website defines autism as follows:

“Autism is a group of developmental brain disorders, collectively called autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The term "spectrum" refers to the wide range of symptoms, skills, and levels of impairment, or disability, that children with ASD can have. Some children are mildly impaired by their symptoms, but others are severely disabled.
 
Five disorders, sometimes called pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs), [make up] ASD:
 
•    Autistic disorder (classic autism)
•    Asperger's disorder (Asperger syndrome)
•    Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)
•    Rett's disorder (Rett syndrome)
•    Childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD)."

I won’t go into details about the differences between the five disorders, but this link to the NIH site  will allow you to learn more if it is of interest to you. At this time, scientists don't know the exact causes of autism. The research to date suggests that both genes and environment play important roles in the development of autism.

As I was thinking about considering working with a student with autism, the various kinds of symptoms these students have could help or hinder a teacher’s attempts. The symptoms of autism can vary from one child to the next, but there are 3 general categories that symptoms fall into:

• social impairment
• communication difficulties
• repetitive and stereotyped behaviors.

Any of these could present real challenges for the uninitiated yoga instructor.  For example, regarding “social impairment” and how this could affect trying to teach yoga to someone with autism, ASD suffers tend to look and listen less to people, leading to a failure to respond to other people. This could call for some very creative approaches to teaching! To see all that the NIH has to say about ASD, see here.

In addition to finding good resources for better understanding autism, I also came across at least two studies that have been done on yoga and autism. One study done in 2012 showed that yoga helped improve school performance and sustained attention in children with autism. Another study done in 2011 showed that yoga relaxation, dance and music therapy helped treat behavioral problems and other autism symptoms. I also came across a 2010 abstract from an ayurveda journal that indicated the positive potential for applying yoga tools to the condition of autism.

Additionally, I found at least one book on Amazon.com specifically on yoga for children with autism, as well a few websites devoted to the subject. And a year ago, in the Huffington Post, Elaine Gavalas devoted a post to this very topic and cited several of the studies above. There is even a dedicated yoga program in Madison, Wisconsin, called YogAutism, which teaches classes to those with ASD, as well as training others interested in assisting in their classes. Their website is yogautism.org.

So, although I don’t have specific recommendations or cautions for our questioner today, I am pleased to have come across so much promising information about the positive potential for yoga and autism and hope the links provided are helpful to any others out there interested in working autism. And always, I welcome any experience our readership has on this topic via our comments.  So, readers, please contact us if you have any information to add to this discussion!

—Baxter

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