Why Speech + Yoga?

From an evolutionary perspective, stress has played an important role in our survival and development as a species. The “fight or flight” response has its short-term advantages--reacting quickly to dangerous circumstances. But what effects does chronic stress in the modern world have in our bodies and how can it affect our performance?

As adults, we probably know many of our stress triggers--work timelines, juggling multiple responsibilities, managing finances, etc. Our children are also experiencing a variety of life stressors at both home and school. Profound adversity that impacts basic issues of health like eating less nutritious or not enough food, poor medical care, or less early cognitive stimulation are obviously serious stressors. But many of our children may be experiencing stress in less obvious ways. For little ones, separation from parents is a well-known source of stress. As kids get older, academic and social pressures, over-scheduling, family illnesses, disturbing news, and their own communication disorders can all be sources of stress.

The body’s reaction to chronic stress can lead to a variety of issues including a compromised immune system and metabolic issues that may contribute to further physical ailments down the road. In early childhood, the stress-response network is even more sensitive to chronic stress and can impact brain development.

Take a moment to reflect on your own self-care habits and de-stressors. Consider how long it took you to develop strategies that work for you and whether you devote enough time to them. What impact would it have had on your life to have these skills in your youth? How would it have served you as you continued your education? Surely, our children would benefit from improving social-emotional learning, stress management and self-regulation. Growing research on the benefits of yoga shows that targeting mind-body awareness, self-regulation and physical fitness can promote improved mental state, health, behavior and performance.

In addition, including yoga in sessions lends itself to targeting an array of communication goals. Think of the receptive language skills necessary to follow simple to complex directions. Imagine the expressive language skills required to describe how a particular posture feels in your body. Consider how your teeth, tongue, lips, and cheeks shape your breath to produce sounds.

The goal of incorporating yoga into our speech-language therapy sessions is to take a more holistic approach to treating communication disorders. We want to give our students the tools with which to manage their social-emotional state as we tackle their communication goals. At Sound Speech Therapy and Wellness, the two are natural partners and we are so excited to offer this service to you.

We’d love to hear your feedback! You can reach us at info@soundspeechtherapyandwellness.com

References:

Dowshen, S., (2015, February) Childhood Stress. Retrieved from https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/stress.html

Khalsa, SBS. (2015). Yoga in Schools: A Scientific Rationale and Research Review. In T. Childress & J. Cohen Harper (Eds.), Best Practices for Yoga in Schools. (Volume 1, pp. xi-xx). Atlanta, GA, YSC-Omega Publications.

Tough, P. (2016) Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.