Yoga Increases Teen Test Scores Without Extra Studying

Teens perform better overall and in separate subjects when taking a comprehensive yoga class regularly, according to MGN College of Education’s published in the International Journal of Yoga.

Yoga Increases Teen Test Scores Without Extra Studying

Teens don’t have to spend more time studying to earn better grades. Instead, they can increase their test scores when they reduce stress by taking yoga classes.

The inspiration for this study came from two previous studies:

1. One showed even a small or moderate amount of stress negatively affects memory and ability to perform daily tasks. The second study showed that
2. The second study showed that doing yoga can reduce stress.

Improve Teen Academic Achievement with Yoga

Teens face pressure to obtain the highest levels of academic achievement. In this yoga study, researchers wanted to find out if  yoga increases teen test scores without extra studying as a result of stress reduction.

To do this, they first administered the Bisht Battery of Stress Scale test to determine the stress levels of 800 boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 15. Then, based on the test results, researchers placed the students into a high stress or low-stress group.

Each group of teens was then divided into a treatment group and a control group. Next, the researchers determined the student’s base level of academic performance by administering pre-tests in Math, Science and Social Studies.

The Yoga Class for Teen Stress Relief

The teens attended a one-hour yoga class every morning for seven weeks. The yoga class had four components:

1. yoga poses
2. yoga breathing exercises called pranayama
3. meditation
4. prayer

Unfortunately, the details of the study did not reveal the yoga pose sequence, the types of breathing exercises nor details about the meditation practice. (I contacted them and I’m still awaiting their reply).

Yoga Classes Increase Teen Test Scores

The results of this yoga study show both the low-stress and high-stress teens who took yoga classes significantly outperformed the students that didn’t do yoga in academic post-tests:

• The average post-treatment academic performance scores of high-stress students who didn’t do yoga were about 12 points higher than the high-stress control group.
• The average post-treatment academic performance scores of low-stress students in the yoga group were about 8 points higher than the non-yoga, low-stress group.