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Yoga and
Learning Disabilities
By Jennifer
Jordan 
Learning disabilities are a common cause of frustration
for children and adults. It is estimated that as high as
15 percent of Americans have some sort of learning
disability. By definition, they are defined as the
psychological or neurological conditions that influence a
person's ability to communicate and learn efficiently.
While people who have disorders such as ADHD and autism
may very well also possess learning disabilities, these
types of disorders don't belong in the learning disability
category. Diagnoses that do belong, however, can greatly
vary, ranging from reading disorders, such as dyslexia, to
disorders that disallow for the comprehension of
mathematics, such as dyscalculia.
Those who are plagued with learning disabilities are not
always of high or low intelligence, though presence on
both ends of the spectrum are possible. Likewise, a person
born with a learning disability wasn't necessarily born
with an inability to learn. Instead, the individual simply
possesses a processing impairment, such as an auditory
impairment or visual impairment, that makes their ability
to learn from routine ways of teaching particularly
difficult.
While learning disabilities can weaken a person's ability
to learn, the damage they do often falls into deeper
crevices. Some people, particularly children, with
learning disabilities may have severe self esteem issues,
anger problems, behavioral problems, and a desire to quit
things like school or extracurricular activities.
How Yoga Helps
The treatment of a learning disability can vary from
person to person. Different disabilities require different
treatment options and even then, therapy must be
determined on an individual basis: what works for one
person with dyslexia may not work for another. However,
yoga, because it does not focus on the disability but the
person, can benefit a variety of people with a variety of
learning problems.
Self Esteem: Self esteem can be a hard thing for
some people to obtain, particularly when that person feels
as though they have something wrong with them. Yoga is a
vehicle of self-awareness, self-realization, and
self-acceptance, three things that work together to
increase a person's sense of self, ultimately solidifying
their self esteem.
People who do yoga feel better about themselves and the
world around them. They become motivated, better able to
tackle the hardships a learning disability, or any kind of
disability, can bring. Yoga also helps them gain
acceptance of their disability, accepting that they have
it and learning what can help minimize the effects of it.
Yoga also provides time for self-reflection, helping
students to become less influenced by their negative
capacities and more influenced by their positive ones.
Conscious Breathing: If there is one function that
can help just about anything, it's probably the act of
conscious breathing. Breathing helps a person on
innumerable levels. From increasing circulation to
providing oxidation, from ridding the body of stagnant
energy to bringing in fresh forces, breathing helps people
to be more in tune, more empowered, and more ready to
learn.
Breathing can also help thwart a major element of learning
disabilities: frustration.. Because frustration comes
along with nearly every learning disability, with some
people succumbing to aggravation and hindering their
ability to learn even more, the breathing techniques
taught in yoga can help people to relax, rejuvenate, and
try again.
Concentration: The ability to concentrate is a
major factor in the ability to learn. Oftentimes, those
with learning disabilities have an impaired ability to
concentrate. Yoga, however, facilitates concentration..
Not only does the actual practice of it require students
to focus on their breathing as it weaves through the
poses, but yoga also gives people the ability to focus
when away from the studio.
Yoga increases the circulation of oxygen and blood to the
brain, allowing people to focus, to concentrate, and to
remember things with greater clarity. It also stimulates
the Central Nervous system, the system that serves as the
messenger between the brain and the rest of the body.
Through the meditation and mindful practices of yoga,
people become more centered and balanced, allowing them to
focus on tasks at hand with greater attentiveness.
Eye Movements: People who have dyslexia, a learning
disability that affects reading and writing, may
particularly benefit from practicing yoga. This is because
parts of yoga involve eye exercises, with students forming
poses and focusing on a certain spot for an extended
period of time. These eye exercises can increase the
efficiency of the optic nerve, relax the muscles of the
face, and increase the functionality of certain areas of
the brain. These benefits all work together to improve a
person's ability to focus visually, helping them to
correctly recognize words in the process.
People with learning disabilities may need a wide range of
therapies. Children, in particular, may require more one
on one attention during class or tutoring. Even with
therapy, however, learning disabilities might not go away
entirely. Because many are biological or genetic, some
people are just programmed to learn differently than
others. However, yoga can help those afflicted to accept
their impairment and gain strength by removing the focus
from their disabilities and placing it on their abilities.
About us: TWISTED is a medical yoga studio at the
Center for Osteopathic Medicine in Boulder, Colorado.
Twisted integrates osteopathic medicine, Hatha yoga and
mindfulness practices to teach optimal balance between
physical, mental, and emotional health. It aims to educate
and help people to live a healthy life from the inside
out. Rehabilitation programs offer a comprehensive
treatment regime for the whole being, empowering each
person one breath at a time to stimulate the body’s
natural healing potential.
Yoga and Learning Disabilities