Yoga is an invaluable gift of India’s ancient tradition. This tradition is 5000 years old. It embodies unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfillment, harmony between man and nature; a holistic approach to health and well-being. It is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with you, the world and the nature. By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help in wellbeing.
Yoga is not a religion; it is a way of living that aims towards ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. Man is a physical, mental and spiritual being; yoga helps promote a balanced development of all the three.
Yoga has been an integral part of Health and Physical Education that has been a compulsory subject up to the secondary school stage since 1988. Both yoga and physical education contribute to not merely the physical development of the child but have a positive impact on psychosocial and mental development as well. Yoga helps a person to get mental and physical refreshment. Along with yoga a person should also manage his diet.
Role of Yoga in Education
We looked at the role of yoga in education from various angles, including the type of education that was being provided to children throughout the world as well as the different levels of stress that children face in the classroom environment. The difficulties, problems, conflicts, distractions and dissipation of their energies were also considered inspire teachers to teach their subjects in a slightly different way.
The system of educating children has to be different. It has to be combined with certain practices which can remove their psychological blocks, which can make them aware of the psychological changes that happen in their body and brain, which can make them aware of their own distractions and which can give them the ability to focus on the theme of the subject they are studying.
Yoga must be a lesson to students of a school as well as colleges. We need yoga not only in our student life or college life, but it is essential throughout the life of an individual no matter which age he/she is in.
Benefits of Yoga
Reduce stress
Stress is a major obstacle to academic achievement, and yoga’s stress relief powers have been shown to boost student performance. School students found that yoga was superior to regular physical education classes in protecting against a slide in GPA as the school year wore on.
Improved Memory
Yoga has been shown to improve memory in adults and children, a benefit that would seem certain to improve academic performance. Practice of asana, breathing exercises, meditation and cleansing rituals will help to improvement in spatial memory test scores.
Improved Attention Span
Controlling attention is a challenge for children, partly because the brain’s frontal lobes, which control the power of attention, mature later than some other functions. Yoga requires attention, which can be a challenge for younger yogis, but it has also been found to enhance the ability to control attention, even in hyperactive children.
Strategies
- In primary school level from class I to V, and colleges yoga teaching is necessary for the development of their mental health.
- For this purpose 4 nos. of yoga teachers should be appointed in block level, which will cover all the upper primary schools & colleges under the concerned block.
- Students belonging to class VI-VII Must be imparted swimming training.
- Students of class VIII-X should be given opportunity of choice games and sports viz. kabadi, khokho, bohuchori(traditional game), football, volleyball, hockey, cricket, badminton, swimming.
- To achieve this goal trained persons of the concerned areas should be appointed to train up the students.
- A sports control officer should be appointed in the block level that will create consciousness amongst the students.
If the students are provided with such training they would be able to tackle any kind of natural calamities like heavy rain, flood, storm etc. It would be helpful to develop their skill at the same time enable themselves to face any hurdles in their future lives. In primary to the higher education both memory and skill development is very important. Because the students after this period starts searching for their career and become job oriented. For this they should be imparted devotional and moral education by trained persons in the concerned fields. Some new kinds of games and sports should be added for the students of college level in Law colleges, Management institutes, Universities and other various educational institutes. The government should adopt some such co-curricular activities in their respective syllabus for the tackle their students.