Effects of School-based Yoga Program on University Students

Adolescence is often described as a period of hypersensitivity that includes increased risk-taking and reward seeking. Such a period of high emotionality will often affect the well-being and mental health of young people, as some experiences can be like emotional roller coasters. Adolescence is not only a period of increased emotionality, but also a psychopathology related to affect. Therefore, how teens relate to their emotions is important to their overall well-being. Young individuals face many internal and external changes that can make them overly emotional. In general, the teenage years are characterized by emotional turmoil, as there is more activation in the emotional part of the brain (limbic system) during adolescence. It has been reported that adolescents are highly emotional, therefore they are often "captured by their emotions" and that the emotional life of adolescents is quite complex both internally and externally. On the inside, teens experience both hormonal changes and "fine-tuning of the neural networks that both generate and govern their emotions". From the outside, young people often experience dramatic changes in their social relationships (parents, peers, romantic relationships, etc.) with the increasing demands of school and society. Because of this high level of emotionality, the adolescence years are characterized by "increased psychopathological levels of dysfunctional affect". Learning to manage emotional responses is an important developmental task for young people's socio-cognitive development. Their development in these areas will affect their emotional decision-making and self-regulation skills. Miller et al. in their review confirm that yoga is a promising intervention for children and youth. Researchers have also reported that "yoga has positive effects on a range of outcomes in psychological/behavioral, cognitive, and physiological/physical functioning." Researchers have reported that practicing yoga can improve mental health and well-being in school settings and beyond, and that yoga facilitates learning among young people. While schools are highlighted as ideal environments for promoting healthy lifestyle skills from an early age, there is less clarity about yoga styles, advice on frequency, and how it works. Still, scholars seem to agree on the value of teaching yoga as a holistic system of practice, including asanas or physical postures, pranayama or breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, and meditation or mindfulness practices. Young people's mental health and well-being includes the ability to self-regulate emotionally, mentally, behaviorally and develop healthy relationships with peers and teachers. Better mood, coping with emotions and coping with stress are important for adolescents' development of life mastery skills and well-being. "Emotional regulation" as a method of communicating with emotions, as a well-known concept, refers to the way individuals manage an experience and express their emotions. In other words, emotional regulation describes the ability to both adapt emotional responses to socially accepted expressions and also allow flexibility in an individual's responses. It has been stated that doing yoga can improve emotional regulation and the ability of individuals to give more adaptive responses. Miller et al. found that practicing yoga increases the ability to regulate emotional, cognitive, and somatic impulses and experiences. Similarly, in a review article on yoga and emotion regulation, Menezes et al. concluded: "Emerging evidence suggests that yoga may help promote healthier psychological responses, demonstrating its potential as an emotion regulation strategy". Other researchers have found that yoga in schools leads students to improve their mood and self-regulation skills and thus have better resilience. Yoga promotes awareness and acceptance and is a method for teaching young people to be more aware and aware of their own breath, body and mind. Studies have shown that yoga can reduce anxiety and improve emotion regulation skills among children and adolescents. Practicing yoga improves the mental health and well-being of teenagers and young adults, as well as increases their awareness of their bodies, minds, emotions, and response patterns. They suggest that "it occurs through interaction between activities that can lead to the development or enhancement of emotion regulation skills". These authors found that attention regulation (via the prefrontal cortex), acceptance, regulation of autonomic activity (reduced anxiety and arousal), and endocrine responses underlie the relationship between yoga and emotion regulation. Increased awareness of themselves and their emotions can be valuable for teens to build resilience and improve their mental health and well-being. Focusing on emotions is valuable because "how a person feels, reacts, and expresses emotions can have both short-term and long-term effects on physical and mental health" (13). This is explained by mechanisms such as reappraisal, attention regulation, self-monitoring, self-awareness, and regulation of the autonomic nervous system. Because yoga reduces negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression, teens are likely to result in less conflict and stress in their lives. It is thought that it is also important for young people to accept difficult feelings and to be able to accept and approve these feelings. When negative emotions are acknowledged and witnessed, they often dissolve or transform, and the process allows the individual to learn about their limits, preferences, and needs. Processing emotions in this way allows a person to be honest with oneself and can contribute to healthier development. Therefore, yoga appears to be a useful well-being tool and practice that schools should adopt, as it can increase life skills for students such as concentration, memory, relational skills, and decision-making that are affected by emotions. Emotional well-being is important for learning in life and school. As noted earlier, research supports such a view, but more research is needed to understand how and why yoga should be offered to young people in their schools. However, it is suggested that researchers further explore the role of yoga in the management of emotions, both in terms of emotional processing and regulation of emotions. The role of yogic breathing (pranayama) as part of a holistic perspective on yoga, and specifically the role of yoga in the relationship between being with emotions, regulating emotions, and how it relates to change, should be further explored. It has been described in the literature that care should be taken to avoid possible harm to individuals associated with the use of unhealthy weight control behaviors among young adults and women with obesity. Yoga's intent to strengthen and support a positive sense of self makes it a particularly viable strategy for healthy weight management for women and those at high risk for poor body image. Finally, it has been reported that reductions in perceived stress may mediate the effects of participation in a yoga program on negative emotional and behavioral problems. It has been suggested that future studies may also assess the extent to which exposure to stress and trauma may affect youth's participation in and benefit from mindfulness and yoga interventions. Considering all the suggestions and research needs in the literature, this study was planned to examine the improvement in self-esteem, life satisfaction, body image, anxiety, depression and cognitive emotion regulation levels of university students after their participation in the yoga program provided to them in the school environment and to compare them with students who do not do yoga. In the study, it is planned to investigate the pre-exam anxiety levels of university youth who regularly practice yoga.