The Reading Room
Research, stories, and plain language explanations of why this work works.
Why this page exists
Parents deserve to know what stands behind the work their children are doing. Everything here is published research or my own writing from the field. I am an instructor, not a clinician, and nothing on this page is medical advice. It is background. It is the reasoning underneath the practice.
Locate. Listen. Reset. Solve.
Movement
Children think with their bodies before they think with words. Movement is not a break from learning. It is a way into it.
Are There Benefits from Teaching Yoga at Schools? A Systematic Review of Randomized Control Trials of Yoga-Based Interventions. Ferreira-Vorkapic and colleagues. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Read the full study — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4600929/
The effects of school-based yoga on the executive functioning skills of children between three and seven years of age. A meta-analysis of existing research. Thinking Skills and Creativity.
Read the full study — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755296624000693
Breath
The breath is the one part of the nervous system a child can take hold of on purpose. Teach a child to change their breathing and you have handed them a tool they carry for life.
The effects of yoga on mental health in school-aged children. A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of Randomised Control Trials. Khunti and colleagues. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2023.
Read the full study — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10251451/
Connection
Healthy social and emotional development happens in the space between us. When students feel seen and safe, they are ready to engage with the world.
Read the full study — https://casel.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/impact-enhancing-students-social-emotional-learning-meta-analysis-school-based-universal-interventions.pdf
Read the full report — https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/evidence-social-emotional-learning-schools-report
The Power Behind the Grounded Mastery Method
Locate. Listen. Reset. Solve. Four steps, in that order, every time.
Locate. Before a child can manage a feeling, they have to find it. Where is it. The chest, the throat, the stomach, the jaw. Naming the place turns something overwhelming into something specific.
Listen. The feeling is information, not an emergency. A child who can pause and listen instead of react has already changed the outcome.
Reset. This is where breath and movement do their work. The body comes down out of alarm and back to center.
Solve. Only now, from a settled body, does the problem get solved. A regulated child can think. A flooded child cannot.
A Yoga Intervention for Young Children. Self-Regulation and Emotion Regulation. Rashedi and colleagues. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2021.
Read the full study — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8188743/
For Parents
Notes from the field. What I see working, what I see families struggle with, and how to bring the same four steps home.
Latest from the Reading Room
Every source above is publicly available published research. Titles and authors are credited. Full text is available through the publisher.