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Get out of your head and plug back into your body. This mantra is a common message in the physical practice of yoga. In our daily lives, we spend much of our time in mental mode; all the while, our bodies, which are many steps ahead of our cognitive process, send us messages that we often ignore. Tight shoulders, hip pain, and tingling sensations when we feel unsafe are all flags for our consideration. Only when these symptoms of stress grow into serious discomfort do we finally respond. If our bodies could talk, they'd likely roll their eyes and say, "It's about time."
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, rates of anxiety and depression were increasing among American children and adolescents. Young people's diagnoses of these two illnesses grew by 27% and 24%, respectively, between 2016 and 2020 (Lebrun-Harris, Ghandour, Kogan & Warren, 2022). The same study found that by the end of2020, 9.2% of Americans between the ages of 3 and 17 had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Researchers also noted increases in child misconduct.
When a child is navigating trauma, they simply have fewer resources to meet learning outcomes. Executive functioning (inhibitory control, working memory, and mental flexibility) is less accessible to a brain on constant heightened alert for perceived threats (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.). Thankfully, the medical community is expanding our understanding of trauma and childhood adversity. Once housed in categories of abuse, neglect, and caregiver mental illness, traumatic experiences now include exposure to systemic racism, peer victimization, community violence, and the threat of physical harm. For this reason, students today are experiencing trauma at rates never before seen.
The impacts of recent years have, of course, not been limited to students. A rise in teacher stress and trauma impacts educators' professional and personal lives (Steiner & Woo, 2021). Educators manage not only their own emotional landscape but the added weight of adopting secondary stress from students, which can feel just as heavy. In the fall of2022, for the first time ever, a task force assembled by the Department of Health and Human Services urged medical providers to screen all patients under 65 for anxiety (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, 2022). I am heartened to see the medical community...