Improvement for students, it appears the Physical Education class students were worse off overall at the end of the study

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the recommendations and future work and limitations of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2025 and 2026, spanning 4 journals. Those papers have been cited 5 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Comparative Effects of School-Based Yoga and Physical Education on Psychological Well-Being of At-Risk Hispanic Adolescents After COVID-19 (2026) · International Journal of Educational Methodology · doi

  improvement for students, it appears the Physical Education class students were worse off overall at the end of the study. The data continue to support the inclusion of Yoga as a form of physical exercise for improving the health of students within the demographics of those who participated in the study. As with any study, limitations factor in and should be identified. This study was limited by the sample size made available to researchers, and the results are generalizable only to the convenience sample population that was afforded to researchers by school district guidelines. Future studies should focus on larger, randomly sampled populations that reflect different schools and regions. The results of this study were positive; precautions should be used in their generalization. The long-term permanence of the results must also be confirmed with follow-up studies. The results of this study demonstrate promising improvements in the mental health and well-being of students engaged in mindfulness yoga practices at school. A school-based yoga program is an innovative approach that supports and cultivates mental skills and socioemotional dispositions in preparing and educating future generations and should be considered a viable option for a traditional PE curriculum due to the potential added benefits.

  generalrecommendations
  Keywords: students yoga school physical health sample researchers future mental improvement appears education class worse overall
• Yoga Experiences of Preservice Physical Education Teachers (2026) · Beden Eğitimi ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi · doi

  Including yoga courses in physical education teaching undergraduate programs offers significant potential for teacher candidates to develop both their physical and mental skills. By carrying the skills, they acquire during this process into their professional lives and integrating them into their teaching content, candidates will enable students at various educational levels to benefit from yoga practices as well. In this context, based on the research findings, the key recommendations are to add yoga courses to physical education teacher training curricula and to encourage yoga activities during student teaching periods. This will provide candidates with the opportunity to directly apply their theoretical knowledge with students and observe how these practices are reflected in the educational process. In addition, the following recommendations can be made for future studies: 414 Gök, D., & Yüksel, H.S. (2026). Yoga experiences of preservice physical education teachers. Beden Eğitimi ve Spor Bilimleri Dergisi, 20(2), 401-418. ● In addition to the subjective experiences obtained in this study, quantitative or mixed-methods studies could be conducted to support the effects of yoga on physical and mental parameters with concrete data. ● Studies can be designed to examine not only the physical dimension of applied yoga education but also the pedagogical implications of this practice within the teaching process and its effects on classroom management. ● The long-term and lasting effects of yoga practice can be examined in depth through studies that involve longer-term yoga programs or include different student groups. REFERENCES Alleva, J. M., Tylka, T. L., van Oorsouw, K., Montanaro, E., Perey, I., Bolle, C., Boselie, J., Peters, M., & Webb, J. B. (2020). The effects of yoga on functionality appreciation and additional facets of positive body image. Body Image, 34, 184–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2020.06.003 Atılgan, E., Tarakcı, D., Polat, B., & Algun, Z. C. (2016). Sağlıklı kadınlarda Yoga temelli egzersizlerin esneklik, yaşam kalitesi, fiziksel aktivite ve depresyon üzerine etkilerinin araştırılması. Journal of Exercise Therapy and Rehabilitation, 2(2), 41-46. https://izlik.org/JA24WN27CR Beutler, E., Beltrami, F. G., Boutellier, U., & Spengler, C. M. (2016). Effect of regular yoga practice on respiratory regulation and exercise performance. PLOS ONE, 11(4), e0153159. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153159 Bhardwaj, A. K., & Bhardwaj, P. R. (2015). Effects of long term intervention of comprehensive yoga on level of self-confidence in high school students. International Scientific Yoga Journal Sense, 7(5), 7–16. Biegler, K. A., Chaoul, M. A., & Cohen, L. (2009). Cancer, cognitive impairment, and meditation. Acta oncologica (Stockholm, Sweden), 48(1), 18–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/02841860802415535 Biswas, D. (2023). Yoga in physical education: A comprehensive path to holistic health and harmony.

  generalrecommendations
  Keywords: yoga physical education effects teaching https candidates process students practice term journal courses programs teacher
• Nurturing Resilience and Healing from Within: The Impact of an 8-Week Yoga Program on Nursing Students (2025) · Healthcare · cited 5× · doi

  This study builds on previous research demonstrating the benefits of yoga for manag- ing stress, anxiety, and depression [65]. However, future research should further investigate self-care practices inspired by contemplative neuroscience and yoga in undergraduate nurse education. Future studies should also address specific research questions, such as the long-term effects of yoga and self-care practices on nursing students’ mental health, resilience, and professional performance. Further, it should include diverse populations of nursing students, including those from different cultural backgrounds, to understand how these practices might be adapted to various contexts and to ensure the findings are generalisable. In addition, comparative studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of different self-care practices, such as yoga, mindfulness, and other contemplative practices, to determine which are most beneficial for nursing students. Future research should explore the best strategies for implementing self-care practices in nursing curricula, including iden- tifying potential barriers and facilitators to successful integration. It is vital to understand the impact of nursing students’ self-care practices on patient care outcomes, to demonstrate the broader benefits of these practices for the healthcare system. Lastly, longitudinal studies are also a potential avenue to observe the long-term benefits of self-care practices among nursing students as they transition into professional practice, so as to understand how these practices influence their career longevity and job satisfaction. Currently, there is a gap in the research regarding the importance of self-care for nurses in Baccalaureate education. Many nurse education programs do not have a sustainable health practice unit. Developing such a unit would involve incorporating various forms of learning. These include silence (disconnected from knowledge), received knowledge (lis- tening to the voices of others), subject knowledge (the inner voice), procedural knowledge (separate and connected knowing), and constructed knowledge (integrating the voices) [66]. Healthcare 2025, 13, 767 14 of 17 A goal of the program would be to expand nurses’ self-knowledge, self-awareness, and decision-making skills. This would be achieved by using subjective knowledge based on personal needs and what is required to sustain wellbeing. The results would seek to highlight the impact of introducing a sustainable health practices unit into the nursing curriculum.

  generalfuture work
  Keywords: practices self care nursing knowledge students yoga benefits future education health understand unit further contemplative
• Yoga Storytelling as an Active Learning Approach: Insights from Early Childhood Classroom Practice (2026) · Early Childhood Education Journal · doi

  Several limitations should be acknowledged. First, there is no universally agreed definition of yoga; the term is used to describe a wide range of diverse practices, which poses real difficulties for implementation in classroom settings and for comparing experiences across teachers and programmes. In this paper, yoga has been described as an adapted, child- friendly practice combining simple postures, breathing, and relaxation delivered through storytelling, but readers should 1 3Early Childhood Education Journalbear in mind that other practitioners may use the term dif- ferently. Second, there is evidence that physical activities, including yoga, can be perceived as “gendered”, and some teaching staff may hold assumptions about boys’ and girls’ engagement with yoga activities that shape participation (Wilkin et al. 2026a, b). Although I tried to invite all chil- dren equally and to present poses in gender-neutral terms, gendered patterns of engagement may still have operated in ways that were not visible to me at the time. Third, there are well-documented barriers to teachers’ incorporation of movement and yoga into their daily practice, including time pressures, curriculum demands, limited training, and con- fidence (Wilkin et al., 2025). My own situation as a chil- dren’s yoga teacher in training, with a movement-education background is not representative of the typical early child- hood teacher, and the strategies described here may need additional support, planning time, or professional learning before they can be adopted in other classrooms. Finally, no formal evaluation or systematic feedback was collected from the children at the end of each session. Although chil- dren spontaneously shared comments, drawings, and pose suggestions throughout the series, I did not use a structured tool to capture their views on the activities. As a result, my account of how children experienced the sessions reflects my own observations and interpretations as a practitioner- researcher, rather than the children’s evaluations in their own words, and future iterations of this work would benefit from including children’s voices in a more systematic way. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

  generallimitationsevidence 5/5
  Keywords: yoga children there activities including chil dren time term poses teachers described child practice early

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