ADHD Kids

[Rick Frank]

I will be doing some work with kids ages 8-11 having ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) on an individual basis. Do you have any specific suggestions regarding practices (asana, pranayama, meditation/relaxation, sequencing, etc.) for them? I"ve been asked to design and teach them a 20 minute home practice.
-Rick Frank
Boston, MA

[Nichole]

Hello Frank,
Please share more with us. Here are a few questions I have:
1. Could you tell us about your Yoga training and experience so we know where to draw from to assist you?

2. Who has asked for your program design? What environment will you be giving the program? A church? A public or private school? A yoga studio?

3. Will you be giving a general home practice to everyone or giving a specific practice to each individual child? Does the group consists of boys and girls?

4. What are you planning to do already?

5. Can you adjust the length of time? I have adult clients who struggle with 15-minute practices.

I look forward to your reply and to what people will offer you and your kids.




*

[Rick Frank]

To answer your questions:

I am a trained Kripalu yoga teacher, some training in Viniyoga with Gary Kraftsow, soon to do Integrative Yoga Therapy training with Joseph LePage.

The program for ADHD kids is part of a research study, in collaboration with an MD at a hospital. The kids will have not been on medication. This will be done in a meeting room at one of the hospital's clinics. Note that this is NOT a group class, it will be done individually. We aren't specifying gender, so who we get is yet unknown.

20-minutes long session? That is our plan, to give them a 20-minute DVD to have at home, and ask them to watch it, and do at least some of it. I am open to suggestion about this.

The plan is to have a standard sequence for all of them, given that this is research. Possibly we may include choices, options

I don't have a sequence planned yet, I need to make a draft of this in the next week or so.
My ideas so far:
Start with some playful, active movements, warm-ups.
Start with more active, movements, standing, progressing towards things on the floor, working towards forward bends, twists, inversions.
Include balances to develop focus
cross-crawl motions
Progress length of breath with counts, particularly lengthening exhalation.
Progress number of breaths that postures are held.
Include a restorative posture, possibly using sandbag or heavy blanket for calming effect.
Pranayama with focus on lengthening breath, possibly alternate nostril, nadi shodana
Relaxation using visual imagery

Thank you for your assistance.

Rick in Boston

[Carne Asana]

Rick Frank, perhaps the folks here can give you some ideas:

Yoga for the Special Child

If you click on Licensed Practitioners I believe there are people available to speak with in your geographic area.

[justwannabe]

Rick,
good luck in your studies. I am a school teacher and teach autistic kids and have been around many adhd kids as well. I will express an opionion, and please take it as just that. a man on cocaine doing yoga would not benefit from it as much as a sober man, I think you would agree. the conclusion I draw from that is that chemicals that we put into ourselves play a valuable role in whether or not something like yoga would help much at all. These kids who are adhd, if they have a lot of simple sugars in their diets like 95% of the kids I have seen in the school system, I dont believe will benefit from much of anything. If you could add a little bit of a diet change with the yoga practice, your results may be astounding to our society. Just some thoughts, good luck in the search,
seeker

[Alix]

Rick, I don't have much advice to give, but I am interested in seeing the outcome of this project. I work with a different population (12-17 year olds) and many of them have ADHD. I have to say, you have your work cut out for you. Children have short attention spans to begin with and those with ADHD are even tougher.

My rather odd suggestion to you would be to give them something to focus on. Many ADHD children can focus if they are engaged. If you give them something unique looking and have them focus on balancing it on parts of their bodies while doing the asanas you may have more luck.

(My thought was to have them balance something on their bellies doing some breathing exercises and keep the object from rolling off.)

Alternate nostril breathing is weird enough and "gross" enough to engage a youngsters attention too. That might be another place to start.

[sarahy]

hi rick in boston.

though not as adept at yoga i'm deeply embedded in clinical research. did the MD give you any parameters? like did the DVD need to be 20 min long or did the practice need to be x number or postures or a specific variety? i'm thinking of this in the context of confounding, in that some practices may be extremely advantageous over others, but this may be lost if careful notes aren't taken/rules followed. in any case i'm also deeply interested in the objectives of this study. is it a (nationally and/or NGO) sponsored study or is the clinician exploring his own hypotheses?

i'm the oldest of 8 kids and i can say that almost no 8-11 year old has the attention span for a 20 minute dvd. is it possible to segment the dvd into different postures or sequences of less than 5 minutes that build progressively? in any case i would say start small.

good luck and would love to hear what you plan and how it comes out.