staff photos by amy newman

Allison Morgan of Montvale, left, demonstrates a "focused eagle" yoga stance during Educate 2B!, a one-day workshop for educators and therapists, above, last month in Oradell.

Therapy and medication are primary treatments for childhood and adolescent anxiety, but they are not the only way to help kids who are feeling stressed and anxious. Yoga, meditation and mindfulness are all being looked at as ways to help not only the one in four children and adolescents who will suffer an anxiety disorder in their lifetime, but also the greater population that battles stress and anxiety in daily lives.

"In helping kids who are worriers, we're trying to teach them you had a scary feeling or a scary thought, but that doesn't mean anything about the truth of the situation other than you had that scary feeling or thought. Meditation does the same thing," said psychologist Lynne Siqueland of the Children's Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.

By KARA YORIO

"I've become more interested in doing more and more with that; I'm part of a group of therapists who are trying to integrate," Siqueland said. "It's a very similar approach but a different entry point than cognitive behavioral therapy. There is a lot of evidence especially with adults, less with kids that yoga and mindfulness really can help, too.

Such methods may solve the problem for children with mild anxiety or serve as another tool for those for whom anxiety has more severely impacted their lives.

Montvale's Allison Morgan is an occupational therapist and founder of Zensational Kids, a company that creates programs to help "integrate the evidence-based science of yoga and mindfulness" into pediatric therapy and education.

"You have an anxiety disorder, something happens, you get all of those feelings stirring," Morgan said. "But if we use yoga, mindfulness, meditation, you practice when you are not anxious so you can create this new pattern in your brain and within your body so that when that anxious event or thought enters, you can kick in this new habit, which changes this cycle."

Recently Morgan held a workshop for educators and therapists in her Educate 2B! program to implement in their classrooms to help alleviate stress and anxiety in the students and create a better learning environment.

Originally posted here:
Therapy and medication aren't the only things that can help anxious children