Previous reviews have highlighted the benefits of yoga for young children. For example, de Oliveira (2020) within their scoping review of yoga and emotional–social intelligence in children and youth, concluded yoga may be of significant value in supporting emotional, social intelligence, development among youth presenting with a variety of issues such as social and behavioral problems, substance abuse, autism, trauma, obesity, ADHD and other psychiatric conditions. Conversely, Hart et al. (2022) aimed to map out the relationship between yoga in schools and mental health and cognition among the neurodiverse and neurotypical youth populations. They found that despite a diversity in school-based yoga programs examined, there was clear evidence supporting the benefits of yoga in schools.

A growing interest in the developmental consequences of extracurricular and after-school programs for children has seen the inclusion of yoga programs, with positive effects on student psychosocial outcomes such as self-regulation (Eccles et al., 2003; Bergen-Cico et al., 2015; Razza et al., 2015; Cooper Stapp and Wolff, 2019; Rashedi et al., 2020). Capitalizing on a child’s propensity to be active (Mendelson et al., 2010), the physical and psychological difficulty of some of the yoga shapes assist children to develop a persistent mind-set which enables the transfer of knowledge to different contexts (Martin et al., 2022).

In addition, the ability of young children to control their emotional and cognitive impulses is considered beneficial (Payton et al., 2008; Cooper Stapp and Wolff, 2019). Yoga is one strategy to help children become aware of their emotional state so as to regulate their emotions, find strategies to help them calm down and augment any uncomfortable feelings they perceive (Case-Smith et al., 2010, p. 234; Tummers, 2005). Specifically, yoga has been found to be a strong indicator of short-term and long-term academic and social success among children (Cooper Stapp and Wolff, 2019).

In addition to the social and emotional impacts of school and associated development, children are challenged in numerous ways throughout the 21st century due to technological, economic and social pressures, which have been shown to require greater levels of intrinsic resilience (Farrington et al., 2012; Choo et al., 2017; Power, 2017). Yoga has also been shown to support children in regard to wellbeing in a number of ways. Many studies reported similar benefits for children who participate in yoga programs during school including: better dietary intake (Conboy et al., 2013), and improved self-control (Case-Smith et al., 2010). In addition, other studies, from the perspective of parents and teachers, have identified that yoga has an influence on helping children get to know their bodies Kaley-Isley et al. (2010), and improved self-regulation of students (Rashedi et al., 2020). Debate continues about the time period for which a yoga intervention should persist. Pandit and Satish (2013) found significant long term change started to emerge after three months and improved self-esteem scores for seventh grade children after a year-long program (Eggleston, 2015).

Finding effective ways to develop a child’s SEL can be challenging. The research would suggest that yoga programs offer one possibility for positively contributing to SEL strategies and provide educators with practical and easy to implement options during the day that engage physical activity, reduce student stress and improve health and academic outcomes (Finnan, 2015; Accardo, 2017).

It is evident that yoga programs have the ability to assist children in many ways, despite this the everyday experiences and perceptions of the children themselves is lacking from our collective understanding. Specifically, the importance of how children, as they connect to their imagination, experience freedom found within the physical body itself and as expressed through the words of the children themselves. Specifically, what are the factors that contribute to the lived experiences and perceptions of children, while clarifying the outcomes of why and how these factors matter to children.

The scoping review was planned and conducted in adherence to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) statement (Tricco et al., 2018). This scoping review also follows the theoretical framework for scoping reviews developed by Arksey and O'Malley (2005), in their five-stage approach to scoping reviews. These stages include identifying the research question, searching for relevant studies, the study selection, charting the data and collating, summarizing and reporting the results (Arksey and O'Malley, 2005).

The database search strategy was designed to be comprehensive and included a preliminary consultation with an academic information specialist. First, the databases EBSCO, CINAHL, MEDLINE and Psycinfo were explored. In addition, Google Scholar and Google were also searched to identify any additional research that may have not been captured through the database searcher. Lastly, reference lists of relevant studies were also examined to identify any relevant studies not captured through the database and search engine searches.

The initial literature search enabled the author to identify the fundamental index terms and keywords from the main searches. To ensure inclusivity, keywords included “yoga” and “school*“and “children*” and were the main terms used in the database searches. Secondary search terms were combined with the Boolean operator OR and then in combination with additional terms such as (program*, yoga-based*OR “asana” OR “after-school”) to facilitate the recovery of relevant studies. All relevant keywords and their synonyms were used to develop search strings to increase search sensitivity and reduce the risk of relevant key studies being omitted. The literature search was conducted between April and June 2019 with follow-up searching conducted in 2023 to ensure recent literature were gleaned.

The search strings focused on keywords in titles and abstracts and were used in the databases. Titles and abstracts were screened based on the eligibility criteria. Agreement was reached between all authors regarding the search strings. To ensure currency of the literature, the search was restricted from 2010 to 2023.

The search strategy was developed based on specific inclusion criteria which included children between the ages of 3 and 10 years. Articles were considered eligible for inclusion in this scoping review if encompassed a yoga or yoga-based intervention; if the intervention was restricted to school or kindergarten settings (integrated into the school schedule or after class); included children between the ages of 3 and 10 years; included an evaluation of anxiety, depression, stress, or other psychological measures such as mood indicators, self-esteem, confidence and quality of life as both preintervention and postintervention; included the assessment of academic or cognitive performance as a consequence of the yoga; written in English; and any geographical location. Only peer review literature was included to increase the likelihood of high-quality information being included in the study. Articles were excluded if they were not original research; only focused on meditation, relaxation, breathing techniques or mindfulness practices without the physical components of postures (asana); participants were post-graduate students; or articles were not written in English. In addition, studies that also included additional interventions or health such as autism and other specific illnesses were excluded.

The articles retrieved from the search were exported to EndNote (version X7). Titles and abstracts were initially screened independently by the first author and crossed-checked by the second and third authors. To increase rigor and reliability, a second round of full-text articles were reviewed independently by the second and third authors. After screening and selecting titles and abstracts, eligible records were obtained as full texts. The screening and selection of the full-text articles were performed by the first, second and third author. Any disagreements about the inclusion or exclusion of studies that arose were resolved through discussion with the three authors. Once full agreement was achieved between the research team full-text assessment was undertaken. The final list of included studies was evaluated and verified by the research team.

Informed by the approach to qualitative systematic review outlined by Voils et al. (2008), the data extraction was undertaken by the first author, who extracted all data using a spreadsheet. Following a modified version of the process outlined by Colaizzi (1978), each reviewer BM, BP, and DT independently read and re-read each article. Reviewers then shared their interpretation of the articles resulting from the independent review. Here common or recurring patterns in the significant statements and meanings among the significant statements and understandings identified from the independent review process were aggregated and formulated into thematic representations to describe the phenomena as suggested by Braun and Clark (2021).

Given the complexities and diversity of literature that was gleaned, various methodological assessments were undertaken to ensure the quality. This appraisal was undertaken among all identified publications to assess risk of bias, guided by checklists produced by the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (Critical Appraisal Skills Program, 2018), the Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) quality indicators (Buckley et al., 2009; Thistlethwaite and Hammick, 2010), and the JBI critical appraisal tool for randomized control trials (Aromataris, 2020).

The qualitative articles were scored as “met” (1), “partially met” (O.5) and “not met” (0), and then added to gain a full final score of 10.0–9.00 (high quality), 9.0–7.5 (moderate quality), 7.5–6.0 (low quality), and 6.0 (exclude), as guided by the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) checklist (Supplementary File 1).

The methodological quality assessment of the quantitative randomized controlled trials were evaluated according to the JBI critical appraisal tool for randomized control trials in systematic reviews (Aromataris, 2020; Supplementary File 1). The methodological assessment of the remaining quantitative papers were rated using Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) systematic review guide (Buckley et al., 2009), where higher quality studies are those which met the minimum of seven of the 11 indicators. Using the BEME checklist within this context, all identified articles were examined using each criterion as either being “met” (+), “not met” (−) or “not applicable” (n/a). Each criteria of the BEME is then scored to provide an overall quality score ranging between 0 to 11, while those excluded had a score equal to or less than 6 (Buckley et al., 2009; Supplementary File 1).

Given the diversity of the data, textual data extraction was undertaken according to best practice principles (Peters et al., 2020). Following a modified process outlined by Colaizzi (1978), each identified article was read and re-read in order to formulate significant statements and meaning, while formulating interpretation, ideas, accounts and assumptions of what the findings presented. Common or recurring patterns and meanings among key statements and understandings were identified from the review process and were aggregated. In addition, textual data were also extracted from each study and due to the heterogeneity research questions and findings of each article, this precluded undertaking meta-analysis.

As data were extracted, findings were grouped into other similar topics and domains, leading to the identification of key themes. The process of aggregation occurred where findings that had been identified as communicating the same understanding of the phenomena of interest were grouped together as a confirmation of the finding (Popay et al., 2006). Conversely, the process of configuration occurred whereby key findings that were thematically diverse and not amendable to data pooling were used to extend, explain, or otherwise counter-argue other findings in an effort to gain greater insights and understanding (Sandelowski et al., 2013).

The literature search yielded 630 potentially relevant publications. Following removal of duplicates 313 records remained and titles were screened for relevance and further review. Of these, 44 were considered directly related to the research question and full texts were reviewed. A further 30 were removed at this point following application of inclusion criteria, leaving 14 papers for the final review as outlined in Figure 1. The 14 studies took place in the following locations: U.S. n = 10; India n = 2; Germany n = 1; Columbia n = 1.

Thematic analysis was used as a method for analyzing the qualitative data and requires searching across a data set to identify, analyze and report repeated patters in the context of a particular phenomenon (Braun and Clarke, 2013a,b).

The strength of this scoping review is that it followed a rigorous framework Arksey and O'Malley (2005), and followed the published protocol for PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al., 2018). There were a diverse range of study designs which allowed a more extensive interrogation of the literature. It provides a synthesis of current literature on how yoga is used among children in primary school and pre-school settings and explored children’s experiences of yoga through dialogical encounter. A limitation was the diversity of the yoga programs and not being comparable between each. The length of each the interventions varied resulting in an inability to compare results and therefore a limitation. Specific yoga poses were not always documented, such as poses to develop strength, poses that improve balance and poses that focus on the breath.

In accordance with the protocol of scoping reviews we were not required to appraise the quality of the evidence. Instead, the authors were able to scope out all the evidence in the area and map out any potential gaps. It could be argued that inclusion of the available evidence was not achieved however, a high degree of confidence that the review represents an excellent overview of yoga in schools for young children and how dialectic inquiry helps realize non propositional knowledge including imagination as ways to understand and navigate the world.

The sample scoping reviews of 14 articles was only a small sample of potential articles and derived from only four data bases. However, the use of highly ranked international journals and a sample that included the past twelve years would suggest that these findings are representative of the topic under investigation.

While this study adds to the small, albeit, growing body of knowledge that supports the benefits of yoga with young children, future opportunities for extending our understanding of this domain is through an examination of the ways in which embodied experiences contribute to children becoming effective agents for their own continual learning and wellbeing. A future study could proceed over a longer period-of- time, such as six-monthly interviews, both with the children and their parent with the inclusion of developmentally appropriate tests of emotional skills, such as emotion understanding and awareness.