Yoga and the Mentally Challenged

Yoga and the mentally challenged are becoming close friends as Yoga therapy as Yoga comes out with newer and more effective techniques to deal with the syndrome called Mental retardation.



The term, broadly, means a delay in development of the mind when compared to other children or people of the same age. A mentally challenged child is able to pick up things at a far slower rate than normal kids. At maturity that person’s capability for understanding and learning will also be far lower than average.

There are 3 general classifications of the mentally challenged.



The mild and moderate are educable. They often go to school to study even though they may not catch up at the same rate as others their same age.

Nest come the severe and profound handicaps.



They are only trainable. For parents of children who have severe and profound handicaps the toughest thing to handle is their stubbornness. This can also make them violent at times. Yoga research discovered that the kids got more alert and less aggressive after Yoga therapy. In fact, it was far less strenuous for their parents to handle such kids. There is a very most important problem that makes them slow learners. That is lack of concentration. This either makes them too slow and inactive or hyperactive and restless.

There is yet another category of kids whose performance at school could be very poor. However, parents find that they are not really dull. Yoga therapy has found that this is a category of intelligent kids who happen hyperactive but their concentration is so poor that they can’t learn and reproduce like other kids their age. For this reason, their performance becomes poor. This type of mental state is now called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Yoga therapy has proven extremely helpful to such kids too.