Across the country, school closures and imposed social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic led to negative mental health issues in children, such as anxiety, depression, and behavior problems. Amidst an unprecedented interruption of all social activities, children could not socialize and interact with others. Consequently, this left children without the adequate social and emotional skills to navigate life after the pandemic, resulting in special education referrals, including occupational therapy. From this emerged the necessity for innovative and collaborative interventions to address these concerns in schools for neurotypical and neurodiverse students. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is essential for teaching children how to self-regulate emotions and use coping skills to deal with life’s challenges. Occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) are uniquely qualified to work with teachers to implement evidence-based, cost-effective, and sustainable interventions that promote social-emotional learning. Mindful yoga is one such occupation-based intervention that OTPs can easily incorporate into the daily classroom schedule to provide self-regulation and coping strategies that align with SEL. This capstone project development will explore the barriers and facilitators for the sustainablility of the Zensational-Kids yoga program through a teacher-therapist collaborative model. The goal is to develop and implement a district-wide mindful yoga program framed within an occupational therapy perspective to target SEL in children of all abilities.
