A counselor at Northstar Elementary School in Knoxville is taking a unique approach to reaching out and helping students…by teaching yoga.

Traci Lee is the school’s counselor, and has an interest in yoga; she says she often deals with students who are full of pent-up energy and become restless during the day. She tells KNIA/KRLS News yoga is an ideal way to help kids to find relaxation and inner peace.

“And there’s been a lot of research, kind of in the past four or five years, that just shows that mindfulness and moving your body and learning how to breathe in kind of that calm way, just kids calm down,” Lee says.

“We get to kind of connect, like what’s going on in our body, what are we thinking, what are we feeling; and we get to move around, so we’re not sitting in the desks all the time.”

Student Celia Marean says doing yoga is relaxing for her:

“I think it’s really great because doing yoga calms us down before going back to class or the next special that we have; and it just calms our mind down and it’s just really helpful throughout the day.”

And her friend Abbie Keitges says it chills out her classmates, too:

“Usually our class is like crazy, but then after yoga they’re like all calm and then we, like do good and it helps.”

But the class isn’t all poses and stretching; Lee says the students get to play games, and sometimes use one of books as a guideline during a session.

The end result is the students usually come out refreshed and feeling better for the remainder of their day.