Calm Minds, Ready to Learn: Empowering Children with Relaxation Training
Debra Krodman-Collins, PhD
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) encompasses a wide range of challenges, particularly
in social communication, sensory integration, and self-regulation. Children with ASD
struggle to regulate sensory input: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, vestibular, and
proprioceptive input. They also struggle to regulate their emotions and impulses and to
manage social cues and expectations. 9 These various challenges can be overwhelming.
Coping mechanisms may include avoiding eye contact and social interaction, fixating on
one source of input (e.g., flickering light), or self-stimulatory actions (e.g., repetitive
rocking or hand-flapping). Additionally, some children with ASD frequently exhibit
“meltdowns” that include behaviors of protest, withdrawal, and/or acting out.
Reasoning versus Reactivity: Physiological Processes Affecting Self-Regulation
The processing difficulties and sensitivities that affect children with ASD are quite
stressful, causing frequent activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the fight-
flight response. The sympathetic and parasympathetic components of the autonomic
nervous system achieve opposite effects. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)
puts the body in a resting state. It slows heart rate, slows and deepens breathing,
relaxes muscles, and conserves energy. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS)
promotes body processes for handling stress and danger, such as increased heart rate,
rapid breathing, muscle tension, and increased energy. The PNS optimizes the
opportunity for thoughtful reasoning and rational choices of action. The SNS bypasses
reasoning, instead facilitating quick reactions.
Teaching Self-Calming Skills
When a person is highly agitated, urging them to “Stop!” or “Calm down!” generally does
not shift their behavior. Moreover, such directives assume that the individual has the
capacity to self-soothe in a manner that supports learning and social engagement. As
discussed earlier, many self-soothing behaviors (e.g., rocking and circling) exhibited by
children with ASD may be instinctive ways to reduce cortisol, 7 but may promote
withdrawal, not engagement.
Mind-body therapies like yoga have been shown to support emotional regulation by
integrating top-down processes (e.g., attention control) and bottom-up processes (e.g., breath and movement) to strengthen brain-body communication and reduce
anxiety. Teaching breathing techniques and mindful movements provide children with
reliable tools to activate the brain’s calming centers, such as the vagus nerve. Over
time, yoga can improve vagal control, reduce anxiety, and support more adaptive
responses to stress.
Techniques to Comfort:
- Create a safe space – Use a calm voice and gentle words to create a climate of
safety and acceptance. - Meet the students where THEY are – Get down on their level, make eye contact,
and be playful. Observe what their behavior is communicating about the
underlying emotion. - Provide tools to promote success – Visual aids, props, and engaging routines
make learning fun. - Foster independence – As children learn helpful techniques, they begin to use them independently, building self-awareness and confidence.
Through regular practice, children develop skills including:
- Differentiating muscle tension from muscle relaxation
- Breathing from the diaphragm
- Responding to visual or verbal cues to “S.T.O.P. and Relax.”
- Cueing themselves or others
By embracing practices that help shift the brain out of fight-flight and into a space where connection, learning, and growth are possible, we help pave the way for academic success, emotional resilience, and social well-being.