Learning to meditate and other mindfulness techniques can help children sleep for more than an extra hour every night, according to a new study.
The techniques, learnt as part of the primary school curriculum, helped children learn to become more emotionally stable, as well as get an hour and a quarter more sleep at night, said the research team from Stanford University School of Medicine.
Telling children to have an earlier bedtime does not work, according to the study, but teaching them how to relax does, said study senior author, Ruth O’Hara.
Low-income families were recruited to test how lessons in how to relax and manage stress may be used as a sleep aid in children who struggle to drift off.
Children from Hispanic families living in areas of high crime rates in San Francisco were not told how to get more sleep, but instead were instructed on mindfulness techniques at school, then had their brain activity examined.
Children who participated in the mindfulness lessons, delivered by classroom teachers twice a week, gained 74 minutes of sleep and 24 minutes of REM sleep.
Learning to meditate and other mindfulness techniques can help children sleep for more than an extra hour every night, according to a new study. Stock image
Researchers used polysomnography, which measures brain activity, to assess how school-based mindfulness training changes children’s sleep.
Yoga instructors and the children’s classroom teachers taught the curriculum twice a week, for two years, in all schools in the community that received the intervention.
The study curriculum consisted of training in bringing one’s attention to the present; exercises featuring slow, deep breathing; and yoga-based movement.
Instructors also taught children what stress was and encouraged them to use the techniques to help them rest and relax, but they did not give any instruction on sleep-improvement techniques such as maintaining consistent bedtimes.
Over the two-year study period, among the children in the control group, total sleep declined by 63 minutes per night while the minutes of REM sleep remained steady, in line with sleep reductions typically seen in later childhood and early adolescence.
It increased by more in those children getting the mindfulness lessons than it declined in the control group – up to 74 minutes of total extra sleep per night.
From the more than 1,000 third- and fifth-graders taking part in the study, the researchers recruited 58 children who received the curriculum and 57 children from the control group for three in-home sleep assessments, conducted before the curriculum began, after one year and after two years.
These assessments measured brain activity during sleep, via a cap of electrodes placed on the child’s head, as well as breathing and heart rates and blood oxygen levels.
Lead author Dr Christina Chick, postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry, said it was expected that the control group children would decrease their sleep over time.
‘Older children are possibly staying up to do homework or talk or text with friends.
The techniques, learnt as part of the primary school curriculum, helped children learn to become more emotionally stable, as well as get an hour and a quarter more sleep at night, said the research team from Stanford University School of Medicine. Stock image
‘I interpret our findings to mean that the curriculum was protective, in that it taught skills that helped protect against those sleep losses,’ Dr Chick said.
‘Hormonal changes and brain development also contribute to changes in sleep at this age.’
As rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which includes dreaming and helps consolidate memories, also lengthened in children who learned the techniques, it is suggested those kids may also be able to do better in education.
Dr O’Hara said ‘The children who received the curriculum slept, on average, 74 minutes more per night than they had before the intervention.
‘That’s a huge change,’ adding ‘they gained almost a half an hour of REM sleep.’
‘That’s really quite striking,’ she said. ‘There is theoretical, animal and human evidence to suggest it’s a very important phase of sleep for neuronal development and for the development of cognitive and emotional function.’
Still, the average amount of sleep that study participants in both groups received was low, Chick said, noting that at least nine hours of sleep per night is recommended for healthy children.
The researchers plan to disseminate the findings more broadly, such as by helping schoolteachers deliver a similar curriculum.
They also plan further studies to understand how various elements of the curriculum, such as exercises that promote deep, slow breathing, may change body functioning to enable better sleep.
‘We think the breath work changes the physiological environment, perhaps increasing parasympathetic nervous system activity, and that actually results in improved sleep,’ Dr Chick said.
The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.