Relaxation methods based interventions in a school context from a perspective of health and well-being promotion: a systematic review

Abstract

Nowadays, children's daily lives are full of stressful elements that they have to deal with. As a practice of body mediation, relaxation privileges awareness and tonic-emotional regulation and comprises different techniques that reduce the impact of stress negative effects on the developing brain. This study aimed to identify and characterise school interventions based on relaxation methods for pre-school and elementary school children to promote health and well-being. It is a systematic literature review based on publications and on terms previously defined. The obtained six papers that make up the corpus of the study went through five filtering steps. The papers were analysed regarding their approach to relaxation, the type of intervention, the techniques used and the results obtained. The results suggest that the concept of relaxation can be used from different perspectives and that relaxation for children promotes the reduction of visible symptoms of anxiety, the improvement of autonomous functions, the child's autonomy and initiative, the interactions with others, the socio-emotional development and short-term memory development. The interventions based on relaxation methods in a school context/setting, carried out in a universal primary prevention approach, contribute to a health-promoting school favouring the child's integral development and promote life skills.