Director of SKY Schools, Elan Gepner-Dales, speaks with Dr. Sneha Gazi on her Fit as a Fiddle podcast, about the transformational power of breath.
Growing up has never been easy, but students today face new challenges that can make learning tougher than ever. Due to the pandemic, students, teachers, and administrators are all dealing with unprecedented levels of stress, and it seems like everyone just needs a breath of fresh air.
That’s where the SKY Schools program comes in.
SKY Schools: Evidence-based stress reduction techniques to prepare the mind for learning
SKY Schools, offered by the International Association for Human Values, breathes life into education by giving students and educators evidence-based tools to reduce stress in these challenging times.
Centered around breathwork, meditation, and good decision making, SKY Schools has been taught in 228 schools across 28 states, and the results have been incredible.
Independent research by Claremont Graduate University shows that the SKY Schools program reduces anxiety, depression, and bullying, and increases attentional focus and responsible decision-making among students.
Featured on the Fit as a Fiddle podcast: An interview with US director of SKY Schools
Elan Gepner-Dales, US director of SKY Schools, was recently interviewed on the Fit as a Fiddle podcast.
On each episode of Fit as a Fiddle, host Dr. Sneha Gazi interviews phenomenal guests in the health and wellness space who share inspiring tips and tangible advice to keep our minds, bodies, and spirits healthy and thriving.
Check out this excerpt from the podcast to find out how SKY Schools is changing lives for the better, one breath at a time.
Dr. Sneha Gazi:
Welcome to this week’s episode. Our guest is Elan Gepner-Dales. He serves as the US Director of SKY Schools, an initiative of the International Association for Human Values, or IAHV. We’ll be talking about the SKY program and IAHV on the show today.
I’m really excited for our audience to hear more about your work and the impact you’re making on the lives of so many hundreds and thousands of people around the world. So, welcome to the show, Elan.
Elan Gepner-Dales:
Thank you so much. It’s a joy to be here.
Dr. Sneha Gazi:
Absolutely. So, I’ll let you go ahead and tell the audience what brought you into this space. I’d love for people to know about the SKY Program and how it’s organized in the United States.
Elan Gepner-Dales:
How I actually got into this work very practically was that I was working in Philadelphia where I grew up, running a small but ambitious NGO at that time. It was bringing arts education to schools, and it was extremely rewarding work. At that stage, I had a strong sense of the need to serve a community that was really hurting.
For me, the work wasn’t just about training young people as performers, poets, or filmmakers. It was always about the therapeutic aspects of the arts. So when I got involved with Art of Living and saw for myself the therapeutic impact that breathwork and meditation could have on people’s lives. It was a natural fit.
I had never experienced a tool like the SKY Breath Meditation taught in our courses. I experienced for myself how it helps people drop stress and reach their full potential. It helped me in that same way.
Dr. Sneha Gazi:
So SKY Schools teaches the SKY Breath Meditation tool, and has now been taught in 228 schools across the US, which is absolutely incredible. Can you talk a little about how the program works?
Elan Gepner-Dales:
I’d love to. Our program centers around techniques to reduce stress, so students can learn at their highest potential.
Our education system isn’t a textbook. It’s not the building and it’s not the newest technology, though all those things are important.
It’s the people. When you have stressed out people, when the mind is stressed, learning simply doesn’t happen in the same way. When we’re bringing all of our baggage into the building, we’re going to be distracted, right?
So if we’re not able to skillfully address stress in schools, then the efficiency of learning is going to go down, and students simply won’t be as successful.
How effective are we at addressing the state of the mind of students? How much time do we dedicate in our day to really making sure that their minds are stress-free and ready to learn? Are we making sure that students are happy, comfortable, present, and ready to absorb information?
SKY Schools offers evidence-based techniques that help students drop stress so their mind is ready to learn.
We teach time tested yogic practices that for thousands of years have shown their benefit for all people. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe. These are physiological practices that work for all human beings, and I think it’s really a birthright of every human being to know how their body works. To understand how our system really works seems simple, but it’s not common these days, and we deserve that. So that’s my pitch.
And there’s nothing better than hearing from the young people how it serves them. Hearing them talk about having more space in their brain after a breathing practice, or finally feeling safe and relaxed in school when they’re used to being on edge.
It’s beautiful to see the shift in schools, dramatic reductions in behavioral incidences, dramatic increases in academic productivity, etc.
The thing that for me is most powerful is the feeling in the building when you walk into a school and people are happy to be there. They want to be there. They share in the climate surveys that it now feels like a place they want to come to every day. People are smiling and they’re connected.
We all deserve to work in those environments. Our kids deserve to learn and grow in those environments. If we can collectively manage our stress, we can rebuild our society and those environments.
To hear the rest of this amazing podcast click here.
Ready for Inner Peace?
Want to learn more about SKY, a powerful breathwork technique that can help you drop stress and reconnect your mind, body, and spirit? Click the image below to experience the benefits of breathwork and meditation for yourself in a free online session.
