Published Apr 19, 2026 | 6:56 AM ⚊ Updated Apr 19, 2026 | 6:56 AM
Yoga is widely accepted in Indian schools and carries no stigma. It requires no specialist equipment, no clinical referral, and no high cost.
Synopsis: Cognitive behavioural therapy is currently the most established psychological treatment for IGD. It has shown real results in reducing gaming behaviours and improving emotional regulation. But CBT requires trained mental health professionals to deliver, and in most Indian schools, those professionals are not available. The researchers felt that yoga interventions may be more feasible and scalable within school settings, particularly in resource-limited contexts.
Across India, millions of teenagers reach for their phones the moment they wake up and start gaming before breakfast.
By the time they sleep, hours have passed, homework is left pending, and arguments with parents are routine. For many, this is not just a bad habit. It is a clinical condition.
Internet Gaming Disorder, or IGD, is now formally recognised by the World Health Organisation under the ICD-11. It affects an estimated nine to 10 percent of adolescents globally.
In India, where smartphone penetration is deep and mental health infrastructure is thin, the problem is growing faster than the solutions.
A new study from Bengaluru suggests that one answer may already exist in Indian classrooms, waiting to be employed.
A team of researchers from Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYASA), Bengaluru and National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, conducted a randomised controlled trial at a co-educational school in Bengaluru between December 2022 and February 2023. They screened 380 students and identified 120 adolescents aged 14 and 15, who met the criteria for IGD. All of them were gaming for at least two hours a day.
The students were divided into two equal groups. One group of 60 pupils underwent a structured yoga programme over eight weeks. The other 60 continued their usual academic routine without any intervention.
The yoga sessions were held three times a week during school hours, with each session lasting 40 minutes. The programme was not a casual stretching class. It was a validated Integrated Yoga Module developed specifically to address IGD, combining physical postures, breathing techniques, sun salutations, mindfulness meditation, and deep relaxation.
The module was built on the Pancha Kosha framework from the Taittiriya Upanishad, which describes human existence across five interrelated levels: physical, energy, emotional, intellectual, and bliss. Practices were chosen to work across all five levels.
The sessions included loosening exercises, standing and seated postures such as Vrikshasana and Paschimothanasana, Pranayama techniques including alternate nostril breathing and Bhramari, Surya Namaskar, and a five-minute deep relaxation technique. Each session closed with mindfulness meditation.
The module was finalised through structured discussions with five yoga experts and a psychiatrist experienced in treating IGD, drawing from classical texts including the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and Patanjali Yoga Sutras, as well as contemporary scientific literature.
Also Read: At NIMHANS, parents learn to log off so their kids can too
The findings were consistent and striking across every measure the researchers tracked.
Students in the yoga group showed significant reductions across all six core symptom domains of IGD: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. The control group showed no comparable improvement.
As the authors noted, these “significant Group x Time interaction effects” across all IGD domains indicated that reductions were “directly associated with the yoga intervention” rather than coincidental.
The benefits went beyond gaming behaviour. Depression, anxiety, and stress scores all fell significantly in the yoga group. Loneliness reduced sharply. Mind wandering, a measure of attention and focus, also improved. Quality of life scores rose across physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains.
Crucially, the improvements were not just self-reported. Parents independently confirmed the changes. Scores on the Parental IGD Scale dropped sharply in the yoga group, while it remained largely unchanged in the control group.
The authors noted that “the convergence of self-reported and parent-reported outcomes strengthens confidence in the behavioural changes associated with the intervention and reduces concerns related to mono-informant bias.”
Adolescents are particularly susceptible to gaming addiction for neurological reasons. The authors explained that their “ongoing neurobiological maturation, heightened sensitivity to rewards, and still-developing executive control mechanisms” make them more likely to fall into compulsive patterns.
Gaming exploits exactly these vulnerabilities, offering constant rewards, social connection, and an escape from academic or emotional stress. For teenagers already struggling with anxiety or loneliness, the pull is especially strong.
Neuroimaging studies cited in the paper suggest that adolescents with IGD show changes in brain regions linked to reward processing and impulse control, patterns that resemble those seen in substance-related addictions.
Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, is currently the most established psychological treatment for IGD. It has shown real results in reducing gaming behaviours and improving emotional regulation.
But CBT has a significant practical limitation. It requires trained mental health professionals to deliver, and in most Indian schools, those professionals are not available.
Yoga, the researchers argued, offers a different kind of opportunity. As they put it, “yoga interventions may be more feasible and scalable within school settings, particularly in resource-limited contexts.”
The authors were careful not to overclaim. They did not suggest that yoga is superior to CBT. Instead, they proposed it as “a complementary or alternative intervention, especially for adolescents with limited access to psychological services or those who prefer non-stigmatising, group-based approaches.”
The cultural dimension also matters. Yoga is widely accepted in Indian schools and carries no stigma. It requires no specialist equipment, no clinical referral, and no high cost.
The researchers are candid about what this study does not prove. It was conducted in a single urban school in Bengaluru, which limits how broadly the findings can be applied.
The control group received no active alternative intervention, which makes it harder to isolate yoga’s specific effects from general benefits like structured activity or time away from screens.
There was also no long-term follow-up. The study measured changes immediately after the eight-week programme ended, but whether those gains held weeks or months later remains unknown.
The authors called for future trials with “active or attention-matched control conditions,” objective measures such as digital usage tracking, and physiological markers like heart rate variability. Longitudinal studies, they said, are needed to assess whether the behavioural changes last.
Despite those caveats, the study’s consistency is difficult to ignore. Every single outcome measure, across self-reports and parent reports, across gaming behaviour and mental health, moved in the same direction.
The authors concluded that yoga “may represent a feasible and scalable complementary intervention for adolescents with IGD, particularly within school-based and resource-limited settings.”
India is not short of schools. It is not short of yoga. What it has been short of is evidence that the two can work together to address a mental health crisis unfolding quietly in classrooms and bedrooms across the country.
This study begins to provide that evidence.
