Effectiveness of Short-Term Yoga Interventions for Stress of College Students: A Meta-analysis Liwen Ju, Weimo Zhu (FACSM), Hai Yan, Zhenglun Wang PURPOSE: To determine the effectiveness of yoga interventions for the stress management of college students using a meta-analysis. METHODS: Key words, such as “yoga,” “stress,” “college students”, etc. were searched in a number of databases such as PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, Webscience and Google through Dec., 2018. Only randomized controlled trials of yoga based stress interventions for college student were included for the meta-analysis. Risk of bias the studies were independently assessed by two of the authors using the Risk of Bias Tool by the Cochrane Back Review Group. Effectiveness of Yoga intervention was determined by computing standardized mean differences (SMD), in which the difference in the means of pre- and post-test difference between groups was divided by the pooled standard deviations. RESULTS: 12 studies (Total college students = 763, Male% =16.64, Intervention length = 8.79±3.96 wk.) were included in the final analysis. Main outcomes included self-reported anxiety, depression, stress, as well as objective measures of heart rate and blood pressure. The yoga interventions were found effective in reducing anxiety, depression, stress and heart rate:Due to the paucity and heterogeneity of the researches, the long-term effects could not be examined. CONCLUSION: Short-term yoga intervention has been found effective in helping the stress management of college students. Studies with longer intervention, with a comparison with other exercise mode, are needed Key Words: stress, yoga, college students, meta-analysis, review