A Study on the Emotional State of Yoga Practitioners

Background: Emotional state indicates the state of a person’s emotions, especially with regard to pleasure or dejection. Emotional states indirectly affect behaviour. Adolescents practicing yoga have been reported to significantly differ from the non-yoga group on emotional regulation. Method: The study was carried out among 100 yoga practitioners by Patanjali Yoga Research Centre, Kozhikode, Kerala, India using a questionnaire containing the measure of emotional state and the characteristics of the respondents such as sex, age, marital status, period of yoga practice (months), and the level of psychological problems, if any, experienced during the previous two months. Emotional state of the yoga practitioners was quantified as the experience of positive and negative emotional state items, with five-point responses ranging from “felt very often” to “felt very rarely” scored from 5 to 1 (reverse scored for negative items) as suggested by Yaden & Haybron (2022). The results were analysed as proportion, scores and through ANOVA. Results: The results have shown that yoga practice has helped the respondents to improve their positive emotions and reduce the experience of negative emotions, helping them to achieve a better emotional state. Respondents who had less of psychological problems during the past two months and with higher period of yoga practice achieved better positive and negative emotional state. In addition to more psychological problems faced, lesser period of yoga practice by those reporting more psychological problems could have also contributed to comparatively low emotional state scores for respondents who had more psychological problems, as observed under the study. Conclusion: Yoga has helped in improving positive emotions and reducing negative emotions for the practitioners, which would contribute to better mental health. It will be useful if, in addition to the academic/research institutions, yoga centres in India also undertake studies on the effects of yoga using the expertise of competent researchers, and transfer the results to people so that they may feel more motivated to start practicing yoga for achieving better wellbeing in their lives. This is especially important in a country like India, where the level of adoption of yoga is not much.