Yoga Practices and Psychological Well-being of Student Nurses

Yoga has been with us since time immemorial, but it is only during recent years that it has assumed worldwide importance. The aim of the study was to assess the ct of selected yoga practices on psychological wellbeing. In this quasi-experimental one group pre-test and post- test study, 83 under graduate student nurses. were taught selected yoga exercises. The se- lected yoga exercises were systematic relaxation, breathing, and stretching that were per- formed in the formative manner. The' intervention was carried out for the minimal duration of one hour per day, three days a week for a period of 6 weeks. Assessment Was- carried out on the first and last- day of the intervention, using-a modified Hindi version of Positive Affect and Negative affect scale, (PANAS-H). It,has 10 questions each to measure Positive (PA) and Nega- tive Affect (NA). Since the data was tested and formed a normal distribution, the paired 't' test was used for statistical analysis. The. mean PA score of 42.92 after yoga practice was statisti- cally higher than the Mean PA score of 32. 50 before yoga practice (p=o. 01). The mean NA score of 20.75 after yoga practice was lower than the mean NA score of 23.33 before yoga practice (p=0.427). The yoga practice can be taught to normalparticipants as it may reduce negative affect and increase the positive affect within a few weeks.