Development and validation of Yogic Personal Excellence Inventory

Area of Science:

• Yoga and Contemplative Science
• Psychology
• Health and Well-being

Background:

• Patanjali's Yoga Sutras outline principles for personal excellence (PE).
• Existing PE measures focus on quantifiable outcomes, lacking a yoga-based model.
• No operationalized yoga-based measure of PE currently exists.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Yogic Personal Excellence Inventory (YPEI).
• To create a self-report measure with constructs derived from the Yoga Sutras.
• To provide a novel tool for assessing yoga-based personal excellence.

Main Methods:

• Expert validation of YPEI items.
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on large participant samples (N=721 and N=364).
• Assessed convergent and discriminant validity using established psychological and Ayurvedic measures.

Main Results:

• The YPEI model demonstrated a good fit with eight factors: psychic incompetence, attachment, despair, existential thinking, somatic illness, laziness, indulgence, and instability.
• Personal excellence (PE) positively correlated with personal efficacy and Vedic personality.
• PE negatively correlated with vikruti (Ayurvedic dosha imbalance).

Conclusions:

• The validated YPEI provides a reliable measure of yoga-based personal excellence.
• The inventory can assess psychic and physical morbidities and comorbidities.
• YPEI can guide personalized bio-psycho-socio-spiritual protocols to enhance personal excellence.