Effects of long-term Ashtanga Yoga practice on psychological well-being

Effects of long-term Ashtanga Yoga practice on psychological well-being Ben Morris, James Jackson, Anthony Roberts III Mental Health and Social Inclusion, Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print, pp.- In recent years, Yoga practice has seen a rapid rise in popularity with many positive consequences, both physical and mental attributed to its practice. Ashtanga Yoga has been less well researched in this area and is the specific focus on this work. The aim of this study is to investigate the possible positive impact of long-term Ashtanga Yoga on psychological well-being.In total, 213 long-term Ashtanga Yoga practitioners were asked to complete the positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment (PERMA) 23 scale (Butler and Kern, 2016) which measures psychological well-being. The values given by these individuals were then compared against a larger sample of 31,966 representative of the general population.Scores were then compared with a PERMA data set representative of the general population (see Butler and Kern, 2016), primarily using a test of difference to compare samples. Secondly, the causal relationship between time spent in practice upon well-being scores.Findings indicated that those individuals engaged in long-term Ashtanga Yoga practice significantly outperformed the control group on all dimensions of psychological well-being.This work has demonstrated specific benefits to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga on psychological well-being. Yoga is a form o...
Source: Mental Health and Social Inclusion - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: research