Effect of Yoga on Anxiety and Depression

Running head: EFFECT OF YOGA ON ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
Effect of Yoga on Anxiety and Depression
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1EFFECT OF YOGA ON ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
Yoga refers to Hindu ascetic and spiritual practice that allow a person to control the
breathing power, enhances the power of medication, helps in maintaining a particular posture
and as well as helps in relaxation of the body. Over the year, yoga has been used as an important
tool of stress management and as a result, it can be used as a supporting treatment for the
depression and the anxiety disorder. As yoga allows the person to control the breathing
procedure that is why it is used as a tool of treating the stress and anxiety.
Yoga is generally considered as supportive way of the medicines. The word ‘Yoga’
comes from the Sanskrit language the meaning of this is unification or union. Yoga mainly helps
in maintaining the balance between the body and the mind of the individual. Yoga is divided into
four main branches and they are Bhakti yoga, Gyana yoga, Karma yoga and Asthanga yoga. By
practicing these four branches, an individual can gain control over the development of his/her
body and mind. Among the four section, Asthanga yoga has two subdivisions named Hatha yoga
and Raja yoga. The Hatha yoga is associated with the exercises, breathing control, deep
relaxation. On the other hand, the primary focus of Raja yoga is promoting the mind skills such
as memory, determination, concentration and as well as accuracy. Yoga can be a fruitful method
reducing the stress and as well as in various stress related disorder. In various studies, it is seen
that yoga can be used in various stress disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
which is an anxiety disorder. In this disease, the patient feels uncomfortable and repetitive
behavior. In a study by Taherkhani showed that yoga is an effective treatment for the OCD and it
mainly supports the treatment of drug and causes better improvement than the drug treatment. In
another study performed by Woolery, demonstrated that yoga is critically helpful in reducing the
symptoms of the mild depression among the young children. This research finding was also
supported by the study of Pilkington. The research study of 30 years done by Khalsa, also stated

2EFFECT OF YOGA ON ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
that attachment of Yoga with the medication procedures of the psychopathological disorders (for
example anxiety, depression), respiratory disorders like Asthma, cardiovascular problems like
hypertension showed better result. In another study in Germany performed on the distressed
women showed improvement in anxiety disorder by practicing the yoga for 3 months. The main
of this study is to examine the effect of yoga in the management of stress and anxiety. In order to
observe the effect, 35 female sample was sent to a yoga clinic for 1-year period. The sample size
included the new female patient who have decided to practice yoga without any serious
documented problem. In order to collect the data, two methods are mainly used. The randomly
divided experimental group was told to participate in the Asthangana yoga for 90 minutes per
day for 90 days. The control group was not participating in any yoga session. The mean value of
the anxiety score in experimental group (before yoga) and the post yoga score was significantly
different. Before the yoga session the anxiety state was documented in 41.2 % cases and after
the treatment the rate became 20.6% and that indicated that there was significant difference
between both of the condition ( p value= 0.03). This indicates that yoga has significant effect on
the stress and anxiety management. The unchanged anxiety score of the control group also
suggested the effect yoga on stress and anxiety.
In this study, total 65 female subject was taken to examine the effect. In order to perform
the study, were divided into two groups randomly. 34 female was in the experimental group
(n=34) and rest of the female population in the control group (n=31). In data collection, method
two methods were mainly used. The first one is the 21-item Back depression inventory (BDI)
and the one was the State- Trait inventory, which is also known as the Spielberger questionnaire.
Both of the method was considered as reliable method for assessing depression and its intensity.
The first method is used to assess the depression in the normal population and the intensity of the