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Yoga Dissertations by MSc Students

Part I: Concept of Consciousness according to the Texts and Spiritual Lore.
Part II: Efficacy of Three Different Yoga Modules in Verbal Memory on School Children
By
Pushpavathi

ABSTRACT

PART 1 Concept of Consciousness according to the Texts and Spiritual Lore.

Consciousness is the breath that makes everything live. When you are conscious of the whole world at the same time then you can become conscious of Divine. Consciousness is the source of all the knowledge and power. Consciousness is the origin of all creation - without consciousness, no creation; and what we call "consciousness" is just a far-off contact, without precision and exactness, with the supreme Consciousness. It can not be seen but it makes the eyes to see. In Éçä, it is told it is both within and without (it is all-pervasive & eternal); Kena it is told that it is formless, timeless, & eternal Truth.

Conclusions

What was attempted in this discussion was to look whether the duality involved in the understanding of consciousness is basic. Intentional and integral mode of consciousness could be better explained and the epistemological circularity involved in duality-approaches could be avoided if we include a third factor of “I-ness” which is non-linear, a local and a causal, and hence metaphorically described as “beside” in this paper. The mystery about consciousness is that it is self-oriented. Breakthroughs in consciousness research could happen if we encourage self-exploration and spiritual enquiry as well as third person approaches.

PART-II

Efficacy of Three Different Yoga Modules in Verbal Memory on School Children

No study has been done in this field using yoga as intervention.  Verbal memory is one of the facets of personality and the purpose of all education is a healthy development of all aspects of the individual. There fore these types of studies are required to establish the usefulness of yoga to improve total growth of personality in school children. The present study was conducted to compare the effect of three different integrated yoga modules on verbal memory in 300 school students of both genders, aged between 13 to 16 years. After stratifying age and sex subjects were randomly allocated to three groups which were assigned to IQ-specific yoga module (IQ), creativity- specific yoga module (CV), or physical stamina- specific yoga module (PS). All the groups practiced their on specific yoga modules for 10 days. Verbal memory was assessed using a paper pencil test of Wechsler’s scale test (1950). The subjects were evaluated on verbal memory at the beginning and the last day of the camp. All the 3 groups showed significant improvement (Paired’t’ Test- P=0.001) physical stamina group showed better performance compared to other two groups.  To compare the effect of various yoga practices between groups post-training data were subjected to one-way ANOVA, followed by post-hoc analysis by Tukey Test.  Results show significant difference between CV (8.84%) and PS (17.59%) groups at P= 0.05. The percentage change based on gender between groups showed that PS group has shown more significance, specially the PSF when compared to the other groups.(IQM=9.05%,IQF=13.63%.CVM=12.12%,CVF=1.31%.PSM=16.35%, PSF=19.69%). Sigmund Freud claimed that we forget anything, which causes us pain and anxiety. The studies done earlier showed the anxiety reducing effects of Yoga practice may the children to do better performance (12).  Earlier study done showed the effect of particular nostril breathing on the spatial memory (84%) & verbal memory (20to 30%) scores (3)       

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Keywords: Consciousness, Spiritual Lore,Verbal Memory, School Children.