practices may show greater degree of changes. The type
of assessment tool used may also not be the most suitable
one to bring out the subtle changes that may have occurred
after the yoga practices.
A study on the relationship between verbal aggressiveness
and state anxiety in sports by Alexandra et al.[20] showed
that male basketball players were more affected by verbal
aggressiveness of their coaches compared to female
basketball players as assessed by VAS administered
immediately after the game. In their study, they also
observed a positive correlation between their anxiety
and VAS scores in male players. It is known that yoga
with its holistic approach uses several techniques to calm
down the mind and reduce the anxiety state. Our earlier
studies have shown that in community home girls and
congenitally blind children, sympathetic tone reduced
after yoga practices which resulted in significant decreases
in resting heart rates and breath rates, thus reducing fear
and anxiety.[29] The sympathetic tone reduction could be a
valuable treatment modality for the reduction of anxiety.
Another study on PT teachers also showed that yoga
reduced their sympathetic activity after three months of
yoga practices.[30] A significant reduction in anxiety scores
was observed in patients with anxiety neurosis[31] after
a yoga program. Based on these observations, we may
suggest that the reduction in aggressiveness in the present
study could be due to the reduction in their baseline
anxiety and sympathetic reactivity.
The rate of violent victimization among 12 to 24 year-olds
is nearly twice as high as that among adults ≥ 25 years
(Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996). In the present study,
the changes observed in VAS after yoga practices suggest
that yoga can be used for the reduction of violence.
According to the most widely used scriptural reference
on yoga, the sage Patanjali[32] defines yoga as a technique
for developing mastery over the modifications of the
mind and goes on to highlight many techniques that
help in achieving this mastery. They are classified under eight major streams including injunctions for social and
personal behavior (yama niyama), body postures (asanas),
breathing (pranayama), and meditation (pratyahara,
dharana, dhyana, and samadhi) techniques that lead
to mastery over any of the modifications in the mind.
Furthermore, the sage Vasistha[24] in his famous work, Yoga
Vasistha, defines yoga as a technique to slow or calm the
mind directly through deep internal awareness. Hence,
it was hypothesized that verbal aggressiveness, one of
the manifestations of an uncontrolled fast mind, can be
decreased by these techniques of yoga.
The strength of this study is the good sample size and
the design in which the control group also had the same
duration of interaction with the instructor and learnt
nonyogic physical practices comparable to the integrated
Yoga module. And the study population was taken from
different parts of Bangalore from different socio-economic
classes of the city.
Some limitations of the study were (a) this could not be a
blinded RCT as yoga is a self-corrective learning process,
(b) although we ensured that both groups had not done
any yoga practices before recruitment, the possibility that
the control group participants may have been exposed
earlier to the concepts and philosophy of yoga (as it is
widely available in Indian media) could not be ruled out,
(c) although significant, the difference found after eight
weeks of intervention was small, raising the utility of just
an hour’s practice in today’s busy schedules. However,
it may be possible that continued longer durations of
practice may show greater degrees of changes. This was
noticed in asthma and schizophrenia projects, where
shorter yoga intervention did not result in any significant
changes but greater significance was seen when the
intervention was increased.[33] Furthermore, a justification
for yoga intervention would be the potential for other
health benefits with yoga (such as positive effects on
blood pressure, well being etc) and the complications
and costs associated with drug therapy as pharmaceutical
intervention. Future studies are required to study the physiological indicators of anxiety that may correlate with
VAS. Also, a third arm with only lectures for education
may be included in future studies.
In summary, this randomized, prospective, single-blind,
comparative study has shown the efficacy of Yoga in
decreasing verbal aggressiveness. Hence, yoga may be
recommended in schools to deal with the problem of
violence among students, which is still a live issue in all
parts of the world.
