A Randomized Control Trial of the Effect of Yoga on Verbal Aggressiveness in normal healthy volunteers

INTRODUCTION

Although global scientific and technological progress is evidence of human intelligence and creativity, emotional hypersensitivity and aggression have increased.[1] Violence remains one of the greatest public health threats to youth. Intentional injuries due to violence comprise the second leading cause of death of US adolescents,[2] as well as a substantial proportion of morbidity[3,4] such as elevated depressive symptoms and posttraumatic stress disorder.[5] Irritability and emotional outbursts are other manifestations of violence that could be measured. The verbal aggressiveness scale is a measure of violence that
has been used in earlier studies.[6] Verbal aggressiveness is defined as an attack on an individual’s self-concept instead of, or in addition to the person’s position on a topic of communication, to inflict psychological pain.[7] A message must attack the self-concept of the receiver if it is to be considered as verbally aggressive message.[8] It was found that people who are high in the verbal aggression trait, differ significantly from those low in verbal aggression trait in terms of their use of these
Yoga which encompasses several techniques including physical postures, breathing techniques (Pranayama) and meditation has become very popular for its applications in health starting from better physical fitness[9] to a better quality of life in cancer patients.[10] Yoga has been used effectively for stress reduction that has resulted in biochemical[11] and physiological[12] changes. Several studies have highlighted the psychological benefits of integrated yoga practices such as anxiety, neurosis,[13,14] and depressive illness.[15,16] The clinical potential of yoga as a self-control technique for improving and stabilizing affective states was studied by Harvey. In a three armed study, Harvey compared yogic breathing exercises with two control groups (a course on the philosophy of meditation and a course in psychology) and demonstrated that yogic breathing exercises showed an improvement in mood and vigor as well as decreased tension, fatigue, and depression relative to subjects in control groups.[17] The mood benefits of Hatha yoga and swimming compared in college students showed that yoga was as effective as swimming in decreasing anxiety, confusion, tension and depression, and that the acute decreases after yoga were significantly greater than after swimming for men who were personally selected to participate.[18] Similar results have also been noted in psychiatric patients with a reduction in negative emotions factor in Profile of Mood States, including tension-anxiety, depression- dejection, anger-hostility, fatigue-inertia, and confusion- bewilderment after yoga.[19] The verbal aggressiveness scale was also used to assess the response of basketball players to the verbal aggressiveness of the coaches which showed that male players were more affected than the female players.[20] Although there are several studies on the efficacy of yoga on different measures of emotional states, there are no studies on any measure of aggressive responses. Also there are no randomized control trials (RCTs) on the effect of yoga in comparison to PE in the same study. Hence, the aim of the current study was to investigate whether Yoga can provide benefits comparable to PE in reducing verbal aggressiveness in normal healthy adults.