Effect of Yoga on Adolescents’ Beliefs about Aggression and Alternatives

Introduction: While the adolescents are trying to adapt to changing life styles and emerging challenges, they are also becoming increasingly aggressive/violent. This is largely attributable to increased competition, stress, and anxiety, besides poor parenting methods. Several studies seek to understand the causes for this delinquency and search for preventive interventions. Indian traditional texts claim that yoga is one of the important preventive interventions. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of yoga in addressing the non-clinical adolescents’ beliefs about aggression and alternatives compared to physical exercises (PE). Materials and Methods: One hundred and fifty eight normal healthy adolescents participated in this ‘Randomized Control Trial’ design study (Yoga: 76, aged 14.03±1.00 years; PE: 82, aged 14.06 +/- 1.03 years). Yoga/PE intervention was for one hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks. Adolescents’ ‘beliefs about aggression and alternatives’ were measured using ‘beliefs about aggression and alternatives scale’ developed by Multisite violence prevention project (2004). Data analysis was done using SPSS 21.0. Results: Yoga practitioners significantly decreased their overall beliefs supporting aggression (p<.05) and significantly increased their beliefs favoring alternatives to aggression (p<.05), compared to PE practitioners. Conclusion: Four weeks yoga practice significantly reduces the adolescents’ beliefs supporting aggression and increases their beliefs supporting alternatives to aggression compared to PE.