Adjunct yoga therapy: Influence on heart rate variability in major depressive disorder - A randomized controlled trial.

HRV is inversely proportional to severity of depression. Effect of 12-weeks adjunct yoga therapy on HRV in patients with MDD was assessed through a randomized controlled trial. Sixty-eight subjects (40 females) with mean age 31.58 ± 8.79 years, scoring ≥ 18 on HDRS were randomized to either (YG; n = 35) or (WG; n = 33). Linear mixed model analysis showed no significant difference between groups. On comparing change in mean percentage, substantial more decrease could be elicited only for LF/HF ratio in YG compared to WG, while being comparable for other variables across the groups. Findings suggest Yoga therapy may help in bringing parasympathetic dominance in patients with MDD.

Yoga Module for Somatoform Pain Disorders: Development, Content Validation, and Feasibility Testing.

BACKGROUND: Yoga practices have been found to be useful in chronic pain conditions but studies focussing specifically on somatoform pain disorders (SPDs) are limited. AIMS: Current study aims to develop and test the feasibility of a yoga program for patients with SPDs. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY: Athorough search of traditional and contemporary literature was performed with the objective of formulating a yoga program for reducing chronic non-specific pain and associated psychological distress. Content validity of the program was then determined by taking the opinion of 18 yoga experts (who had >5 years of experience in treating mental health disorders) using content validation ratio (CVR) through Lawshe's formula. The feasibility of the module was tested on 10 subjects diagnosed with SPDs as per the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) -10 criteria using standard scales. RESULTS: In the finalized module, 70.83% (34 out of 48 items) of the practices were retained along with the modifications as suggested by the experts. Two practices were not found to be feasible (Trikonasana and Shalabhasana) and hence were removed from the final module. A significant reduction in pain severity was observed in the subjects after practising the yoga module for 2 weeks. The content validity index for the whole module (average of all CVRs) was 0.55. CONCLUSIONS: Ayoga module was developed for SPD. The content validity of the module was found to be good. The module was found safe and potentially useful for reducing pain severity in patients with SPD. Future studies should test the efficacy of the developed program through a randomized controlled clinical trial.

Self-Esteem and Performance in Attentional Tasks in School Children after 4½ Months of Yoga.

INTRODUCTION: Physical activity is known to improve self-esteem of children. Low self-esteem causes distraction of attention which leads to decline in performance in attentional tasks. The performance of a child at school depends on multiple factors, a major factor being attention. Hence, the present study was designed to see (i) the effect 4½ months of yoga practice had on children's (a) performance in attentional tasks, (b) self-esteem and (ii) the correlation between yoga performance and (a) academic performance, (b) behavior with peers, (c) behavior with teachers, (d) punctuality, (e) participation in extra-curricular activities. METHODS: Participants were 116 children with group mean age ± standard deviation; 10.2 ± 0.6 years. We assessed them for (i) self-esteem using Indian Adaptation of Battle's Self Esteem Inventory for Children and (ii) performance in attentional tasks using two different tests, i.e., six letter cancellation test (SLCT) and digit letter substitution test (DLST) and (iii) the teacher's rating scale which analyzed the teacher's assessment of the children's academic performance, behavior with peers, behavior with teachers, punctuality, yoga practice, and participation in extracurricular activities on an analog scale, before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed with PASW (SPSS Statistics 24) using the t-test for paired data. RESULTS: There was a significant improvement in the scores of (i) SLCT (P < 0.001), (ii) DLST (P < 0.001), (iii) social self-esteem (P < 0.01), (iv) academic self-esteem (P < 0.001), and (v) total self-esteem (P < 0.001) after 60 min/day of yoga practice for 4½ months. Pearson correlation showed a positive correlation between yoga performance and the behavior with teachers (r = 0.221 and P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Yoga practice is beneficial for school children as it improves attention, concentration, memory, motor speed, and self-esteem (social, academic and total). In addition, improved yoga performance improves behavior with teachers, thus improving discipline in school.