Effect of kapalabhati on performance of six-letter cancellation and digit letter substitution task in adults.

BACKGROUND: Attention and concentration are valuable skills for all fields of human activity. Training to improve these skills is described in ancient hatha yoga texts. AIMS: To study the effect of 1-min Kapalabhati (KB1) and 5-min Kapalabhati (KB5) practice of the Yoga rapid breathing exercise, Kapalabhati (KB), on psychomotor performance, as measured by the six-letter cancellation task (SLCT) and digit-letter substitution task (DLST). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-six subjects, 21 male (mean age 25.71 years, SD 2.10), 15 female (mean age 24.13 years, SD 2.23) participated in the study. All were participating in a 3-month pranayama training program, part of residential degree courses at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Yoga University. The subjects were divided into two groups, and assessed on the SLCT and DLST, immediately before and after KB on two successive days. The first group did KB1 on day 1, and KB5 on day 2. For the second group, the order was reversed. RESULTS: There were no significant differences on SLCT and DLST on Total and Net Scores between sessions for the same group, and between groups for the same session i.e. the effects of KB1 and KB5 were not distinguishable. However, both groups made more errors on DLST after the interventions, 525% after KB1 and 562.5% after KB5, P < 0.018 and P < 0.041, respectively (Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test). In contrast, scores on SLCT remained completely unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Both KB1 and KB5 found no change on both SLCT and DLST. But, this kind of breathing practices leads to increases error score.