Yoga therapy for developing emotional intelligence in mid-life managers

BACKGROUND: Business executives’ lives have become a never-ending race against time, technology, and targets. This race creates tension, which leads to dissatisfaction and frustration and eventually manifests itself as psychological and physiological stress with mental and emotional drain. This modern lifestyle intensifies the stress leading to “excessive tension” and consequent deterioration in “executive efficiency”. OBJECTIVE: To assess emotional intelligent quotient (EQ) in managers undergoing yoga-based Self Management of Excessive Tension (SMET) program. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 72 managers participated in this study which is of “single group pre-post design.” The EQ test developed by Prof N. K. Chadha from University of Delhi was administered as pre and post the 5 days of SMET program. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Means, standard deviations, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The data analysis showed 72.02% significant increase (P<0.001) in EQ. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that participation in a SMET program was associated with improvement in EQ and may have implications for “executive efficiency.”