Ancient science of yogic life for academic excellence in university students

BACKGROUND: Academic excellence is essential to provide opportunities for students to work together to improve their understanding of concepts in their academic core. Academic excellence helps students to teach problem-solving and collaborative learning strategies. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess Guna (personality traits) in students undergoing Yoga Instructor's Course (YIC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: In all, 68 YIC students with a mean age of 28.03 ± 9.38 years participated in this single group pre–post study. The Personality Inventory data were collected before (pre) and after (post) the YIC. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Means, standard deviations, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used for analyzing the data with the help of SPSS 16. RESULTS: The data analysis showed 11.33% decrease (P < 0.01) in Tamas Guna (dull personality trait), 0.68% decrease (P =0.819) in Rajas Guna (violent personality trait), and 10.34% increase (P <0.01) in Sattva Guna (balanced personality trait) scores. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that YIC can result in the improvement of Sattva Guna (balance personality trait) among students, thus paving the way for their academic excellence.