Yoga improves attention and self-esteem in underprivileged girl student

BACKGROUND: A student under optimal stress does bring out his or her best; however, extreme stress can result in mental health problems and deteriorates their academic performance. Students who esteem themselves low are most likely to engage in destructive and self-destructive behaviors. Moreover, excessive stress is harmful to academic performance and may lead to dropping out in student. Can Yoga be of benefit in students for improving their attention and self-esteem (SE)? OBJECTIVE: To assess attention and SE in girls undergoing Integrated Yoga Module (IYM). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty low-income high school girls with 15.17 + 0.64 years of mean age participated in this single group pre-post study. The data was collected before and after 5 days of IYM. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Means, standard deviations, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyze the data with the help of SPSS 16. RESULTS: The data analysis showed 9.04% increase (P = 0.001) in SE scores, whereas d2 test for attention revealed 10.12% increase (P < 0.001) in total number of symbols processed scores and 44.73% decrease (P < 0.001) in total number of errors. CONCLUSION: The present study suggests that of IYM can result in improvement of attention and SE among students and thereby enhancing their mental health and can help them in improving their academic achievement. Efforts aimed at reducing mental health problems among students may focus more on implementing effective and culturally acceptable interventions, such as Yoga, counseling, and social support. Additional well-designed studies are needed before a strong recommendation can be made.