EFFECTS OF YOGA COMBINED WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION ON PERSONALITY AMONG SCHOOL BOYS

Personality traits are long lasting personal characteristics that influence the one’s perception and thoughts and guide actions under various conditions. The present study a imed to investigate the effect of yoga with psychological intervention on personality of students in the age group of 11 to 13 years. For the purpose of investigation 120 students from 6th, 7th and 8th standards from two different schools were randomly ass igned into experimental group (n - 60) and control group (n - 60). In the Pre - post control design, the experimental group was exposed to yoga with psychological intervention to improve their personality traits. The control group was not exposed to the training for the entire period. The teachers rated the School Behavior Checklist for the children (SCHOBL) at before, after and follow up assessments of both groups, besides collecting socio demographic variables. The intervention focused on enhancing their person ality traits such as extraversion, attitude towards school work, agreeableness, emotional stability and openness of the students. The yoga intervention was conducted for a period of six months covering a total of 40 sessions. The psychological approach inc luded counseling sessions which were conducted one to one and one to group for taking right decisions. The results have shown that the experimental group had significantly high scores on personality such as extraversion, attitude towards school work, agree ableness, and emotional stability when compared to the control group. The experimental group maintained the effectiveness and had significant changes in overall score of the scale at follow - up assessment. The yoga combined with psychological intervention is effective in increasing the personality of school going students.