Yoga practicing medical and nursing students creating a ripple effect: An experience from a Government teaching institution

Abstract

Yoga is scientifically validated health promotion intervention developed thousands of years ago in India. It is helpful in improving attention, memory and learning efficacy of students along with reduced incidence of depression and anxiety. Introducing yoga in medical curriculum will not only improve the health of students, it will also make them advocates of the same for their patients in future.1. To identify the students who are practicing yoga in medical and nursing college and assess the perceived benefits of yoga practice; 2. To use yoga practicing students to create a ripple effect in the institution for yoga awareness and practice; 3. To incorporate yoga module in the Competency Based Medical Education curriculum(CBME).Interventional study among all medical and nursing students. Started with a pre tested questionnaire. Descriptive statistics is used for analysis of data with Epi-Info7software.Yoga practicing students were motivated to influence the freshers to adopt yoga(Ripple effect).Among 200 students 83 yoga practicing students were selected as study subjects. Among them 38% of them are practicing for more than 1 year and 25% of them for less than 1 month. 78% of students favorably perceived the health benefits of yoga. Sensitization program had influenced the students positively.Students were aware of the importance of Yoga and all of them perceived some benefits by Yoga practice. Using yoga practicing student volunteers to create ripple effect is a novel method to spread awareness and practice.