EFFECT OF VARIOUS YOGIC INTERVENTION STRATEGIES ON BODY IMAGE OF HOMEMAKERS

Dr. Sanjib Kumar Bhowmik and Prof. Manika Debnath

 Abstract

Many women are excessively concerned about their body image and tend to have low body esteem because they believe themselves to be overweight. Books, films, TV, and popular magazines (especially women’s magazines) consistently send messages that our society esteems thin women and disdains heavy ones. Whereas maintaining appropriate body size is associated with good health, attempting to achieve an unrealistic ideal of slimness is oppressive to many women. Failure to meet unrealistic standards leads many women to judge themselves as unattractive and lowers their self-esteem. The word “Yoga” means “union”. Yoga is a form of practices based on belief that the body and breath are intimately connected with the mind. By controlling the breath and holding the body in steady poses or asanas, yoga creates harmony. Yoga practices consist of proper breathing, proper asana, proper relaxation, proper diet, positive thinking and meditation. The asanas are designed to ease tensed muscle to tone up the internal organs and to improve the flexibility of the body’s joints and ligaments. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of various yogic intervention strategies on body image of homemakers. The subjects were 50 upper middle class homemakers from Gwalior city. The age of the subject range between 35 – 45 years. The subjects were equally assigned to random sampling procedure into two groups, i.e. experimental group and control group. The experimental group participated in practices of various yogic intervention strategies programme. The duration of the training programme was three months. Marilou Bruchon- Schweitzer’s Body Image questionnaire (19 questions) was administered in the beginning and at the end of every month to obtain data. Training was given 5 days in a week; each session scheduled for one hour. The significance of mean difference between the pre-test and post-test means of body image was analysed using ANCOVA. Further trend analysis was used to see the trend effect. The level of significance chosen was 0.05. The experimental group showed significant improvement as a result of training programme of various yogic intervention strategies, whereas control group did not show any significant improvement.

Keywords: Body Image, Homemakers and Yogic Intervention Strategies.