Yoga and emotional well-being: A heuristic inquiry into the experience of women with a yoga practice.

摘要

This heuristic research study was completed to illuminate the rich and complex journey of the experience of having a consistent yoga practice and how this might affect one's overall emotional well-being. Yoga has been practiced for hundreds of years due to the physical, mental and spiritual benefits, and yet it is an area seriously lacking in research. Yoga's popularity has rapidly grown in the Western world over the past 30 years, with the concepts of mindfulness and meditation moving into the medical and behavioral health fields to help in healing physical and mental ailments. This popularity has inspired some research, but it has been limited. This heuristic research study assists in filling this gap. Through this journey, it became apparent that the practicing of yoga helped to increase overall life happiness and feelings of joy. Yoga also helped to increase the growth of coping mechanisms indirectly, which led to an increase in positive self-care and more positive reactions to others and stressful life situations. More specifically, the findings resulted in 5 general themes that distinguished certain aspects of the effects from the yoga phenomenon. The overreaching feelings of the thematic analysis were "peace", "calm", and "happiness". The study culminated with a creative synthesis, which led to the discovery of sense of connectedness to those who have a consistent yoga practice, and this realized feeling lends to a loss of disconnectedness or loneliness, which adds to the positive emotional well-being effect from have a yoga practice. The heuristic process are discussed, explored and the data is illuminated with the rich depth of detail that adds to the small body of research specific to the effects of yoga in both the psychology and medical fields of study. This includes suggestions for future research to aid in the development for a yoga theory on human emotions.