Impact of meditation on state trait anxiety of teachers

Abstract

Teachers face rising pressure in their job: In a connected, computerized world all information’s can be found one click away in the internet, all achievements can be compared, there is a rising competition among the students and among the schools, students get more and more demanding and challenging for the teachers. The aim of present study is to find out, if the anxiety level differs between teachers that practice meditation and those who do not. To select the samples the purposive sampling method was used. The sample included 60 government school teachers, 35 male and 25 female, East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh state in India. Among them 30 meditative teachers, who are practicing Sahaja Yoga meditation about 10 years and more and 30 non-meditative teachers. Age of the subjects ranged from 35 to 59 years. The data was collected through State Trait Anxiety Test, in a questionnaire method. SPSS statistic software was used for the interpretation of the data and the statistical tools mean, Standard Deviation and T-Value and t-ratio were employed at .05 level confidence. The statistical analysis shows that there exists significant difference on anxiety level among meditative teachers and non-meditative teachers. Moreover both state and trait anxiety level of non-meditative teachers is higher than meditative teachers. Keeping this in view, it can be concluded that Sahaja Yoga Meditation practice helps the teachers to overcome their anxiety level and hence it can be used as a therapeutic technique for teachers to keep their mental health peaceful and balanced.