Development and Feasibility Testing of Krida Yoga Group Programme for In-patients of the Integrative Medicine Department, NIMHANS.

Background: Krida yoga, as a stand-alone intervention, has not been extensively researched in the field of mental health, especially for inpatients. Previous studies have been conducted on healthy populations and have included Krida yoga as the part of their overall yoga programme. Most of these yoga programs have reported improvements in various outcomes, such as stress, anxiety, physical health, and psychological wellbeing, with no negative effects, indicating that Krida yoga, along with other forms of yoga, is beneficial. In this context, the current study aimed to develop and test the feasibility of the Krida yoga group programme on stress and well-being of inpatients of the Department of Integrative Medicine, NIMHANS.

Methods: A sample of 30 inpatients having neurological and psychiatric conditions participated in a 15-day, thrice-weekly, 1-h Krida yoga programme conducted by the researcher, a certified yoga trainer. Tools such as the Perceived Stress Scale-14 (PSS-14) and WHO Well-being Scale (WHO-5) were used to assess the pre- and post-effects of the Krida yoga programme on days 0 and 15.

Results: Pre- and post-quantitative findings indicated a significant reduction in stress from 35.20 (5.51%) to 19.86 (3.9%) and an improvement in well-being from 9.36 (1.67%) to 15.93 (1.93%). Thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected from the inpatients supported the quantitative findings. The triangulated quantitative and qualitative findings suggested moderate to high feasibility of the Krida yoga group programme for inpatients in mental health settings.

Conclusion: Based on these results, it can be concluded that the Krida yoga programme is feasible to conduct and should be tested for its effectiveness in future randomized controlled trials.