Crystal Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience - Article In Press

Abstract
Acceptance of unpleasant feelings can be useful for managing difficult emotions and improving psychological health. The study reported in this article was undertaken by Patanjali Yoga Research Centre, Kozhikode, Kerala State, India among a randomly selected sample of 100 yoga practitioners and 100 non-practitioners from Kerala using a questionnaire containing the measure of acceptance of unpleasant feelings, and the characteristics of yoga practitioners, namely, sex, age, marital status, whether they did yoga before joining the present yoga class at the yoga centre, and whether they have experienced health problems during the past six months. The results show that yoga practitioners are accepting unpleasant feelings more than non-practitioners, with statistically significant difference in their mean score for acceptance of unpleasant feelings. When compared to the non-practitioners, higher proportion of yoga practitioners have agreed to the items related to acceptance of unpleasant feelings. Statistical significance exists for the difference in mean score for acceptance of unpleasant feelings of yoga practitioners based on thei rsex, age and marital status. The probable reasons why male, elderly and married yoga practitioners are accepting unpleasant feelings more are mentioned. Whether the yoga practitioners did yoga before joining the present class in the yoga centre or not, and whether they experienced health problems or not during the past six months contribute to 67 % of the variation in the score for acceptance of unpleasant feelings of the yoga practitioners, with statistically significant F value. Those who had done yoga before got a comparatively higher mean score for acceptance of unpleasant feelings than those who had not done yoga before, and those who reported no health problems got a comparatively higher mean score than those reported slight health problems. It will be useful if, in addition to academic and research institutions, yoga centres also undertake studies on the beneficial health effects of yoga and transfer the useful results to people through various media. This can be expected to improve the adoption of these practices, which is especially relevant for a country like India, where the extent of adoption of yoga among people is not much at present.

Keywords
Acceptance, Unpleasant feelings, Yoga practitioners, Non-Practitioners