Relationship between Sattva and PERMA among Meditation Practitioners

Abstract

Meditation is known to foster a positive state of mind and promote psychological well-being. The present study was conducted with the purpose of exploring the relationship between Indian psychology and Positive psychology. An attempt was made to understand the relationship between the Sattva guna and Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework among meditation practitioners. For this purpose, a sample of 70 meditation practitioners consisting of 35 males and 35 females, was selected through convenience and snowball sampling methods. The Vedic Personality Inventory (Wolf, 1998) was used to measure the Sattva guna; and the PERMA Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) was used to measure the positive psychological variables, namely Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 30.0.0.0. Results showed significant positive correlation between Sattva and Positive emotions (r = .594, p <.001), Sattva and Relationships (r = .546, p <.001), Sattva and Meaning (r = .610, p <.001), and Sattva and Accomplishment (r = .603, p <.001). Sattva and Engagement did not show significant correlation (r = .202, p = .094). Linear regression analyses revealed that positive emotions, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment explain 38.8%, 32.6%, 41.8% and 39.4% variance in Sattva guna respectively. Meditation practitioners possess characteristics corresponding to a sattvic personality, experience positive emotions, are able to build and maintain positive interpersonal relationships, have a sense of direction and purpose in their lives, and are able to achieve higher levels of growth and success. This study highlights the positive relationship between Sattva guna and the dimensions of positive psychology in improving the psychological well-being of meditation practitioners.