Empowerment Through Yoga: Alleviating Academic Stress and Examination Anxiety in Visually Impaired Secondary School Students

Abstract

Visual impairment hinders children’s neurological progress, markedly impacting their physical, psychological, social, and emotional health. Yoga counts to be a multifarious approach that holds the capacity to help children with visual impairment to cope with varied challenges. The presented research was conducted with an objective to study the role of yoga for alleviation of academic stress and examination anxiety of visually impaired secondary school children in Kolkata. Experimental method of research, specifically Non-Equivalent Control Group Design was used in the conduct of this research. A total of 160 visually impaired secondary school students were taken as sample while deploying Convenient Sampling Method along with Purposive Sampling Method. The period taken into account was of 8 weeks. The training program involved yogic prayer, asanas, pranayama and kriya. The study was conducted in a three-phase manner involving pre-test, training and post-test. Related criterion measures were selected to comprehend the impact of yoga, on academic stress and examination anxiety of the directed group under study. The results highlight a positive impact of yoga on visual impaired students. The intervention was found successful for diversified domains, specific under the presented study being reduction of academic stress and examination anxiety.