Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of yoga posture, breathing and relaxation program on stress reduction with recognition that it is needed to develop and distribute effective stress management programs for irregular women workers. There were 45participants in experimental groups consisting of posture group(14 persons), breathing group(17 persons) and relaxation group(14 persons); they had total twenty sessions which are composed of one-hour session for ten weeks (two sessions per week). The control group for comparison were composed of 28 people. Measures were physical symptoms of stress,fatigue, stress response inventory for workers, and self-esteem scale, which were recorded three times; before and just after the programs and 5 weeks after programs completed. The major findings are as follows; the yoga posture group significantly reduced physical symptoms of stress and 3 factors (pain, physical fatigue, and depression) in comparison with control group. The yoga breathing group significantly reduced physical symptoms of stress,fatigue, stress response and 6 factors (gastrointestinal and cardiovascular factor, pain, physical fatigue, somatization, and depression) in comparison with control group. The yoga relaxation group significantly reduced physical symptoms of stress, fatigue, stress response and 4 factors (cardiovascular factor, pain, physical fatigue, and somatization) in comparison with control group. 3 experimental groups reported improvement of self-esteem but without statistical significance in comparison with control group. There is no significance in statistical differences among 3 experimental groups in relation to all the dependent variables. This study verified the effects of yoga to reduce stress. It was meaningful to verify a tendency that yoga breathing is more effective to reduce physical symptoms of stress and stress response,and yoga relaxation is more effective in reducing fatigue.