Telles Shirley, Vishwakarma Babita, Gupta Ram Kumar, Balkrishna Acharya
Department of Yoga Research, Patanjali Research Foundation, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India.
Med Sci Monit Basic Res. 2019 Apr 22;25:121-127. doi: 10.12659/MSMBR.914956.
BACKGROUND Yoga breathing techniques like high-frequency yoga breathing (HFYB) and breath awareness (BAW) have been associated with improved performance in the shape and size discrimination task. A PubMed search of the literature revealed that alternate-nostril breathing has been shown to improve performance in attention tasks, but the effect on tactile perception has not been studied. Hence, the present study was designed to assess the immediate effects of alternate-nostril yoga breathing (ANYB) compared to breath awareness on shape and size discrimination and state anxiety. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fifty healthy male volunteers ages 20-50 years (group mean ±S.D., 28.4±8.2 years) were recruited. Each participant was assessed in 3 sessions conducted on 3 separate days at the same time of day. The 3 sessions were (i) alternate-nostril yoga breathing (ANYB), (ii) breath awareness (BAW), and (iii) quiet sitting (QS), and the sequence of the sessions was randomly allocated. The shape and size discrimination task and state anxiety were assessed before and after all 3 sessions. Repeated measures analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) followed by post hoc tests for multiple comparisons, which were Bonferroni-adjusted, were performed to compare data before and after all 3 sessions using SPSS version 18.0. RESULTS The errors scores in the shape and size discrimination task showed a significant reduction after the ANYB session (p<0.001). A significant reduction was found in the level of state anxiety after breath awareness (p<0.05) and quiet sitting sessions (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS The present results suggest that ANYB: (i) improves performance in a task which requires perceptual sensitivity and focused attention, but (ii) does not reduce state anxiety following this task.
诸如高频瑜伽呼吸法（HFYB）和呼吸觉知（BAW）等瑜伽呼吸技巧已被证明与形状和大小辨别任务中的表现改善有关。对PubMed文献的检索显示，交替鼻孔呼吸已被证明能改善注意力任务的表现，但对触觉感知的影响尚未得到研究。因此，本研究旨在评估交替鼻孔瑜伽呼吸（ANYB）与呼吸觉知相比，对形状和大小辨别以及状态焦虑的即时影响。
招募了50名年龄在20至50岁之间的健康男性志愿者（组均值±标准差，28.4±8.2岁）。每位参与者在同一天的同一时间在3个不同的日子进行3次评估。这3次评估分别为：（i）交替鼻孔瑜伽呼吸（ANYB），（ii）呼吸觉知（BAW），以及（iii）安静静坐（QS），评估顺序随机分配。在所有3次评估前后，均对形状和大小辨别任务以及状态焦虑进行评估。使用SPSS 18.0版本进行重复测量方差分析（RM-ANOVA），随后进行经Bonferroni校正的多重比较事后检验，以比较所有3次评估前后的数据。
在ANYB评估后，形状和大小辨别任务中的错误分数显著降低（p<0.001）。在呼吸觉知（p<0.05）和安静静坐评估后（p<0.001），状态焦虑水平显著降低。
目前的结果表明，ANYB：（i）在需要感知敏感性和集中注意力的任务中能提高表现，但（ii）在此任务后并不能降低状态焦虑。
