Comparison of Bilateral Elbow Joint Position Sense (Error ) Between Yoga and Non Yoga Practitioners

Dr.Shirley Telles, Shreevidya Nagesh and
Naveen K.V,Shirley Telles Ph.D.,
Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation, # 19, K.G. Nagar,
Bangalore 560 019, India

Abstract: Yoga has been shown to improve balance and perceptual motor skills, but no study was done on joint position sense, an important factor for body equilibrium. The present study compares the effect of yoga group, who had minimum of one-year experience and non-yoga group on the bilateral elbow joint position sense in normal adults. The joint position sense errors of both elbow joints was measured in three angles, that is, 20 degree, 50 degree, and 120 degree using a kinesthesio-meter. 29 right-handed subjects were chosen out of 30 subjects in both pre-selected groups. Subjects of both groups were blind folded to avoid non-kinesthetic and visual clues and were assessed for similar angles of both yoga and non-yoga groups. The yoga group showed a significant decrease of 55 %, 44.7 % and 50.9 % in the absolute error of elbow joint position sense on the right hand for 20 degree, Right hand for 50 degree and left hand for 50 degree (p< 0.05, Mann Whitney - U test) compared to non- yoga practitioners.

Summary & Conclusion: Cerebral control of position sense appears to be lateralized as an association was demonstrated between contra-lateral lesion deficits of arm position sense inputs with damage to the right cerebral hemisphere (Vallor, Guarighia, Magnotti & Pizzamiglio, 1997). There was no significant difference between the errors on the right and left sides for the three angles tested for both groups, separately (Wilcoxon paired signed ranks test, p>.05). This suggested that in neither group was there a specific hemispheric bias for joint position sense, even though the practice of yoga has been previously reported to specifically influence right hemisphere functioning with reference to a spatial memory task (Naveen, Nagarathna, Nagendra, & Telles, 1997).