Enhancing Physical Psychological and Cognitive Abilities of Elderly by Seated Yoga Exercise Program.

Abstract

This research consists purposes were 1. to develop a chair yoga exercise program for developing a chair yoga program suitable for the elderly and 2. to study the effect of chair-sitting yoga exercise program for the elderly. is quantitative research The research instruments were a hand grip strength meter, sit and reach test, Suanprung stress test 20 (SPST-20), and digit span task of memory. The participants consisted of fifty elderly volunteers who live in Ang Sila municipality, Chonburi province; they were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups using simple random sampling. Data were analyzed by repeated MANOVA and one-way MANOVA.The results revealed that 1) the developed program was suitable for enhancing physical, psychological, and cognitive abilities in the elderly and 2) after training, the hand grip strength, body flexibility, and short-term memory scores in experimental group exhibited a significant increase when compared to the scores before the experiment (p<.01) and that of the control group (p<.05). Moreover, the stress score in experimental group exhibited a significant decrease when compared to the scores before the experiment (p<.05) and that of the control group (p<.05). Therefore, seated yoga exercise program can improve physical, psychological, and cognitive abilities of elderly.