Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemYoga Pathways to Wellbeing: Exploring Conceptualisations, Profiles and Mechanisms in Regular Ashtanga Yoga Practitioners( 2023-05)Yoga is an embodied practice founded in philosophical frameworks intended for the evolution of different dimensions of human existence and optimal functioning. With a solid body of research demonstrating its positive impact on health and wellbeing, recent studies mostly using quantitative methods have shifted their focus to understand practitioners’ characteristics and the mechanisms yielding positive benefits. This thesis adds to these studies by exploring the pathways of yoga towards wellbeing by understanding how an international sample of regular practitioners within the Ashtanga Yoga (AY) tradition conceptualise wellbeing and yoga, examining differences and similarities in their wellbeing and yoga profiles, and understanding the mechanisms of yoga from their lived experience of a developing a long-term practice. Guided by a social constructivist epistemology and interweaving Reflexive Thematic Analysis and Cluster Analysis, this predominately qualitative mixed-methods research comprises five studies using data from an online survey and semi-structured interviews to gain in-depth analysis of yoga, wellbeing, and their inter-relationships. While the first three studies were designed to understand how regular AY practitioners conceptualised wellbeing and yoga, the two subsequent studies focused on understanding the characteristics of practitioners and the pathways that their yoga practice paved towards wellbeing. Wellbeing was conceptualised as embodied, multidimensional, integrated, holistic, and dynamic, being experienced and perceived by the self as a whole. Wellbeing outcomes experienced in one dimension of the individual (i.e., physical, emotional, psychological, social, spiritual) were seen as permeating into other dimensions and in dynamic interaction with one another. Yoga was conceptualised as an evolving system interweaving philosophical and practical components, and in close relation to health and wellbeing. Yoga was represented as a formal practice, as a lifestyle and a way of seeing the world, which could be further used as a path for self-inquiry and for spiritual development. The pathways of yoga towards wellbeing were varied across regular AY practitioners. While practitioners shared some common characteristics, including high levels of perceived health and wellbeing, mindfulness, compassion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness, they also varied in their engagement with the AY practice. The pathways towards wellbeing involved different levels of engagement with different components of the AY system (e.g., breathing, philosophical framework), in addition to experiencing increased autonomy and awareness through the AY method (i.e., way of teaching/learning), and the integration of mechanisms across neurophysiological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal domains. These findings suggest that AY can cater to different individuals, providing autonomy in ways of engaging with the practice over time, activating various pathways leading to wellbeing outcomes involving neurophysiological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal elements and processes. Two conceptual models emerged from this thesis: a conceptual model of human functioning and wellbeing, and a conceptual model of the pathways of AY towards wellbeing. Together, these models articulate how a regular yoga practice can permeate into every dimension of human existence, yielding wellbeing benefits within the self and in relation to others. The ability to navigate through different levels of individual functioning, (i.e., from coping, to personal growth, to transcendence) in an embodied and regulated manner can ultimately translate into a sense of integrated self, which is attuned to oneself, to others, and to the world around them. Overall, the thesis underscores the relevance of incorporating an embodied, holistic, transdisciplinary, and systems lens into wellbeing research, theory, and practice, as well as moving from purely cognitive wellbeing interventions to embodied and holistic ongoing practices and lifestyles that can lead to sustained intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal wellbeing outcomes.