• Divya Kanchibhotla
• Anusha Anand
• Shashank Kulkarni
• Shweta Singh

Rural communities often have challenging life situations, which induce stress in their daily life. This stress often gets manifested in the form of suicides, alcohol dependency, substance abuse, violence, criminal tendencies among the young people. A comprehensive intervention technique is required to address multiple issues faced by rural people, especially the younger generation. Art of Living has a program called as Youth Leadership Training Program (YLTP) which addresses empowerment needs. This program consists of yoga and pranayama, stress busting techniques like Sudarshan Kriya and such processes which make a youth to develop positive attitude and makes him fairly confident to face multifaceted challenges thrown by the society. The present study examined the impact of yoga based empowerment program on stress and mental well being of rural Indian population. Total 992 rural youths participated in this observational study. All the participants attended 8 days Youth Leadership Training Program (YLTP) in different years and at different places in India. They were then invited to an YLTP retreat at the Art of Living International Center. At the time of retreat participants were asked how they perceived stress before doing YLTP program and how they perceived stress after doing YLTP program. The impact of the empowerment program was observed on individual’s perceived stress using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen, 1988). The questionnaire was administered in the YLTP retreat held in Art of Living International Center, Bangalore. Significant results clearly demonstrate that by YLTP program, a reduction in stress level can be obtained.

Rural Community, Perceived Stress, Youth Leadership Program

"Yoga based Leadership Program and Perceived Stress level of Rural Youth", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 12, page no.754-758, December-2018, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1812198.pdf

"Yoga based Leadership Program and Perceived Stress level of Rural Youth", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 12, page no. pp754-758, December-2018, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1812198.pdf