Immediate Effect of Gayatri Mantra chanting on Attention in School Students

Abstract

Background Attention one of the component to enhance the academic excellence. The traditional techniques were included in the Indian education system to develop their mental faculty which will be adding value to academic institutions. Aim The aim was to evaluate the effects of Gäyatré mantra chanting on attention as measured by Digit Letter Substitution Task (DLST) . Materials and Methods Subjects consisted of 60 school students included (boys = 30 and girls = 30) in the age range of 12-14 years, who were trained for chanting gäyatré mantra for 5 days. They were assessed on DLST immediately before and after two sessions (i) gäyatré mantra chanting (10 minutes) (ii) Poem line recitation with an equal time (10 minutes) period. Fifty percent of participants performed gäyatré mantra chanting and remaining on the Poem line recitation on Day-1. The order of the sessions were reversed on Day-2. Results Both sessions showed significant improvement in the total and net score of DLST. The magnitude of net score improvement was greater after GM (21.67%) compared to PL (4.85%). Conclusion Both GM and PL led to improvement in performance, as assessed by DLST. But the influence of GM had significantly higher than PL. Key words: gm, mantra, atttention