Effects of Pranayama Practices on Players at College Level

Sports participation and appreciation have become integral part of life. Competitive sports make tremendous demands on the physical conditioning, virtually, endurance and mental power of the participants. Only the finest can play to the best of their abilities. Each sport has its own pattern, muscle load, tempo and duration. Today the people of every country are more concerned with physical fitness than ever before as it has become the vital part of winning sports competition. Stresses always hamper the performance of an individual in sports competitions. Pranayama is the fourth limb and meditation is the seventh limb of ashtanga yoga. Its full significant has to be propery understood and appreciated. It consists of two components, pran and ayama. Pran is an essential living activity agent that works in the human body and makes the various function of the body possible. Since the stress is a main hurdle to the performance of sports men it shall be given higher priorty to be treated. The present paper attempt to examine effects of pranayama practices in reducing stress and other psychological distress among players at college level.