Associations of Yoga as a Mind-Body Exercise and Its Components with Spiritual and Subjective Well-Being: Cross-Sectional Evidence for Potential Distress Prevention.
Sports (Basel, Switzerland) January 4, 2026 Orsolya Cseh, Vera Klier, István Karsai et al.
Regular engagement in specific yoga components—āsanas, prāṇāyāma, relaxation, and meditation—is associated with higher spiritual well-being and subjective well-being. Among 335 Hungarian adults with an average of 10.2 years of yoga experience, all four components showed medium-sized positive effects on spiritual well-being and small but significant effects on subjective well-being. The strongest effects appeared in the Personal and Transcendental dimensions of spirituality. Weak to moderate positive correlations also linked subjective well-being with spiritual well-being factors. The findings suggest that practicing diverse yoga components regularly may support both spiritual connection and mental well-being, relevant for mental health promotion.