Yoga practice in mental health – An innovative lowcost solution for the portuguese airforce

Melo, Filipe; Cabo, Carolina Alexandra; Espada, Mário C.; Fernandes, Orlando; Parraca, Jose A.; Santos, Sara

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/28916

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Autores

Melo, Filipe

Cabo, Carolina Alexandra

Resumo(s)

Background: Military aviation demands cognitive performance, emotional stability, and resilience under pressure (1). Yoga’s capacity to reduce stress and enhance mindfulness makes it a promising intervention for aviation pilots (2). Despite these potential benefits, research on yoga’s impact in military aviation re-mains limited. Purpose: This study investigates the incorporation of yoga into the training regimen of Portuguese military pilots for enhancing mindfulness, reducing stress and improving mental health. Methods: A randomized controlled trial with Portuguese Airforce pilots had the Control Group (n = 8), follow standard military aviation training, and the Intervention Group (n = 10), receive additional yoga training twice a week for 12 weeks. Cognitive/performance assessments included: Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (3); Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (4); Aviation Safety Attitude Scale (5); Risk Perception To Self (6); Trail Making Test (7). Data analysis used Jamovi v2.6.13. Results: Significant changes were found in FFMQ (Aware Actions and Non-Judgmental Inner Critic), MA-IA (Noticing, Attention Regulation, and Body Listening), ASAS (Self-Confidence, Risk Orientation, and Safety Orientation) and TMT (B) within the yoga group. Discussion: Significant improvements in mindfulness (FFMQ) and interoceptive awareness (MAIA) sug-gest that yoga fosters better self-regulation and stress management (8). Enhanced cognitive flexibility (TMTB) performance, highlights yoga’s potential to bolster decision-making under pressure. Gains in safe-ty-related attitudes paired with risk-related attitudes (ASAS) underscore yoga’s role in promoting calculat-ed-risk confident behaviour, critical for operational safety. Implementing yoga programs could yield wide-spread benefits, including better mental health among aviation pilots. Conclusion: This research offers a unique contribution: studying the hard-to-access population of military aviation pilots, due to security and workload constraints. Results could influence policymakers to imple-ment mandatory exercise programs, enhancing work safety, with low cost and minimally time-consuming interventions. These insights are also applicable to Airforce teams in other nations, commercial and civil aviation sectors, as well as high stress/high-performance sports.