Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Requesting a favor

I'm currently working on my MA in International Education (IE). One of my personal goals for this program has been to find a way to integrate my yoga with my IE background. I'm excited that I am finally conceptualizing a way to do this through my final project. My initial idea is to create a program that will integrate yoga techniques with a view to helping students cope with stress from culture shock and exams in an international education project. As this develops, I may decide to do a research study instead of designing a program; I'm not yet sure what final form this project will take.

For the time being, I'm doing a small study with American college students for one of my classes in order to begin to explore some of these ideas. The aim of the study is to investigate how college students use techniques and practices learned in yoga classes outside of class in order to cope with stressful situations. There's lots of research that suggests that yoga does have both short-term and long-term effects on stress (something which yogis know intuitively) but little to no work has been done on how students use specific practices such as pranayama. This is something I've become very interested in in my own practice and would love to explore formally.

For my current study, all I require is college students who also study yoga - preferably at their college but I would also accept participants who study yoga off-campus. Participants will simply have to respond to a two-page questionnaire, which should take no more than ten minutes. I'm looking for students who study in the US, although they do not have to be Americans. I would consider participants who study in Canada. I'm having great difficulty finding participants because it's summer, and my study is in danger of being a total failure. Please help!

I'm hoping someone will see this post who teaches at a college, studies at a college, or otherwise has contacts with people who would fit my participant requirements. Please e-mail me at dragonflyspirit35@gmail.com if you think you can help.

2 comments:

-into+ said...

Rachel! I would be happy to participate. I have been practicing yoga since I was ten years old but do it on my own now. I start school in September. Let me know if this qualifies. Stephanie

dragonfly said...

Thanks so much for your offer, Stephanie. I think I do need people who have already been taking college classes and doing yoga together. I appreciate your willingness to help though. :)