The Relation of Attachment to God with Spirituality among Yoga Practitioners

Context: Attachment to God and Spirituality are the topic for great concern among Yoga practitioners. Hall, Fujikava, Halcrow and Hill (2009) suggested that attachment to God and Implicit spiritual knowledge were related with each other. The present investigation is an effort to study the relation of attachment to God with Spirituality among Yoga practitioners. For this purpose yoga practitioners (N=60) with age ranging from 35 to 60 years were selected as sample from the various Yoga Training Centres and Institutions of Delhi NCR. For assessing attachment to God, Attachment to God Inventory (AGI) given by Beck and McDonald was employed and for assessing spirituality, Spirituality Scale (SS) developed by Hadart et al was used. Results of the present study were analysed using Pearson-r correlation. The main finding of the current investigation is that there is no significant correlation any of the dimensions of attachment to God and spirituality except anxious attachment to God (dimension of attachment to God) and belief in God (dimension of spirituality), which are negatively correlated (r=.276) at 0.05 level. The study has important implications for intervention programs.

, and of one's relationship with God as more stable and emotionally close (Hall & Edwards, 2002). In addition, retrospective reports of secure attachment history have been associated with higher levels of orthodox Christian beliefs (Merck & Johnson, 1995). Two recent studies found evidence directly supporting correspondence between anxious attachment in romantic relationships and anxious attachment to God (Beck & McDonald, 2004;Rowatt& Kirkpatrick, 2002).

Spirituality
Spirituality is a complex multidimensional concept (Cook 2004;Hill et al. 2000;George et al. 2000;Moberg, 2002). The concept confronts definite boundaries, which also applies to other latent constructs that are often used, such as character, well-being and mental health (Miller and Thoresen, 2003). Many definitions of spirituality have been proposed from various disciplines and perspectives. For example, spirituality has been described as "the way in which individuals realize and live their lives in view of their ultimate meaning and value" (Muldoon and King, 1995), as"search for sacred." (Snyder, 2007),as "a personal experience of the sacred" (Vaughan, 1991) and as "a quality that goes beyond religious connection, that struggles for inspirations, respect, amazement, meaning and purpose, even in those who do not have faith in any good." (Murray and Zenter, 1989).. It involves belief and obedience to a supreme power usually called God, who wheels the universe and the destiny of human beings. It involves the ways in which people accomplish what they embrace to be the purpose of their lives, a search for the meaning of life and a sense of connectedness to the universe. The universality of spirituality outspreads through faith and culture. At the same time, spirituality is very much personal and unusual to each individual. It is a divine world of human experience. Spirituality produces in man qualities such as affection, trustworthiness, tolerance, acceptance, and empathy, a sense of detachment, faith, and optimism. Of late, there are some reports which suggest that some areas of the brain, mainly the non-dominant one, are involved in the gratitude and accomplishment of spiritual values and experiences (Verghese, 2005). There is no single, widely-agreed definition of spirituality, (Koenig, 2012). Zinnbauer, Pargament and Scott (1999) described five studies in which various groups of individuals were asked to describe spirituality. They concluded that differences in the responses of the participants exceeded by far the similarities. McSherry and Cash (2004) even specified that we should accept that the word 'spirituality' has different meanings.
Yoga is the science of connecting soul to the super soul (God) and attachment to God shows the relationship between the God and the human beings, (Kumar, 2008). Spirituality may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity, personal growth or blissful experiences. So, the relationship between spirituality and attachment to God can be best studied among yoga practitioners. On the basis of the above literature, following objectives were framed: • To assess the dimensions of attachment to God (i.e. avoidant attachment to God and anxious attachment to god) and to assess the dimensions of spirituality (i.e. belief in God, search for meaning, mindfulness and feeling of security). • To explore the relationship between the attachment to God and Spirituality Based on above mentioned objectives, the hypotheses for the present research were as follows: • There would be a significant relationship between the dimensions of attachment to God i.e. avoidant attachment to God and anxious attachment to God and the dimensions of spirituality i.e. belief in God, search for meaning, mindfulness and feeling of security.

METHOD Sample
A total of 60 Yoga Practitioners age ranging from 35 to 60 years, contacted for present study. Sample was collected from different centres of Akhil Bhartiya Yoga Sansthan of Delhi and NCR.

Procedure:
For the purpose of proposed research data was collected from different centers of Akhil Bhartiya Yoga Sansthan of Delhi NCR. After rapport formation all required scales with instructions were administered on all the participants. The participants were informed that the information collected from them will be kept confidential and will be used only for the study of research purposes. The participants were asked to fill the questionnaires of attachment to God and spirituality.

Statistical Analysis:
Pearson r Product moment correlation has been used to analyse the data for the present study.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The present study was to find the relationship of attachment to God with spirituality in Yoga Practitioners (age 35-60) Obtained data were analysed by Pearson r Correlation. Results are being presented in the following tables:  Table 1 indicated that there is a significant negative correlation between avoidant attachment to God (dimension of attachment to God) and belief in God (dimension of spirituality), (r = -.276), which depicted that more the avoidant attachment to God the less would be the belief in God and vice versa.
There is no significant correlation between any other constructs of attachment to God and spirituality.