Now Brian Fallon, MD, MPH, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the Center for Neuroinflammatory Disorders and Biobehavioral Medicine at Columbia University in New York City, is launching a study designed to help U.S.-based residents increase their personal resilience and coping strategies using well-known anxiety soothing techniques. The study, called “Meditation and Yoga for Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19,” will teach participants techniques including meditation, kundalini yoga, and anxiety reduction strategies, or some combination of those three. Fallon and his colleagues are testing whether daily meditation or daily kundalini yoga with anxiety reduction training confers a greater reduction in anxiety than anxiety reduction training alone. Dr. Fallon, who was designated a top doctor by Castle Connolly, a patient research and information resource, says the results of this study could be useful for people with types of anxiety other than that caused by the current global pandemic. The entire eight-week study will be conducted online, and is currently enrolling participants. The study is open to anyone who is 18 to 70 years old (including those who have previously been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder such as OCD, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety, or a simple phobia, as well as those who have never had an anxiety diagnosis) and has experienced mild to moderate anxiety related to COVID-19 (but has not been diagnosed with COVID-19). Find details about how to participate in the study on the ProofPilot website. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: kundalini yoga plus anxiety reduction, meditation plus anxiety reduction, or anxiety reduction alone. You do not need experience with yoga or meditation to enroll. RELATED: How to Handle Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19 Those in the kundalini yoga cohort will commit to doing a 35-minute yoga class every day for the duration of the study. The class is led by Charles Alexander, MD, a psychiatrist based in Southport, Connecticut, and Ghurucharan Singh Khalsa, PhD, a psychotherapist based in Aliso Viejo, California; both are trained meditation and kundalini yoga teachers. The yoga class includes light stretching, breathing, and meditation. RELATED: All About Hatha, Ashtanga, Kundalini, and Other Types of Yoga The people assigned to the meditation cohort will commit to a daily 15-minute meditation practice for the duration of the eight-week trial. The daily meditation training is taught by an instructor from Journey Meditation, a digital program. Both the meditation and the yoga programs are prerecorded so participants can listen when it’s convenient for them. People in the third group, as well as people in the yoga and meditation groups, will all receive reading material about topics such as “anxiety versus worry” and “causes of insomnia and how to improve it” (they’ll receive material on a new topic every two weeks). The reading material will include a lesson plan with information about how to use cognitive behavioral changes for stress reduction and will take approximately 30 minutes to read. Participants will be instructed to read the material several times over the course of the two weeks. At the end of the study, all participants will be given a free eight-week subscription to the Journey LIVE Meditation App. “[Our hope is] that nearly all participants will benefit from the study as they all will be getting trained in methods of anxiety reduction using cognitive behavioral therapy strategies that are known to be effective in reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia,” says Fallon. He says he and his team conceived of the study because of the tremendous need for everyone to learn the best coping skills to deal with the current major stressors. To demonstrate the improvement over time, Fallon’s team will measure the change in anxiety, depression, insomnia, and cognition as well as participants’ self-reported quality of life. While there have been many studies about the effect a daily meditation practice can have on wellness, kundalini yoga has not been as well studied, Fallon says. RELATED: What We Know About the Health Benefits of Practicing Yoga “Kundalini yoga integrates movement, meditation, and breathing,” he says. And there’s evidence suggesting it may help reduce anxiety. A study published in April 2018 in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy found that kundalini yoga may help people previously diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder manage their symptoms. The spread of COVID-19 and the anxiety that goes along with it — anxiety related to job losses, financial stress, disruptions in everyday life, loss of a loved one, uncertainty about when things will return to “normal” — could trigger increased despair, insomnia, depression, and suicidal thoughts, Fallon says. “We hope to demonstrate that brief, easily accessible, internet-based interventions that can be widely disseminated can be helpful to improve coping skills and reduce anxiety in the context of a large-scale public health crisis,” Fallon says. The trial will also help Fallon and his colleagues understand if this type of lower-intensity anxiety reduction training is feasible in the context of a national crisis, he explains. “Because the training is primarily self-driven and not dependent on contact with therapists or trainers, it is low cost and easy to disseminate. If we are able to show benefit from this approach, then it could be a very useful cost-effective tool for future widespread public health crises or natural disasters.”
