Systematic review to explore the effect of yoga on anxiety in adults

Abstract

Introduction: The National Health Service cannot chronically sustain the overwhelming demands being placed on it due to financial cuts, staff numbers and recent presence of Covid-19. As a result, anxiety levels are on the rise thus increasing the need for effective first-line treatment.
 Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the efficacy of yoga as a first-line treatment for anxiety. Previous systematic reviews have produced mixed results.
 Methodology: The inclusion criteria followed the PICO research statement. The population (P) were either healthy or diagnosed with anxiety and the intervention (I) was yoga. The comparison (C) was a control group, or CBT, or used a pre-and post-intervention design. The outcome (O) was the change in the level of anxiety post-intervention.
 Results and Discussion: After the review of 64 studies, 7 studies fit the inclusion criteria: four randomized controlled studies, one longitudinal study, and two pre- and post-intervention comparisons. All the studies included provided statistically significant results for the beneficial effect of yoga on anxiety.
 Conclusion: This study adds to preceding literature on the current anxiety levels of adults and the potential utility of yoga as a first-line treatment for self-management of anxiety levels. This review stresses the issue of heterogeneity, mode of yoga and calls for more robust randomised controlled trials to pioneer the subject matter to help, if not prevent, to slow down the rising cases of anxiety and ill mental health worldwide.

The effect of yin yoga intervention on state and trait anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…( 51 ) suggested, the results of their meta-analyses are mixed and often inconclusive because of the lack of rigorous research designs. However, another systematic review ( 53 ) found that yoga was effective regardless of the sample size or research design. Importantly, unlike other meta-analyses, this review article excluded such search terms as depression because anxiety and depression are frequently comorbid and studied together.…”

“…The credibility of the review by Laban-Sharman et al. ( 53 ) was increased by including studies with validated anxiety assessment scales, such as State–Trait Anxiety Inventory and similar rating scales. The only exception was a study by Simon et al.…”

Echoes of the Abhidamma in the Component Process Model of Emotion

“…Attempts to build bridges between Western and Buddhist psychology (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006) allowed the two systems to merge in the therapeutic arena (Shonin et al, 2014). Mindfulness, for instance, has shown e↵ects on the physiological correlates of psychological experiences (Gamaiunova et al, 2022;Morton et al, 2020), and has become a common tool in the therapeutic arsenal (Coelho et al, 2013;Gu et al, 2015;Kelly, 2023;Otani, 2023).A similar coalescence has occurred with yoga and psychotherapy (Laban-Sharman et al, 2023;Kang & Wittingham, 2010) in recent years. Yet modern psychology has remained visibly reluctant to consider ancient Eastern models of the mind in its theoretical development.…”