Yoga for military service personnel with PTSD: A single arm study.

Abstract

This study evaluated the effects of yoga on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, resilience, and mindfulness in military personnel. Participants completing the yoga intervention were 12 current or former military personnel who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition-Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Results were also benchmarked against other military intervention studies of PTSD using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS; Blake et al., 2000) as an outcome measure. Results of within-subject analyses supported the study's primary hypothesis that yoga would reduce PTSD symptoms (d = 0.768; t = 2.822; p = .009) but did not support the hypothesis that yoga would significantly increase mindfulness (d = 0.392; t = -0.9500; p = .181) and resilience (d = 0.270; t = -1.220; p = .124) in this population. Benchmarking results indicated that, as compared with the aggregated treatment benchmark (d = 1.074) obtained from published clinical trials, the current study's treatment effect (d = 0.768) was visibly lower, and compared with the waitlist control benchmark (d = 0.156), the treatment effect in the current study was visibly higher.

Yoga research review

“…In a study on yoga with military service personnel the yoga group experienced a significantly greater reduction in PTSD symptoms than a waitlist control group [56]. Surprisingly, even Kundalini yoga has reduced PTSD symptoms including sleep disturbances, stress and anxiety [57].…”

Kripalu Yoga for Military Veterans With PTSD: A Randomized Trial

“…Recent studies including veterans (Stankovic, ; Carter et al., ; Staples, Hamilton, & Uddo, ; Mitchell et al., ; Johnston et al., ) suggested that yoga is feasible and acceptable as a PTSD treatment for military veterans, although outcome results did not consistently show significant changes in PTSD symptoms. Mitchell and colleagues () found that both civilian and veteran women randomized to yoga or assessment‐only control groups experienced significant reductions in reexperiencing symptoms.…”

“…These include improvements in self-regulation, including cognitive, emotional, and behavioral regulation (Gard, Noggle, Park, Vago, & Wilson, 2014;; interoceptive awareness (van der Kolk, 2006;van der Kolk et al, 2014;Schmalzl, Crane-Godreau, & Payne, 2014); and stress physiology (Riley & Park, 2015;Streeter, Gerbarg, Saper, Ciraulo, & Brown, 2012). Collectively through these mechanisms, yoga may reduce PTSD symptoms by decreasing physical tension, increasing relaxation, attenuating automatic thoughts (e.g., rumination) and behaviors (e.g., hyperarousal), and enhancing awareness and attitudes characterized by nonjudgment (Johnston et al, 2015). These changes may support trauma survivors' symptom management and negotiation of traumatic sequelae.…”

Trauma-Informed Yoga: An Embodied, Cognitive-Relational Framework

“…A growing trend is the use of yoga interventions as part of the PTSD recovery process [6,10,[15][16][17][18]. Studies have also examined yoga interventions for children and adolescents who have experienced various forms of trauma exposure in different regions of the world [19].…”