Three ways to prevent lockdown anxiety
Depending on where you live, the lockdowns have been enforced for several months by now. Besides the simple cabin fever of being at home and disconnected from our normal social networks, there is the uncertainty about jobs, the economy, and when treatments and vaccines might be available. Here are three methods you can use daily to fight back the COVID-19 related lockdown anxiety: breathing exercises, mindfulness meditation, and of course exercise such as home workouts.
#1: Breathing Exercises
Breathing is a vital part of human life. It is the only bodily function under both autonomous and voluntary control. This means the process of inhaling air into our lungs and exhaling it is controlled by your body’s autonomic nervous system and therefore does not require active thinking or conscious effort from you – yet you are able to step in and control your breathing whenever you like.
Breathing can be done anywhere, anytime. Well, we actually do it literally all the time, but taking a moment of conscious deep breathing can make change your mental state in a moment.
Regular deep breathing helps us manage our stress levels as it allows us to consciously trigger our parasympathetic nervous system, switching our body to “rest and digest” mode. The physical processes taking place in a “rest and digest” mode are designed to maintain your long-term health, improve your digestion, conserve energy, and maintain a healthy balance in your body’s systems.
When we get stressed for any reason, our body's sympathetic nervous system is activated due to the sudden release of hormones, and the body will switch to a “fight or flight” mode. The overall effect is that our body speeds up, tenses up and becomes generally very alert – our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and blood glucose levels will increase, our pupils dilate, our muscles will tense up, and nonessential systems such as digestion will be shut down. This all prepares our body to either stay and deal with a threat or to run away to safety.
Breathing is a fantastic tool against stress and anxiety, because you can do it anytime, anywhere. The Apple Watch does a good job integrating a regular breathing break with their 2-minute Breath app, but you can just set a timer to remind you on your phone. Similarly, if at any time during the day you start feeling a little worse, you can do a quick exercise to calm your nerves. You can totally do it during a Zoom call, just mute your mic first!
Read more: The Science of Breathing (incl. 7 breathing programs you can try!)
1:2 breathing / The long exhale
This practice focuses on relaxing your nervous system. Use it to destress and get your body into a parasympathetic rest & digest bias or right before bedtime to help you fall asleep.
How: Exhale at a duration twice as long as you inhale – for example breathe in for 5 seconds, and then exhale for 10 seconds.
Apps: Healthzilla
Equal breathing / Circular breathing / Sama Vritti breathing
This breathing technique focuses on making your inhales and exhales the same length for improved balance and equanimity. Use it to take your mind off the racing thoughts or whatever might be distracting you.
How: Exhale at the same duration as you inhale – for example, breathe in for 5 seconds, and then exhale for 5 seconds. Aim to find a breath length that is not too easy and not too difficult – usually, this is between 3 and 5 counts.
Apps: Apple Watch breathing app
4-7-8 Breathing / Relaxing breathing
This method aims to reduce anxiety and help you fall asleep. It has been called “a natural tranquilizer for the nervous system,” by Dr. Andrew Weil, a celebrity doctor and the founder and director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.
How: Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds.
Apps: Oak
#2: Mindfulness Meditation
Currently the most popular form of meditation is mindfulness meditation. Unlike mantra-based meditation, the intention here isn’t to escape and avoid thoughts through focus. Instead, the aim is to be mindful of the entire conscious experience which includes thoughts, emotions, physical sensations of the body, sight, sounds, etc.. The aim is to learn to separate these as appearances in the raw stream of conscious experience, helping the practitioner to distance their sense of self from these experiences.
Combining meditation, a bit of sunlight and fresh air can be turn a bad day into something better. Don’t overthink it, keep it casual.
Stress is simply the way your brain reacts to negative external stimuli. You perceive threats and ruminate over the past. The bad news is that stress response cascades into your body wreaking havoc through cortisol, insulin, and oxidative stress. The good news is that meditation can directly alter the link between external stimuli and the internal reaction. [study link 1, study link 2]
Read more: The Science of Meditation
Guided Meditation
Most beginners should start with guided meditation audio. Typically these are around 10 minutes in length to fit into busy schedules. The expert guidance will help get over the hump of sitting restlessly with eyes closed, and allows gradual progression and development of key skills of meditation practice.
Unguided Meditation
Seasoned meditators and even beginners can choose to explore and develop their skills independently through simple timers from 10 to 60 minutes at a time. Often these timers would include intermittent audio cues to help the practitioner keep focused on the task at hand. Healthzilla includes an unguided meditation timer with gongs as audio cues.
TIP: A specific exercise you can try during unguided meditation is to focus on your chest area. Often negative emotions such as anxiety can be sensed as a tightness around your chest. Simply focusing your attention there while breathing can help relieve your symptoms in just a few minutes! As Sam Harris has said, that which is aware of restlessness is not restless. These negative feelings are just patterns of chemicals in your body and brain. You can separate your conscious experience from them to gain some perspective and distance.
#3: Exercise and Home Workouts
Have you ever heard of “runner’s high”? There’s a release of hormones called endorphins which can happen during exercise, physically forcing you into a happier state. Many common forms of exercise have been studied extensively for decades, driven by competitive sports. The story is consistent: exercise makes you happy. Any type of exercise, and any amount of exercise is better than nothing.
Moderate exercise such as treadmill walking is enough to trigger positive changes in stress hormones in just a few weeks [study link].
Both Cardio and Strength Training have been even used to treat patients with clinical depression, with significant improvements in symptoms [study link].
Even a little exercise is better than nothing, as exercise is an effective treatment for symptoms of depression [study link].
If you want to kick it up a notch, you can find fun ways to make use of the urban setting around you. Benches, gates, fences, and hand rails can double as makeshift exercise equipment!
Full Body Workouts at Home
Here are a few types of strength workouts you can try at home, with no equipment needed at all.
Explosive Strength Training:
The idea here is to focus on short, explosive muscle contractions. You’re not trying to struggle against gravity here. That also means that you may need to adjust the exercises, to make sure you can do them explosively instead of barely at all.
Exercises: jump squats, drop pushups, fast pulls from bar or table.
Sets: 5 rounds circuit, no rest in between. Switch between exercises after each set of 3 explosive reps. After each complete round, you can also choose to do a quick sprint or stair climb, if available.
Extreme Isometric Strength Training:
These are the familiar bodyweight exercises you know, but just done as a static hold. For each exercise, you should find the bottom part of the motion and stay there with arms/legs at a 90 degree angle. WHEN you fail, you just shake it off and go back to the same position. Even if that happens every 10 seconds, just stick to it. Embrace the burn!
Exercises: lunges, pushups, hangs from bar or table.
Sets: 1 round circuit, short rest in between. You just do one “rep” for each exercise, it just takes 5 minutes for one rep.
Super Slow Strength Training:
Since the focus is on slow movement, bodyweight exercises work very well. You will only do a single set for each exercise, moving the weights very slowly back and forth in a continuous motion. You will keep moving until you simply cannot move against the resistance any longer. Shaking will ensue. Usually that would be around 5-10 reps, ideally less than 2 minutes. IF you feel like you can keep going, try a harder variation!
Exercises: lunges, pushups, hangs from bar or table.
Sets: 1 round circuit, no rest in between. Each rep is 10 seconds down, 10 seconds up.
Mobility Training:
Last but not least, mobility is what keeps you in the game. Without mobility, you will learn poor movement patterns, ruin your joints, and simply stop exercising in middle age like most people. Yes, some have great genes allowing them to smoke cigars and play tennis into old age, but everyone else has to work hard to keep our bodies functional for the longterm.
Cardio workouts: running or stairs
If you’re allowed to actually go outside, this can be a huge bonus to alleviate cabin fever. Nevertheless, even if you’re stuck in a stairwell or just at home, you can try different cardio modalities to keep it interesting, and keep those endorphins flowing!
High Intensity Interval Training:
Without a treadmill, you’ll just have to feel it out. Run at a rate you can sustain for 4 minutes, which is definitely more than a light jog! You should be at your max heart rate by the end of each set. Don’t sit down between sets, keep walking for active rest.
Sets: 4 x 4 minutes @ 90% speed, 4 mins active rest between sets.
Outside: Running in the best scenery you can find!
Home: Assuming you can’t run even in a yard, you can do light bodyweight exercises like knee raises, jumping jacks, and air squats. Just keep rotating exercises to keep it fun! Stairs can be a good alternative in apartment buildings.
Zone 2 Cardio:
Zone 2 refers to the heart rate zones used by many apps and wearables. Some calculate that based on age, others allow you to set them manually. Generally, Zone 2 is where you’re still able to hold a conversation with yourself, approx. 130-140 bpm for most people.
Sets: 60 minutes steady state.
Outside: Running in the best scenery you can find!
Home: Assuming you can’t run even in a yard, you can do light bodyweight exercises like knee raises, jumping jacks, and air squats. Just keep rotating exercises to keep it fun!