How Can Meditation Help Relieve Coronavirus Anxiety?

Behold, the natural uncertainty of life is now magnified! You may be anxious about catching the coronavirus, or worried about family and friends getting sick or dying. Perhaps you worry about the future of your community or of humanity. You may be also feeling overwhelmed by the constant news updates and a growing number of deaths.

While I’m taking reasonable precautions, I am personally not afraid of the coronavirus—as you read through this article, you will realize why.

This article was first published on Giovanni’s blog in March 2020 and is shared here with his permission.

Don’t Panic — Practice

This calamity is a great opportunity to take the skills and qualities you develop through meditation—such as serenity, equanimity and acceptance—and practice them in your daily life.

We can use this time to work on ourselves, grow as a person, meditate more and spend quality time with people we care about. It’s also a great time for reflection about what truly matters in our life.

Here are three principles to keep in mind.

1. Mindful Preparedness

We need to be careful, but not to panic.

Let’s be careful about our hygiene, our health, and let’s avoid non-essential contact with people and gatherings. These are all concrete steps we can take—but we don’t need to panic or become neurotic about it. That doesn’t help; in fact, it simply weakens our immune system (which is not a good idea right now)…

As meditators, we seek to find the middle way of balance: being careful, yet calm.

Read more: Discover how to approach washing your hands as a mindful practice.

2. Human Tribe

One of the lessons we learn from meditation is compassion and oneness. This is very relevant now because we realize that we are all together in this sticky situation.

Taking care of yourself is taking care of the other, and taking care of the other is taking care of yourself. You are not alone in this!

3. Mental Fitness

In situations of calamity and danger, taking care of your mental health is essential. Hence the importance of meditation. It helps you manage the stress and anxiety of this situation, remain calm and think positive.

This not only makes you feel better but is also proven to boost your immune system—thus making you stronger against viruses.

Explore our free collection of coronavirus meditations that can help you coping with the different difficulties during the pandemic.

What Can We Do

(Note: I’m not a medical doctor, nor do I offer medical advice. Everything in this article is to be considered an opinion piece, fruit of my own personal research.)

There are a few types of action you can take, e.g., limit your exposure (avoid non-essential travel, meetings, events and public places), thorough hygiene and avoid touching your face and touching public surfaces).

In this article, I will focus on two things that meditation can help you with: boost your immune system and manage your anxiety.

There is a lot we don’t know about the coronavirus yet. Some argue that boosting your immune system may not even help in preventing you to get the virus. Even if that is the case, a well-functioning immune system can be the difference between developing no illness from the virus, or having serious complications.

There are several ways to enhance your immune system. Many people are talking about Vitamin D and other supplements, having enough sleep, and a healthy diet. Another thing that helps boost your immune system is having a daily cold shower, even if for only a few minutes. This is a practice I have kept daily for the past four years and I do feel the benefits in terms of immunity and wellbeing. And, of course, meditation! Because a stressed mind, or overly anxious mind, will weaken your immune system.

Read more: You might also be interested in this “Coping with chaos: Creating a mindful relationship with society and politics” blog series. Part one explores how to protect ourselves from negative mass consciousness.

How Meditation Helps: Immunity

Continuous exposure to stress and anxiety is known to weaken your immune system (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Similarly with other negative emotions.

In fact, there is a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine (2002) showing that people with negative emotions were less resistant to the common cold than people with predominantly positive emotions. This means that learning how to manage stress, anxiety and other negative emotions is an essential part of keeping your immune system strong against viruses. And meditation is a great way of doing exactly that.

If the stress and anxiety triggers of our modern life weren’t enough, we now have all the triggers caused by the constant bad news and public panic regarding the coronavirus. So it’s now more important than ever to learn how to master your mind with meditation—through whatever means work best for you.

Meditation helps to enhance your immune system, and by doing so can protect you against diseases caused by the coronavirus.

There are several scientific studies that demonstrate that meditation helps boost the immune system, makes you more resilient to stress, and helps with anxiety management.

For that purpose, however, the practice needs to be regular (daily), over a period of time—and this is a challenge for most people. That is why habit is the first pillar of meditation. (In another article, Giovanni explains the other pillars and how to meditate properly.)

Does it matter which type of meditation? Yes and no. There are many different types of meditation, but all of them have one thing in common: they calm you down, and help you manage stress and anxiety more effectively.

Having said that, each style is unique, and some of them lay greater emphasis on deep breathing (such as Pranayama) and on relaxation (such as Yoga Nidra)—and, thus, are likely even more powerful in terms of strengthening your immune system.

Read more: Explore the workings of breathing techniques for anxiety. This article explains how focused breathing helps to breath through the anxiety spiral.

How Meditation Helps: Placebo Effect

Meditation in the form of affirmation and visualization practice can also help boost your immune system by tapping into the placebo effect.

The placebo effect, or placebo response, is when a fake health treatment—such as sugar pills, water injections, sham surgery, etc.—improves a patient’s condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. The more a person believes they are going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that they will experience a benefit. (source)

The key element here is not the form of treatment, but how much you believe in its efficacy. Some argue that placebo is the mechanism that explains all sorts of “miracle cures” and alternative medicine procedures.

Placebo And The Immune System

The placebo effect shows us that our thoughts, emotions and beliefs change our body. Our psychology affects our biology.

By believing oneself to be healed while taking a “sugar pill”, people actually get healed. In fact, there are many documented cases of placebo working as well as “real treatments” for depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, asthma, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and autoimmune deficiencies, among others.

So, my argument here is simple: by believing ourselves to have a strong immune system, our immune system will respond. It will become stronger and more effective at fighting viruses and diseases.

MEDITATION —> because strong mind = strong immune system = good health = peace of mind.

My Life Experiment With Placebo

I’m running a long experiment about this in my own life. Now, a warning: this is where things start getting weird 😉

When I was a kid I had severe pneumonia three times and a bunch of chronic allergies. For most of my adult life, I would get a cold or even the flu every year. Until I understood the power of mind over body, and decided to consciously use the placebo effect.

Several years ago I “convinced myself” that I will never again become sick. It took some time and a lot of repetition—using affirmations and visualization—but it’s now an effortless belief for me.

What are the results? In the past six years, I have not taken any type of medicine or pills. And, apart from a few sneezes and runny nose here and there, I’ve felt great every single day, and have not fallen sick.

Want to consciously use the placebo effect on yourself? Make a strong decision that, “I will never fall sick again”. Believe it 100%, and you will experience the changes.

Once, I was with a group of about 50 people on board of a small boat going to the Great Barrier Reef, when heavy rains and wind started. It lasted for over two hours and it was pretty rough. Every single person on board got sea-sick, apart from me. And I was one of the only ones who didn’t even take the sea-sick pill.

“I am okay, I am okay. My body is happy and well.” — I kept telling myself during the trip. I repeated that many times, with the clear intention of pacifying the body.

So, I am not panicking about this coronavirus business. While I am taking all the reasonable precautions, there is an understanding that I can protect myself through the power of my mind. And I know that I will feel okay no matter what.

Meditation has helped my mind become more powerful—and it can help yours, too. We have barely scratched the surface of what a calm and focused mind can achieve.

Guided Coronavirus Meditations

The coronavirus is a serious thing; it is spreading quickly, and there is no cure yet. However, there are many steps we can take to protect ourselves. Apart from limiting our exposure and practicing good hygiene, we need to boost our immune system and manage the negative emotions of this situation (fear, stress, anxiety).

Meditation can help you with this. I have created two special guided meditations for this purpose: