The temporal dynamics of daily stress, affect, and several affect regulation processes, in patients with chronic mood and anxiety disorders before and after a mindful yoga intervention

Background and Objectives: Patients with chronic mood and anxiety disorders experience many life stressors and are more reactive to these stressors. Although mindful yoga might reduce stress reactivity, little is known about the affect regulation mechanisms involved, such as repetitive negative thinking, fear of emotion, acting with awareness and body awareness. Design and Methods: Using experience sampling methodology, 12 patients with chronic mood and anxiety disorders completed five daily assessments for 15 days before and after a 9-week mindful yoga intervention. Interrupted time-series analyses were used to assess mean-level change from pre-to-post intervention and vector autoregressive models to assess change in the temporal associations. Results: Most individuals experienced positive changes in affect and the proposed affect regulation processes. Fear of emotion showed changes from pre-to-post intervention for most individuals (67%), followed by acting with awareness (58%), body awareness (58%) and repetitive negative thinking (50%). In the dynamic relationships between stressors, the four affect regulation processes and affect, there were individual differences in which pathways changed and how they changed. Conclusions: After a mindful yoga intervention, affect and several affect regulation processes improve in most individuals. Achieving this in the context of daily life stress, seems to be more complicated. Trial registration: ISRCTN register (study ID ISRCTN13612864).