A quantitative exploration of the relationships between regular yoga practice, microdosing psychedelics, wellbeing and personality variables

“There is evidence that the DASS-21 has convergent validity with a correlation of .81 found between the depression subscale of the DASS-21 and the Beck Depression Inventory and a correlation of .74 between the DASS-21 and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995).”

“The depression, anxiety and stress scale-21 (DASS-21) The DASS-21 measures depression, anxiety and stress (Antony et al., 1998).”

“Factor analytic studies provide support for the sixfactor structure (for review, see Ryff & Singer, 2008).”

“…validity was developed following a series of factor-analytic examinations that revealed a six-factor structure that form one higher-order factor (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) that has excellent internal consistency, with α reported to range between .92 and .95 (Hölzel & Ott, 2006; Studerus et…”

“depression, have an increased likelihood of developing a mental health problem (Lahey, 2009).”

“Classic psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and mescaline, affect serotonin (or 5-Hydroxytryptamine [5-HT]) pathways in the brain as 5HT2A receptor agonists (Nichols, 2016).”

“It has also been suggested that psychedelics can be used to treat substance use disorders (Bogenschutz et al., 2015).”

“Openness is one of the Big Five personality factors, which refers to broadminded tolerance of others’ values and viewpoints, aesthetic appreciation, sensitivity, imagination, and fantasy (MacLean et al., 2011).”

“Consistent with our findings, psilocybin combined with meditation increased psychological wellbeing more than psilocybin alone (Griffiths et al., 2018).”

“This resonates with the concept of set and setting in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (Hartogsohn, 2016).”

“Yoga has been related to improved physical and psychological health in a range of populations (Büssing et al., 2012; Jeter et al., 2015).”

“…was developed following a series of factor-analytic examinations that revealed a six-factor structure that form one higher-order factor (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) that has excellent internal consistency, with α reported to range between .92 and .95 (Hölzel & Ott, 2006; Studerus et al., 2012).”

“Yoga, microdosing and their combination may be useful for improving emotional responsiveness (Tellegen, 1981) and the efficacy of mind-body interventions (Menzies et al., 2008), such as mindfulness (Hölzel & Ott, 2006), which have been shown to be significantly influenced by absorption.”

“This might be why our findings were not consistent with the findings of previous researchers who found that yoga reduced anxiety and depression (Khalsa et al., 2009; Lin et al., 2011), and that self-reported microdosing decreased depressive symptoms (Polito & Stevenson, 2019).”

“This was consistent with the results of previous researchers who found that yoga significantly improved wellbeing (Hartfiel et al., 2011), that wellbeing was significantly related to length of yoga practice (Ivtzan & Jegatheeswaran, 2015) and that psychological wellness was significantly related to…”

“Internal consistencies have been reported as ranging from α = .69 to α = .85 (Morozink et al., 2010).”

“Bershad et al. (2019) randomly administered either a placebo, 6.5, 13, or 26 µg of LSD to 20 healthy adults.”

“Anderson et al. (2019) completed a cross-sectional study comparing 315 non-microdosers with 594 self-reported microdosers.”

“Yanakieva et al. (2019) conducted a double-blind study in which 48 healthy older adults (Mage = 62.92, SD = 5.65) were administered either a placebo, 5, 10, or 20 µg of LSD and completed a cognitive task 3 h after administration.”

“This might be why our findings were not consistent with the findings of previous researchers who found that yoga reduced anxiety and depression (Khalsa et al., 2009; Lin et al., 2011), and that self-reported microdosing decreased depressive symptoms (Polito & Stevenson, 2019).”

“practice led to decreased depressive and anxiety symptoms (Johnstad, 2018).”

“A study published after this manuscript was submitted for publication found that most participants who disclosed microdosing reported improved mood and anxiety on the days they microdosed (Lea et al., 2020).”

“less likely to be vulnerable to stress (Jarrett et al., 2012) and depression (Adler et al.”

“Individuals low in dysfunctional attitudes are less likely to be vulnerable to stress (Jarrett et al., 2012) and depression (Adler et al., 2015), while individuals high in negative emotionality, including anxiety and depression, have an increased likelihood of developing a mental health problem…”

“The M5-50 subscales of openness and neuroticism have good internal consistency with α = .78 and α = .86, respectively (Socha et al., 2010).”

“…neuroticism at follow up (Polito & Stevenson, 2019), and that a yoga intervention significantly decreased neuroticism compared to a control group (Yadav et al., 2012), we aimed to find out whether there were differences in neuroticism between people who microdose, practise yoga or do neither.”

“…researchers who found that yoga significantly improved wellbeing (Hartfiel et al., 2011), that wellbeing was significantly related to length of yoga practice (Ivtzan & Jegatheeswaran, 2015) and that psychological wellness was significantly related to hours practising yoga (Moliver et al., 2013).”

“Yoga, microdosing and their combination may be useful for improving emotional responsiveness (Tellegen, 1981) and the efficacy of mind-body interventions (Menzies et al., 2008), such as mindfulness (Hölzel & Ott, 2006), which have been shown to be significantly influenced by absorption.”

“Finally, consistent with previous research (Polito & Stevenson, 2019; Simpkins & Simpkins, 2010), the yoga and microdosing groups scored significantly higher in absorption than the control group.”

“Retrospective surveys of community microdosers have reported a wide range of benefits to mood and cognition (1-9).”

“Meditation (Berkovich-Ohana & Glicksohn, 2017; Davidson, Golemn, & Schwartz, 1976; Hölzel & Ott, 2006) and yoga practice (Bright et al., 2021) have been associated with higher levels of trait absorption in practitioners when compared to nonpracticing controls.”

“However, Bright et al. (2021) found that microdosers had higher levels of depression and anxiety compared to a yoga control group.”

“Findings have been inconclusive, with some studies observing that microdosing is associated with improved mental health (Anderson et al. 2019) and others observing increased anxiety in microdosers compared to controls (Bright et al. 2021; Hutten et al. 2020).”

“Empirical research suggests that administering micro-doses of certain substances can reduce depression and anxiety (Bright et al., 2021), improve mood and stimulate creativity (Bornemann, 2020), address mental health issues, and inspire positive cognitive and social changes (Petranker et al., 2022;…”

“Three qualitative studies (Anderson et al., 2019b; Beaton et al., 2020; Webb et al., 2019), and one retrospective survey study (Bright et al., 2021) showed increases in the overlapping constructs of wellbeing, self-fulfilment, self-efficacy, and resilience.”

“Furthermore, wellbeing and personal traits have been under-studied for long-term yoga practitioners’ profiles (e.g. Bright et al., 2021; Yadav et al., 2015).”

“In sum, these studies show that psychedelic microdosing is mainly associated with lower Neuroticism and higher Openness/ Open-mindedness and Absorption (Anderson et al., 2019; Bright et al., 2021; Dressler et al., 2021; Haijen et al., 2023; Polito et al., 2019).”

“Out of these studies, 18 were RCTs [16–18, 20–25, 37, 39–46], 2 were cross-sectional [13, 47], 2 were quasi-experimental [48, 49], 1 was prospective [50], and 1 was longitudinal [51].”