As Australians suffer the blow of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts say meditation is a skill worth learning to help us cope and you don't even need to formally practise it.

Although many meditation practices recommend sitting twice a day for 20 minutes, research shows we can get the perks from far less.

Dr Elise Bialylew is using meditation to ease anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, we may not need to be consistent to get its anxiety and stress-relieving benefits.

Monash University researchers say a 15-second comma, placed here or there between our daily activities, can be enough to punctuate our day and clean the slate.

This involves simply pausing to notice any tension in your body, the depth of your breath and how you are feeling. You then allow your body to relax, slow and deepen the breath, and name whatever thought or feeling you are having.

Dr Elise Bialylew, a psychiatrist and founder of Mindful in May, says meditation teaches skills and perspective around how we relate to our thoughts and emotions. It also makes you more likely to be able to release negative feelings.

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[It] is invaluable, even if you are not doing a regular meditation practice, says Bialylew, who is also the author of The Happiness Plan. For me, its about emotional intelligence and self-awareness and the ripple effect of that.

This means that simply dropping into it for a moment can be enough to provide us the grounding we need.

Crisis support service Lifeline is experiencing a spike in calls related to COVID-19 over financial stress, social isolation and health concerns, with chairman John Brogden saying about a quarter of callers last week were ringing to discuss the coronavirus.

In an op-ed for The New York Times last week, psychiatrist Judson Brewer, an associate professor at Brown University, wrote that simply pausing and naming what we are feeling is a brain hack that can help to break the cycle of COVID-19 anxiety.

Overwhelmed by uncertainty and fear of the future, the rational parts of our brains go offline, Brewer wrote.

By taking a moment to become aware of our angst and what has prompted it (do we really need a six-month supply of loo roll?), Brewer says we give our prefrontal cortex the brain's rational part a chance to come back online.

We can compare anxiety to what it feels like to be calm. To our brains, its a no-brainer."

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This technique pausing, perceiving and naming is also commonly taught as part of meditation practice.

Looking at whats happening moment to moment and labelling it silently thinking, worrying, whatever that naming has been shown to activate the prefrontal cortex, Bialylew explains.

While we may not need a formal practice of meditation, Bialylew does recommend an initial period of regular practice to integrate it into our lives so that we remember to use it when we need.

Once integrated, she says the results can extend beyond calming COVID-19 anxiety.

People are often coming to meditation for stress relief and to get blissed out, but I think its about so much more than that, Bialylew says.

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Sarah Berry is a lifestyle and health writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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15 seconds can help calm the spread of coronavirus anxiety - The Age