Exaggerated heart rate oscillations during two meditation techniques
Introduction
There has been much interest in heart rate dynamics during a variety of physiological and pathological states. In addition, considerable attention has been focused on the potential health benefits of a variety of meditative, relaxation techniques and their possible effects on neuroautonomic function. Surprisingly, however, there is little information regarding the effects of meditation on beat-to-beat heart rate dynamics as an indirect “assay” of autonomic regulation [1], [2], [3]. Accordingly, we collected and analyzed continuous heart rate time series from two groups of healthy young adults before and during two well-known forms of meditation. We sought to determine: 1) whether there are any distinctive heart rate dynamics during these practices, and 2) whether such meditative states induce a quiescent (less variable) or active (more variable) pattern of autonomic response.
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Subjects and meditation protocols
Two specific meditative techniques were studied: (i) Chinese Chi (or Qigong) meditation (as taught by Xin Yan) and (ii) Kundalini Yoga meditation (as taught by Yogi Bhajan).
The Chi meditators were all graduate and post-doctoral students. They were also relative novices in their practice of Chi meditation, most of them having begun their meditation practice about 1–3 months before this study. The Kundalini Yoga subjects were considered to be at an advanced level of meditation training. The
Results
Fig. 1 shows representative instantaneous heart rate plots for one Chi meditator and one Kundalini meditator. Two features stand out: (1) The extremely prominent heart rate oscillations for both subjects during meditation. Spectral analysis of these heart rate time series confirmed a peak in the range of 0.025–0.35 Hz for both groups of meditators. For example, Fig. 2 shows illustrative data from another Chi meditator with a spectral peak around 0.05 Hz. (2) The overall variability of the time
Discussion
The major and unexpected finding in this analysis of heart rate dynamics during these two forms of meditation in a small number of subjects was the presence of intermittent, extremely prominent oscillations in the 0.025–0.35 Hz band. For example, as shown in Fig. 1, the heart rate varied over a 30–35 beat/min range within 5 sec in some of the subjects. These oscillations, observed in both Chi and Kundalini practitioners, correlated with slow breathing. Of note, these oscillations were
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