RAGHAVENDRA BHAT
Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation, Bangalore, India

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Abstract

Background: At the end of one month of yoga training the yoga group was able to reduce their pulse rate significantly without using external cues while the control group showed no change. Hence the present study was designed to understand the strategies used by yoga practitioners and autonomic changes associated with voluntary heart rate reduction.
Methods: Fifty volunteers with ages ranging from 18 to37 years participated in the study. All of them were residential trainees midway through yoga training programs of one or two years duration. All participants were assessed in two trials on two separate days. Both trials were 12 minutes in duration. For Trial I, subjects were asked to sit at ease with their eyes closed, for six minutes. This was the ‘pre’ state. In the next six minutes subjects were asked to attempt to voluntarily reduce their heart rate. For Trial II, the ‘pre’ state was same as for Trial I. In ‘during’ state all subjects were asked to regulate their breath as a possible way to voluntarily reduce their heart rate.
Results: Yoga practitioners were effectively able to reduce their heart rates by 19.6 beats per minute when they used strategies of their choice, and were able to achieve a reduction of 22.2 beats per minute when they all used breath regulation. The heart rate variability changes were suggestive of sympathetic dominance with an increase in LF power.
Conclusions: Yoga practitioners were able to reduce their heart rate by using breath regulation more, compared with when they are asked to reduce their heart rate voluntarily by using their own strategy.