Heart rate dynamics during three forms of meditation

Objective: This study was designed to quantify and compare the instantaneous heart rate dynamics and cardiopulmonary interactions during sequential performance of three meditation protocols with different breathing patterns. Background: We analyzed beat-to-beat heart rate and continuous breathing signals from 10 experienced meditators (4 females; 6 males; mean age 42 years; range 29–55 years) during three traditional interventions: relaxation response, breath of fire, and segmented breathing. Results: Heart rate and respiratory dynamics were generally similar during the relaxation response and segmented breathing. We observed high amplitude, low frequency (∼0.05–0.1 Hz) oscillations due to respiratory sinus arrhythmia during both the relaxation response and segmented breathing, along with a significantly ( p