Chinese-chi and Kundalini yoga Meditations Effects on the Autonomic Nervous System: Comparative Study

Abstract

-Cardiac disease is one of the major causes for death all over the world. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a significant parameter that used in assessing Autonomous Nervous System (ANS) activity. Generally, the 2D Poincare′ plot and 3D Poincaré plot of the HRV signals reflect the effect of different external stimuli on the ANS. Meditation is one of such external stimulus, which has different techniques with different types of effects on the ANS. Chinese Chi-meditation and Kundalini yoga are two different effective meditation techniques. The current work is interested with the analysis of the HRV signals under the effect of these two based on meditation techniques. The 2D and 3D Poincare′ plots are generally plotted by fitting respectively an ellipse/ellipsoid to the dense region of the constructed Poincare′ plot of HRV signals. However, the 2D and 3D Poincaré plots sometimes fail to describe the proper behaviour of the system. Thus in this study, a three-dimensional frequency-delay plot is proposed to properly distinguish these two famous meditation techniques by analyzing their effects on ANS. This proposed 3D frequency-delay plot is applied on HRV signals of eight persons practicing same Chi-meditation and four other persons practising same Kundalini yoga. To substantiate the result for larger sample of data, statistical Student t-test is applied, which shows a satisfactory result in this context. The experimental results established that the Chi-meditation has large impact on the HRV compared to the Kundalini yoga. Keywords -2D and 3D Poincaré Plot, 3D Frequency Delay Plot, Hypothesis Testing By Student t-Test.I. InTRoducTIon M edITaTIon is considered an ancient spiritual practice that has potential benefit on health and well-being [1,2]. It is a complex physiological process, which affects neural, psychological, behavioral, and autonomic functions. It is considered as an altered state of consciousness, which differs from wakefulness, relaxation at rest, and sleep [3,4]. Most of the meditation techniques affect the ANS, thus indirectly regulate several organs and muscles. Accordingly, functions of heartbeat, sweating, breathing, and digestion are controlled by the ANS. Recent studies highlighted the psycho-physiological aspects of meditation and its effect [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].Typically, the HRV is a popular non-invasive tool to assess different conditions of heart [16][17][18][19]. Nowadays, it is observed that HRV reflects some psychological conditions [20,21]. The HRV analysis studies the period variation between consecutive heart beats to provide valuable information for the ANS assessment. There are two branches of the ANS, namely i) the sympathetic branch, which increases the heart bits, and ii) the parasympathetic branch, which decreases the heart bits. Thus, the observed HRV is an indicator of the dynamic interaction and balance between these two nervous systems. In the resting condition, both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are active with parasympathetic domina...

Nonlinear analysis of heart rate variability signals in meditative state: a review and perspective

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