Squeeze the beat: Enhancing cardiac vagal activity during resonance breathing via coherent pelvic floor recruitment.

Abstract

Resonance breathing (RB) has been shown to improve psychophysiological health and performance within clinical and non-clinical populations. This is attributed to its baroreflex stimulating effects and the concomitant increase in cardiac vagal activation (CVA). Hence, developing methods that strengthen the CVA boosting effect of RB could improve its clinical effectiveness. Therefore, we assessed whether supplementing RB with coherent pelvic floor activation (PRB), which has been shown to entrain the baroreflex, yields stronger CVA than standard RB. N = 32 participants performed 5-minutes of RB and PRB, which requires to recruit the pelvic floor during inhalation and release it at the initiation of the expiration. CVA was indexed via heart rate variability using RMSSD and LF-HRV. PRB induced significantly larger RMSSD (d = 1.04) and LF-HRV (d = 0.75, ps < .001) compared to RB. Our results indicate that coherent pelvic floor recruitment during RB enhances its CVA boosting effects in healthy individuals. However, subsequent studies are warranted to evaluate whether these first findings can be replicated in individuals with compromised health, including a more comprehensive psychophysiological assessment to potentially elucidate the origin of the promising effects. Importantly, longitudinal studies need to address whether the additional CVA during PRB translates to better treatment outcomes.