The aim of a new study published very recently was to understand the impact of an active meditation protocol on heart rate variability (HRV) and mood in women as compared to breath-focused silence meditation.
Women experienced two different practices of 20 min each: (a) control group: silence meditation focusing on breath and (b) experiment group: active meditation that included four activities, each lasting for 5 minutes – (1) simple humming, (2) coherent heart-focused breathing with 5s of inhalation and 5s of exhalation, (3) coherent heart-focused breathing while invoking positive emotions, and (4) guided imagery about a preidentified goal. The silence meditation encouraged women to only focus on the breath.
HRV (specifically, parasympathetic nervous system [PNS]) parameters showed a statistically significant improvement in the experiment group as compared to the control group. There was a statistically significant reduction in negative affect after both the practices, and the increase in positive affect was observed only for the experiment group.
The study concluded that : “The active meditation provides a significant enhancement in mood and HRV parameters related to PNS as compared to silence meditation where the changes in HRV were not consistent and the positive mood did not increase significantly.”
This is fascinating for us as we’ve been working with coherent breathing techniques and running workshops Dr Patricia Gerbarg and Dr Richard Brown, and this adds further support to the existing evidence we’ve seen. HRV has emerged as an indicator of health and quality of life. Recent studies have demonstrated that individuals with high HRV tend to have better emotional and physical well-being compared to those with low HRV. Other studies also indicate that (a) positive and negative mood induction tasks result in differential ANS responses as measured by HRV and specifically (b) multiple HRV indices have significant differences between happiness and sadness emotion states. The evidence, therefore, indicates that an increase in HRV could lead to better mood and could enhance the autonomic function balance, and hence, studies involving HRV have the potential to provide insight into a wide variety of psychological and physiological processes. And it would seem that coherent breathing is an important tool as part of a more ‘active’ meditation practice.
As the study’s researchers noted “The findings provide a strong case to incorporate active practices in meditation as compared to just silence due to the positive impact on the mood and nervous system. Specifically, an increase in PNS measures and the positive mood could benefit the individuals who may be facing some negative emotions during “silence” meditation. Such active practice could be more beneficial to individuals with anxiety and depression as compared to silence and may have a positive impact on sleep quality. These are the areas for possible future work related to such active meditation. Finally, the specific components of the active meditation could be separately studied to understand if the combined use of various techniques resulted in this outcome or was contributed by any specific element of the practice.”
