OBJECTIVES To compare the cumulative effect of commonly practised slow and fast pranayama on cognitive functions in healthy volunteers. SETTINGS AND DESIGN 84 participants who were in self-reported good health, who were in the age group of 18-25 years, who were randomized to fast pranayama, slow pranayama and control group with 28 participants in each group. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fast pranay...

Yogic practices can be used as psycho-physiological stimuli to increase in physiological functions and human performance. Yoga breathing or Pranayama is the science of breath control. Rapid succession of forcible expulsion is a characteristic feature of Bhastrika Pranayama. To determine the effects of Bhastrika Pranayama on Vital Capacity of lung (PFT), sixty (n = 60) randomly selected voluntee...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Regular practice of slow breathing has been shown to improve cardiovascular and respiratory functions and to decrease the effects of stress. This pilot study was planned to evaluate the short term effects of pranayama on cardiovascular functions, pulmonary functions and galvanic skin resistance (GSR) which mirrors sympathetic tone, and to evaluate the changes that appear...

The effect of Chandra nadisuddhi pranayama was studied on a yoga practitioners and a naïve subject. Chandra nadisuddhi pranayama is simply a left nostril breathing exercise. The heart beat rate was taken immediately before and immediately after each session, which consisted of twelve cycles of Chandra nadisuddhi pranayama. The mean heart beat rate of the yoga practitioners dropped from 73.94 ± ...

OBJECTIVE To compare two breathing exercises (Buteyko and pranayama) with a control group in patients with asthma. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. SUBJECTS One hundred and twenty subjects were randomized to three groups through block randomization. Subjects with an Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire score <5.5 participated in the study. SETTING Outpatient pulmonary medicine departme...

The stress either physical or mental, leads to cardiovascular morbidity. Newly admitted medical students are likely to be exposed to various stresses like change of environment, demanding medical education and different teaching protocol in a medical college. Pranayama is known since ancient times to relieve stress and stabilize autonomic function of the body. Therefore it was decided to study ...

Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp of a person. This allows us to measure brain activity involved in various types of cognitive functions. Experimental goal of this work is to interpret and characterize the EEG activity during Pranayama breathing with respect to temporal and spatial context, and acquire two channel data using MyDAQ and Labview. This w...

Approximately 2.5% to 3% of the children are intellectually impaired who lack fine motor coordination abilities like eye-hand coordination, grip strength in fingers, etc. There is a need to improve their condition for better survival. Pranayama has been found to be very effective in the case of general children in the development of these abilities. But there is very little study on the applica...

Aim of this study was to see any effect on respiratory functions in hypothyroid patients after pranayama (yoga). The subjects for the study were 20 hypothyroid females, 39.70 +/- 8.27 years of mean age referred from medicine department of UCMS & G.T.B. Hospital. Spiro metric recordings were taken with hypair (version-1.28). Baseline (first) recordings were taken when patient came for the first ...

Background: Numerous studies have reported long and short term effects of Yoga training on reaction time (RT), but few have evaluated differential effects of training in asana and pranayama. Hence the present study was done to elucidate effects of such differential training on RT in health professions students attending Yoga training. Materials: 134 healthy young adults studying BSc Nursing at ...