Studies of autonomic functions in practitioners of Yoga in India.

Abstract

Dr. Wenger, one of the authors, explains this article as follows: In 1933, a student from India first stimulated my interest in Yoga. In an experiment on muscular relaxation his performance far exceeded that of any other subject. He explained that he employed a Yogic method which was commonly used in India, and I made a mental note to go to India someday. The note got unburied over twenty years later when I discovered an article by Therese Brosse, a French cardiologist who had taken a portable electrocardiograph to India in 1935 and measured a few yogis as they at- tempted to control their heart action. One of her published EKG records was amazing. It showed a gradual reduction in heart potentials to near zero. She concluded that the heart could be controlled voluntarily. A review of the literature disclosed similar claims, and other claims off voluntary control over other visceral muscles—none, however, so objectively documented. Claims of fire walking, pit burials of many hours' duration, and needle penetration without bleeding are fairly common. Less common are reports of voluntary control of regurgitation and defecation, of great increases in body heat, and of relaxation of the sphincters of the anus and urethra so that water or other fluids can be sucked into the bowel or bladder with the aid of another practice (uddiyana) that apparently creates negative pressure in the abdomen. Testing these various claims of voluntary control of autonomic functions and recording physiological changes during Yogic meditation were our major purposes in going to India.