Slow breathing exercises have been used for thousands of years in yoga and meditation practices, and have been successful in reducing sympathetic nerve activity and lowering blood pressure. Recently, computerized devices aimed to replicate self-guided breathing have been used. There have been mixed results regarding the efficacy of these devices. It is hypothesized that the act of reducing breathing rate is not the only factor contributing to physiological changes, and that factors such as external aid and psychological metrics are also important in determining the responses to breathing rate changes. Therefore we compared device-guided (n=10) and self-paced (n=11) slow breathing maneuvers in young healthy males and found differences between conditions in forearm vasodilation as measured by venous occlusion plethysmography (111.78±7.82% and 96.24±5.82%, p=0.067) and changes in systolic blood pressure as measured by finometry (-3.47±1.43 mmHg and -0.45±2.35 mmHg, p=0.138). In addition, several psychological metrics are predictive of differences in physiological responses to each of these practices: trait anxiety correlates with a lack of reduction in mean arterial pressure (MAP) in the self-guided intervention (r=0.452, p=0.81); acting without awareness correlates with a lack of reduction in MAP in the self-guided intervention (r=0.683, p=0.01); and acting without awareness correlates with a reduction in MAP in the device-guided intervention (r=-0.472, p=0.084). It is concluded that these two breathing practices are inherently different breathing maneuvers, given the differences in physiological outcomes and psychological predictors.
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