By Alicia Souto, PhD and Adrian Cillo, MD

Alicia Souto

Literatury review The practice of Ujjayi removes throat diseases caused by phlegm and increases the gastric fire. It also destroys nadis diseases as well as vertigo and dhatus diseases. (1) A research published in Yoga Mimamsa concludes that the prolonged practice of Ujjayi decreased oxygen consumption from 40 to 50 ml per minute. (5), the same authors showed that the content of CO2 in exhaled breath increases during Ujjayi (6)

Adrian Cillo

In relation to the cardiovascular system, was demonstrated by Mestan J and Bohle that Ujjayi without  Kumbhaka increased cardiac emptying by 17% and heart rate decreased by 15 beats per minute. (7)

Material and Methods
The study was conducted with 16 yoga instructors of Yogatherapy Eutony Center in Buenos Aires, trained in the technique of Ujjayi as described in the HP with an average of years of training in yogic practice of 7.2 years, 100% of them female, with an average age of 41.8 years.
Study started with 3 minutes of Savasana, after which they were asked to seat in a comfortable position on the flor (asana), we made a measurement with a pulse oximetry saturation of 02 initial pressure and heart rate, measurement was repeated after 10 minutes without ujjayi kumbhaka. The study was repeated once weekly during the term of two consecutive months (August / September 2009) at 4 PM in the presence of researchers. Participants practice at home twice every day  without measurement.


Working hypothesis:
Our working hypothesis is that the measurement of values  arterial oxigen saturation measured by transilumination after 10 minutes of UYYAJI, will be maintained or decreased slightly and the heart rate measure will decrease in statistically significant values.

Conclusions:
This work showed not only the decrease in heart rate by Ujjayi practice, as had been raised in the initial hypothesis, but also a training accumulative  effect that allowed the construction of decreasing slope curve with values that decreased to frequencies at the end of the second month within the limits of sinus bradycardia.