A Framework of Measurable Features of Bhramari Pranayama Leading to Meditation

Bhramari pranayama, a yogic technique involving a self-vocalized humming sound that mimics a female bumblebee, can be broken down into sub-components: pranayama (breath control), the sound-producing phase, and Shanmukhi practice. Its overt, measurable features—such as fundamental frequency, resonant vibrations, and articulation—offer a unique opportunity to study how meditation is caused. Concepts like efference copy, corollary discharge, and sense of agency are observable in electrophysiological investigations. The framework explains how breath and self-vocalized acoustics produce synchrony among multisensory systems, leading to a meditative state, and suggests therapeutic benefits from self-evoked resonant vibrations, sensory entrainment, and gamma waves.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Background: Bhramari pranayama, a yogic technique comprises a selfvocalized humming sound emulating a female bumblebee. Attention to this sound leads to a meditative state. The component of its stimuli, the sustained self-evoked humming sound with breath control, is overt unlike the stimuli of most of the meditations. These observable and measurable components of Bhramari pranayama offer a rare opportunity to study the causal component of meditation in research. Objectives: Considering the growing interest in this area, Bhramari’s potential as a unique research tool, and a framework of the mechanism of it leading to meditation is attempted. Methods: We review relevant current scientific literature and classical yoga texts to understand the framework of how the overt features of Bhramari pranayama cause the meditative state. We present our argument in three sections, where we present the Bhramari pranayama practice into its sub-components, namely i) pranayama, ii) Bhramari sound-producing phase, and iii) Shanmukhi practice. Findings: This has facilitated the identification of the measurable attributes of Bhramari like fundamental frequency, resonant vibrations, articulation, etc. Concepts related to its processing like efference copy, corollary discharge, and sense of agency, are also observable in electrophysiological investigations. This information would be useful to harness the therapeutic benefits of Bhramari pranayama due to its ability to produce self-evoked resonant vibrations, sensory entrainment, and gamma waves, that have specific clinical significance. Novelty: This framework elucidates the mechanism of how the overt, observable, and measurable features of Bhramari Pranayama cause meditation. It presents the relation between breath and self-vocalized acoustics, that produce synchrony among multisensory systems to facilitate meditation. Keywords: Bhramari Pranayama; Meditation; Self-evoked sound; Resonance; Sensory entrainment