Can Praying Help Your Heart?

The rhythmic chanting used when saying the rosary prayer or performing a yoga mantra seems to have a calming effect on the heart.

The rosary might be viewed as a health practice as well as a religious practice.

To investigate, the researchers measured the breathing rates of 23 adults while they either prayed the rosary in the original Latin or recited a yoga mantra. The rosary is a repetition 50 times of the Ave Maria, or the Hail Mary prayer, with the whole 50 repeated three times.
For comparison, the researchers also measured the study participants' respiration during free talking, and during spontaneous and controlled slow breathing exercises.

When the participants breathed spontaneously, their respiratory rate was about 14 breaths per minute, which slowed down to almost 8 breaths per minute when they engaged in regular conversation. During recitation of the Ave Maria or the yoga mantra, however, their respiratory rate was about 6 breaths per minute.
 
A slow respiration rate of 6 breaths per minute has generally favorable effects on cardiovascular and respiratory function.

Furthermore, breathing rate was irregularly reduced during free talking, but was significantly more regular during recitation of the Ave Maria and the yoga mantra, similar to during the 6 minutes of controlled respiration. This indicates "that these methods could stabilize the respiratory rate as effectively as precisely timed control.
 
What's more, recitation of both the Ave Maria and the yoga mantra similarly synchronized all the heart rhythms.

The similar effects produced by the two seemingly different cultural practices may not be merely coincidental. In fact the two practices may have similar origins.

It is known that the rosary is related to the Christian religion, but it was actually introduced by the crusaders who learnt a similar technique from the Arabs who in turn learned it from the Indian and Tibetan masters of yoga.

So it may be that recitation of Mantras, which originally was conceived as a health practice, and the Rosary, which is essentially a religious practice in Europe, could have the same background.
 
British Medical Journal December 22/29th 2001;323:1446-1449