2017-02-28
I haven’t seen anything like that before. In a usual state the heart rhythm is stable and distinctive. It’s like handwriting of a person – it is individual for everyone. There is, of course, some dynamics during the day, which provides some changes, but as a rule, the main rhythmic line remains recognizable. Here, the usual line of heart rhythm became totally different. It looked as if the heart started to improvise reacting to an external source.
Heart rhythm itself is already a music – music of the heart, music that reflects individual psychophysiological state. When a person is listening to a music from an external source, his/her heart trues to adapt and “beat in unison”. Not always this adaptation is smooth, sometimes, the heart declines the external sound – at this moment the heart rhythm “breaks”. Heart beats trying to manage the new task, but not always successfully. Looking ahead, I will say that this is what my method is based on. If the heart distunes – this means that this music activates the problem. Knowing what message the music carries, we can suppose the nature of the problem. But I’m looking ahead too much here.
So, the results of the experiments were impressive. I had a feeling that I discovered something important, something that changed my knowledge about this world. I wanted to run outside, jump, and shout to everyone on my way: “People, wake up! Music – is a strong weapon if you don’t know how to use it. Turn off your music players, that program your life, be serious to what music you listen to!”.
My next desire was to write an article, tell about my experiments and share with the VedaPulse community the information that I discovered. I’ve been interested in the influence of music on humans for a long time and in different perspectives: practical, philosophical, scientific and esoteric. I’m sure that the success of my experiments was also stipulated by a high quality sound equipment which I carefully built and I think I will talk about this as well. All of these thoughts tied together into such a big ball that I didn’t know where to start to convey the message. Two years passed before I decided to tell everything in order.
Thinking about music therapy, I was attracted by one of its esoteric branches – Tibetan singing bowls that help tuning Chakras. I didn’t have the bowls themselves, so I decided to work with audio recordings. I asked one of the VedaPulse users – Tamara Doloechanova, for an advice. Tamara lives in the Netherlands, does integrative psychotherapy and complementary medicine, and uses a big range of different esoteric instruments: Tibetan singing bowls, African pipes, Shaman's drums, etc. Tamara advised me to look into healing music of Jonathan Goldman. I found his recordings, read his book called “Healing sounds” and was convinced.
So, I started experimenting with the recordings of Tibetan singing bowls by Jonathan Goldman. While I was doing this, I accidentally invented a new method for evaluating the Chakra energy. In any case, I have never heard about anything close to what I will describe now. Maybe, I discovered something new. You may consider this article a claim for having developed a method for evaluating the Chakra energy via heart rate variability and Tibetan bowls. If I find out that this method has been described before, I’m ready to concede the right of precedence.
When I started my experiments, my initial task was to study how the harmonization of the functional state happens in the body while listening to the Tibetan bowls, using the heart rate variability method. Trying to explain what exactly was meant under the “tuning of Chakras”, the idea was the following:
Musical album “Chakra Chants” consists of 7 audio recordings on Tibetan bowls, each is 9-10 minutes long. Each recording influences the specific chakra. We move from the bottom to the top. The bowl with the lowest sound influences the root chakra, Muladhara, the next – on Svadhisthana and so on, ending with the bowl with the highest sound which influences Sahasrara – the highest chakra. In order to increase the effect of sounds, we need to perform a special meditation while listening to each recording – to concentrate our attention on the corresponding chakra and feel the energy flow into this chakra. Combination of music and meditation tunes the Chakras. At least, this was the idea. Starting the experiment, I hoped to capture the harmonization process via dynamics of the heart rate variability values. However, the results didn’t coincide with my initial expectations. I have no doubts in the skills of Jonathan Goldman, I’m still sure that his music has healing effect. The problem is different. The person who will listen to his music, should be ready that a whole cascade of the pranic energy will pour on his/her chakras. I couldn’t see a miracle of the healing harmonization of the body, but a new method of evaluating chakra energy was born out of this unsuccessful attempt.
During the experiment, I used a musical album “Chakra Chants” by Jonathan Goldman, released in 1998.
People that I knew personally, took part in the study, so I knew about their psychological and physiological problems. This helped me to match the reactions on tuning of the specific chakra with their individual psychophysiological problems. This is the process of evaluating the Chakra energy, it is very easy. Turn on the recording of the Tibetan bowls, start the heart rhythm recording and observe the dynamics of heart rhythm. IF the heart reacts adequately – than this chakra is ok, however, if the heart starts “jumping”, this means there might be the problem here. I intentionally used the word “jumping” instead of the professional term “non-stationary areas in the heart rate recording”: the changes on the computer screen were so obvious, that only by seeing the changes in the heart rhythm graph, I could make the conclusion without HRV indexes analysis. Later, of course, we will also study the dynamics of HRV values, but before let’s just enjoy the heart rhythm without any numbers.
Participant 1. Woman of 30 years old, having problems with reproductive system and difficult relationship with her partner. Having started an early sex life, she developed infectious diseases of bladder and kidneys that transformed into chronic type, her many attempts to conceive were not successful.
I put together 9 screen shots of cardiointervalogram and created an animated gif image. First – recording of heart rhythm before the experiment, from second to eights – reaction of the body on Chakra tuning. The last – recording of the final state of the body.
The recording of heart rate in a calm state is pleasant. Variability of heart rate is a bit lower than norm, but in general the recording looks like the usual heart rhythm of a healthy person. Meaning, that just by looking at the cardiointervalogram without analyzing the HRV values, we won’t see anything serious.
During the recording of Muladhara, the rhythms starts breaking and non-stationary periods appear. When its’ time for Svadhisthana – we see obvious “jumps”. Visual analysis of cardiointervalogram shows that the most problematic chakra is svadhisthana. By the way, this chakra is associated with the female reproductive function on the physiological level and sexual sphere on the psychological level. Ajna and Sahasrara are also problematic. Note, that when Svadhisthana is included – heart rhythm “jumps” – there are big ups and downs. Inclusion of Ajna and Sahasrara is additionally accompanied by another phenomenon: heart rhythm becomes “bald” – there are no short waves (HF diapason) which shows significant depletion of restorative potential, in other words, the body needs to mobilize in order to stand such high vibrations. When, after the end of the experiment, I asked her to tell about her subjective feelings, she said that it was very uncomfortable.
Now let’s look at the numbers. Using the module “Dynamics” I exported the values of spectral analysis into Microsoft Excel and built graphs.
The highest rise of the Total power value happened during activation of Svadhisthana. Before the experiment TP = 1080 ms^2, during Svadhisthana activation it went up to 14 700 ms^2 - 13,6 times more. Can you imagine this activation of energy? It’s like waking up a hurricane! During activation of Ajna, there was a big drop of HF diapason values, in other words – restorative potential (remember how I mentioned that the cardiointervalogram graph became bald). During activation of Sahasrara there was a rise of VLF diapason values which led to increase of Total Power = 12 800 ms^2. That means, that this peak of the overall spectrum power appeared because of switching on the reserve regulation mechanisms.
One more graph – the dynamics of LF/HF vegetative balance and Index of centralization is also interesting. I recommend analyzing these graphs simultaneously, because they usually illustrate individual peculiarities during the strain of regulation systems, which appears during the process of adaptation to stress. See the graph.
Here the most interesting fact is a strong growth of centralization index during activation of Manipura. It increased from 1.68 to 9,57. Manipura chakra is responsible for the will power. Well… a very strong will power impulse, mobilization of central regulation mechanisms in 5.7 times. During activation of Ajna, the body reaction manifested through the shift of vegetative balance towards the strain of sympathetic part of autonomic nervous system, meaning that here the reserve mechanisms of the central nervous system were not involved.
Now let’s go back to Svadhisthana – the chakra that looked the most problematic during visual analysis of cardiointervalogram and also – on the first graph where we saw a significant increase of Total Power. Relative values of centralization index and vegetative balance didn’t show anything special. The increase was seen only in absolute values. All components of the spectrum increased simultaneously. Why am I analyzing all of this in such detail – first, visual analysis if cardiointervalogram, then analysis of absolute values of the spectrum, then – more important relative one? I’m doing this in order to show how many nuances we can see in changing of the functional state during activation of specific chakras. All of them are important. Here we are not limited by the simple scheme in Bioenergy module where the state of chakras is shown in a form of standard units from 0 to 10. Here we are performing a detailed analysis, doing a stress test and as a result, we can not only say which chakra went out of balance, which one is depleted, but we can analyze the nuances of individual reaction of the body.
Below you see a screenshot from the Bioenergy module.
Here we see a significant strain of Muladhara and Ajna and significant depletion of Sahasrara and Vishuddha. In order to anticipate the reader’s questions, I will say that I think it is absolutely normal that different algorithms of Chakra analysis show different results. Stress test using Tibetan singing bowls and analysis of the initial calm state in Bioenergy module – these are the two different methods to study such a broad phenomenon as Chakras. It is important, that both methods showed significant imbalance in Chakras.
Short lyrical digression. It is not the first time when a common, unprepared person starts doing any of the Eastern practices, and there is a significant degradation of his/her heart rate values. Many times when I attended group meditations or yoga classes, I saw worsening of state of many attendees, even in such classes given by famous masters. I remember when I was invited to do the study at a yoga classes given by an Indian guru who came to Novosibirsk. Without mentioning his name, I will just say he is an enlightened person and it was a great pleasure just to observe him – his movements and speech were full of saintdom. There were a lot of people who came to see him, some even flew from other cities… When compared the HRV values before and after his class and showed them to the guru, he was shocked. Only on the next day he said that it is normal that unprepared people have bad reaction to yoga classes, that there were many people with different physical levels and many did mistakes during exercises which led to worsening of their state. Basically, the same thing happened with Chakra tuning with the Tibetan singing bowls: just like an unprepared person can’t perform asanas correctly, a certain training is needed in order to sense high sound vibrations. The explanation is simple and obvious. In order to receive harmonizing effect from any of the Eastern practices, years of training are required. Tibetan bowls were not an exclusion.
Participant 2. Woman of 40 years old, has some experience of meditation, psychological and transpersonal practices, and even some shamanic experience.
See the film created from the cardiointervalogram screenshots.
Here there are no incidents. Heart rhythm reacts on the activation of chakras but within the healthy reaction of the body. Do you see the difference from the previous participant?
Short note. On the last screenshot where the recording of heart rhythm is done after the Chakra activation, there is a “step” at 380th interval. Interesting situation. I was observing the participant and I noticed that she went into trance at some point, her eyes glazed, even though in the beginning I asked her to stay in a state of a quiet wake. On the graph it is seen by a slower heart rate. I decided not to interrupt the recording.
As we don’t see any incidents on the cardiointervalogram graphs during activation of chakras, let’s move to the HRV parameters analysis.
Here we see two peaks of mobilization that happened during activation of Anahata and Sahasrara and decrease of energy to its initial level during activation of Vishuddha. The biggest growth of Total Power did not exceed 4970/1100 = 4.5. 4.5 times is much less than 13.6 times in the first participant. Here the adaptation was going much easier. I also noticed a drop on the fifth chakra – Vishuddha, where the variability parameters almost went back to the initial numbers. The participant commented that while listening to the Tibetan bowls, at this moment she had a feeling as if her meditation failed. Before she felt a continuous increase of energy, but when it came to the throat chakra, she couldn’t keep this energy flow. Then she tried to control the flow of energy again. It is important, that first she told me about her feelings – the graph of spectral parameters dynamics (which proves her subjective sensations) was built much later when we added a feature of exporting the data into Microsoft Excel (Dynamics module).
Now let’s look at the graphs of relative values of the spectrum.
Here the activation of Manipura and Anahata created both the mobilization of sympathetic part of autonomic nervous system (LF/HF) and engaging of the Central nervous system reserves (centralization index). Basically, three chakras: Svadhishana, Manipura and Anahata – created a volume peak on the graph. This graph allows us to understand that before the failure of meditation at Vishuddha, there was a significant strain (growth of LF/HF) already at Anahata. I personally find it very interesting. The woman felt the increase of energy at Anahata, but in fact, this increase was induced by the mobilization of the inner resources. Then failure at Vishuddha happened. Here is an advice: in order to create more at the level of a throat chakra, we need to open up to the world more at the level of the heart chakra, but if we try to be creative by means of our inner reserves, this will lead to a failure. Seems logic, but I’m very happy that the method I invented for chakra analysis allows to prove it on the graph.
And now we will look at the graph of initial state of Chakras in the Bioenergy module.
It is interesting that here there is no significant strain, no significant depletion; all the values are either within the green zone (norm), or just a little bit out of balance.
Both stress test and static test in the Bioenergy module show that all imbalances are very minor (even if they are not exactly the same). In some situations, the existing problems will be seen already during static test, in other situations, you will notice them only during stress test. This is exactly such case.
Participant 3. Man of 40 years old, professional psychologist specializing on couples’ relationships as well, however he is still single: he couldn’t find a partner yet and has some sluggish relationships that he doesn’t consider as serious. In other words, there are few women in his life, relationships with whom are difficult to identify and pin a label on. We could start being sarcastic and say “a shoemaker without shoes”, but in real life things are usually more complicated and sometimes the person who is familiar with the problem firsthand, can help other to deal with it, and not necessarily the fact that he solved the problem himself. Often it is enough that the person went further than his/her clients.
Look at the animated gif image. Here I used one more, 10th screenshot – this is reaction to the Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. But let’s start from the beginning.
It is very interesting that there is no obvious dynamics anywhere here. Participant number 3 went into defense. When the experiment finished, I told him that his heart had no reaction to the Tibetan bowls. He replied:
- I don’t trust Tibetan bowls.
- Why?
– I was surprised.
He tried to explain, but his story was very complicated and started with his childhood and his journey through life that led him to distrust to the Tibetan bowls.
Then I asked him:
— Ok, if you don’t trust Tibetan bowls, which music do you trust?
He said:
— Play something of the classics.
— the “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven is ok?
— Yes.
I played the “Moonlight Sonata”, but again – no results.
Heart rhythm didn’t really change. The paradox is that earlier I was able to catch significant changes of heart rhythm in people who attended his seminars, meaning his clients did have the dynamics – and very obvious dynamics! In addition, there was dynamics before, when I did a previous experiment with him (to analyze his reaction to meditation). It seemed that when he changed his own state or state of others with the help of meditation, there was dynamics of heart rhythm, however, in case of music he went into defense. Interesting… Basically, there is only one explanation: he “closes” his own feelings, blocks them, unintentionally trying not to be vulnerable. Music is the shortest way to the human emotions, which a psychologist is working with. Behind an image of a merry friendly guy there is a person who froze his feelings not just towards women, but apparently towards the whole world.
Small note: when you look at cardiointervalograms, don’t pay attention to the gap between 110th and 115th intervals at Vishuddha – he simply coughed. Of course, I excluded this part from the HRV analysis.
Let’s look at the graph of absolute HRV values, here we can see more nuances.
Dynamics of Total power parameters was very little (before the experiment – 901, the smallest value at Svadhisthana – 403 and the biggest peak at Sahasrara – 1580). Decrease in two times and increase in 1.5 times is nothing compared to other participants, so nothing really changed. I will not even show the graph of relative values, there is also no dynamics there. Let’s go straight to the Chakras picture from the Bioenergy module. This is the initial state of Chakras before the experiment.
Most interesting here is a strain in Svadhisthana. This is not surprising as his favorite topic of consultations is couples’ relationships and also considering his own relationships with women.
Basically, in the setting of a defense from the outside world, the most problematic chakra is Svadhisthana. On the spectral analysis graph, there is a gap there, in Bioenergy module it is shown as strain. Why there is such a difference? My version: in static picture (Bioenergy module), we see strain as this area of life is under constant stress, and during stress test there was energy depletion. These are the two classic stages of adaptation syndrome according to Hans Selye. First – strain, then depletion, very logic.
Now let’s look at the participants of our experiment from a different perspective: using the beta-version of a new scientific module “non-linear dynamics”. The thing is that, not all of the recordings that we analyzed were stationary. This puts some limits on the use of standard HRV methods. In this case, methods of non-linear analysis suit very well. Chaos-gram in particular. Pioneer of the HRV method, Professor Baevsky in his book “Prognostication of norm-pathology boundary states” offers to view entropy as one of the indications of the process of “transition from norm to pathology”. He also writes that “adaptation mechanisms stand against” this. Let’s look at chaos-grams. I made pairs of them, on the left – graphs before the experiment, on the right – after the experiment.
There is a total chaos by the end of the session. Who asked about entropy?
This looks much better. We see some increase of entropy, however, it didn’t lead to the loss of an overall structure of the heart rhythm. Basically, it looks good.
Here initially the heart rhythm is rigid, by the end of the experiment the chaos-gram became angulous. Basically, there is no “openness to the world” neither in the beginning, nor at the end.
Let’s summarize. Analysis of these three examples, of course doesn’t claim any serious results. This was an attempt to describe the new method of evaluating chakra energy, which uses recordings of the Tibetan singing bowls as a stress test, and heart rate variability and all the capacities of the VedaPulse as a method for analysis. VedaPulse users can continue the experiment themselves and I’m ready to help.
At the end, I’d also like to mention some of my additional thoughts.
Some additional thoughtsI think that the term “Chakras” doesn’t have a scientific explanation, even though the first attempt to provide a scientific explanation to Chakras was made hundred years ago by John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) in “The Serpent Power”, Chapter-5 The Centres or Lotuses (Chakra, Padma). In this chapter he tried to explain Chakras from the perspective of Western anatomy and physiology. During the past hundred years the views of Western medicine changed. The knowledge about nervous regulation was complemented by humoral mechanisms. As a result, modern attempts for scientific explanation of Chakras were complemented by the ideas of their connection to endocrine system.
In spite of the fact, that all of these anatomic and physiological explanations are important, in the scientific community they are considered pseudoscientific. The problem is the following. The term “Chakras”, as well as many of the other terms taken from the Eastern philosophy and medicine, cannot be fully transferred to the level of Western medicine. There is a huge gap between philosophical and methodological approaches accepted in the East and West. This gap appeared about 500 years ago when Western civilization placed its bet on reductionism. Reductionism is a methodological approach which breaks any complex phenomenon into several more simple elements connected to each other by causal relationships. East remained faithful to the holistic approach. Holistic approach is based on a completely opposite idea – that any phenomenon is a part of a whole and can be understood only in connection with the whole Universe.
It is almost impossible to decide which approach is more correct, because in some cases the reductionism is more effective, while in other cases – holistic. In any case, technological and industrial breakthroughs happened by virtue of reductionism. However, it was not as simple with medicine. Transfer of the machine approach was effective in anatomy, so such branches of medicine as surgery, traumatology, prosthetic dentistry developed on the basis of reductionism, but, for example, in physiology reductionism was not very effective. General adaptation syndrome, theory of functional systems – all of this has more to do with the holistic approach, however, even the fact of having narrow discipline frames in science is an outcome of reductionism. As soon as we start to analyze any phenomenon within the frames of a narrow discipline: physiology, psychology, sociology, etc., this means that we throw away everything which lies beyond the scope of the selected discipline. Chakras, first elements, pranic energy – none of these terms fit in the frames of psychology, physiology and even psychophysiology. These terms comprise the relationships of humans and the Universe, any attempt to analyze them within the frames of a narrow discipline scientific approach is like castration of the initial truth. A general problem of the whole Western civilization and science in particular, is disintegration, fragmentation and inability to see the world as a whole. Everything is being fragmented. Just like any phenomenon is being fragmented into “atoms”, scientific disciplines are also divided into smaller disciplines. The funniest thing is that we are still looking for the roots of the diseases within the frames of narrow disciplines: biochemistry, genetics and so on. We care about cholesterol, gene which is associated with indigestion of lactose, etc.
It is also impossible to take out any term from the context of one belief and place into another. That’s why chakras, first elements, etc. are such terms which cannot be viewed within the frames of the current science. We are facing a dead end here. The development of science is limited by its methodological approach and fragmentation into smaller disciplines. Of course, in modern science there is a so-called synergy approach, which in fact is holistic. This approach is limited only by the capabilities of mathematics. (Synergy approach is based on the search of mathematical regularities in phenomenons related to different disciplines). However, most of the scientific studies are still done within the frames of the ruling paradigm. Synergy approach cannot be realized within the current administrative system which requires strict differentiation into departments working within the frames of narrow disciplines. Any interdisciplinary connections in science face big challenges. The problem arises already when a researcher is trying to analyze a phenomenon within the frames of just two disciplines. What if he needs to analyze it from the perspective of several disciplines? Then this puts a scientific and administrative machine into a dead end. As a result, we know only of few exceptions in the face of such titans as V. Kaznacheev whose scientific genius was combined with a great administration ability that allowed him to go beyond the scope of academic medicine. Kaznacheev is a rare example of a person who could go beyond the frames of a scientific and bureaucratic system. I will leave open the question of how long will the reductionism rule in science, but something tells me that changes will only come with the change of the current socio-political system. Reductionism was born along with capitalism and the change of methodological approach is only possible with the crash of a capitalist society. But this is completely different story, so I will stop here. The methodology used in the current science has big limitations for the object of its research. There are phenomenons but they cannot be studied within the frames of the current methodology. But the fact that more and more people realize this, shows that the transition is already been prepared. This transition cannot happen only in science as everything is connected…
In Russia there is one interesting philosopher, his books turned my life upside down about 20 years ago. I was 30 and had a crisis of 30 year olds which was a pretty hard period for me. The first serious feeling that I found the knowledge that will help me overcome the crisis I had after reading the book by Avessalom Podvodny “Returned occultism or the Story of the thin seven”.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to meet him personally, but for all these years I remain his loyal reader and think that he, better than others, managed to convey the knowledge of the East by the language understandable for Western people.
Very little people understand what chakras are. Some time ago I read on some website the following: “Ajna. Sixth chakra (“third eye”); responsible for clairvoyance. Active in women, passive in men.”
Even if we set aside such naive understandings of Chakras available on different blogs and fashion magazines and go deep in studying such books as the one by Avessalom Podvodny, there is still a simple question: what to do with this knowledge?
Let’s imagine that we figured out chakras, figured out their connections to the thin bodies, mastered the method for evaluating their energy level, and then what? The answer to this question in the following. If we are only interested to put our feelings in order or never get sick, it is better to deal with this directly and forget about Chakras.
Better go to a psychologist to solve psychological problems, or to a therapist to get rid of a disease.
Chakras are not about this. The fact that each chakra is connected to a specific part of psychic and physiological functions is basically a side effect of a much larger phenomenon. Of course, by tuning Chakras we can improve psychic and physiological functions, but there is a much bigger goal. In order to understand which important opportunities open up by working with Chakras I need to explain another simple fact, and for that, I need another thousand words.
Here it is.
Chakras are centers of energetic connection with the outside world. If we understand that the main reason of all problems of the person is disturbance of his connection with the Universe, we simply need to make a logic step – to see any disturbance in Chakras not as a symptom of some psychophysiological problem or internal organ disorder, but rather as violation of the person’s obligations to the Universe.
We need to stop thinking so much about humans’ problems. Human is only a small cell of the whole body of life, tiny atom lost in a huge Universe. Does the human serve the Universe or vice versa?
If we think that the human is more important, then, of course, we can concentrate on searching for different ways to get a piece from the Universe resources, but don’t get offended if the Universe writes you off before your biological age runs out. If we think that the human serves the Universe and try to find our role in this service, there is a big chance that the Universe will find you a place in the whole stream of life. And since it needs you, it will heal your emotional and physical wounds.
So the goal to create harmonized relationships with the Universe is more important than to heal a separate disease. Chakras are the tool that will help us do so. You can decide for yourself what does “serving the Universe” mean to you: serving your family and loved ones; the borders of a personal universe can be extended to co-workers, social or professional group, country, nation or even the whole humanity. You can also serve some specific idea which becomes a personal mission, or you can serve God. Everyone decides for themselves.
Ancients called it dharma – to find your way to serve the world. How to find it? There are many different ways, but I’ll risk to give an advice: you can be guided by feeling your reason of existence. It can change with age, it can disappear (if you lost your way or if one life program ended and the next one didn’t start yet) and then appear again. By evaluating Chakra energy we can understand where there is a block on this way. The next question will be how to harmonize Chakras, but this is a topic for another article. Today we only touched the method of evaluating Chakra energy.
In my previous articles I discussed how we can use VedaPulse to evaluate psychophysiological state. In this article I was telling how VedaPulse can help finding blocks n life journey.
P.S. Don’t necessarily try to read this article at once, it took me some time to write it and almost two years to nourish, so it’s ok if you need more time.
Leonid Doroshenko, R&D department, Biokvant LLC.
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