I'm a practicing yogi and surprised myself recently in the hospital (I ate some bad food on a trip to South America). I was in a hospital bed attached to a hear

I'm a practicing yogi and surprised myself recently in the hospital (I ate some bad food on a trip to South America). I was in a hospital bed attached to a heart rate monitor for a few hours, and I could, while conscious, consistently bring my heart rate under 50 bpm (which would set off an alarm at the nurse station). I believe I got down to 46. The alarm was appropriate, as this resting heart rate likely gets me to the high reaches of the 99th percentile [1]. I could do this by practicing a fairly technical breathing technique - basically opening up the channels of breath by joining inhalation and exhalation. Still, I was able to convince myself that by practicing a very specific relaxation technique, I could lower my heart rate enough to scare nurses. I'm standing while typing this and my thumb-to-wrist test has me right around normal (72bpm). So, from my perspective, parts of this seem reasonable. I think a true master (I've only been doing this a few years) may well be able to continuously regulate his heart to quite low levels. I've often mused that yoga is a hack of some of your body's autonomic processes. A flatline seems unrealistic even to me, but I'm sure curious about what benefits there might be in this technique. [1]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr041.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr041.pdf