[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness.
Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
Welcome friends to Heart Rate Variability Podcast. I'm Matt Bennett here with Dr. Richard Harris today talking about one of the most fascinating articles on HRV that I have read in a while. I'll just for our for our listeners, read the topic single case report Dynamic Changes in Cardiac Function During Somatic Journeying and Q Gong Meditation.
So I know, Dr. Harris, we've got people's attention now, but I'd love to just having researched a little bit about you and your career, if you could just give maybe just kind of an informal introduction about a little bit about you, your research and your work.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. It's great to great to be on the podcast here with you, Matt.
So I'm a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at the University of California at Irvine. I'm also Susan Samueli Endowed Chair in the Integrative Health Institute here at UC Irvine. So I've been here for a couple of years and my research has focused more about looking at integrative therapies, like things like meditation or acupuncture, shamanism, energy healing, psychedelics. Like all of those things are very interesting to me and I'm very much interested in studying them. I do a lot of brain imaging type studies like mri, pets, proton spectroscopy. But for this specific paper that we're talking about today, I was interested in looking at cardiac function and things like heart rate variability when individuals do integrative therapies. I got interested in this field way back. So when I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, I was doing electrophysiology and recording ion channels and I was thinking, there's something more to my job. I want to do something more impactful.
And I started doing tai chi and qigong meditation as a grad student and this is in the 90s, and was really impressed by like how those things were changing, not just physically, how I was changing, but also like mentally and spiritually.
Those practices really resonated with me and I was like, hey, there's got to be something here. There's got to be something going on neurobiologically Because I feel these things and it's changing my, my cognition and changing my thoughts. So I was like, there's got to be a way to, to study these from a scientific perspective. And that really carried forward through my postdoc and work after that, all through my career, I've been very interested in trying to understand things like Qi, which is used in traditional East Asian medicine, and accessing qi with acupuncture needles. I got trained in acupuncture, and so I treat patients that have pain using acupuncture. So I know that it has an effect and just trying to understand what that effect might be, how to disentangle it from, you know, placebo effects, you know, or expectations. And so I've been very much interested in that line of work. And specifically for this talk today, I has been interested in shamanism and shamanic healing and trying to understand how shamanic healing might differ or be similar to things like Qigong. Meditation is the essence of, you know, the, the paper that we're talking about today.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: I love that. I, I'm just curious about, because anesthesiologists, you know, that's pretty modern Western medicine we like. Besides your personal experience, I would assume, and maybe I'm just wrong. Maybe it was because you're in California and let me just stereotype like an anesthesiologist jumping into somatic journey. Q Gong, like, I'm just curious, professionally, as you started to do research on this, did your colleagues kind of wonder what the heck you were doing? I'm just curious about.
You shared the personal part of it, but professionally, was there a transition there? When I was reading this, I was just fascinated with what. That looking at integrative approaches hit you professionally with that?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would say the consistent theme professionally has always been fighting against the overwhelming.
Skeptics that don't believe anything, you know, or like, are very skeptical. Like, that's been an uphill battle for me.
I obviously don't think that everything works. I don't think everything is.
Has specific action. I do think there's things like placebo effects that I definitely agree with.
But what I'm at, I'm in. I'm in the game to try to determine what does science say about these things.
And that's just what I'm trying to get across. And so even some of my mentors in the past have been, you know, not believing what the results say.
So I definitely get a lot of that.
You know, that makes it difficult to advance, you know, through the academic ranks.
So I feel very fortunate that I've been able to work all the way up from postdoc or a study coordinator to postdoc to research investigator, assistant professor, associate in full with tenure. So I've been very fortunate to be able to do that. Now, like what you said about California, definitely here at Irvine it's different than what I happened to experience at Michigan. Like at Irvine they get it, they really understand that, you know, these whole person system approaches, the whole health, whole health approach makes sense. And hey, there's a lot of these treatments that are really safe and cheap and you know, why aren't they accessible?
And you know, at Irvine they get that. At Michigan I'd have to say, you know, took a while for them to even warm up to me to do acupuncture there.
I was licensed as an acupuncturist in Michigan, but it wasn't until like about 18 years into my academic career that they even let me treat patients in the hospital or in the clinics with acupuncture. Whereas here at Irvine it's all over the place.
So yeah, there is a difference where you are in the country.
And definitely, I'll repeat, it's been an uphill battle to try to get my research, you know, accepted or at least considered.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Oh yeah, And I'm curious, you know, and I'm, you know, looking at your bio, looking at past research, where did heart rate variability come into your consciousness? I'm just kind of curious, you know, of using that as one of the metrics here to, for this study. Just sort of where that came in, in your journey to, to your consciousness and thinking about human health.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so it came about via two pathways. One pathway was in shamanism. So like when you do a shamanic journey, and we can go into that if you want to, but when you do a shamanic journey, you oftentimes get visions and, and perceptions from things that are seeming to, seeming to be outside of your body, outside of your consciousness. But they come in and one of the things they talk about in shamanic journey work is that you're supposed to see with your heart. You open your heart and visualize things with your heart playing the center role.
And so that got me interested in that because a lot of my research up until then, and this is like 2019 or 2020 or so, I'd really focused on the brain a lot. And then now when I was getting, opening up to this shamanic treatment, I decided to think more about the heart.
And then the second line of avenue came from an investigator at Michigan. Her name is GMO Borjigian.
And she has this technique called electrocardiomatrix, which allows you to look at the beat to beat variability in interesting ways over time.
And we, we did this with the heart rate variability. We, we, we looked at the heart rate while a shaman was, or a shamanic practitioner was undergoing a journey. And we saw just dramatic changes in the beat to beat variability in the shamanic practitioner's heart over the course of the journey. And it varied, like it was definitely going through dynamic changes over the course of the journey. And so we did that once, and I was like, oh, my gosh, we've just found, you know, a very interesting thing. And so that then led me to, you know, work to get this paper done.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: I love it. So let's kind of define our variables. You talked a little bit about the schematic journey, the Q Gong, because I think that was a powerful finding in this. All too talk about the meditation as sort of the comparison practice, if I'm maybe using that term. Right. But like, how, how did this idea for this study come about? And let's define the variables there.
So.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: When we found that result. So, okay, so shamanic journeying. So typically in shamanism, what happens? Well, first of all, let me step back. Every culture on the planet has shamans.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: If you go back in time, no matter where you're from, you will find shamans in your history.
And it's an ancient healing practice. It's been around for about 30,000 years. We don't know exactly how long, but it's about 30,000 years.
And interestingly, it's kind of evolved in the same way across all the cultures. Even though the cultures have been separated by space and time, one of the common features among all practices is drumming. So typically what happens is there will be a drummer, and the shaman or shamanic practitioner will undergo an altered state of consciousness during the drumming. And when they're in that altered state of consciousness, they interact with spirit entities.
And when that happens, they then engage a healing process with the patient.
And so the patient may alter their state of consciousness as well during the. During that experience.
Now, this can all be done with drumming. You don't need to have a plant substance or like a psychedelic on board. Interestingly, psychedelics all come from shamans. So, like, almost every psychedelic that's used except for, like, LSD or the ones that have been synthesized by chemists, all of the psychedelics that are natural have origins with shamans.
So that's interesting.
As an aside.
So during this shamanic journey work, the, the practitioner may undergo a shape shift. Like they may interact with a spirit animal, which might be a helper spirit, and there might be a merging of the practitioner with the spirit animal. And then, you know, that may happen. And that's one of the things we found in our paper. We found a very striking thing happen when the shamanic practitioner engaged with their spirit animal and shape shifted.
So then that's very different from qigong. So qigong is a meditative practice that's used to cultivate qi, or internal energy in the body. So qi is the essence that gives you life force.
Qigong comes from China specifically. It's been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
And it's, it's different from journeying. In that qigong, you typically repeat the movement over and over. You have, you're moving your body usually, or cultivating the chi.
It's, it doesn't have that aspect of a change over time in the practice. Like in the shamanic journey work, you feel like you've undergone a journey when you've listened to the drumming and had the healing. Whereas with qigong it's usually self oriented and you, you cultivate the energy in the body and it's a meditative contemplative practice.
It's also different from other forms of meditation. Qigong is a healing treatment. You can, masters are able to heal other people by engaging their Qi with, with their, their bodies.
So anyway, they're definitely different practices and they feel different. If you're, if, if you're, if you can do both of these things, you'll notice that they don't engender the same sensation either.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Right. So we, we've got a single person who I guess has expertise in both of these areas.
So I would love to just to kind of explore, you know, compare, contrast these different styles of, you know, one being meditation, one being shamanic journeying. What, what was some of the findings that, that came out of tracking HRV and biometrics throughout these two processes?
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, just if you look at the paper, like in, in one of the first things that we found was that the beats per minute changed with the drumming and it also changed with the qigong meditation, but it changed in the opposite direction.
So with qigong meditation, what we found was that the beats per minute increased, whereas with the shamanic drum work, as soon as the drumming started, the heart relaxed and there was a decrease in the beats per minute. And then over time, when we looked at the variability and beat to beat, you know, occurrences. So like heart rate variability. Yeah. We did find that both qigong and the shamanic drumming increase the heart rate variability.
So there were some things that were similar, but some things that were different between the two. And then when you look at the electrocardio matrix and if you ever, if you go and look at this paper, you'll notice that the beat to beat variability during the qigong is very cyclical. There's like this wave that happens over time and it's very similar over time and it's like a constant wave.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Whereas if you look at the shamanic journey, the beat to beat variability is very heterogeneous. There's like periods where, for example, like when the, when the person shape shifts to their power animal, you get a very strong difference. You get a very strong increase in heart rate. Very, very large increase in heart rate variability.
And then after the shape shifting you get a decrease in the low frequency to high frequency ratio. So like maybe an increase in the parasympathetic tone. So like, anyway, if you look at that figure, you can definitely see that these two practices have differing effects on the heart rate.
And you wouldn't see that if you were just recording the, the, the EKG and yeah. Not plotting it out on this electrocardio matrix that GMOs kind of invented.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: So, so it is, I mean one of my thoughts on that because I thought one of the fascinating studies is the increase in heart rate accompanied by the increase in heart rate variability. Because, you know, simple math is if you have more beats per minute, you'll, you know, you're, you're less likely to have variation. Not, not. I mean this isn't always true as this example gives us, but I think it's, it's rare to see those two things go together and how.
I just fascinated. I was as transitioning states within the journey. If, if I'm using the correct terminology, you know, that, that we saw something I would think would be a little unexpected during it.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's really interesting and I'm not an expert in heart rate or heart rate variability, so I'm not as steeped as I'm sure the audience is. But if you look at that ECM electrocardiomatrix, you'll see that the beat to beat variability is the noise or like the peak to peak variability in the heart rate.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Is, is small.
But as soon as there's the drumming, you see like this wave and the peak to peak variability from beat to beat is definitely increased.
So there's more variability even though there's fewer beats. Yeah, so it's, it's definitely.
I mean, I, I'd be curious to know what a cardiologist would say about that in terms of like, what's going on with the physiology there. How is it that the physiology is showing, you know, a decrease in heartbeat but increase in variability?
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the, the decrease in heart rate, you know, because again, those two things kind of trend together a lot of times is that we'll see, you know, less heartbeats per minute, there's more room for variability. So a lot of times that, that is sort of trends the way we would expect it to do. So I would like the Q Gol in a meditative state. You're usually, you know, more in the parasympathetic nervous system, so you get lower heart rate. But, you know, with that, that vagal break, the parasympathetic break, you'll get more of the variability there as well. Whereas, you know, and I would assume the Q Gong meditation was probably a steady practice through throughout, if I'm picturing Q Gong meditation correctly in my head. Whereas I know shamatic journey, or at least my experience with it is it can be a very sympathetic process at points. Like, it's not necessarily a relaxing experience, can be very healing, but not necessarily relaxing. So that, that was what I was fascinated to get this data, you know, on, on this, you know, I've done a little like work with pre and post testing hrv, like for Reiki and stuff, and the results are just astounding to see the difference in the variability pre to post test and some of that stuff you seem to be finding there as well.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Do you find increased variability in the heart rate with Reiki, like almost doubling?
[00:20:14] Speaker A: I've, I've done it just personal, so n of one, you know, personal study.
So I'm not going to publish a paper on it. But like, you know, what I've seen is like tremendous jumps where I sometimes have found my highest ever, you know, reading after a Reiki session, sometimes twice what it was before the session itself, which is really astounding as far as the therapeutic kind of intervention. And again, building, building that parasympathetic vagal break on the sympathetic activation with that is, you know, numbers. I would not have expected anything could kind of do to you. We, we joke on the show sometimes, like taking a cold shower can get you close to those results, but just laying down and closing your eyes and having the practitioner do things you're not even Aware of, to see those jumps afterwards were mind blowing to me.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: So as you look at this, with all your experience, just kind of, you know, we don't have to get necessarily scientific about this, but you know, with a somatic journey and the shape shifting, those pieces versus the Q Gong meditation, you know, if you were to just kind of think about this, let's say we're at a party, I know nothing about HRV or this, what would you like, how would you explain kind of the differences that you were seeing and the data just kind of from a layman's perspective?
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think the simplest thing to think about is with the qigong meditation, it's a repetitive movement of the body. The practitioner is moving their arms back and forth and they're moving it with the breath and synchronizing with the breath work is what the qigong practitioner is doing.
It was a very interesting effect on the heart rate and it was very cyclical. And so the ECM pattern looked very much the same over the time of the whole exercise or meditation and it definitely caused the heart to change its beat, beat pattern to undergo those changes and beat to beat variability.
So that was very interesting to see in the qigong meditation.
Whereas with the shamanic journey work, what we found was, um, the heart rate changed, but it was much more dynamic and it wasn't as cyclical as what we saw with the qigong. With the, with the shamanic journey, what we found was that there were different stages of the data as, like, as the time went on. So this was like a 15 to 30 minute acquisition. If you look in those, in that timeframe, you, you, we found these stages where like there were different periods during the journey where the heart was undergoing changes and then during another period there would be a different change and then another period there'd be a different change. And a lot of the time that's, that change was reported by the shamanic practitioner saying, oh, well that's when I'm shape shifting or like, oh, that's when I just now hear the drumming music or that's when I descended into the lower world and engaged with spirit animals in the lower world. And so I think that's the take home message is, is that the shamanic journey is more, much more dynamic and, and it's a journey like you actually experience, if you do this, you actually experience like a path. When you're done with the journey, you like the music stops and you're like, wow, I just felt Like I did something like I just felt like I ran five miles, for example. Whereas with the qigong, if you practice qigong and you do the, do the exercise, you know, after 20 to 30 minutes of qigong, you don't really feel like you've gone on a journey, right? You may feel relaxed and calm and stable, but it's a different feeling. You don't feel like you've encountered many things. It's more of like a stable, peaceful, cyclical pattern. And the other thing I'd have to say, and this goes beyond the heart rate.
With shamanic journey work, many times you gain insights or wisdom about things that might be troubling you. And so usually when you go on a shamanic journey, you have an intention for like, I want to do this or I, I want to seek guidance about this aspect of my life.
And you know, I'm asking for help with that. And so that's your mission's intent.
And so maybe if it's a successful journey, you may access information or healing from an other spirit animal or whatnot, or from someone else. And that healing or that wisdom that comes in, you don't obvious. You don't always see what qigong. With qigong, it's more physical body.
You don't usually do qigong, for example, to understand like your relationship with your significant other or, you know, it's different, they're not the same thing and they actually have differing effects on the heart.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Which, which is why I thought the article was so fascinating. I would love to get, since since I got an expert in both of these arenas that I'm talking to. You know, you mentioned chi before and Q Gong, you know, my, my, my study of it. At least I know we're working in that Chinese medicine idea of qi and body energy.
Just as a side note, I find the old channel charts of chi and the vagus nerve chart weirdly similar. I know it's not a perfect match, but I find that really fascinating.
I wonder, when you put your study of chi on the shamatic journeying, do you have any kind of insights or thoughts about what is going on there in these. I mean, altered states of consciousness. I think that's an okay term to use and correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: They'Re definitely altered states of consciousness and both of them can be that way.
You know, like before we started doing this research, I mean, this is my first study where you've actually contrasted shamanism and qigong. Like, I've not. Nobody, nobody has done this before to my knowledge. And this is my first attempt at it.
Going into this, I was like, you know, I bet.
I bet they're not the same because they feel differently.
The subjective sensation of journeying and the subjective sensation of qigong.
While they're similar to some expects to with some respects, they're actually very different on others.
So going into this, I was expecting probably to see diff. I was expecting to see differences. And we did.
It would be really interesting.
So I'm doing a new study now looking at shamanic practitioners and patients.
Now we're looking at the practitioner and the patient and we're collecting heart rate data as well as brain data from both.
And we're looking to see if there's any heart to heart synchrony or brain to brain synchrony going on.
That's the next step to do this. Also with qigong. I think the next step with qigong is to have healing happening between the qigong practitioner and the patient and looking to see, yeah, is there. Is there synchrony going on between the heart in people who receive qigong healing and is that different from people that receive shamanic healing? So there's a lot of unanswered questions and, and it's like wide open with, with respect to, like, what people can do because it's, it's definitely understudied. If you look in the clay, if you look in the literature, just with shamanism, there's only a single clinical trial of published research on shamanism, and that was a study by Nancy Vukovic from Oregon Health Sciences university back in 2007.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah. This is the first one I've ever seen in a journal before, which got me very excited.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And shamanism, like I was saying earlier, shamanism has been around for 30,000 years.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: So it's a healing tradition that's been around for quite a long time and nobody has really, like, cracked it open to see, like, how it's. How it's working from a modern, you know, Western medical perspective.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And what I love about your study too, and I. This is not to. To say I. I don't think the other area of study is not critically important and very exciting is, you know, it's fascinating to me is that we've taken some of the.
The drug ceremonies out of shamanism practice, like ayahuasca, psilocybin, like these were, you know, came out of, as you mentioned, those traditions, and yet kind of forgot the baby along the way.
We took the water. But I think any, any shaman who uses psychedelics would that they are a part of that experience, a facilitator, maybe in some way, shape or form, but not. Not the entire experience by any stretch.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the things I've been very conscious and aware of is like, using or appropriating cultural or spiritual traditions that are specific to, like, a population.
And I don't want to do that. I want to do something that's more accepted. And the shamanism that we're doing is core shamanism, which is essentially developed by Michael Harner, who was an anthropologist who went all around the world and studied different shamanic processes.
And he basically came up with this core shamanism, which is the common elements that all practices use. And they're not specific to any one practice. So we're not really appropriating the cultural beliefs or practices of any one nation.
Instead, we're just using drumming, which is common to most practices, and trying to unpack that.
I'm also including on my research team people that are very interested in indigenous cultures and indigenous music.
And so we're growing our team to have that awareness of that where this is coming from, the heritage, you know, that's. That's providing this profound wisdom.
And I want to be. Honor. I want to honor that and be respectful of that and have that be part of what we're doing when we go forward.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Well, I think that's a beautiful way to hopefully end the first of several conversations, because I would love to have you back in this, because I just. You know what, one of the things, you know, again, as I shared with you, I don't know, we're about on episode 220 or something like that is. And it's not always the case. We find new ways. We have modern approaches to mindfulness and meditation, usually some way connected to the past, but like, really using our technology. And this is where I love using heart rate variability to really bring light into practices that range back tens of thousands of years. And I know Q Gong has a long, long history that probably precedes writing in some way, shape or form from my understanding. So I love that we bring back and celebrate that, hey, modern understanding of healing in our bodies and minds didn't start 100 years ago.
You know, that it really. We've been students of ourselves for tens of thousands of years.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah, very much so. One of the things that, that reminds me of in, in qigong, if you look in, in China at the ancient texts and the ancient pictures and drawings of individuals doing qigong, they often would mimic animals.
A lot of times the. The Movements that they have, the steps, the legs, the arms, they would mimic certain animals. And even as you look in martial arts, you see that there's different styles. There's like tiger style or there's dragon style or crane or, or whatnot. And so even in the martial arts you see the, the mimicry of animals.
And that's very similar to shamanism. Like what I was just saying about the, the shape shifting where the shamanic practitioner engages with a spirit animal and then takes on that spirit animal's form and actually shape shifts and feels like they are that animal. And so I can see how both of them, both of those things are similar with that respect.
And yeah, maybe I think like the.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: How I'm going to screw this up. So I just apologize but like the founder of maybe Taoism, that's I'm wrong with this but like there was a bear shape shifting and I know having practiced Q Gong like the steps of the bear was one of my like favorites. So like in reading some authors of Q Gong, like referring back to kind of the first dance and maybe even it was a creation story, but like those early, basically the first story of Chinese history, before it was probably called Chinese history, that there was a shape shifting element that is still celebrated in some of those movements which if you've never tried it, it's really powerful. And I would also say if you've never gone on a schematic journey, it is also something to try as well. It's, I've done it several times and it is a, it is a peak experience that will likely change things about you and how you see the world. So I couldn't, I couldn't recommend either of those high enough for those interested, so.
Well, Dr. Harris, I really appreciate you. I'm really excited now that I've discovered you to keep following your research in this area. And thanks for again bringing some of this stuff that again one other article that's been published on it ever into the limelight and I'm just so like thrilled that heart rate variability is helping to bridge that gap. So I just want to thank you for your work.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure to be here and it was a pleasure to talk to you and I hope the listeners, hope we engage them in some way and make, make them more aware of the research and maybe provoke some questioning.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I'm going to put the link in the show notes to this thing. It's a really great read and I don't even. Great articles are not always great reads. And this was a very enjoyable experience to read. And again, don't always say that about journal articles. This is a great one. So we'll put that link in the show notes and you can find those and everything else as
[email protected] and as always, we'll see you soon. Thanks so much, Dr. Harris.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you.
