Abstract—Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is fast emerging as a noninvasive research and clinical tool for assessing cardiac and autonomic nervous system function. The variations in the heart rate are the consequences of multiple and complex mechanisms, making the heart rate dynamics nonlinear in nature. So, nonlinear analysis of HRV provides more appropriate information for understanding and interpretation of the physiological problems associated with cardiovascular system. In this paper, multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis of HRV signals pertaining to pre-meditation and during meditation conditions is worked out. We observed a right shift in the peaks of multifractal spectra for the subjects during meditation, which represents an increase in multifractal nature of HRV. This result clearly shows that there will be an improvement of health in the cardiovascular system functioning during meditation.
 

Index Terms—heart rate variability, multifractal detrended fluctuation, meditation, nonlinear analysis, multifractal spectra

Cite: Ram Gopal Reddy Lekkala and Srinivas Kuntamalla, "The Effect of Chi Meditation on the Multifractal Nature of Heart Rate Variability," International Journal of Signal Processing Systems, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 128-132, April 2016. doi: 10.12720/ijsps.4.2.128-132