South Asia
Bhramari
A humming exhale named for the bee. Set out in yogic texts as a breathing practice for settling the mind before stillness.
South and East Asia
Buddhist chant
Low sustained chanting, held communally. Carried along the monastic routes that opened during and after the Ashokan missions.
Europe
Plainchant
Unaccompanied single-line song. Sung inside stone architecture that lengthens the tone and returns it to the singer.
Middle East
Dhikr
Remembrance. Names and phrases repeated aloud, breath-driven and sustained, in some orders carried with movement.
Europe and the Levant
Nigun
A melody without words. Tone is asked to carry what the tradition holds words are not sufficient for.
The Americas
Sustained chant
Long communal chant, held in groups and passed between generations directly rather than through a written text.
The Americas
Missionary cadence
Daily structured study and recitation, spoken in pairs on a fixed schedule held over a period of years.
What is claimed here, and what isn't
These are living traditions with living practitioners. None of them describes its practice in physiological terms. A person singing nigun is not toning a nerve. Someone in dhikr is not producing a gas. The descriptions above are what each tradition says it is doing. Anything past that is ours, not theirs.
What the seven share, as form
- Air taken in slowly, usually through the nose
- An exhale that is long, and voiced rather than silent
- Repetition — daily, or on a fixed schedule
- Most often done with other people
- No equipment, no cost, and easy to teach without writing it down
The hypothesis
A long voiced exhale is a cheap and repeatable way to change how the body settles. If that's true, it would be unsurprising for unconnected cultures to find their way to similar forms — the same way unrelated animals arrive at wings. That is a hypothesis about why the forms converge. It is not a finding, and it is not what any of these traditions teaches about itself.
What is established
- Humming through the nose raises nitric oxide in the nasal cavity substantially compared with quiet exhalation (Weitzberg & Lundberg, 2002).
- Slow breathing with a lengthened exhale shifts autonomic balance and raises heart-rate variability.
- Paced breathing can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep.
What is not established
Everything else on this page. The convergence is an observation. The mechanism connecting these seven practices to one another is proposed, not demonstrated.
Weitzberg E, Lundberg JON. Humming greatly increases nasal nitric oxide.
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2002.