Project Summary
Heightened cardiovascular reactivity to acute stressors is a common symptom of posttraumatic stress (PTS).
Integrative mind-body health practices have shown promise for the treatment of PTS and stress-related
disorders. Many of these integrative practices include pranayam, the practice of controlled breathing. Mind-body
practices often use a type of pranayam that emphasizes slowed, deep breathing, as a strategy to calm
physiological stress reactions. Pranayam has yet to be studied as an isolated, acute coping response when
confronted with trauma reminders. Little is known about how well this strategy actually works to calm one’s
hyperarousal symptoms, particularly elevated cardiovascular reactivity. Pranayam has been explored generally
as a method of calming the stress response, though not in the context of trauma and not isolated as a coping
strategy for managing acute distress. Identifying effective methods to calm cardiovascular responses to trauma
reminders is important given the association of exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity with later risk for
cardiovascular disease. For this project, we examine 1) how effective pranayam is at reducing hyperarousal in
response to trauma reminders, both in spontaneous daily use and in a directed lab task, 2) whether higher levels
of interoceptive awareness increase the effect that pranayam has on lowering hyperarousal reactions, 3) if
emotion regulation skills mediate the relationship between pranayam use and cardiovascular reactivity. We are
conducting this study within a sample of 130 female sexual trauma survivors. We will compare pranayam to a
cognitive-based coping strategy, cognitive reappraisal, to determine if pranayam is an effective means of calming
trauma cue-induced hyperarousal. Hyperarousal will be determined by cardiovascular measures of arousal,
including heart rate, heart rate variability, and blood pressure. By isolating and explicitly testing deep breathing
pranayam, we can determine if pranayam is the mechanism through which mind-body health interventions may
exert their effects. This simple, parsimonious strategy can be emphasized as a primary coping strategy for
survivors who may have limited time or few available resources. This project serves as a training vehicle through
which the applicant can work towards her long-term research goals of examining how integrative mind-body
health interventions may impact the stress response in trauma-exposed populations. This project is the next
phase of the applicant’s broader career research goal of identifying and understanding the mechanisms through
which mind-body interventions can reduce cardiovascular risk, particularly for trauma survivors who are at
increased risk for cardiovascular disease.