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Is it a good practice to meditate or do some breathing exercises (like Pranayam, Analom-Vilom) soon after daily gym exercise?

It felt to me that during our gym exercises the heartbeat rate increases and during meditation or breathing exercises the heartbeat rate decreases. Does it affect heart in any ways due to this irregular heartbeat?

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  • Calming down with meditation after an exercise session....what makes you think that's bad? :)
    – Kneel-Before-ZOD
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 12:52
  • Irregularity in heartbits
    – captainsac
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 5:00
  • 2
    Meditation after exercise will normally slow the heartbeat down gradually, over the course of a few minutes. This is the way it's supposed to work and no irregularity. If you're experiencing sudden changes in heartrate, though, something might be wrong with your heart.
    – user8119
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 9:56
  • Just to state the obvious, you want your heart to increase its pump rate during stress. It needs to move more blood around to handle the demand. Your legs move faster when you run, your heart pumps faster when your body is under load.
    – Eric
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 20:18

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Before I answer your main question—if meditation or yoga is helpful soon after working out—let me first address your claim about it causing an irregular heartbeat: your heart will increase gradually (or at least continuously) while your body endures stress from intense physical activity, and it will decrease gradually when practicing a physiologically calming action such as meditation; there should be no sudden increase or decrease in heart rate that could produce similar negative effects to experiencing a medically irregular heartbeat.

Just because meditation after working out won't kill you, doesn't mean it's helpful either. Meditation involving limited to no movement is not optimal for allowing your body to recover from the stress of an intense workout. Gentle and moderate movement involved in cooldowns is important for the following reasons:

  • It prevents dizziness or fainting caused by blood pooling in your extremities
  • Helps your muscles clear lactic acid buildup
  • Aids in reducing tensions from tightly contracted muscles

Yoga could be far more effective in cooling down, depending on the style and type of movements. When cooling down, it is important that you are moving to achieve optimal results; yoga that involves lengthy static holds would not be optimal immediately after working out, but stretching in short repetitions can help to gradually relax muscles and maintain flexibility and range of motion.

Hope this helps!

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