KANSAS CITY, MO. The same kind of exercise that can bring peace to your mind may bring peace to your heart as well.

Researchers at the University of Kansas Hospital are finding that regular time spent doing yoga breathing and stretching exercises may help keep potentially dangerous heart rhythm disorders in check.

A hospital study published late last month in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that as little as two one-hour yoga sessions per week can help significantly reduce the number of episodes of rapid, out-of-control heartbeats experienced by patients with atrial fibrillation. These patients also cut their blood pressure and lowered their levels of anxiety and depression.

The results of this preliminary study are so promising, two similar yoga studies at the University of Kansas Hospital are enrolling patients with other disorders that cause faulty heart rhythms.

Yoga is not a solution in itself, but it provides very profound effects, said University of Kansas heart specialist Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy. Its not a drug; its not a (medical procedure). Its something you can do in your living room for not very much money.

Lakkireddy wants to see if yoga training can work for other patients.

He has started recruiting people with tachycardia, another rhythm disorder with accelerated heart rates, and syncope, a disorder that causes fainting when the heart stops beating temporarily.

Lakkireddys studies are too small to prove definitively that yoga is effective. He hopes to persuade the National Institutes of Health to fund large-scale research to determine with more certainty what yoga may do.

Yoga, with its meditation, breathing exercises and sometimes-difficult poses, has been practised for more than 5,000 years. Because its known for its ability to bring inner peace, yoga often is recommended to heart and cancer patients as a way to relieve stress.

Research suggests yoga can lower blood pressure and slow the heart rate. But there has been little study aimed at using yoga as a medical treatment.

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Relax! Yoga helps the heart, researchers say