Effect of Bhramari Pranayama on the Acoustic and Aerodynamic Parameters of Voice in Normophonic Females

SUMMARY. OBJECTIVE: Pranayama is known for improving various health conditions. The present study is aimed at investigating the effects of bhramari pranayama on aerodynamic and acoustic parameters of voice in healthy individuals. STUDY DESIGN: This is a pretest-posttest design study. METHODS: A total of 24 participants in the age range of 20 to 25 years completed the bhramari pranayama regimen for 30 sessions. Aerodynamic and acoustic assessments were done before and after pranayama sessions. Maximum phonation duration, pitch, loudness, subglottal pressure, glottal airflow, laryngeal resistance and conductance along with acoustical parameters such as average F0, jitter, and shimmer, soft phonation index, noise to harmonic ratio, cepstral peak prominence, and smoothened cepstral peak prominence were analysed. RESULTS: The results revealed significant improvement in the maximum phonation duration, glottal airflow and pressure, average fundamental frequency, and cepstral peak prominence after practice suggesting that it has an effect on voice parameters. CONCLUSION: Bhramari pranayama is effective in improving the acoustic and aerodynamic parameters of voice. The same needs to be investigated in hyper- and hypofunctional voice disorders in the future studies.