- The average start-to-end decrease was 6.5 bpm.
- The median first decrease came after 1.0 minute.
A formal research summary of how the body responded, in aggregate, during qualified Dojo meditation sessions.
Download the reports: Research paper (PDF) and Visual report (PDF).
This report covers the method and the rules a session had to meet. It also covers what heart-rate change can and cannot say about meditation.
This page reports product data, not clinical outcomes. The figures describe qualified sessions with usable heart-rate coverage.
They should not be used to judge a single session or to make a health decision.
Aggregate physiological signal
What the body showed
Across qualified sessions, heart rate most often moved downward. The first measurable decrease appeared quickly, while the lowest point tended to arrive later in the meditation.
How to read this report
A few terms come up again and again in this report. Here is what each one means in plain words.
Bpm means beats per minute. It is the number of times the heart beats in one minute.
Start-to-end change compares heart rate at the start of a session with heart rate at the end.
The mean is the plain average of all the values. The median is the middle value when all values are put in order.
Half of the sessions sit above the median, and half sit below it.
A qualified session is one with enough heart-rate coverage. That coverage lets us build research-ready numbers for it.
Resting heart rate is a person's usual heart rate at rest. Here, it comes from a baseline users shared through connected health data.
Aggregate means the numbers are pooled across many sessions. No single person's session is shown on this page.
Abstract
Meditation is usually judged by what people say about how they feel. Wearables and connected health data now add another view.
They make it possible to see how the body responds during practice. This report looks at anonymized aggregate data from qualified Dojo sessions in H1 2026.
A session was included only when it had enough heart-rate coverage. That was needed to build research-ready session metrics.
The key results were:
- Among qualified sessions, 76.8% showed a start-to-end heart-rate decrease.
- The mean decrease was 6.5 beats per minute (bpm).
- The median decrease was 5.11 bpm.
- The median time to the first heart-rate decrease was 1.0 minute.
- The lowest heart rate came later in the session, after 7.63 minutes on average.
- Where users had shared a resting-heart-rate baseline, 27.0% of sessions fell below it.
These findings come from watching product data, not from a clinical trial. They are not clinical evidence.
They suggest that qualified sessions often show a heart-rate change you can measure.
They also suggest that two moments are worth telling apart. The first downward shift and the lowest heart-rate point capture different parts of how the body settles.
1. Introduction
People often talk about meditation in terms of focus, calm, handling emotions, and less stress. These things matter, but they are not always visible during a session.
Heart rate is one easy-to-reach signal from the body. It can help show whether the body is moving toward a lower-arousal state during practice.
The aim of this report is narrow. It describes pooled heart-rate response in qualified Dojo sessions.
It does not try to rank all meditation techniques or to infer clinical outcomes. It does not claim that a lower heart rate is always better.
Instead, it asks two questions. Do sessions with enough usable heart-rate data show a start-to-end change you can measure?
And if they do, how quickly does that change appear?
The topic is linked to measured, heart-rate, and personalized meditation. But the focus here is on method, not on selling a product.
The main thing we study is the cleaned heart-rate signal from each session.
2. Methods
2.1 Data Source
The study used anonymized aggregate Dojo session data from H1 2026. Dojo captures heart-rate response during each session.
It then cleans the signal into research-ready session metrics. The product can measure heart-rate response during the session.
This report analyzes the session-level metrics derived from that signal.
2.2 Inclusion Criteria
The research group includes qualified sessions with enough heart-rate coverage. Sessions without enough coverage were left out, not filled in with guessed values.
This choice makes the sample smaller. But it makes the numbers for each session easier to trust and read.
2.3 Endpoints
The primary endpoint was start-to-end heart-rate change:
HR drop = starting HR - ending HRPositive values indicate a start-to-end decrease.
Secondary endpoints included:
- median time to first heart-rate decrease
- average time to minimum heart rate
- median time to first point below resting heart rate, where baseline data was available
- average minutes spent below resting heart rate, where baseline data was available
- average largest drop from session start
2.4 Resting Heart Rate Baseline
In this report, resting heart rate means an average resting-heart-rate baseline. Users shared this baseline through connected health data.
Dojo did not work out each user's average resting heart rate for this study. So findings below resting heart rate apply only to sessions where users had shared that baseline.
2.5 Privacy
The study used anonymized aggregate data. It was designed to protect user data privacy rights.
Results are shown only as pooled numbers across many sessions.
3. Results
3.1 Direction Of Heart-Rate Change
Among qualified sessions, 76.8% showed a start-to-end heart-rate decrease.
A smaller share, 22.7%, showed a start-to-end increase.
The remaining sessions were roughly flat, by residual calculation.
The size of the change was:
- The average start-to-end decrease was 6.5 bpm.
- The median decrease was 5.11 bpm.
- The average absolute start-to-end movement was 8.96 bpm.
Absolute movement counts the size of a change, whether heart rate went up or down.
So the typical session showed a heart-rate shift you could measure, even when the direction varied.
Direction of change
Most qualified sessions moved downward
3.2 Timing Of Response
The median first heart-rate decrease came after 1.0 minute.
This suggests that the first downward shift you can measure often shows up early. The lowest heart rate came later.
On average, qualified sessions reached their lowest heart rate after 7.63 minutes.
The median time to the lowest heart rate was 6.0 minutes.
This creates a two-stage reading:
- The first downward movement often appears quickly.
- The deepest observed heart-rate point tends to occur later, after more settling time.
Timing sequence
First shift and deepest point are different metrics
3.3 Magnitude Of Response
Aggregate landmarks were:
- average starting HR: 73.64 bpm
- average ending HR: 67.14 bpm
- average minimum HR: 62.27 bpm
- average session HR: 69.36 bpm
- average largest drop from session start: 11.37 bpm
The gap between the start-to-end decrease and the largest drop from start is important. End-of-session heart rate may reflect a return phase.
In that phase, awareness turns back toward normal activity. The lowest heart rate shows the deepest point seen during the practice.
Aggregate heart-rate landmarks
Average HR moved from 73.64 to 67.14 bpm
3.4 Below Resting Heart Rate
Where users had shared a resting-heart-rate baseline, 27.0% of qualified sessions fell below that baseline.
The median time to the first point below resting heart rate was 2.0 minutes.
The average time spent below resting heart rate was 1.3 minutes.
Read this result with care. Dojo did not work out resting heart rate for this study.
It was a baseline that users shared through connected health data. So this finding depends on whether users shared one.
3.5 Qualified Content Groupings
Some content-level groupings met the reporting threshold and appeared in the aggregate output:
- Personalized sessions built in Dojo: 7.41 bpm average HR drop; 85.3% lowered HR.
- Body scan module family: 8.93 bpm average HR drop; 84.6% lowered HR.
- Intro module family: 9.12 bpm average HR drop; 87.1% lowered HR.
Content findings are useful for product research. But they should not be read as a universal ranking of meditation techniques.
Session context and user state can change how the body responds.
4. Discussion
The main result is that qualified Dojo sessions often show a heart-rate drop you can measure. The median first decrease came quickly.
The lowest heart-rate point came later. This matters because one value taken at the end can miss the deepest point in the session.
The findings point to a practical path for research. Meditation systems can be judged by more than completion, personal taste, or content type.
They can also be judged by how the body responds over the course of a session.
For a personalized system, this creates a feedback loop. The loop runs from user intention, to session design, to the body's response, to future adaptation.
The useful question is this. Can an app learn which exercise or technique seems to help a person reach their desired state?
And can it learn this from how that person's body actually responds?
5. Limitations
This report has several limitations.
First, it is observational product research, not a clinical trial. It does not prove cause and effect or clinical efficacy.
Second, heart rate is only one signal from the body. Posture, stress, breathing, hydration, caffeine, sleep, device behavior, and other factors can all affect it.
Third, the report focuses on qualified sessions with enough heart-rate coverage. This improves signal quality.
But it means the results should not be read as a count of all Dojo sessions.
Fourth, the resting heart rate results depend on whether users shared a baseline. Dojo did not work out average resting heart rate for this study.
Finally, the content findings are early and pooled. They should guide how future studies are designed.
They should not stand alone as claims that one technique is always better than another.
6. Conclusion
Among qualified Dojo sessions, heart rate decreased in 76.8% of sessions.
The median first decrease came after 1.0 minute.
The average lowest heart rate came after 7.63 minutes.
These results suggest that meditation can produce change in the body that you can measure.
They also suggest that timing adds important context. That context goes beyond a simple start-to-end comparison.
The broader lesson is about method. Measured meditation can help users and researchers see how the body responds to practice.
It can do this without reducing meditation to a single metric.
The goal is not to chase the lowest possible heart rate. It is to make the link between practice and the body's response easier to observe.
What can a personal session graph show, and what can it not show?
For a plain-language answer, read Can Meditation Be Measured With Heart Rate Data?.
Suggested Citation
Dojo. (2026). The State of Meditation 2026: Heart-Rate Response During Qualified Dojo Meditation Sessions. Medidojo Inc.
Download: Research paper and Visual report.