Mind over Heartbeat

One day last winter, 44-year-old Aircraft Mechanic Vernon W. Hansen of Strathmore, Calif. (100 miles north of Los Angeles) lay frightened on his hospital bed. He had told doctors that if left alone he could stop his heartbeat. Although he had done it in the past, Hansen feared that he might not be able to "will" his heart back to working. He turned on an electrocardiograph, then, "simply by allowing everything to stop," silenced his heartbeat for five seconds. After a deep breath, he was back to normal. Last week, writing in California Medicine, Dr. Charles M. McClure of Lindsay, Calif, confirmed Hansen's ability to stop his heart voluntarily, without any physical maneuvers: "The case ... is unusual, perhaps unique."

Although yogis have claimed to be able to control the heart, there are no well-documented cases in medical literature of an individual's stopping his own heart at will. What enables Mechanic Hansen to turn the trick is still a mystery. As a youth he suffered from rheumatic fever, once overheard the family doctor tell his parents: "Your boy will never live to be 20." Now the father of a 20-year-old son, Hansen lives with a heart condition and the boyhood-inspired fear that his heart may stop beating. To prevent this, he says that he hopes to "will" his heart to keep beating, just as he can "will" it to stop beating.

Dr. McClure believes that Hansen's unusual ability to control his heartbeat is related to rheumatic-fever damage, and "is just an exaggeration of the normal degree of control which any person's mind has over his heart actions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.