#125: Healing Through Breathing with The Renegade Pharmacist, Niraj Naik

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I feel so extraordinary this morning. I've just woken up in a good way. Not every day that I wake up do I feel physically and mentally the same. I would love to be able to feel the same great way I feel this morning every single morning they wake up. And I think that's a challenge for a lot of us is, you know, what's the first step of the day look like? My grandmother would always say, you leave the house, leave and lead with your right foot. Kind of a way to just consciously go, hmm, I want to lead with my best attitude, or whatever it is, you know, for you that's the right thinking, the righteousness. Sometimes it's described in the Bible as righteousness, as right thinking. So it's curious, and we'll get back to that later as to how it is that you start the day on the right foot. But for right now, for me, it's gratitude. Always when I can lead with gratitude, man, if there's anything that would be written as part of my ending statement, the eulogy I guess it's called, or the epitaph, it would be lead with gratitude. That's the best advice I can ever give myself. So, it's probably the best advice I can give anybody else. I feel grateful in this moment to be sitting here in my grow fit, as my wife and kids call it sometimes. I'm all in gray today, and I have a great guest that I am so jazzed up to talk to this morning to share with all of you. You're going to just dig this guy, both his story, his energy, his experience. We're going to dive into some really great stuff as well on the side of health, but not just the physical health, the health that emanates from within that is not always physical, and more often than not, it originates or starts in some other place. His name is Niraj Naik, and Niraj is actually in Spain today. So I'm gonna read a little bit about his bio, and then we're gonna tune in with him in just a second. So Niraj is an ex-pharmacist— ex-pharmacist. I'm an ex-lawyer. He's an ex-pharmacist turned holistic health expert and founder of Soma Breath. We'll find out what Soma Breath is in a few moments as well. After working for several years as a community pharmacist, Niraj saw firsthand just how ineffective and damaging pharmaceutical drugs can be. I'm underscoring that because I certainly believe that to be true. When he found himself as a patient of stress-related depression and ulcerative—

Ulcerative colitis.

Thank you for that. Ulcerative colitis. He embarked on a journey of profound healing and now lives totally symptom-free. Known around the world as the Renegade Pharmacist, Niraj is dedicated to educating others on topics of health, breathwork, meditation, and more. I feel really lucky, Niraj, that we get to have this conversation and other people get to benefit from it. I guess when I was maybe 17 or 18 years old, a friend of my dad's, a young man in his late 20s, actually had to have a colostomy, had to have his colitis removed and had a bag. And it was, for a young man, very difficult. And I just remember that and feeling, gosh, that's a tough thing. That's a tough thing to deal with. So I guess it started as an ulcer or in some way, and you had a similar thing that started for you, but it didn't end in you having to have your colitis removed, thankfully. Mm. I would love to know a little bit more about you. And so my first question, as our community always knows, is I'll ask you this. What's not written in this bio, what's not written in the introduction here that you would love for people to know about you?

I don't know if I've written much about my big ambition at the moment. So I like to set myself big challenges. And actually, one of my big passions has always been music, making music. And I used to run big raves years ago, like massive, like 2,000 capacity raves. But it also takes its toll on you after a while running events like that. That's where When I lost everything, got very sick, and ended up going through this healing journey when I became a community pharmacist, became very disillusioned. But my thing right now is I've got really back into music, especially dance music, and I'm attracting some of the top DJs in the world into the movement I've created, which is this new form of music where we combine breathing with music, with beats and rhythms, to get into ecstatic states without the drugs. And alcohol and all that stuff. So it's like I did a big gig at Envision Festival, which was this amazing festival in Costa Rica where I showcased it for the first time. We had like 500 people going nuts saying it was one of the best workshops they've ever been to. And this is the thing I'm pushing right now. Like, this is my big passion. I love it. It's like what I'm about. And I can just envision leading these big, almost like same as what I used to have, these big 1,000+ people raves And getting everyone breathing in a rhythm and connecting to the higher self and the spirit through music and passion.

I'm so glad you said that because let's go down that path for just a couple minutes. I want to follow those breadcrumbs. We were in the event space for many, many years, the big event space, thousands and thousands of people. And if anything could give you an ulcer, I thought that being a lawyer was a direct path to a heart attack or, you know, if the path of the law was seemingly that path for me and I pivoted off of that. The path of doing large events was a path to an ulcer. So we pivoted off of that a couple of years back as well because it's— well, as you know from back in the day, it's just a lot to get so many people to not only say yes to something but show up in a particular place.

Yeah.

Especially if it's not like— if you're going to show up to see U2, that's not— I mean, there's a lot to doing that for sure. But you know what you're getting. Something like a rave that includes breathwork and it's sort of a non-pharmaceutical event or a non-drug event because not all drugs are pharmaceutical drugs, right? And so there's recreational drugs and things like that. But breathwork can bring you into, as you said, an altered state without drugs. In fact, we were just— my wife and I were in Costa Rica 2 weeks ago at a place called Rythmia. I had to make an introduction.

Oh, I know Rythmia. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, fantastic. And we used to do, as part of these events we put on, we used to do trance dances. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will Will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah, but just didn't involve the breathwork. So I am fascinated by the concept that you would put breathwork into the music and dance scene and see what's possible in that.

You know, I think you would make a really good breathwork facilitator because you have that voice. You've got such a deep Like voice for meditation, it'll be really, really nice. You should give it a go sometime.

I

don't know if you do any guided meditations, but yeah, you definitely got the voice for it. Great. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the heart, man. It's the soul.

It is totally, brother. See, you were in Barcelona now. Barcelona. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm in Barcelona. Yeah. This is a beautiful city, man. If anyone's ever wants to go and explore some of Europe, like this is definitely one of the best. cultural cities, which still retains a lot of the culture of Europe, of Spain.

How long have you been there?

On and off for the last couple of years.

Nice.

Yeah, we like living here. It's a beautiful city.

Fantastic. Yeah, we haven't been. I mean, we've been all over Europe, but never been to Spain. We had friends that were living in Madrid for a while and knew someone in Barcelona. Are you planning to be there for some time?

Yeah, well, it's very close to Ibiza, so I'm going to be in Ibiza for June. And Ibiza is pretty much the dance capital of the world. electronic music capital of the world.

Yes.

So my ambitions are coming to fruition slowly. We're running a big retreat there actually for Soma. Soma is the online school that I've created for breathwork and meditation and music therapy. We're running a retreat, an instructor training retreat there.

Tell us a little bit more about Soma. We used to do something called rebirthing, was a breathwork process that helped people to go backwards and then come forward from a place where they've— they had let go of stuff that maybe started in utero, started when they were being born. I— when I was rebirthed, I had a very vivid recollection of being taken out, brought into the world, let's say, by forceps. And forceps babies, there are specific things, study research around issues with anger, issues with authority. And I was always, and still am, sort of not keen on authority. And part of my journey over the last 10 years out of the practice of law and into the work of running a large personal development company where we did retreats and all that kind of thing was me letting go of anger. But when I did that breathwork, that particular process, and went back to the birth, my own birth, which was bizarre just to even think that that's possible. Yeah. And many people listening to this or watching this right now, they'd be like, come on, guys. Seriously? Really? I mean, that's a little too woo-woo for me. For people who think that way, you'd be wrong. You can go to a lot of places, a lot of places with the right breathing. So in just a moment, I'd love for you to share a little bit about what, what is it about breathwork that can transport you without the plant medicine or the MDMA or any of the other things that people sometimes take, the hallucinogens that they take to sort of get an out-of-body experience. Yeah. You don't need to do that to be able to find these, these other planes. So please share a little bit about that.

Well, I have nothing against those sorts of recreational substances. Like, there's a time and place for all of them. But it takes me back to a story which I discovered from the ancient manuscript called the Rig Veda, which is the oldest religious manuscript that's known. And nobody really knows the age of it. It's like thousands and thousands of years old. However, in there, there's this legend of Soma. Okay. And imagine there was a golden age on the planet, which again, nobody knows the time and date, but it's similar to the Garden of Eden. All right. Where humans lived in harmony with nature. They lived for long periods of time and everyone was peaceful. However, what do you do when, when you're living like that is you dabble with psychedelics. So they used to all revel in this psychedelic called soma, which is a catch-all name for all the psychedelics that you can imagine, like mushrooms, ayahuasca, San Pedro, all of those things, cannabis, everything that is a substance that gets you ecstatic, right? So what happened was, as the rishis, which was these ancient yogis, started to move across the land to explore new territories, soma starts to run out. Now, this is the metaphor that is so important for today. They were so dependent on the soma for their bliss that they all freaked out when the soma starts running out. And the, the head of the time, the head god, the god Indra, orders everyone to go inwards to discover how to create the soma within. And it's through that journey that they evolved Tantra. Tantra means body, right? Tantra is like all of the things that you do, the methods to move energy around the body, to manipulate and create the most peak human exist state that you can, that you can experience. Yoga was the philosophy. Tantra is the doing, the action, right, that you do. So you imagine these were like ancient biohackers, right? And they discovered that The breath is the mechanism for controlling the physiological functions of the body, and through the breath you can tap into the autonomic nervous system. And through that, they realize that we actually have every single substance that exists in nature already contained within us, and it's through the breath that we can tap into it, and we can create more natural, safer, less side effects, endogenous drugs, if you want to call it drugs or medicines, whatever you want to call it. Now, for many years, we've been educated out of this ability, this innate ability to control our autonomic nervous system. We've been told that it's impossible and that the only way to do it is through drugs, through machines, through surgery. And we've been handing it over to the realm of people like the drug companies and doctors and other scientists and things like that. However, there has been times where yogis have gone over from India to America and gone under scientific investigation and shown they have the ability to tap into autonomic nervous system. One of them in the '70s was a guy called Swami Rama, okay, who preserved this very ancient form of Himalayan yoga. He's from the Himalayas, from the Rishikesh area, and he showed under scientific investigation you can stop your heart rate. He stopped his heart rate for 12 seconds. Right, did all kinds of crazy stuff, raised his body temperature up by like several degrees, down by several degrees, and showed complete control over his physiology, which totally baffled scientists. Okay, then in more recent times, a guy called Wim Hof, you may have heard of, he's a very good friend of mine. He did a similar thing with bacterial infection using E. coli and showed that he could suppress the symptoms of the infection. Very amazing. I personally have anecdotal evidence because I cured myself from a chronic illness using a combination of breathing techniques from pranayama and other lifestyle changes. And I learned all of this because what happened was I actually was a pharmacist and I was very good at getting people off drugs. There's a whole other long story how I got into that, but actually, let's bring it up now because your whole thing's about pivoting, right? Pivot. Yeah. Well, I had a massive pivot. So imagine I used to run these huge raves when I was younger, when I was at uni. I did a pharmacy degree, which I didn't really understand. I didn't really want to do it, but I just breezed through it quite easily, actually. But my passion was to be a DJ.

And this is in the UK, yes?

This is in the UK, and I was doing really well. However, the hedonism took its toll, and I ended up as a pharmacist. I went into the corporate world and I got so disillusioned, so disheartened with the whole entire system. Like, I couldn't believe it. I was like just baffled at how this system works, you know, where people are like on a conveyor belt of like a factory of drugs and, you know, people going away with shopping bags literally full of drugs. And I thought this profession was going to heal people, but it was doing the opposite.

And this is the opioid crisis that we've been—

Not just opioids, but all kinds of drugs, you know, blood pressure drugs, you know, heart meds, steroids, painkillers, everything you can imagine. People were on like a plethora of drugs. Now, I was so disheartened with the whole system. I couldn't believe it because I could see through the bullshit, you know. Like, I think artists, artistic people have the ability to see the bullshit that's being projected by the media or the mainstream and corporations. And I just saw the industry, how it works. Just by putting yourself at the top, imagine you're the CMO, the Chief Marketing Officer of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Imagine how they have to think. All they're interested in is increasing their bottom line, right?

Well, don't they have to think like a heroin dealer?

Exactly, exactly. So what do you do? You've got to create a customer for life. You need repeat customers. That's like Business Economics 101 if you want to make profit, right? So how do you do that as a pharmacist? Well, you don't want to cure people because that would suck. That would kill the business. Like, once you cure people, they don't need any more of your drugs. So what you need is a customer for life. So you want consumers for life. And the way you do that is to treat symptoms, right? Because that gives you the illusion that you're well, but you're not. And the side effects take their toll, and eventually you end up taking more drugs to counter— mitigate the side effects. Of the first drug you took. And here's the thing.

So meaning the drugs you're taking spawn other drugs you have to take to manage the symptoms of the drug you were taking to begin with.

Totally. That's, that's how it works. It's incredible. I mean, if you, if you're on—

Sounds like a racket. I know we're just playing ping pong here with each other, but

yeah,

sure sounds like a racket.

It is. It's the biggest racket in the world. Everything is controlled by pharmaceutical companies. If you follow the money, you'll see a massive influence in the world. But anyway, what I was going to say was this is when I had a big pivot because I was really depressed. I was going out every weekend, drowning my sorrows. I was raving, taking all kinds of drugs, and it took its toll on my body. And I had a burnout. And one of my best friends at the time, he dragged me kicking and screaming to a Tony Robbins event. And I couldn't believe it. I was like, I mean, firstly, I thought it was all a bunch of Like Tony Robbins, what's all this rah-rah guru stuff? Anyway, I went with an open mind eventually, and boom, it was amazing. It totally blew my mind. But the last day, he talked all about health and diet. There was a lot of things that he said was not— I've now, over time, I realized that he was a little bit also misinformed. But what he did say was that with diets, you know, and the Hippocratic Oath, let food be thy medicine, you can actually help a lot of chronic conditions. Basically, the drug companies have educated doctors and everyone to believe that diet and nutrition and all these things don't really make an impact on their health. For many years this has been going on. So I thought, what I want to do is, if this is true, I want to test this out in the pharmacy. And the best way I thought was to write healthy shopping lists for patients because you only have like 2 minutes the patients. I had to deliver the information to them in a way they would understand. And what I would do is I would like take them into a corner and I say, look, you're on a lot of medications. Do you really want to be taking that? Now, most of the time they'll be like, no, like I feel like side effects are coming on and all this. I'll be like, well, let me give you an analogy. Imagine you are like a car, like a super efficient bioengine, just like your normal car. Imagine what happens Like if you put the wrong fuel into your car, say you put diesel into petrol or petrol into diesel, have you done that before? And they'll be like, yeah, I've done that before. And like the car chugs along, almost breaks down, you know, may have to go to the mechanic. And I'll be like, well, imagine this, you've been putting the wrong fuel into your super efficient bioengine for all these years. And you'll be surprised at how many people live on microwave meals and processed foods. It's just incredible. So I said to them, like, imagine if you just put the right fuel into your body, you won't have to take all these drugs. And I'll give them like little swaps that they'll do and write them healthy shopping lists. And those who took like action, like quite a few people took action because this little analogy kind of put the fear into them a little bit and they really wanted to get better. So those who took action, boom, within a couple of weeks even, I was getting people off drugs, off pressure medications, cholesterol drugs, diabetes. Diabetes was the easiest fix through diet. And that really got the attention of doctors and actually were like saying, keep this up, you're doing really great. I love, love your coaching that you're giving me. However, it got me fired from my first job because I was deemed to be mismanaging the pharmacy and people were going over to Tesco's and buying ingredients to allow them to make their own like cough remedies and flu remedies and their own lifestyle plans without needing to keep going back to the doctor or the pharmacy. So then, believe it or not, I ended up getting promoted to the biggest corporation in the world. I'm not going to put any names out there, but they have a supermarket and a pharmacy in one place. And I came up with this amazing concept for healthy shopping lists given out on their website to patients who are suffering from like things like diabetes and heart disease and things like that. They loved the idea, but 6 months into it, they realized this was too renegade because most people consume a lot of processed foods. And I was being very controversial saying, don't eat sugar, don't eat processed foods. This is the first primary thing you can do for your health, like the no factory diet. That's my rule. No factory diet. You don't need supplements and all that. Just the no factory diet will do wonders for you. Those who took action on that had amazing results. However, eventually they called a meeting and they disbanded the project for various reasons. And this is when I just lost my hope for humanity. I was like, this could have helped millions of people. You know, this is amazing knowledge. It works. I've proven it, but they don't want to do it. And I just lost faith in humanity, faith in God. My spiritual connection was gone. And boom, it was so weird at this time with all this hatred and anger that was stored up that it wasn't weird now. Now I can understand exactly why, but I got the symptoms of ulcerative colitis and I was literally housebound then for a year and I was in a very desperate state. And I literally, it was another pivot moment where I got told by the doctor that diet has no influence. And actually, here's the funny thing. I was trying to be healthy, right? Back then, there was this craze of vegan raw food diets, and I was trying to do that, and it was making me feel so bad, so bad. And so I thought, okay, the doctor's right. I'm just going to listen to the doctor. And I took all their drugs and everything, got loads of side effects. And they said stress doesn't make any difference. So I got more stressed out and the symptoms got worse. And then it got to a point where the doctor said, you've got 2 choices. Either you have your colon removed. Oh my God. Or you can be a guinea pig for a drug that hasn't been tested before. And I was, this was the lowest point in my life. And this is when luckily, well, they say God stands for gift of desperation, but I literally got a gift in the most desperate moment, which was this amazing lady called Swami Ammikananda came to the rescue. She runs a very popular yoga school in the UK. She works with me now very closely with Soma. And she said to me, you've got a gift. If you can heal yourself, you'll be an amazing role model for people out there. And we can give this a go, you know, I can't promise anything, but if you learn the foundations of pranayama, yoga, and Ayurveda, you'll be able to get well. And within a few months, I realized what was the right diet for me. I realized the breath and this relationship with the body, discovered this whole story of soma and how we can use breathing techniques to influence the autonomic nervous system. And I changed my diet. According to Ayurveda. Ayurveda is this lifestyle plan, uh, well, guide. It's a system from ancient India that gives you your lifestyle according to who you are in terms of your energy type, your body type, your mindset, all of these things. And you can customize food, so there's no one-size-fits-all in Ayurveda. And I use Ayurvedic principles and healed myself within a few months. And one of the things I really discovered was the reason, real reason why cows are considered holy in India. That's because cows produce 2 types of milk. One of them is the colostrum, the first milk. We all consume colostrum, okay? The first milk that you, you consume when you're born, that your mother gives you, is called colostrum. And it's super rich in antibodies, growth factors, immune factors, nutrition. It's the perfect food. Comes in, it gives you your immune system. Your mother's antibodies come over. And it actually gives you the ability to digest adult food. So if you weren't breastfed properly, if your mom's colostrum was weak, you're going to be more prone to childhood problems and then autoimmune conditions later. And that's something that happened to me. And you've got to be also careful because the colostrum that you consume from your mother can also pass over emotions. So if your mother has been in a very stressful time, then it can also pass on, and that can again lead to Other issues because your immune system is largely in your guts. Okay, your gut microbiome has been shown now various studies to be super important for your gut health, and according to Ayurveda, like all diseases start with the gut. So gut health is my primary focus. I'm really helping people with their gut get better.

Wow! The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid, and if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different, something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken, and all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

So yeah, so I had—

The root cause, let's just say people have— people are walking around with all kinds of things. Some are physical and other, you know, non-physical. Let's say the gut is the place you would, you would recommend that people look to first to find out and have their gut health tested. Give us a sense of somebody walks, comes to you and says, look, I've got these things that are presenting, these symptoms, etc. They're either on meds or they're considering taking them because they're frustrated and they don't know what else to do. But Perhaps, as you said, rely on a doctor that has been trained to prescribe medicine because that's the formal training in medical school. It's not— they're not trying to do anything wrong. I think the Hippocratic Oath is clear, do no harm. In addition to food be thy medicine, the principle is do no harm. So I don't think doctors are trying to do any harm. I think they're just missing some information potentially. So what would you say to somebody that walks in and has some symptom? You're going to say, look, let's start by examining your gut health?

Well, okay, so I'm actually not into a lot of testing, like health checkups and all that stuff. I think they're the biggest crime against humanity. All right, tell you why.

Interesting.

Like, at any given time, there's only a few million people in the world who are genuinely really sick in the country. Okay, so here's another reason why the pharmaceutical industry are a bit of a racket because the health checkup is the best way to give you more prescriptions. The reason why is that what's happened is we live in a scientific, reductionist scientific world, okay, where our science is based on averages and a linear representation of how the human body works, which is not true. We're not linear creatures. We're very irrational and very different. Every person's unique. Yeah. So here's the thing. Like, one of the problems is that if your blood pressure is slightly elevated or if your blood sugar is slightly elevated, because you may be higher than the average, the moment that— that's when they've got you. Because they'll give you a drug as a routine checkup. They'll say, oh, you have high cholesterol, you better get on the statin. Once you get on the statin, you've got like a 50% chance the following year of taking statins of getting diabetes. So we're producing diabetics like on a massive rate around the world. Okay, so health checkups is the way to get people on drugs. When very innocent people go in for a checkup and they go away with a prescription, and then a year later they're on more drugs and more drugs and their health deteriorates. And here's the thing, like classic example why averages don't work with humans. Guess you know Gandhi. Guess what his blood pressure was most of his life?

I'm guessing it was high.

It was 200 over 100. Yeah,

yeah,

most of his life. And what did

that? That's because he was a lawyer. So yeah, yeah, the reason he had high blood pressure. But what what was when he died?

Well, he died of a bullet in his you know bullet to his head. He he died in when he was 80 years old. So he lived a long life with with a Yes.

Is that the systolic or the diastolic? Whichever the—

200, yeah, systolic. 100 is diastolic. Yeah. So that's the way it works. So yeah, going back to gut health then. So you need to really start to get back into touch with your own feelings.

That's where I guess I wanted to take this, at least for the moment, is somebody that realized— let's say there's somebody listening to this thinking, you know, I've got these symptoms or I've been living with chronic Something, chronic dis-ease, chronic pain of some kind. And either I'm on medicine or not on medicine, but I'm tired of it. Just tired of feeling this way. Honestly, just want to do something about it. Don't really give a shit what that is as long as it's not going to cause me more harm by creating more symptoms that I've got to treat or deal with in some way. And so I started to see a naturopathic physician some years ago and got, you know, got a number of different tests done to determine whether or not I was deficient in certain areas and primarily food is the way to go. I mean, this is what I've come to understand for myself. So supplements are fine, I suppose, but food is the way to go. But if you're sitting there thinking, well, what do I do? What's my next step? Should I just go to see my doctor? Should I go get that annual checkup? Should I go get a battery of tests? I hear you saying no because tests only produce more prescriptions of a sort. Mostly, yeah. They're just sort of finding more things to prescribe. Is there an alternative to that? And if so, what is it?

Okay. So this is where we go into an area which is controversial. So I actually put symptoms into certain categories. There's some really alarming symptoms you really, really want to actually find an expert to help you with. And those would be where you're bleeding when you go to the toilet, where you're puking up blood. Yeah, things like that.

These are acute symptoms.

These are like things that there is some problem and you might need— and doctors are amazing in emergency situations. They can help you stop the bleeding and stop you from internally bleeding.

You have a bullet wound, you break a bone, you fall off the roof. These are really good reasons to go to the doctor, go to the hospital, go to the emergency room. No debate. Yes.

Yes.

All right, good. I'm glad we're clear about that.

Yeah, so actually, you know, they're amazing in emergency situations. However, chronic conditions, not so much. And symptoms like heartburn, indigestion, things like that, for example, which a lot of people suffer from, is the first sign that there's something not right. You start getting like regurgitation of food or, you know, nauseous feeling. If you get a lot of nausea and a lot of pain, That's another warning symptom, okay? Or it may be that you're pregnant if you're a woman. That's another thing.

Headaches.

There are a lot of symptoms that actually you can treat yourself, like, you know, where you may have a lot of gas, bloating, things like that. They're almost all either emotional or a combination of emotional and diet. And quite often we choose the wrong foods, either out of ignorance or comfort eating. So, and that's usually because there's some emotional trigger, you're under stress. So one of the first things you can do, right, when you start getting the symptoms, and I really believe in gut instincts, and this gut is like your brain. It's— I don't say any brain is more important than the other, but this is a part of your brain and you need to really pay attention.

This is the trust your gut or check in with your gut. Yeah, those kind of clichés are there because primarily they're, they're true.

Yeah. So here's the thing. So if you wake— here's the most important question you can ask yourself every single day, right? That is, when you wake up, do you wake up feeling like you have to do what you have to do to survive, right? Or are you doing it because you really love it and you want to do it because it's your passion, right? Now, if you wake up every day feeling like you have to do something, or you're having to be compassionate around— feel like you're having to be compassionate rather than wanting to be genuinely with enthusiasm, then that's where the problem starts.

So it's an obligation. So if you're waking up feeling obliged to do something versus something you're, you're called to do, or it's your blessing, it's your honor to do, it's just— there's a difference between those 2 states of—

Big time.

Energetically and otherwise. Yes.

And your gut and your heart will start to respond to that.

Got it.

And start to like upset stuff. Yeah, got it. Yeah, you got it. So basically, these— this is the kind of way I treat things. It's like, I know that people who are constantly in survival mode will start getting gut issues and then may even have heart problems. So, you know, like some people, they're going to get more prone to heart issues. Like almost everyone has some— the first line is usually some gut problems. So it could be like heartburn, indigestion, or more intestinal issues like constipation, diarrhea, these sorts of things. And there's almost always some emotional component to it. Okay, so the first thing is I would like really recommend to people, if you're feeling like you have to do something and your gut's still feeling funny, is firstly have a look at your environment. Your inner world is a reflection of your outer world, and your outer world is often a reflection of your inner world. And if you're feeling unhappy, it's usually because of your environment, and you need to do something in your environment. Okay, now I was in a very desperate situation. Okay, so I was in a situation in pharmacy where I went to work and I felt like I had to do this job to survive, to pay the bills. And I just felt like I was just passing time a lot in my day. And, you know, that obviously led to a lot of like suppressed emotions that affected my gut. Then there's other emotions that really affect you, which is like anger, envy, jealousy, rage, fear. These really affect the gut health big time. So these low-level emotions, okay, we have to work with. If we hold on to them, It will take its toll on us. Okay, so certain techniques really help you to get there. Now, some people, like some coaches, they would like to work on the actions that you take and the strategies. Okay, now I like to go a layer deeper and go to the level of physiology, because the physiology is where thoughts come from, where decisions come from, and that's what influences your actions. So I like to work on the quality of physiology because that will impact the quality of your thinking and your decision-making. And then you'll really start to make decisions more in your favor. So very simple things that affect your physiology is diet and food. You become what you eat. So the first thing you can do if you have gut problems is to find out what is the right food for your body type, who you are. And that's what Ayurveda presents a very beautiful solution for. So you can go and do these tests called dosha tests. I'm going to come out with one soon. There's many online for free which basically give you—

Spell it just for folks.

Dosha. D-O-S-H-A. And they'll give you an indication of the kind of foods that should be— that you should be eating. And you may find that raw foods, raw food diets are really, really bad for you. Okay.

Well, because what we're saying is that Not everybody is the same, and therefore you can't have one-size-fits-all, even when it comes to something that you would call good, like vegan diet or raw food diet, because that's not going to be fitting for every person.

And same as a carnivore diet, the other extreme, which there's a whole load of people going on about, just eat meat, eat meat, that's all we're designed for. It's bullshit. Like, you know, humans have been eating a plethora of different foods for thousands of years. Meat is not the be-all and end-all of everything. It's not right for everyone. So you've got to find out who you are.

In the few moments we've got left, I'd love for you to share, because this may be part 1 of a 2-part or a 3-part interview. I've got that feeling right now. What are some of the rituals that you've got? Just give us a sense of how is it you begin the day? Because for me anyway, that first step, as my grandmother would say, that first step forward out of bed

Beautiful.

Really important. It's this— you'd call it the first domino in this long line of dominoes that is our life day to day. So what's that like for you?

So my energy type, and which I find is very similar to people like us, we probably have the same, which is Vata-Pitta. So it's air and fire. We have a combination of air and fire. People with air and fire are more prone to colon issues, right, than other energy types. So I make my lifestyle around balancing vata and pitta and kapha. So we get an alignment. Kapha is the other, which is earth. So vata people, pitta people tend to be creative entrepreneurs like us, right? So what we— what balances it very well, okay, firstly, when you wake up, to drink water, to rehydrate, because when you are asleep, You're dehydrated. So you first replenish lots of water and you don't need to eat straight away. I usually give like a bit of time, like 30 minutes to 45 minutes break where I rehydrate. Then I have a smoothie, which is really grounding for Vata people, which is rich in ghee. Ghee is like one of the staples. It's really good for all the energy types. So ghee is very grounding, very nourishing, and it helps strip out toxins from the gut. It also gives you a very good source of energy for the day. It's very grounding for air energy types like myself. I also add in other ingredients like cacao. I love chocolate, like real pure cacao. It's a superfood. It's one of the most antioxidant-rich foods that you can consume. I have a mixture of different things in my smoothie, and then I usually, not always, but At the moment, I'm very much in creative mode, but I try and do a little bit of exercise, low moderate exercise. And I don't do very intensive, like long cardio workouts or anything like that, because that's not very good for our energy types. Okay. Because it actually strips away the muscle. We need that muscle there. Because I don't know, maybe I'm right with you, but you lose weight quite easily if you Don't eat and stuff. Do you find it hard to— can you basically eat anything and you maintain like a pretty standard weight?

You know what, I used to be able to. I don't lose weight easily, but I don't gain weight at all. Almost, almost hard to.

You kind of keep a moderate weight.

So what I'm thinking is right here, what'll be great, because I want to just summarize for a moment that part of your, your morning ritual for your body type and your makeup, and makeup is everything. So it's not just physical. Is water to begin. That's definitely how I start because we get dehydrated when we're sleeping. So water at the start of the day. Coffee is dehydrating for folks that don't know that already. That's just the way it is. So I do drink coffee, but I don't drink coffee before I've had at least 8 ounces and sometimes more water to begin with. I don't eat typically at the start of the day. It's usually 30 minutes to an hour, just like you described. Yeah. I start with a green smoothie that includes things like ghee, And spinach and kale and other things.

Oh, great. Very simple.

Exactly. And then some light exercise, which can be walking, 20 minutes of brisk walking or something like that. So what'll be great is in the show notes from this particular podcast, we'll have more information about that morning ritual for you, including a recipe. We'll include our recipe. We'll— if there's a recipe for that smoothie that you're willing to share with our audience, I'm sure they'd love to know what your smoothie is.

Yeah.

We'll share ours, so we'll have our recipe, your recipe, and the good news there, folks, is that you create your own. So my recipe's not gonna be the work-all for you, neither would Niraj's. His is for him, and maybe there are other people with his makeup that would work for, but you gotta try it out for yourself. So for example, some of you may wanna have sriracha, or you might wanna put ginger or something else in a smoothie. Or you might want to put fruit in. I typically don't. I like mine more bitter. And if we do put any fruit, it's maybe one banana and that's it. You know, it's just a personal, you know, very much personal preference. But Niraj, I want to first of all thank you so much for having me on the episode today.

Yeah. Well, I missed out one very important bit is the breathing, the breathwork. I always try and start the morning with breathing practice. I've got a daily routine. I'd love to send you also in the show notes like a link so that they and learn the routine, which is this amazing rhythmic breathing that balances the body, followed by breath retention techniques called Kumbhaka, which is the most revered technique of all. And it creates a very powerful positive stress response in the body. And another component that I want to share is the sauna. I love saunas and using a combination of sauna and cold immersion techniques. So I'll give you all of that in the show notes.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Beautiful, because the reference to Wim Hof— people who haven't heard or have heard of Wim but just would love to know more, we'll put that in the show notes. We'll have these recipes. We'll talk more about, again, the, the soma, the breathwork. Maybe we'll even put something in there. People know a little bit about somatic intelligence, but we won't have time to get into that at the moment. But the idea of how it is that you manage and move energy I want to close a loop and then close the show. So the closing loop would be that when I did do breathwork long ago and returned to my birth and to the forceps entry into the world, I was able to do something really remarkable. So just to have that knowledge was one thing, to know that there was this sort of aggressive, let's say, beginning to things. But what I was able to do in the moment that I realized that was to— What? forgive. And forgiveness is a very powerful, powerful experience when it's coming from a place of just greater understanding. So I was able to forgive everything surrounding that moment in time when I was brought out into the world with metal, you know, with metal tongs, so to speak. And so a lot of the anger that I think I did feel and other emotions toward and reactions toward authority was shifted and it's never been the same. And so—

That's what we do is we're using the breathing. You can get into these deep meditative states where you can reprogram the cell consciousness with love, with forgiveness, with gratitude. This is how I actually start my day with this meditation. And, and it makes you feel so amazing. It makes you feel so good. And this is what I did in, um, when when I healed myself of the illness because all that anger, all that fear is what manifests into disease. And if you leave it for too long, then that's what's going to happen. You're going to end up like I did, housebound. So what I believe is this practice of daily forgiveness, gratitude. I think it's the most healing thing you can do for yourself.

Yes. So that's where we'll end things, but I have a practice that our folks know of really well as the waking ritual, and the waking ritual For me and the waking ritual that I want to not only share again and repeat, but also recommend in this moment that we all experiment with is waking up, first of all. So how many of you— I ask this question to everybody listening and watching out there— how many of you are willing to wake up tomorrow? And Niraj, I'll ask you the same question. You woke up today, yes? That was a gift.

Yes.

It wasn't a guarantee. It was a gift, not a guarantee. So are you willing to wake up again tomorrow?

Of course. Yeah.

100%.

Yes.

And again, it's not a guarantee. So when it happens, not if, but when that happens, it'll be a gift. It'll be something even in the midst of whatever the morning feels like. As we said at the very start of the show, we don't always feel great at the start of the day for whatever reason. There might be stuff that was just being processed in the time that we were sleeping, but we wake up, don't always feel great, but in that moment when we're waking up, Regardless of how we feel or what our minds go to, whether it's the problems that we have or the challenges we face in the day or how we're feeling physically or any other thing that might be happening in that moment, as we take that first breath of the day, that first conscious breath, we can have the understanding and, and it's truthful understanding that people in that very moment will be taking their last breath.

Yes.

So as you are taking your first breath tomorrow morning, and realizing there are people taking their last breath at that same moment, you can be grateful. It doesn't have to be contrived. It's not something made up. It's not something that you have to feign, because there is gratitude in that moment for the fact that you have been given another day and given another breath. In fact, we can be grateful for every breath. We can forgive every moment, forgive as we breathe, for the same reason that That we are just not guaranteed the next one, so everyone is truly a blessing. But however it is that you sort of put your own arms around that concept, that we take a breath. Let's, in fact, even in this moment, just breathe together. We're virtually breathing together, all of us. And what's great about a podcast too is that for years and years and years, as people are listening to this, we'll still be breathing together. How freaky is that, right?

Mm-hmm.

We'll breathe together, feel gratitude, and tomorrow morning, when you are taking that breath from bed, from your bed or from the floor as you're putting your feet on the floor, take 10 seconds. And this is the ritual, this is the practice. Just take 10 seconds if you would. Feel appreciation and feel gratitude and even love, unconditional love. What a concept. Feel that for yourself and say these words out loud if you will. I love my life. I love my life. Niraj, what are the words?

I love my life.

Yes, sir. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time.

You know, you know, the funny thing is the, the new song I'm coming out, which is like a lot of people are raving about at the moment, guess what it's called?

What's it called?

I Love My Life.

Are you kidding?

Yeah, we've even made a music video for it. Wait till you see it.

We put this into motion a few years ago and, uh, actually had a TED Talk that was Just published a couple of months back about this 10-second I love my life practice.

Are you serious? We have to collaborate on this. Wait till you hear the song and the music and you see what we've got in store. You're going to help me create this new genre of positive music with positive lyrics.

We love it. All right. We're going to say goodbye for right now. Everybody have a beautiful day. Again, love to get your thoughts on the podcast. You can go to adammarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment or leave a review on iTunes and we'll respond to all those as well. But what a blast. Blessing again. Have a beautiful day, everybody.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.