5 Day Breathworks Challenge LIVE with Niraj Naik - Day 3

Welcome everybody to the Breathworks Challenge Day 3. Happy Wednesday for everyone. Maybe those of you tuning in from New Zealand and Australia, I will say happy Thursday. They have passed the midnight mark. Let's just find out exactly where people are tuning in from. So if you've come on day 1 and day 2, you know the drill. And if you're here for the first time, here's the instruction. Let us know where you're tuning in from— city, country, region, whatever that is. Let's see how international the crew is today. I'm seeing Germany, Lithuania, Canada, Finland, Norway, London, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, Estonia, Colorado, South Africa, USA, UK. Wow, there we go. Incredible. Welcome, welcome everyone. Super excited that you're all here. We have another great day today and there's going to be something special I'm going to announce because there's been some updates happening behind the scenes, and you're all going to get a chance to see what that is all about. As soon as we get a few more— oh, Quebec, Canada! Denis, welcome! Bienvenue! I'm also from the border of Quebec, so myself tuning in as a Canadian who's right now in Bali, Indonesia. Just here to kick things off, my name is Jason Mark Campbell, and I'll be welcoming our speaker for today on day 3. And look at that beautiful map. Although I think we have to get a few more people in Africa to join and a few more people maybe in Japan. Get these parts of the world filled out. And of course, New Zealand and Australia, it's quite late for them, so they get a bit of a free pass. That being said, last time as well, we had a bit of a question we asked everyone, which was, are you new to Soma Breath? Are you a regular? And for those who have joined on day 1 and day 2, we started day 1 with 80% of you being new to Soma Breath, but now there's been a shift. So let me ask the question again. Number 1, if you're new to Sumo Breath. 2 if you're a regular, and if you've joined yesterday and today, you're already a regular. And if you are an instructor or you're becoming one, type in number 3, and we're going to see who's on the call today. And as I was expecting, I think we have a lot more people who are now become regulars given that you've been here for the Breathworks Challenge. And hey, just on an open-ended question— and yes, I am that guy that gets you to type a lot of stuff in the chat, but it makes it more fun. I'd love for you, as an open-ended question, to tell me, how is the challenge so far? Are you enjoying it? Is there a highlight that came up? Do you have any kind of mention? Has it been incredible? Have you experienced it? Have you been doing the activity? I just want to see the kind of comments coming into here. I'm seeing awesome from an iPhone. So even the technology has become conscious and says it's awesome. Tammy's saying it's great. We got Maria, great, great. Feeling a shift already. Ingrid, great to hear that. That's exactly why we do the 5 days. And if you feel in a shift already, we're not even halfway through. And there's a lot of what you're going to experience today, which is part of our signature program. So I'm so excited for everybody. You're going to see Bernadette's going to move a lot faster today. And we also have open delivery that sticks on this perfect, amazing revive. Very, very lovely. Okay, there's— I swear this is going to be the first time, the last time that I play with this fancy tool, which is I do like to know how's everybody feeling, and we did this survey yesterday, and I just wanted to do a comparison to what we had. So 1 is not great, 10 is great. How are we feeling right now? Take the time to put it up into the survey, and this will be the final time that I get to use this incredible tool, which by the way, I do love getting a chance to make this a bit more interactive, especially if you're about to join a webinar, joining this challenge. Let's make sure we're fully engaged, present. You're about to have an incredible experience. And my God, I need to bring up— let me see if I can bring up what I had yesterday. Um, I'm gonna look at my file real quick because I took a screenshot yesterday to see how everybody was feeling, and I have a feeling I have the survey right here. So we're sitting at an average of 8. Okay, now look at this. This was yesterday, average 7.0. We were 6.3. We are moving the needle, ladies and gentlemen. And so yesterday we had 7 was the dominant, today is an 8. That makes me happy. There's more to be done. So I'm glad you guys are playing along. We get to measure this stuff and have fun doing it. So with that being said, again, I'm going to be introducing someone very special to you today. One thing I need to admit is who, by the way, who was here on day 1, day 2? You've been attending the whole challenge so far. Just type in me if you were. And as you know, there was some very interesting updates that were happening in Niraj Naik, founder of Soma Breath, his life. He was based in Dubai and he was feeling quite destabilized and he was actually looking to make a shift into a different place. And I'm happy to report that he's actually found a way to get him and his family to actually leave. And I'm very excited because he's going to be coming over to Bali where I'm based, and we're going to get a chance to work together, which also brings some, uh, I'm going to say neutral news because what I'm about to announce is going to be very exciting. Niraj is not going to be here. He's on a plane right now. So him and his family are on a plane. They're moving to Asia. They're getting all the paperwork done, and we're going to make sure that they are well settled and ready, uh, perhaps join on Friday if he gets here on time. But regardless, we're super excited for him and his family. Um, they really wanted to make sure to leave, they've had a chance to do that, fantastic. So what does that leave us with? Well, you're gonna have an amazing master transformational coach who's gonna be leading the session today. His name is Nigel McCollin. He's actually the lead trainer who's gonna be taking people over our London instructor training that's happening this weekend. And he's a leader for our 21-Day Awakening Journey, which is our signature program where Cambridge University has been studying that protocol and seeing how is this protocol with breathwork making the same type of healing transformation that most people are seeing in clinical trials around psilocybin and MDMA therapy using just the breath. It's incredible. It's a protocol that we do every single week, and Nigel is going to be leading that right after this session and has jumped in to be able to lead you for today. And before I bring him on, I'm going to have one more thing I want to have noticed, which is nobody type into the chat. Silence on the chat. Hands up. You can do spirit fingers. So everybody's camera— Mary Redmond, I see you. I see your fingers now. Awesome. Ingrid. Okay. Monica is going to put a link in the chat. So Monica put the link because while we're doing the breathworks challenge, we have a ton of products that are going to go on sale as a gift for everyone who's participating. And the link that is there is something I'd encourage you to click on and keep as a tab open. So once you're done with the challenge today and you want to see, oh my God, maybe I want to go deeper on this journey. Particularly, we're going to highlight the 21-day awakening journey because you're going to get a taste of it today. If you are feeling inspired to continue on the journey with Soul Breath, if you've never had the opportunity to become one of our clients, we would love to be able to serve you, give you massive value. And there's a massive sale going on where it's 55% off, saving you hundreds of dollars in the process. Cool. So with that, you have your link, put that aside and save it. And Nigel has been an incredible coach, an incredible trainer inside of Soma Breath, and he's going to be your leader today, taking you on the third day of the Soma Breath Challenge. And you all know how to use the react button by now, so please, with your reactor, give an applause, give some love. But more important than ever, let's give a warm welcome to Nigel McCollin, who's going to be our lead trainer for today. Nigel, the floor is yours. We're excited to have you here.

Hey, thank you, Jason. Uh, welcome everyone, day 3. I've just been reading the comments and it's great to see that the level of vibrational energy has already risen since she began on Monday. So I am honored to be here in place of Niraj, and I wish him a safe journey to Bali to join Jason over in Bali. That's amazing, that's gonna be awesome. So we're gonna follow up from what we've done, we've done or been doing the last few days with the breathworks challenge. So I wanna start basically by getting you up on your feet. Let's have a bit of movement, let's shake off some of that tension. Yeah, let's dance to some of that cool music that Summer Breath does. So if you get yourself a bit of space, get a bit of room, come and stand up and join me and we can shake together. So just give me a second to get the music ready and we are on. Again, just make sure you can all hear this cool music. Here we go. We all hear that? Good. So, up you get, come and join me. Just shaking the body, getting the arms. Start off low, start off light, and when you're ready, you can boost that a bit more, whatever you want. Let's shake together, let's be amazing together. A little bit of shoulder rolling, neck movements, hips, legs, arms, wherever you want. It's kind of free movement, free dance. Yes, so taking a few deep breaths in and out through the nose, out through the mouth, and let it go. And again, breathing in, then let it go. Let's do one more. Reach your arms up to the ceiling, breathe again, and hold it there. Squeeze and let it go. Ah, and hold there for a second. Just enjoy the stillness, the space. Let the music build again. We are amazing. You are amazing. Let's make this an amazing, incredible session today. The music is building gently. We're starting to feel the vibration come up through the feet, through the knees, through the hips, through the arms. Building. Let's breathe again. Getting a bit quicker with the breath. And last one, we're going to breathe and hold again. Breathe in, hold and squeeze, hold, keep it there, and with the exhale, let it go. And let's shake together, let's dance This move, you are amazing. Let's shake, let's dance, let's move. All that energy shifting around. Anything works, anything goes. Shaking the legs, shaking the arms, and that sigh as well. Ah, the all-important sigh. Let go of any tension and stress. We can move our mouth, our jaw. So you can really widen your mouth, make noises if you wish, or just a silent shout. Get your jaw moving, loosening off all the jaw muscles and neck muscles. Right down the shoulders and the spine and the pelvis where we hold on to our tension. Let it go. Yes, let's shake together. Shake, shake, shake and vibrate. Sing along if you wish. Keep going, keep shaking, keep moving, keep dancing. Changing our state, changing our physiology just by movement and the music together combined. That beautiful combination. Let's breathe in. And hold and squeeze every single muscle. And let it go. Ah, again, just enjoy that silence, that space, feeling your feet on the ground beneath you, your knees, your pelvis, your spine, your shoulders. Your head resting on top of your spine, your arms hanging free. Let's get ready to breathe in a beat again. Last one, breathe in and hold and squeeze and hold, hold and release. And one last shake and dance and move together. Yes, let's see what you got. Let's move, let's breathe, let's dance. Last little bit, let's keep going, let's move. Last effort. Give those legs a shake, those arms a shake. And your pelvis. Let's see where you are. Now we just slowly start to calm down, still slow down gently, less and less, coming back to a bit more release and relax. Breathing in and breathing out. Just roll the shoulders Moving your head from side to side. Now let's have a big stretch up, reaching up, and let it go. Nice. And then we can come back to sit down, join back in. Okay, all right, let me just check the comments. Okay, so I'd like to open up first of all by just having a recap, maybe some Q&A. I know you've already done this with Jason, you've answered in the poll and you've given how you're feeling. Have you progressed in the last few days since then you started? I'd love to open up and hear more individual stories. If anyone wishes to unmute themselves and come forward and share with them anything that's come forward for them, anything that's happened for them in the last 2 days. I know it's only been 2 days, but this is the power of the breath that we can get. We can make pretty significant, substantial changes in just 2 days. So if anyone wants to share with me and the group, please unmute yourself. Let's see what's been going on for everyone. In these last few days?

If you'd like to speak, please raise your hand with the reaction button and I'll go ahead and unmute you.

Thank you, Jason. Who's willing to be the first volunteer? We might start picking people from the group. No one? Dennis. Amazing. Dennis, well done, you. Okay, you need to unmute yourself, Dennis. All right, can you hear me? We can. Excellent, thank you. All right, so I just want to share that I've been spending, spending a lifelong— I'm a French Canadian, so don't worry if I'm looking for my word a little bit.

So I've been living a lifelong struggling with breathing deeply.

And it's amazing, just after 2 days, I was looking at myself this morning when I was in bed and just beginning to practice this 2-2-4 modality. And I was already beginning to breathe more deeply, meaning that I really sense it when the breath is trying to go through my chest and go deeply because I'm so used to breathe so shallow. And it's already, let's say, just to give a number, sometimes when over a 5-minute lapse when I'm practicing, sometimes I'm I'm able to take at least one deep breath and it feels very good to me. So right now it's happening maybe, let's say, 3 or 4 times in this same lapse of time. So I can see something was relaxing inside of me already and can't wait to have much more result as I practice that.

Yeah.

So cool. Yeah, thanks, Dennis, for sharing that. That's amazing. And this just kind of confirms to us, you know, it shows us just the power of the breath, how just stepping off the accelerator, stepping off the gas pedal, stepping away from survival mode and just putting yourself into an environment where you can actually kind of just come back to regulation and all other kind of parts of your body, the physiology, the psychology, to start to slowly kind of regulate itself as well. So you're experiencing that, you're living it right now. So you're doing amazing with it. Yeah. And day 3, you know, hold on tight. Just can't wait to get out of this stress mode that I've been in for almost all my life. So I'm going to keep practicing. Well, it sounds like it's happening already. So yeah, thank you guys. You're in the right place. Yeah. Thank you, Denis. Amazing. Thank you. Merci Denis, c'était un plaisir d'avoir parlé. All right. Thank you, Dennis. And Joe, do you like to share? I can ask you to unmute. Yeah, we hear you. Good. So, yeah, I've been practicing Since the last 2 days, I had already the app and I let it aside for a while, but just in these 2 days I can really feel more conscious, more centered and more conscious about my body, my breathing, my mind is more calm, so, so, yeah, I just keep going and In the morning, I just, I was 29 on the first day, 31 second today, this morning.

And I went to the gym, I do gym.

I try to hold my breath also during my practice there. And that was pretty interesting, what's happening in the body, how to breathe and I'm not pushing, I'm just going slightly over the comfort zone. Yeah. It's pretty interesting because it puts oneself in like taking another vision of what's happening. And yeah, I feel Really, we can. That's true. Nice, nice. And that's something that comes up quite a lot, Joe, is that stepping out of the comfort zone and into discomfort. You know, so you've— I think it's quite amazing that we all have these individual kind of comfort zones that are— how are they set? Where does the comfort zone come from? You know, from something that's happened in the past that's led to us being very overreactive about things. When you can just slowly learn to calm that little discomfort down or extend the discomfort into discomfort a bit longer. This is when we start to have a bit more growth, a bit more magic starts to happen in that zone. So it's an interesting spot where that discomfort kicks in. Can you just prolong it another 10 seconds? Maybe by moving your body or by rolling your shoulders, kind of mimicking the actions of breathing but not actually breathing. Then we can kind of extend that a little bit longer, and your brain learns from that. Your brain learns that it was, it was a positive experience, and you've now set a new threshold of where the discomfort actually kicks in. So yeah, just slowly keep progressing. Your brain learns, you learn new neural pathways, and then we start reaping the full benefit of being in the discomfort. And today we'll experience that when we go into a bit of the intermittent hypoxic training we're going to do later on. So yeah. Well done, Joe. Amazing. Good stuff. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you, Joe. And next up, I'm going to bring our guest, Diana. Now, guys, I want you guys to say a big shout out to Diana. She joins a lot of our live calls, always here to say hi to the big gang. Good to see you again, Diana. Sending you lots of love and a quick hello. All right, well, Deanna, you are one of our biggest cheerleaders. We much appreciate you. I know you're joining us for live calls regularly, and we get to have you connect with the community. So much love sent to you, always a pleasure to have you on board. Thank you for being a part of the Soma Breath Tribe. We have Duarte. I'm going to ask you to turn on your video as well.

And here you go. Hello? Hello?

Hi, sorry. Um, yeah, I just wanted to share the— in this, uh, short period, uh, I, I, I— today morning I reached a little bit further. I went for 42, but really pushing. But, uh I feel the changes in the body and I start to— because I was doing every day a little push-ups and everything. I used to do it always a little bit and I tried to do with, with the retention and I really feel because I have some problems here in my— not shoulders, but this muscle here. And I know it affects a lot the nervous system here. I feel the zones of my body that I know that I have some injuries when I'm lying down in bed at night. After doing a little bit of the breathing exercises, I feel those places like being latent, you know, like pulsing a little bit and some hot sometimes and everything. And I feel like it's healing. I don't know, I feel— because I used to do different kinds of meditations and treatments and everything when I was much younger. I used to focus the breathing on the pain and then it would go away and I would heal myself sometimes like this. But Now, for a long time, for a long period that I haven't done these kind of things and, and it's working and it feels great because I'm still, I feel myself not yet that well because I know I have a lot of things to take care, but I see the difference from just two days.

It's wonderful.

It's really, really good.

So thank you. Excellent. Absolutely, more than ever. Yeah, it's interesting you're saying that you're feeling these sort of differences and changes, like the heat coming through your body and so on. You know, is this one of the side effects that we get from proper breathing, where we're actually creating new growth in the capillaries? We're actually oxygenating areas that maybe haven't been oxygenated for a long time because we're actually using our nitric oxide capability that we're producing in our nose, and we're oxygenating ourselves better by getting into the tissues and the cells through these reducing the breathing techniques. You're influencing your biochemistry, so you know, you're getting a lot more blood dispersal to where it should be going. So is this part of it? And this is part of the healing. We know we can, you know, deal with areas of our body that have been— we've been neglecting them for so long just because we've been in survival, we've been in stress. Now you can actually allow your body to come off the gas pedal, the accelerator, and now say, "I can now deal with this. I can now address these issues that have been on the back burner for a while, and I can now manage them better." Yeah, because you have more capacity for that. So awesome to hear this, Duarte. This is great. This is the sort of stuff we love to hear. That immediate effect, just 2 days, and it's already transforming, it's changing. Yeah. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Excellent. Loving these stories. Yeah. Who do we have next?

Carmen? Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, Carmen.

Hi.

Thank you for all what you are doing for us, all of us these days. I have been practicing since day one. Already the night of day 1, I have like a little pressure in my heart, but I tried not to focus on it and continue sleeping. And yesterday was all right till we listened to this audio where we inhale in 2 and then exhale in 4 and then stop. And for me, inhaling was very quick. It's like I need more air. I imagine it's because I'm always breathing with the mouth, especially when I'm sleeping. Again, I was feeling a bit pressure in the heart. I don't know if I should ignore that and continue because I see they're improving. For instance, today I was walking and I have to go up a little hill and normally I need to open the mouth. Today I could go up without opening the mouth. So it was like I can do it without the mouth. But I don't know if I have to worry about this pressure in the heart or is normal.

Yeah, thanks for bringing that to our attention, Carmen. And I would just say from what I've been listening to you and what I've been hearing from you is that you maybe have had, you know, dysfunctional patterns of breathing that have led you to being more mouth. So when you're starting to breathe in, and this is for everyone to kind of take note of, when we start breathing in through our nose, it's a much smaller hole, two holes instead of this big wide gaping hole we've got in our mouth.— so 2 holes is smaller, so the resistance that's coming in with the breath in, your diaphragm has to work a lot harder. And the diaphragm is a muscle, and any muscle, just very similar to any other muscle you exercise or train, it's going to take time for that muscle to develop. So for a muscle to change, you're looking at 4 to 6 weeks minimum of exercising it. So you're starting to see some differences already, but I would just be cautious of this here and just to be mindful of that that you might actually be trying too hard because you are feeling this need to inhale deeper. So you might be just breathing too much into the chest. So if it helps, and this is again for anyone out there who's experiencing similar, is to do the hand on the stomach, hand on the belly technique, and a hand on the chest. And really focusing on breathing into that belly. And even if that's something that we do any time of the day, not just when we're doing these techniques, but any time of day, we're becoming aware. This is what we call breath awareness, the awareness of the breath 24/7, not just when we're doing these techniques, but if you're sitting down in the car, if you're eating your dinner, how are you breathing? If you react to something, how has it changed? So maybe just this all here has had a bit of a hard time recently, so now you're changing it. Just these little physiological changes are happening, Carmen. To acknowledge it. And if you need to step away from it at any point, you can do, and just make your breathing come back to normal and come back into that 2-4-4 rhythm and revisit it. Yeah, so always be kind of guided by any pain or discomfort or reaction you might have from these techniques. You know, they are, they are super beneficial. You're gonna have a really good benefit from it, but just every so often we have to just kind of acknowledge that maybe we're not progressing at that same level, so we can step back from that. So again, being observant and being aware of the breath is really quite key to this practice.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you, thank you. Good, great question though. Thanks very much and wish you good luck with it. Okay, have we got time for one more?

It's a D. Yeah, just wanted to say that I just feel my posture has got so much better in the last few days, walking with a bit of pride and aware of the breath. And people are noticing it and me going, oh, see, what are you up to? And they've noticed as well I've been putting my hand on my belly. So a lot of what you're saying is, it's coming naturally now, and I'm amazed how quick It's been all, I suppose, leading up to with the facilitator course, but this little extra 5-day commitment is empowering me as well. So I'm really aware of myself more than ever. Yeah. And, uh, I really am aware of not getting into tour guiding as much. I'm doing it for years. It's a lot of mouth breathing because I'm talking so much. I was wondering where my burnout was coming from, and it was that lovely girl on Monday. Yeah, one that was saying she was, yeah, speaking a lot. So now I'm trying to rejig my career and I need this feeling of empowerment, which this trial 5-day is seeming to trigger.

So thank you. Just put your body, your nervous system in the right environment and the rest will take care of itself. Yeah, true. Give it the right environment and healing will begin and And the regulation will come back. Yeah. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. Tanya's got her hand up. Should we just do Tanya?

Fellow instructor, Tanya. Hi, I just wanted to add on. Are you able to hear me? Yes, we are.

Okay.

I just wanted to add on that. Our diaphragm is not a muscle that we are usually used to connecting with and taking control of our breathing. So oftentimes when we are starting a breathwork practice and maybe for the first time connecting in with that muscle, it can feel really awkward and it can feel like the diaphragm is tight and we don't know how to relax it and we don't know how to fall into a rhythmic breathing pattern comfortably. So I find that for myself a lot of times when I was first starting my breathwork practice and when I'm working with newer people, that they'll feel a lot of tightness in the chest and all the auxiliary muscles and the rib cage isn't able to move freely just because we aren't used to consciously connecting and taking control of our breath. So that can also be something that people may be experiencing when they talk about feeling a tightness. Or feeling like they need to breathe in through their mouth because they can't get enough breath in through their nose is just learning that, getting that body-brain connection, getting that neural pathway with our diaphragm.

Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for that, Tanya. Yeah. Good points there as well. And there is a period of adaptation that we have to go through to allow our diaphragm to become more efficient. If it's been stuck or if it's been, what we can say is frozen for quite a while, then you start to move that, it's not going to be always as simple as what we would like it to be. Sometimes it comes with a little bit of resistance as well. So, and there are things you can do to help that on. You can maybe move, stretch better, and try breathing in different positions like sitting, standing, lying down, see if anything makes a difference like that.

So yeah. And so also, you know, one of the things is our hip flexor muscle is actually physically connected to our diaphragm.

It's piercing.

So many of us, yeah. So many of us have jobs where we're just sitting all day long and have tight hip flexors. So that can contribute to a tight diaphragm as well. So there's just a lot going on with being able to come into a place of being able to have a nice, smooth, relaxed breath.

Yeah, absolutely. Nice. Thank you, Tanya. All right, we'll have one more and then we'll need to move on. So Denise is next on the list. Let's have you, Denise. Can you hear me?

We can. Hello. Okay, great. Thank you. Hi, I just wanted to say this is my first introduction to Soma, but I've done pranayama and yoga breathing for over 20 years. And being asthmatic, I never liked it. It was scary. And I always felt like I was out of breath. And anytime I focused on my breath, I felt like I couldn't breathe. And what you all have done, and I thank you very, very much for this, is teach me in a different way that worked for me to make me feel a little more comfortable in doing this work and adding movement to it and adding the maximum breath hold thing. That's really scary for me, but I'm getting better. I've done it 3 times now, and I'm— instead of being 10, I'm like 22 now, um, in just 3 days. And it's because I— something clicked in my head. And yeah, I'm 64, so I'm older now, and I've given up some of my control issues. But, um, still, what you— the way it's brought, the way you present it, the way it's, um, just so real and useful has really opened up new pathways for me to be able to feel comfortable in my breath.

And I thank you. Nice. Yeah, we've all got Niraj to thank for that, for bringing this amazing modality together.

A bit of a— I know, I wish I could say that to him. But I'm very happy he got on that plane with his family.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't do your nervous system any good, does it? No. Thank you, Denise. Thank you. Okay, we'll come back to questions. I'm going to move on with day 3. I would like us all to actually just to do a little bit of a little experiment. Yeah, if we can all do this together, and then I want to get your reactions, your feelings from it in the chat box afterwards, just to kind of highlight a few things for us. So if we could all just close our eyes and just be comfortable in the position that you're in, just sitting, or if you're lying down, that's absolutely fine as well. Just shut your eyes when you're ready and then just begin with a nice rhythmic breathing pattern of in through your nose and then out through your mouth. Now that could be any breath rhythm you wish. It could be 4 in, 4 out, but just become present with the breath. Become aware of the breath entering through your nose and exiting through your mouth. And just ask yourself a few questions like, how does the breath feel? Are there any areas of resistance when you do that gentle inhale? Is your, your belly gently rising? Do you feel the lower ribcage is starting to move outwards a little bit? If it helps, place one hand on your stomach, one hand on your chest, and again, bring in that breath awareness into our breathing pattern. So a little bit lower, deeper into the abdomen, deeper into the ribcage. Don't force the belly out. Just allow it to gently expand, but feeling into the lower rib cage as well. Now, whatever breath rhythm you're going at now, I want you to slow that down, maybe take 50% off that. So make it even slower than what you're doing before, or make it more subtle. So think about the volume of air that you're now taking in. How much less air can you take in and breathe out. And that might bring with it some feelings or experiences of discomfort, and that's fine. If at any point you want to go back to a preferred rhythm, you just go back to that preferred rhythm. But we're slowing the breathing down. We're taking less volume of air in and less volume out. There's no pause, there's no gap, it's just that gentle rhythm. Now if you can make it even more subtle, see how little air you can take in and breathe out. What can you actually now function at? And if that means that now we're starting to encourage a gentle pause after the exhalation, so a subtle inhale, a subtle exhale, a subtle pause, go ahead and do that. But again, if you're starting to feel overwhelmed or too much of this feeling of suffocation or air hunger, then just resume back to your normal, or find a pattern that really kind of resonates best with you. Make it subtle, make it quiet. If you had a candle with a flame on top of the candle in front of you, you could gently blow on that flame and it wouldn't blow the flame out. You're making it just very gently, subtly flicker, the flame. Just continue that for another 10 to 15 seconds, and then we'll come back to normal breathing. Subtle in, subtle out, and that flicker of that flame. And then just let yourself come back to normal breathing. Just whatever breathing pattern suits you. Not a big gulp of air in, just resuming a normal, relaxed breathing pattern. And on your next exhalation, when you're ready, just open the eyes and come back to the room and come back to, come back to me, come back to the call. So upon reflection of what we were doing there, I'd like you to write in the chat box anything that came forward for you there. Like, what were you feeling when you experienced that, that air hunger, or that, that little bit of restriction of the breath? Did you feel tingliness? Somebody said tingliness already. You felt shortness of breath. Did anyone feel any warmth in their body? People are saying they felt relaxed, sleepy. Neck and shoulders in peace.

Tingliness.

Relaxed and warm.

Calm.

Preferred it to normal breathing. Less breath is comforting. Yeah, exactly. So we're directly influencing. That only took us about 3 minutes to do that. We started off with what we were kind of breathing at this point, and then we just took a bit less off, we took a bit more off,. And that has kind of directly influenced what's been going on with our oxygen and our CO2 balance.

Yeah.

And now I'd like you to think about any time you've had in your life when you've experienced some kind of dysregulation. Yeah. So something that has triggered you or something that has upset you, something that has made you step out of that nice relaxed feeling and regulated feeling and experiencing something else. Write in the comments there for me again what you would have felt in, or what you think, or what you can remember you would have experienced in that moment. So think of it as from muscle tightness, from chest, the diaphragm. Think of it from neurologically, what was going on there as well? Was, did you get dizziness? Do you have a headache? Do you have a dry mouth? Heart racing, arrhythmia? Tight chest, anything that's coming forward to you, write in that chat box. That feeling of panic, the psychological, the emotional anxiety, low confidence, starting to question everything that you're doing. Maybe it's something at work, maybe it's something in your relationships, maybe it's something at home. And what were you observing when you felt that? Nice. So tightening, suffocation, dizziness, palpitations, It's not a nice place to be, is it? It's not a preferred default mode. Yeah, but you see that we— what we just did there in that 3 minutes, we became breath aware. And in that 3 minutes, we managed to influence what was going on in probably a lot of those domains, those modalities of our own body. So the psychological, the emotional, the physical, the chemistry that's going on in your body as well. We can just very, very easily, very subtly, just change that to influence so many other factors within our day. Yeah, so those are what we call the pain points with breathwork, that these are things that people are experiencing on a daily basis. And it's not until something like what we're doing now comes along and points out, or you educate your body, you, you become aware of how simple and subtle these practices actually are. For me personally, I've I began many years ago doing meditation and just found that it was always just too much effort. It was just the voices in my head. I couldn't afford to sit down for up to an hour and meditate. And then I found breathwork, and then I found that how easy that can be just to influence my psychology, my physiology, just by tapping into the breath. Yeah. So I'm going to take you into a box breathing session now. This is one of the first tracks we're going to go through today. So this is a 4-in, 8-out, and a 4-out hold. Okay, so it's in for 4, out for 8, and then we pause and hold for 4. Okay, so what we're going to be feeling here potentially is going back to your first experiences we had, a little bit of that kind of warming in the fingers, a tingliness, very relaxed, because a 4-8-4 breath ratio gives us 16 count for 1 breath. So we're actually under 4 breaths in a minute for breathing. So normal breathing pattern, if Niraj Naik highlighted this last few days, normal breathing can be anything over 15 breaths, 10 to 15 breaths a minute, even more than that, especially in a period of anxiety or in a stress response. So let's, um, let's come back to regulation through the 4-8-4. Okay, so again, we're going to drop back into that place. So we're going to again close our eyes, find that comfortable space. In through the nose for 4, out through the mouth for 8, pause and hold your breath for 4. It's all guided. All you need to do is just kind of drop into this space and stay with it. So 4 in through the nose, 8 out through the mouth, and 4 hold where you pause. Yeah, at any point, any time, if you feel that this is getting too much for you, please just go back to your normal breathing rhythm. All right, okay, so let me just bring up my music for this one here. Okay, so make yourself comfortable, have a seat, relax, and we just tune into this. We should all be able to hear that now. Okay, allow your shoulders to relax, your jaw to soften. Your breathing is just normal and rhythmical, so in through your nose, out through your mouth, and then pause and hold your breath. Here we go. In. And exhale through the mouth, letting go softly. And hold your breath, relaxing and releasing. Inhale through nose, the belly, the ribs expanding gently. Exhale through the mouth like you're blowing through a straw, gently. Home. And hold your breath. In. Out. Feeling that natural rise and fall of your breath.

Home.

And when it comes to the pause, release. Relax. In. It might feel a little bit uncomfortable to begin with, but then we will relax into it. Hold. In. Out.

Hold.

In. Out. Hold. In. Out. Hold.

In. Out. Hold.

In. Out.

Hold.

In. Out. Hold. In. In through your nose. Out. And exhaling through your mouth, let it go. Hold. And pause and hold.

In.

In through the nose. Let the belly, the ribs expand. Exhale through the mouth, releasing, letting go. Hold your breath and relax. In. Out.

Hold.

In. Out. Hold. In. Out. Home. In. Out.

Home.

In. Out. Breathing out like you're breathing through a straw.

Make it last.

Hold. Pause and hold. Relax. In. Out. Hold.

In. Out. Hold.

In. Out. Hold. In.

Out.

Hold. In.

Out.

Hold.

In. Out.

Ho.

In.

Out. Ho.

In.

Out.

Hold. In. Out. Ho. Keep breathing, keep connecting. In. The inhale. Out. The exhale. With the rhythm, with the beat. Ho. Allowing your nervous system relax and settle into it. In. Beautiful.

Out. Hold.

In. Out. Home. In. Out.

Home.

In.

Out. In.

Subtle inhale. Out. And a subtle exhale, letting go, breathing out.

Home.

Relax.

Trust.

In.

Out.

Hold. In.

Out.

Home.

In. Out.

Home.

In. Out.

In.

Out.

Home. In. Out. Home. In.

Out. Home. In.

Out.

Home.

In, out, hold.

In, out. Keep breathing, keep connecting. Last few Breaths in and out.

Amazing.

Out.

In.

Out. Ho. In. Out. Ho. In. O, N. Now just allow your breath to come back to a natural rhythm, a natural pace, what suits you best. Just enjoying this moment, this little bit of silence. If you want, you can start to begin to move your fingers and your toes and your arms. Wiggle your fingers and your wrists. Stretch above your head. Breathing in and breathing out. Open your eyes. All right, so feedback on that. How did we feel at the beginning of that? Was it resistance? Was it challenging to be doing that 8-second exhalation and then pausing? Did you experience that little bit of panic to begin with, but then it became more efficient, became more effective? Write in the comments box again, or if you want to unmute yourself, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Let us know how you felt that went. Yeah, I mean, your posture does affect the way you breathe. So if you're sitting in a slumped position and you're trying to engage the diaphragm, that's not going to work. So this is why we always say sit in an upright position with your back straight. Or lie down, then you get the full efficiency of the diaphragm. Yeah, it's a really nice track. The music is really good. And again, that was only 12 minutes. That's all it took to change our state and to influence a lot of the systems that are going on in the body. So we, we call that one a reduced breathing technique. So if you find yourself in a place where throughout your day, you've noticed that your, your breathing has changed, maybe you're going back into those anxious states, starting to feel some muscle tension building up, starting to feel some of those pain points again that we discussed earlier on, then we can do something as simple as this, which will directly influence our nervous system in the biochemistry as well. So bringing back in a correct or a more balanced ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body. Because I think Niraj has explained to you that CO2 is not the enemy that we've all been taught and we've all been led to believe for so many years, that CO2 is a waste product. I come from a fitness background and that's all we got taught when I was at fitness college was that we should get rid of the CO2. But actually the CO2 is that one molecule, that amazing gas that actually influences it. If we've got too little CO2, then what happens is we get this vasoconstriction. All our blood vessels and arteries, capillaries, they start to constrict and everything gets a bit narrower. Blood pressure goes up, for instance. And that as a result of, you know, could be anything— anxiety, something that's worrying you, something that has made you feel alert, much the same as Niraj Naik Naik out in Dubai when he was before. And his nervous system was on edge. So that would have a direct impact on you. You're always fearful of what's happening round about you. So we can take these, these little steps, these techniques into influencing our nervous system. Really, really simple. And just bringing back in balance just from doing that. Yeah, and there are other reduced breathing exercises on the app if you are on the app, or if you wish to subscribe to the app, you'll feel loads of very similar ones like that that are very, very simple and very easy to to do. Yeah, so I'm going to take full advantage of the fact that we have probably oxygenated ourselves better, and I want to revisit the anaerobic squats, or the Hindu squat, as Niraj did with you— I think it was yesterday. So if you've any back problems or knee problems, then you probably don't want to go too low with this one. Let's go and give it a shot. Let's try it. Yeah, so if you want to stand up and join me with that, let's try that together. Um, we're going to go down Down for 15, we're gonna pause and hold for 5, and we'll come back up for 10. Now, on the inhalation, you come back up. If you're struggling to continue to take an inhalation, then just take as many inhale extras as you need. All right, so feet are probably a bit wider than hip distance apart. We can bring our arms up in front of us if we want, but the idea is go down slowly, down with an out-breath for about 15 seconds, maybe 10 if you wish. Pause and hold it there for about 5, and then come back up for 10. All right, but please go at your own level. If you prefer to do 10, do 10 down, pause and hold for 5, come back up for 10. Okay, so let's just take a few breaths in and out just to get ourselves a bit more with the breath. Release. Now next one, let's breathe in, let our arms come up, and down for down, exhaling 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Hold, hold your breath, hold your squat, and then inhale. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 10. Good. Give legs a bit of a shake there. All right, that's quite a challenging movement. We can try again in a second. So just give your body a bit of a shake, the legs a shake off. Let's come back to the breathing. We're gonna go for 3 times. Let's do another one. So again, be present with the breath. Come back in, inhaling, arms up. Breathing out, make it last. Down, 2, 3, exhaling, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Pause and hold. Try and keep your heels down if you can. And then in, up, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 8, 9, 10, and relax. Good. Okay, yeah, I mean, if your heels come up, that's fine, but try and keep them down if you can. We're gonna do one more time, just one more, really capitalizing on that reduced breathing exercise. So again, one more time, join me with that, with the Hindu squat. So again, breathing in and breathing out, lift the arms, breathe in. Exhale down, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Pause. And up, 2, inhaling, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10. Yes, well done! Give legs a shake, let your breathing come back to normal, and then come and sit back down again. Okay, so somebody asking maybe a modification for those who can't do squats. You can do that technique with pretty much anything. You could do with a push-up on your knees if you wanted to. You could do it with a lunge position if you can. There's various ways. If you can't do a squat on the floor, you could try it maybe against the wall and have the wall supporting yourself. So let your breathing come back up. Yeah, we exhale through our mouth on that one, just to slowly control the mouth, the air as it's coming out through our mouth. That's a really nice way to do it, more control with the mouth. Than the nose. So exhale down, pause and hold, inhale back up. Really simple technique. And if you need to take that extra in-breath on the way back up, that's totally fine as well, because it is quite a long time to be inhaling. It does come with practice, but it's a hard one to do. Yeah, okay, so just reading some people's comments there. Great workout, couldn't manage the way back up. Yeah, that's quite normal. Legs were screaming. So what are the benefits? Just to recap maybe what Niraj said yesterday, what are the benefits? Or, you know, why are we doing that type of training? Well, when we do anaerobic training, which just basically means, you know, you're having to use available oxygen that's in the muscle and the tissues, all right? So you're not getting any new oxygen coming in. When a muscle is in contraction, it is kind of— the blood flow is stopped or impeded, so you need to be then using what is available inside the muscle, inside the tissue. Through time, you get really efficient at doing this. You're actually working a little bit of the hypoxia as well, so your mitochondria are going to perform better. You're going to use the available resources that are in that muscle, making it more efficient. Yeah, so it's a great technique and it's really simple. If you were to have a morning routine and you can do squats, stick those 3 squats in, in your morning routine. You can do them before, or you can do them after your normal meditation, your breathwork. You can do them whenever you want, really, just kind of adding them in at whatever point you want to add in them. I mean, then, okay, so try it, play around if you want. It can be a Hindu press-up if you wanted to. You could do the same idea going down into the push-up and then holding and then coming back up on your knees on a box-style push-up. It's up to you. You can, you can play around with it as much as you want. Okay, so let's go back to any questions or anything people want to ask. So we've got Sonal with her hand up. Sonal, do you want to unmute yourself and come forward?

Sonal still there?

Okay, yeah, I got it. Can you undo your video?

Can we see you? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.

Okay, can you see me?

I can. Yeah.

Okay.

I wanted to know that tune was so good for 8-4.

Is it in the app? Yeah, I think it is in the app. Yeah, it will be under reduced breathing exercises if it is. Is it under breathing exercises or reduced breathing exercises? So no, yeah, you'll find it in there. Reduced.

Okay.

Reduced. Yeah.

And there was one yesterday Niraj was talking about, which is 26 minutes at the relax or sleep time. Do you know which one is that? I tried to find it in the app.

It was just—

which one was it?

So many. Just somebody talking, or was there some breathwork in there as well?

Just the breathwork. It was like 4-8, but something— it puts you to sleep also. Like, it is a breathing work, But under sleep, it was not under sleep.

Yeah, it could be the Trypnoral one, maybe, possibly. I need to watch the replay. Trypnoral, T-R-Y-P-N-O-R-A-L, N-A.

So Trypnoral, it could be that. Okay, Trypnoral. I'll try it.

Is it 26 minutes? I think so. I think so. There's quite so many in the app, isn't there? Yeah. Or somebody's saying it's the, someone's saying it was the Buteyko one. So you might want to try in the Buteyko section. There is an inhale-exhale pause one in there as well.

Try that one.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay, okay. I'll do that.

Thank you.

Heart coherence.

This was so good. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Son. Okay. Do we have somebody else?

Stephanie.

Hi, can you hear me? Hi. Yes.

Hi.

That was really good. I've been practicing for a while actually because I'm doing the instructor course as well. So I've been doing it for about 10 days now and I've just managed to get my breathing into a lot better coherence now. But I think what I'm noticing is when I do the 4 breaths in and the 8 out or whatever variation of that, I think sometimes I'm breathing Maybe I'm breathing in too much because I feel like I need to breathe out for longer than 8. Like, they've got a lot more. After so many rounds, I feel like I've got too much air in my lungs, and then I need a really big breathe out. I don't know whether that's common or whether there's any tips to help kind of regulate that or just keep going with the practice.

Well, because you're breathing out through your mouth, you have a lot more control of the exhalation with your mouth when you breathe out through your mouth.. So if you feel that you're maybe not getting to the end of the exhalation, you can actually speed the exhalation up a little bit more to match the count if you wanted to. Yeah. But it might just take a bit more practice to kind of regulate that, to figure out how much air you need to be blowing off through the mouth rather than retaining it, if you like.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And the second question was, some of them you're saying breathe out through the mouth and some of them you're saying breathe out through the nose. And I'm just wondering I haven't quite grasped the difference between the two of those and why one is one and one is the other.

Good question. But that's, that's again something for everyone here is if we, if we are doing rhythmic breathing and we deliberately want to be blowing off the CO2, and we do that because we want to reduce the amount of CO2 in preparation for holding our breath in the retention, then that's going to lower our CO2 levels. So when we go into the retention, it's going to take a bit longer for that CO2 level to rise back up to where we then get triggered that we need to take a breath in. But for the specific purpose of breathing in through your nose and out through your nose, that is more about retaining the CO2. So therefore it has the effect of calming us, relaxing us, dilating our blood vessels, because CO2 is a dilator like nitric oxide. So if you want to have that immediate effect, ideally what you want to do is, you know, if you're able to, lie on your left-hand side and breathe in through your nose and out through your nose for about 3 minutes, and that'll give you an immediate instantaneous relaxation effect, but not taking you too long into a deep sleep, for instance. It's a nice power nap almost. Lie on your left-hand side, nose in, nose out, retaining CO2, not blowing it off like we do for retentions. Okay, brilliant, thank you. No, good questions, thank you.

Yeah, all right, Duarte. Hi.

Hey.

Sorry, I forgot to say the other time, the other question when I was talking, because I was wondering, I'm being more aware of my breathing. So when I'm aware, the normal breathing, if it's good or not, because I've been trying to make the exhalation a little bit longer. Should I try to do that? Or is something like just be aware and not trying to influence, you know, like, let— because I feel that I'm still not regulated for sure and everything. So I'm, I don't know if by forcing a little bit more the exhalation, I'm contributing to, to that CO2 regulation or not. Yeah, and then I have another question, but it's—

you can, you can re-tap into that exhalation as a way of tapping into the parasympathetic breath. So if we extend our exhalation, because there's— when your heart rate— you're— if when you breathe in, your heart rate goes up, yeah, we have this inhalation heart rate increase, but when you breathe out, your heart rate comes down. So if you spend a bit longer time in that longer exhalation, your heart rate will then start to slow down more. Yeah, so if you're looking for kind of regulation, instant regulation, and bringing your heart rate down, trying to come out of that stress pattern, then really extending exhalations is a really good technique without even holding your breath, just slowing down by influencing the inhale, the exhale. Again, it won't have a hugely direct influence on like what a retention would do for the CO2-O2 balance, but it will allow you to have less breaths coming in and out. Because remember, an anxious person, a worried person, a stressed person, a dysfunctional breathing pattern is coming from too many breaths in rather than too little breaths out. Yeah. So it's about kind of finding what suits you, what's best for you. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

No, because I think it has been maybe even instinctively because it's not stress or anything, but I'm a person that I know since a kid, I'm very energetic and I know, and I did already a lot of times calming down and everything. And I feel really good when I'm calm. I feel good when I'm speed, but you know, I know that I need more to calm. So maybe with this breath aware and everything, it's instinctively that it was bringing me to that, uh, breathing out a little bit longer. The second question, it was just the, when we were doing the squats and the 8 breathings and everything, I'm understanding that I breathe much more from the chest. Than from the abdomen, you know, down here. And because I used to do my breathing from yoga and other meditations and everything, I used to do— I don't know if you know the 3 parts, like down here, side, and here, and then down here, here. I used to do that almost instinctively because I used to go to sleep like that. I used to do meditation like that and everything. So it would be like a part of my breathing like that., and I stuck a lot with the chest breathing.

I don't know if I should force it a little bit more down in the abdomen. No, you don't want to force it. Just a gentle expansion is enough, but also being able to feel the rib cage expanding and the lower part of the rib cage is really useful as well. Then you know that you're kind of engaging with your diaphragm because you could still be belly breathing but not really engaging the diaphragm too much.. So if you can feel the belly and feel the rib cage as well, that's going to have a nice effect. Get that diaphragm moving and a lot of these pain points we talked about earlier on will kind of be reduced. The musculoskeletal issues, tightness, neck tension, maybe back pain, these will all kind of become so much more relaxed if you can get your diaphragm to move a lot better. Yeah.

Okay. So the point is to really work the diaphragm. Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay.

And the shoulders, it's not— it's not something we encourage in them. But maybe if you're doing a faster breathing technique, we might start doing chest breathing and maybe elevating the shoulders as well. Okay, that's— that's— we don't do a lot of that in Summer Breath. Okay.

Because it's not forced, it's just you feel in here, you feel in the 3 cages. I don't know how to explain, but—

and it goes up naturally, like— but keep it below here. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Nice. Thanks, Duarte.

Let's have one more.

Fen. Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great.

Okay, I feel when I'm doing still down inhale-exhale practice, when I get up, inhale, I cannot inhale.

No, no, I inhale, but I don't feel my diaphragm drop. Yes, it's definitely harder to be trying to expand your diaphragm when you're coming up with pressure because the abdominals are kind of doing this as well. So that's why I say take a few inhales if you want on your way back up from this squat. Don't be restricting it to try and do one breath. So if you have to breathe a bit more, that's absolutely fine. It's challenging to do that. It's hard work to do that.

But again, through practice it comes.

Yeah. It's a mental practice. Keep practicing. Yeah. Yeah.

Just a little bit often. Yeah. I like this kind of stood-down practice. It's about the Niraj Naik say it's a very good exercise.

Indeed it is. It's a good workout and it really is really effective as well.

Yeah. No, good question. Another question please. My breath practice come from Dr. Joe Dispenza in the beginning and actually he emphasized the pineal gland breathing predominantly. I feel that pineal gland breathing is very difficult. So when I get in touch with soma, that in-out, in-out is much easier.

But at the end, I know that soma breath, it does push the air to the midbrain. It does, yeah, especially on the inhale retention when you are spiraling the energy up into the midbrain. We're going to get that flood of all the bliss chemicals going into our into our body like we're kind of injecting ourselves with those hormones that we've produced and the neurotransmitters we produced from holding our breath, which we're just going to go and talk about in just a second there with the intermittent hypoxic training. Yeah, but different modality but similar effect with Joe Dispenza.

We're both similar. Even that, are you saying that push the air up to the midbrain.

It's the same energy, squeeze the energy up through. Yeah, but you can do that with your pelvic floor. So when you breathe, you can actually squeeze the mula bandha and let it go as you exhale, squeezing. That's called a Sweeney mudra. You can actually squeeze that up and down. It can help that cerebrospinal fluid move up and down through the body by engaging with your pelvic floor, your mula bandha, up and down as well. So it helps that that flow up and down to the spine.

I always have a difficult time making that air up.

Yeah, coordination. Coordination, that. Yeah, the energy is the life force energy, the prana. You're squeezing that up and you're pulling that up. It's kind of like sexual energy is what you're doing, recreating that feeling. Nice. Alright, let's move on. Time is ticking, so I want to get, I want to get the intermittent hypoxia session in, but I want to do a quick recap on intermittent hypoxia, on the actual technique, the kind of core method of Summer Breath. So we all know we start our sessions, when it comes to the breathwork, we start our session with rhythmic breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth on a rhythm of in a synchronized pattern. We know that this is important because it brings rhythm and synchronicity into all the systems of the body. So the heart, sorry, the brain, the heart, and the internal organs, just by breathing in this rhythm. It's helping us create some oxytocin in our body, creating this love hormone. We're gonna straight away feel that we're more in this coherent state. So we'll always start with this rhythmic breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth. On this loop, on this cycle. Yeah, perfect rhythm, perfect groove with no gaps, no pauses, no breaks in between each inhale and each exhale. Then we move into the intermittent hypoxia section. So we're gonna breathe in, we're gonna breathe out, we're gonna hold your breath, and this is where we move into the breath hold, the breath retention, the Kumbhaka. And we're holding our breath on an exhalation. And as we kind of just briefly discussed earlier on, that you're slowly starting to have CO2 rising up in the body, in the blood. And this is what's then, you know, for some people is going to trigger this early-on response, I need to take more air in, I need to have a breath in. So if you do feel that point where you feel I need to take a breath in, the urge is too strong, We're going to take a little sip of air in and then breathe out, and then we go back into holding our breath. And this is the breath retention. This is again the core method of swimmer breath, rhythmic breathing and moving on into that rhythmic, that breath retention on an exhalation. So we're going to hold our breath for up to a minute and a half because we know that our intermittent hypoxic time is around about 60 to 90 seconds. So if you're able to hold your breath, maybe, maybe even with those recovery sips as well, and we can get to that 60 to 90 seconds time zone or mark, then we know that we're starting to go into intermittent hypoxia. There's a cascade of beneficial stress hormones. So breath holding is a stress, but it's a positive stress. It's going to create a positive effect in your body. Yes, some of those effects that we know of very quickly are we're going to oxygenate ourselves better, we're going to release those red blood cells, going to release the oxygen into the muscles and tissues and the cells, and improving your oxygenation. And we're going to get into stem cell regeneration if we hold our breath for a bit longer than that minute and a half. And even longer into breath hold, we can get the, the anti-cancer, anti-tumor P53 guardian of the genome activating. So we can actually have this, you know, this anti-cancer, this protective mechanism being kicked into place, but all from the right environment. So this is why we retain the CO2. So we let go of CO2 initially in the rhythmic breathing, and then it slowly starts to accumulate because we want that effect. Yeah. And yeah, somebody said their breath holds are my favorite part. Yeah, absolutely. I love the breath hold. That's when we get high. So everyone loves the breath holds. And after you've held your breath for about 90 seconds, we're gonna take a full inhale. I'm gonna hold the inhale, but I'm gonna squeeze our mula bandha, our pelvic floor muscles. That's the muscle around about your sphincter, ones you use for holding yourself back from going to toilet. Squeeze and hold those, draw up the energy, pull the energy up into the spine, up into the midbrain, and you feel this kind of rush of feel-good energy And as all these stress hormones are flooding into the body with this, this new in-breath you've taken in, you're just dispersing that all out everywhere. So we hold that for about 30 seconds and then we let it go. We're going to do 2 rounds today, yeah, and that's 2 rounds of what I've just said there. I'm going to quickly read out the contraindications if you're new to some breathwork or if you've never done this before. There are some contraindications, and what I mean by contraindications are, there's maybe a risk involved. So let me just read these out. If you have severe or critical diseases or infections, if it impairs your ability to breathe, severe uncontrolled hypertension, use after heart attack, organ failure or late-stage terminal illness, pregnancy, if you have epilepsy, a pacemaker, or irregular heartbeat with exception of your doctor has given you permission, you should avoid doing the breath retentions. Please be present with the rhythmic breathing, but the retentions, we want to avoid that. Okay, so, um, before we go into this, if you can, just for one last time with me in the chat box, going back to your morning breath hold time, can you just pop in the box what your breath hold time was? Or have you been tracking it? Just pop in a number, how many seconds you'll be able to hold your breath for this morning, if you did it this morning. 33, 17, 32, 31. These are great. Anything above, really above kind of 25 is really— is getting really good. You know, don't be worried if you're below 25. That's absolutely fine. We're on a progressive here. We're all getting better. Yeah, so if you do have uncontrolled high blood pressure, then please avoid the retentions. If it's controlled, you're okay. All right, okay, so this is a very short track. It's about 11 minutes long, and we're going to start in just a second. So again, make yourselves comfortable, get yourself into space. Sitting upright is best. Get the diaphragm moving, get the spine elongated. Let's go into this again one more time together. I will get my music ready. Just double-checking, I'm still sharing my sound. Okay, so here we go. This is guided, so you won't hear my voice at all throughout the session. All right, it's 11 and a half minutes long, so enjoy the session and experience the real benefit of the intermittent hypoxic training.

Welcome to Soma Breath intermittent hypoxic training sequence, where you're going to be breathing in a 2-in 4-out rhythm with a breath retention phase. Breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth. That's right. So now sit comfortably with an upright posture, relaxed. When you hear me say in, breathe in, and when you hear me say out, breathe out. The smooth and consistent rhythm to the rhythm and groove of the music. That's right.

Let's begin.

3, 2, 1.

Exhale. And in. Breathing in. Breathing out. The smooth, consistent inhale and exhale. Breathing in through your diaphragm, then into your chest, and letting go on every exhale. This rhythm should be effortless, relaxed, with no force. Deepen your breath slightly, taking longer, deeper breaths, staying in that rhythm. Deepen your breath even more. Begin to breathe deep, full breaths in that same consistent rhythm. Just 3 3 breaths left before the breath retention phase. 2 breaths left. One last breath. Now take a deep breath in and breathe all the air out, holding your breath after full exhalation, relaxing the shoulders, your chest, and Let your chin drop towards your chest and relax every muscle in your body. That's right, you have 60 seconds remaining on this breath hold. If you need to take a breath at any time, take a little sip in through your nose and breathe out and hold your breath. And you can repeat this as many times as you need to. Until you get the command to inhale. That's right, stay calm, stay relaxed. You are perfectly safe. Allow your muscles of your body to be relaxed and at ease. Let your shoulders drop, soften your jaw, your Your face becoming very relaxed. You have 20 seconds remaining. You're doing great. See if you can hold your breath slightly beyond the comfort zone, going beyond what you thought was possible. Overriding the fear of holding your breath rubs off on other areas of your life where you may be having fear that holds you back. 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, 1. Now take a deep breath all the way in and hold your breath after full inhalation, pulling up the muscles around your pelvic floor, your sphincter up, contracting up. You send this energy up like a spiral of light into your midbrain, illuminating you to the light of this blissful awakening. And focus now on maintaining the state of stillness by holding your breath for as long as you comfortably can. Now you have 15 seconds remaining of this breath retention phase. Relax muscles in your chest, your diaphragm, your face. Just stay calm and at ease and enjoy that stillness. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now let go with a hum.

Hum.

Now coming back to normal breathing, observing how you feel, noticing any changes. 3, 2, 1, exhale. And in 2 Breathing in, breathing out. The smooth, consistent inhale and exhale.

3, 4.

In, 2. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2, out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2, out, 2, 3, 4. Deepen your breath out even more. Begin to breathe deep, full breaths in that same consistent rhythm. 2, out, 2, 3, 4, in, 2, out, 2, 3, 4, in, 2, out, 2, 3, 4, in, 2, out, 2, 3, 4, in, 2, out, Just 3 breaths left before the breath retention phase. 2 breaths left. One last breath. Now take a deep breath in and breathe all the air out, holding your breath after a full exhalation, relaxing your shoulders, your chest. Let your chin drop towards your chest and relax every muscle in your body. That's right, you have 60 seconds remaining on this breath hold. If you need to take a breath at any time, take a little sip in through your nose and breathe out and hold your breath. And you can repeat this as many times as you need to until you get the command to inhale. That's right, stay calm, stay relaxed. You are perfectly safe. Allow your muscles of your body to be relaxed and at ease. Let your shoulders drop, Soften your jaw, your face becoming very relaxed. You have 20 seconds remaining. You're doing great. See if you can hold your breath slightly beyond the comfort zone, going beyond what you thought was possible. Overriding the fear of holding your breath rubs off on other areas of your life where you may be having fear that holds you back. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now take a deep breath all the way in and hold your breath after full inhalation, pulling up the muscles around your pelvic floor, your sphincter up, contracting up. You send this energy up like a spiral of light into your midbrain, illuminating you to the light of this blissful awakening. And focus now on maintaining the state of stillness by holding your breath for as long as you comfortably can. Now you have 15 seconds remaining of this breath retention phase. Relax muscles in your chest, your diaphragm, your face. Just stay calm and at ease and enjoy that stillness. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now let go with a hum. Now coming back to normal breathing, becoming aware of the sensations in your body, noticing any changes, reflecting on this journey. And any insights, inspiration, or ideas you've received in this moment, become aware of them as they come from a higher place. And as we come to the end of this experience today, know that you're now connected to the light of a higher power. You can tune into this light at any moment, become a channel, and breathe in that light to every cell of your being. That's right.

Much love and positive energy for your day ahead. Peace. All right, beautiful. Again, just give yourself that time to come around from that. No rush. Gentle movements, grounding yourself back into the room, into the space. And only when you feel ready can you open your eyes, or if you wish to open your eyes. So that is week 1 of our 21-day awakening journey that Summer Breath has on offer at the moment. I think Monica will put another link in the chat box if you want to get 55% off the 21-day awakening. So that was week 1. There are, there are 4 weeks, and each week you do an extra 2 rounds of that. So in week 2 you do 4 rounds, and week 3 you do 6 rounds, and you get such a huge benefit from doing increasing that amount of intermittent hypoxia on a daily basis. You just feel incredible. And not only that, you're upgrading the hardware, our body. We're also upgrading our software. In the 21 Day Awakening, we go deep into the subconscious and we explore any limiting beliefs or anything that's holding us back from achieving our average peaceful day. What we want to call in, what we want to achieve, how we want to live our lives, what we truly deserve. Yeah, so people are saying that, is it normal to feel emotional? Yeah, of course it is, of course it is, because you're stepping off, like I said before a couple of times already, we're stepping off the gas pedal, we're into coherence rather than dysregulation, rather than survival. And anything you've been kind of wanting to deal with might start coming forward now you've got a bit more headspace to do it. So that's all normal. That's all fine. Somebody's mentioning the headache there. Yeah, you're changing again the vasodilation, the vasoconstriction, blood vessels opening and closing. Sometimes we get mild headaches, but it all just disappears. The body comes back to regulation. So yeah, so let's do our practice again. I might be here tomorrow. I'm not sure. It might be Niraj Naik is back tomorrow. Let's do our practice again. If you are interested in doing the 21 days, then the link— there we are, the link has just been put up in the, in the box there in the chat. And do your practice. Let's, you know, this is not something we can step on and step off. We kind of— it's breath work, it's work. We work at it on a daily basis. And if that meant that you didn't have time to do your, your morning meditation then when you're out walking, when you're walking to work, you're walking the dog, you're walking just out for a walk, the walking breath holds are something we can do, we can apply. Inhale, exhale, and walk as many steps as you can with a nice comfortable breath hold. Where I would just kind of end on now is when you're doing your morning breath hold time test, when you're doing that, that check-in, this is different to our retentions. So on the retentions, the command, the guidance is to breathe out fully. On the morning breath hold time, we're exhaling to a comfortable exhalation. It's just— and then hold your breath. Don't try and push every single last drop of air out your system. You will feel straightaway uncomfortable, and that will affect your breath hold. Likewise, when you get to the end of that breath hold during your morning breath hold time test, it's not a competition. The minute or the second— sorry, the second that you feel I shouldn't say the minute, the second that you feel that you have reached that point, that's when you come out of it. It's not a test, yeah? So it's the ability to comfortably hold your breath until you feel that first urge to breathe, and that's when you take your breath in. And it should be returning to a nice, normal, relaxed breathing pattern. You're not coming out of the breath hold time test going, you know, it's a nice gentle return back to breathing. So how long can you hold your breath for? And returning to normal relaxed breathing pattern. That's the kind of key message for the morning breath hold. Don't treat it as a breath retention, something different. All right, so I have to go and jump on a 21-day call now. We're doing week 3 in 21 days. This is the really amazing week where everyone gets some real, you know, transformational experiences and moments, and that has. So thank you all for being here and, and accepting me as your replacement for Niraj today. So I really thank you for all being here. Sticking with your practice. You know, this is, this is just the first, the first step into this new reality for you. So make the most of it and really experience what the breath can do for you. So you've been amazing. Thanks very much. I hope you took a lot away from it, and please reach out, keep in contact. This is a big tribe, a community. We all stay together, we support each other. So thanks once again, and I might see you tomorrow, who knows. Thank you and have a great rest of your