Niraj Naik created Soma Breathwork, a breathing practice with music that mimics psychedelic effects without drugs. A Cambridge study found it elevates dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin while quieting the brain's default mode network. Participants reported bliss and clarity, with one regaining mobility from muscular dystrophy.
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The breathwork modality I do is Soma Breathwork. I have no affiliation with Soma, but Soma Breathwork by Niraj Naik, he's based in Ibiza, that's really cool because they infuse incredible music with it. And the best alternative for the impact that you get from plant medicine today is breathwork. Breathwork is crazy powerful. Meditation is intentional. Breathwork, you don't know what's gonna happen. When you go into an altered state with breathwork, you get some of the same results as being on psilocybin. In fact, Cambridge University is doing a study on Soma breathwork right now, and they're seeing that it's beginning to produce some of the similar chemicals in the brain as plant medicine, but in a much safer way.
One or 2 times a month, I slip down into my sauna, I lay flat on my back, and I do an hour of what is called Soma breathwork. I learned it from a man named the Renegade Pharmacist. This morning's session was very powerful. All of these sessions are the deepest I ever go into consciousness, light, love, and wisdom from God in a completely drug-free type of situation. This is all based on using your breath to go very, very deep.
I'm a licensed psychologist and I've been— I'm board-certified in neurofeedback. which is, you know, basically monitoring brainwave activity. I came across your stuff and I was like, okay, this is awesome. Is there something consistent in the brain that looks similar to what's happening with psychedelics? Really wanted to look at a specific part of the brain called the default mode network. Yeah, and the default mode network is getting a lot of attention right now because what we understand its role to be, it's really kind of that the network in your brain that is Creating your sense of who you are. It's kind of your— you can think of it almost as your ego, the brain's version of the ego. We're finding more and more that if somebody has a significant mental health concern, usually there's some issues with the default mode network, which makes sense. If you're thinking too much about yourself or how you relate to other people or to the world, probably gonna make you anxious or depressed or both. Mm-hmm. And what's interesting, of course, is that with psychedelics, uh, that whole region basically goes offline. Uh, it shuts off. And so the way that a person normally thinks about themselves is basically interrupted. We kind of took that initial analysis of what was happening with the Soma breathwork and looked specifically at the default mode. Um, what we saw was a pattern that looks remarkably like what we see with the traditional psychedelics. There's other research showing that if somebody has a mystical experience on or off of a psychedelic, that is much more likely to have lasting effects be more life-changing in a positive way. And again, we saw that pattern here with psilocybin, where the people in this experiment reported higher levels than with psilocybin or MDMA. You know, the fact that we're getting these results in this situation is, I think, is super significant.
What?
Yes.
20 minutes of psilocybin was equivalent to the usage of psilocybin to treat depression? Severe depression. Severe depression. Now, psilocybin, I know, In studies is 300% more effective than antidepressants.
So, there you go.
This is pretty freaking phenomenal.
This is a great alternative to psychedelics. So, what we've just done is the biggest study on breathwork with this technique, this psychedelic technique with Cambridge University. Okay. This is my Soma Breath Protocol, where step by step over 21 days, it's actually the same protocol we have in Breathwork for Life. The quest is step by step taking you to create the soma within. The soma within is a dose of—it literally stands for dose, D O S E—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and a cocktail of tryptamines.
What did Cambridge find about soma?
What they found with our protocol was that as the dose increases over the. the 4-week period, they found a strong correlation that is in line with traditional psychedelics, right? And they also found that the blissfulness in our protocol is very, very clear. So not all psychedelics make you feel blissed out, like, ah, like just like orgasmic or blissed out, right? Some make you feel a little bit sick sometimes, right? Or troubled and nervous, even anxious. But With our technique, it made people go into bliss.
November of 2018, I was formally diagnosed with FSH muscular dystrophy. In May, I flew to Spain to see my grandson for the first time, 3-month-old baby. And well, my state of health was such that, uh, to hold the baby, I had to sit down and they had to put him on my arms. I couldn't stand up with a baby on my arms because I would have fallen. Then my son told me about the 21-day of a summer breath experience. I did almost the whole 21 days. And by November of 2019, I was back in Spain visiting my grandson again. And this time I had no problem of picking picking up my grandson and my son was so amazed. He said, what happened? What did they change? And I said, well, it has to be the sauna breath because this is the only different thing that I have done. And 30 days later, amazingly, I was recovering some of my movements. I was able to walk barefoot, something that I couldn't have done in years. I decided to go back into swimming and I could swim When I went to the test, the doctor came to me and he said, well, you're not supposed to improve with this. Your muscles are not supposed to improve with this condition, but you're improving. So keep on doing what you're doing.
In 2021, I had a terrible breakdown. I've always been a very positive, motivated, and happy person. But after living many bad situations at the same time, I just couldn't handle it and I suffered From anxiety, depression, and insomnia, I even started taking anxiolytics and sleeping pills. Then one day, somebody sent me a somabreath meditation, and I liked it very much. So I booked for the 21 awakening journey. I can't describe all the positive changes because I didn't believe in magic. But believe me, it was magic. I started to feel alive again. I started to have clarity in my life. I stopped.
