Efficiency with Breath: Niraj Naik on SOMA Breathing PH289

So when you breathe in a perfect aligned rhythm, you actually create balancing of sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system so it creates more of a harmony. And every single function in your body is rhythmic in nature. So we have biorhythms, circadian rhythm, menstrual cycle. So the ultradium, infraredium, circadian rhythms. Right, they're all the bio functions of life. Biorhythms of life. So with just a few minutes of rhythmic breathing a day, we can restore balance to this.

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Hello and welcome to pursuing health. I'm Dr. Julie Fouche, family physician and former CrossFit Games athlete. Here I bring you information and inspiration to help bridge the gap between fitness and medicine and support your journey toward your healthiest self. Thank you so much for joining me. Now let's get started with this week's episode.

Welcome back to Pursuing Health. I am really excited to be here today with Niraj Nayak, who is, is a professional musician as well as a pharmacist. Interesting combo there. Who then turned holistic health and breath work into his passion and his expertise and he's now bringing it to people all over the world. So he started down this path in healing others as a community pharmacist, but after several years found himself a patient. He had a stress related depression and ulcerative colitis and this was a big wake up call for him. It made him embark on a journey of profound self healing and education and and subsequently has created a global community of heart centered change makers by founding Soma Breath, which is the global breathwork and wellness movement with over 2000 certified instructors and hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. He's known internationally as the renegade pharmacist and is dedicated to educating others on the topics of holistic health, breath work, meditation and more. And his breath work is advocated by some top names in wellness that you've heard of as well as his techniques are being currently studied by leading neuroscientists at Cambridge University. So welcome to the podcast, Niraj. I'm excited to chat with you.

Yeah, me too. Great to be here. You have quite an epic backstory to yourself.

Well, it sounds like we have a lot of similarities, so I'm excited for this because I, you know, I first was introduced to breath work as a concept just a few years ago and it's, it's had a big impact on me personally. But I've heard of Soma Breathwork from a couple of people, two friends who, you know, one I think is a trained instructor and then another who's had some profound healing by doing the breathwork sessions herself. And so it's, it's a, you know, it's kept coming up as something, wow, I need to learn about this type of breath work. And so I'm excited. Then I, as I've tried it myself, I see, you know, how you've brought together so many different modalities and also made it this very efficient practice that's practical for people to fit into their day to day lives. And so I'm excited to talk about all of it. But I thought maybe we could start with your story because we do have a lot of similarities in terms of starting down a very conventional path in healthcare and then finding our own way.

So where do we start? Well, I used to be a pharmacist years ago. I was a community pharmacist.

Actually. Can we start back? I remember I or I heard that you actually started. I love the music part of your story too because it comes back up later. So can you start at the very beginning with sort of even before you decided to become a pharmacist?

Yeah, yeah, why not? So actually my main passion has always been as a musician, as a dj. And what happened was like my dad gave me a keyboard when I was 14 and this keyboard I could synthesize my own music. So I learned like kind of basic sound engineering and production myself. I self taught. And it was also a way to not get my kicked on the rugby pitch because I wasn't like the biggest guy in the class. Used to get my kicks on the pitch. So as an excuse I'd be able to punk off and jam in the music studio. So I got really good at like composing music with various synthesizers and that suddenly got me into doing gigs and I became like cooling in the class. So I had like lots of benefits. But then I ended up going on running my own raves and I had a 2,000 people rave for like three years in my hometown actually. So this is while I was actually a pharmacist. So as a pharmacist I was, you know, I was like completely different world altogether. So the reason I became a pharmacist is because I lost everything. Everything just got taken away from me. There was a shooting that happened at another club event at the same venue and the venue got shut down. And because I was in the middle of my finals, I didn't really have much time to be able to fix the event and I had to go and make a choice. And my parents being, you know, very kind of Academic focus, my mom's a doctor, all that. She was like, you must finish your degree. You can't go off and try and fix this event. You got to finish that first, then you can do it. So I listened to her and, you know, like, in hindsight is actually the best thing I did. Made that decision because I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for that. So I am where I am now because I suffered pretty badly. Seven years as a community pharmacist and really, really, really depressed, really disillusioned. Firstly it was like, because you're doing a very right, left brain job when you're. I'm a right baby brain kind of guy. And secondly, because I just saw people going away with shopping bags full of drugs. And these people weren't getting better, they were actually getting worse. So I was like completely devastated, you know, with where my life had ended up. And I tried many ways to get out of this industry in the music industry. I tried to actually make it in the commercial music industry on the side. And I actually ended up befriending one of the managers. Well, he's the manager, founder of a band called Muse, which is one of the biggest bands, rock bands in the world at that time, and they're still pretty big. And he actually saw the talent that I had for music. But he was like actually trying to discourage me from getting into the music industry because he had become jaded. He said, it's a horrible culture. You don't want to be a part of this. So he tried to put me off it, actually, and I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to do this. He said, no, no, go and be a pharmacist. Do your farm, do that. There's something there. So I used to rant all the time about all the things that were wrong with it. So he was actually pretty intuitive for that. Because in the end, I came up with the concepts of getting people off medications by changing their lifestyle. Something I learned from going out of desperation to a Tony Robbins event. And this was the first time in the Tony Robbins event I heard about anyone mentioned diets and lifestyle changes for preventing disease. So I was like, well, look, I've got a pharmacy full of sick patients. I'm gonna put Tony Robbins to the test. And I got really good at getting people off the drugs by just changing their lifestyle. And then I got promoted head office to one of the biggest supermarket chains in the uk. And I came up with this healthy shopping list service which would have Been a really cool way of getting custom prescriptions of diets to patients, especially diabetic ones, obese patients, rather than being so dependent on medications. By making informed choices in the grocery store, they'd be able to start to change their lifestyle. So that actually was going to get launched, but then six months into it, they called like a meeting and they decided to shelve the idea now.

Not good for selling drugs, right? When people get too.

Yeah, it's too controversial. And I was also, like, way ahead of my time. Like, the stuff we know about diet nutrition now is way more advanced than back then, back in 2010 even, which isn't that long ago. And so, well, actually before that, like 2009, so it wasn't accepted on the mainstream, you know, so I actually then was like, literally shitting myself facing, going back to my old job. And that's when I got ulcerative colitis, where you do yourself about 40 times a day for almost a year. I was housebound and I was actually ready to just let it all go and just give it all up because I. I'd lost hope for humanity and everything.

You said you actually were suicidal at some point?

Yeah, very much so. Like, you know, I was ready to just die, basically. So I was wasting away. I'd lost a third of my body weight. The doctors gave me two choices. Have your colon removed, where I get a. Be a. Wear a colostomy bag or be a guinea pig for a drug that hasn't even been tested. So I was like, Whoa, you know, 32 years old, wearing a nappy when I went out. Because you. You need to go to a toilet so many times.

Yeah.

So this wasn't a good look for someone that age. So. Especially when you're going on a date, right?

Yeah.

So. So there were no dates that kind of didn't happen. And I was just super depressed. And then by grace of God, a third path opened up. And that's where I made a bold choice, because this third path meant putting some faith into my own culture of India, where we have yoga, pranayama, Ayurveda. And here I learned some very simple breathing techniques from pranayama, from my swami, a yoga teacher in the uk, who said, look, if you can reverse your condition, you'd be an amazing role model to other people with your tenacity. And if you can do it in a way which you're doing it yourself, rather than being dependent on a corporation, you're going to thrive. So do it yourself and make this your mission. Make turn this story into a positive story. So she changed my perception about the condition. Best thing that ever happened. And there I discovered a few different things at the same time. Because the pranayama techniques gave you this relief instantly of stress and kind of cloudy thinking and negative thought. So it kind of resets the nervous system. And this then took me on a kind of a whole rabbit hole because I got such relief from breathing techniques. To learn as much as I could about these ancient practices, From Ayurveda to breathing techniques, from pranayama to yoga, asana, lifestyle changes in Ayurveda. I realized I was eating completely the wrong foods and that I needed to switch my diet to more of a paleo diet rather than a kind of a starchy vegan or vegetarian diet, which I thought was healthy. But for me, actually having some meats, I mean, things like bone broth, were actually very beneficial. So actually, I found a lot of kind of new paradigms that question the old paradigm. You know, one of the paradigms, we're told, is breathe deep and heavy to get oxygen into your cells, your body. It's not true. To oxygenate the cells, you actually do the opposite. You slow your breathing right down. You stop your breath almost, you know, so you slow your breathing rate and increase your ability to hold your breath. And we're told don't hold your breath ever. But I found that breath hold control, breath holding was an amazing tool for changing your inner world. So within a few months, actually go back to full health. And here I created a system which was based on what I learned from this amazing book called the power of your subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy, where you use mantras in a meditative state to speak to the unconscious mind, which is like your operating system of your computer. And through these mantras, we can reprogram the incorrect thought viruses that happen from conditioning that's happened throughout your life, from your childhood to society, media, tv. All telling, you should be a certain way, which is kind of going against nature. So you're using these ancient practices to discover who you truly are and reprogram yourself. And boom, within a few months, I was back to normal. And what I also went back to was the music. Because now I realized music is an amazing tool for changing state. And music has a rhythm to it, groove to it, a rhythmy music. So with pranayama techniques, a lot of it involves around counting to a beat. Like either using mala beads to count, or that's why you use why they yogis, where mala beats as soon to count the number of reps. So instead of using a stopwatch or anything like that, I thought with music you can actually time your breath to the beat. So I started to compose all this kind of breathing beats music for myself. And it made the whole practice of doing these breath meditations so much more fun and cool and something I wanted to do every day.

Yeah.

So rather than just being boring thing that you don't, you don't sometimes remember to do, but other times, you know, this became my thing is my like kind of not just like kind of a escape from my sorrows and pain I was in, but also a way to totally upgrade myself from within. And boom, this is what all led to my me getting better. Then after that, I tried really hard to actually share this with other people because I became an evangelist. But what I came up when you.

See how powerful it is.

Yeah, every time. Because I was like, I'm going to become a coach. Because actually during the pharmacy days, I got fired from one of my jobs because I was mismanaged in the pharmacy for getting people off the drugs. And I asked, I said to the guy, well, look, if this doesn't work in the pharmacy, what should I do? Then he says, well, you should go into coaching. And that stuck with me a little bit. He also called me the renegade pharmacist, which almost.

That's pretty much one of the things that inspired me to. To be a renegade pharmacist. That's a whole nother rabbit hole anyway. But I got tried to become a coach. And then in coaching I came against this whole battle of there wasn't enough science to support what I was talking about. Also it wasn't so fun and engaging for people to stick to doing these practices. So I started to make them more engaging practices through music. And then the music became the soundtrack to a lot of these somewhat esoteric practices to demystify them and make them more accessible. So then I decided to get a lot of benefits from that and for our clients as well. And so I started to upload them to YouTube and started to get some traction that way. And before I knew it, I had like a thriving therapeutic music business called Trip Nor. I invented technology called Trip Nor. That's what I called it. And then that led to then Soma Breath. Well, there's a whole crazy journey between.

That and I'm sure there's a lot.

Of roles like Wim Hof and meeting crazy superhuman yogis and traveling the world and living in Thailand and going deep into tantra, like really understanding tantra. The use of life force energy for, you know, creating magic and so many, so many amazing things on that way.

Wow. Wow. What a journey. Well, I love your story. And as you were talking, I was getting chills because there's so many similarities, even to the mention of Tony Robbins, that I went to a Tony Robbins seminar also. That was the start of a lot of change in my thinking and actually was the start of this podcast. I. After the seminar, I had met with a friend and I never would have been the kind of person to start a podcast, but he encouraged me to. And because I was so amped up after being at Tony Robbins, I thought, oh, I can do anything. And that's, that's what the podcast, where the podcast was born. So that's really cool. But I think, you know, so many interesting things that you shared about your story, just how, you know, this process of doing the things that you think you're supposed to do or kind of what, what the right path is, what other people expect you to do at first. Maybe it's turning away from music and doing a professional career, like becoming a pharmacist and listening to what people are telling you, that even though you could look back on those and be frustrated, like, oh, man, I wasn't listening to what was really my own truth in those moments. Actually, you look back on those with so much gratitude because of how they helped you get to where you are today. And now you can see all the pieces come together of how you developed your ability to produce music. And while it didn't work in the traditional setting for you, it worked in an even better way because now you're using it to help people really transform their health and how, you know, even though going into pharmacy might not have been the best place for you, it gave you this platform and, and you know, I don't ever wish sickness on someone, but your, your sickness from being in that career then is what all that gave you, this ability to help people and to reach people and for them to understand. One, for you to create this method, but two, for them to understand that you've been there. Right. You've been in those moments, those lowest moments, and you've recovered. And it's amazing to hear that it only took a few months with, with doing some of these practices.

Yeah, it gives you empathy.

Absolutely.

To really connect with people who are suffering, you know, because unless you really suffered, like, it's hard to understand what people are going through, you know, and to be a really good coach, that empathy is really important.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the other really profound part of your story was this friend who helped you to change your thinking and helped you to see how where you were in that low moment could actually be a launching point for you and to give you back some sense of, like you said, purpose or control or empowerment that, that you, you know, could see a different future for yourself than maybe you had seen before and how powerful that thinking is. You know, a lot of what Tony Robbins talks about and how, how you've weaved that also, like you said, kind of speaking to the subconscious mind throughout the meditations, how important that, that part of the thought process is.

Yeah, I think for some people, the autoimmune disease, if they have autoimmune, is when you understand that every cell has consciousness. But Bruce Lipton talks about it in biology. Every cell has its own consciousness. So if your self, your mindset has gone through a lot of setbacks and you start to lose hope and you start to see the world with more hostility and the universe doesn't have your back. Right. And beliefs like this, that belief puts yourselves on defense mode all the time. And then over time, if that's turned up too much, your healthy cells start to attack, so your immune system starts to attack healthy cells, and that's autoimmune. So for me, what I think really made the big difference was that change in perception of actually there's a real big opportunity I've got here right now. If I can get better, I can actually help a lot of people. And I don't need to do it through a big corporation. I can do it myself because I read another book as well, gave me a lot of hope. The Four Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss.

Oh, yes.

That really inspired me. I was like, wait, ah, this is the business model I've been looking for. It gives you time, freedom, location, independence, work from anywhere. And it means I don't need to be stuck in a cubicle in pharmacy. That was the thing that really like killed.

Not a good environment for you.

Yeah, just being stuck in one kind of very negative environment. So then I was like, right, I'm committed now to do as much as I can, work as hard as I can to understand this business model, to get my message out there, to reach as many people as possible. And what's happened now is I've been able to replicate that so that others can just save all that years and years of hard graft and research and figuring out to now just have my kind of business in a box template to train in techniques that are already proven to work and to turn that into a career that's more fulfilling. So that's what the whole point of creating instructors is to me.

That's incredible. And it's incredible to hear. You know, I'm grateful for you mentioning just all the different influences. Whether it's reading Bruce Lipton or going to the Tony Robbins event or reading for our workweek. There's so many different, you know, influences that we all have. And sometimes it's just getting the right message at the right time that that really sinks in for us and then can really impact our path forward. That's amazing. I love to talk a little bit about what exactly the Soma Breath is because there is, like you said, there's so many different components to it and there is a lot of science behind it. So you found this, you know, through you said pranayama and Ayurveda and going back to these, you know, ancient practices. But can you explain a little bit about what the practice includes and how you came to. To incorporate each part?

Sure, sure. Yeah. So think of Pranayama, which is the most ancient school of breathing practices from. It's a branch of yoga, very important branch of yoga. Okay. As a pharmacy, right? Imagine this is a pharmacy and each breathing technique has its own application indication, right? And it can help with a range of different symptoms, but it can also be a very powerful tool if done with a sequence of pranayama techniques, a routine that can actually help prevent diseases from happening and to also enhance your longevity. Right? So what I did was I made firstly an education that is all about teaching these pharmacy of different breeding techniques with the science behind it, the application, when to use them, when not to use them. So like, if you have a block nose, you can unblock your nose. So if you've got constipation, you can relieve constipation. Say you want to turn on alertness, you can turn on alertness. So you want to go to sleep better, you can go to sleep better. If you want to lower your blood pressure, you can do that, and so on and so forth. And so I wanted to teach that, but then also create a routine which people can use to bring people together so everyone can breathe together and create a dynamic kind of group meditative experience which can be used to. Firstly, these breathing techniques I put in a sequence are really good for, like, just improving your inner world. The strength of your mitochondria, your mitochondrial strength, where you produce energy, is one of the most important factors for longevity and quality of life, right? Mitochondrial function. So one of the breathing techniques that is important for that is called in pranayama, is called Nishra chakra, where you hold your breath for certain lengths of time. That stimulates a positive stress response in the body. That creates a period of low oxygen in your blood, which is just a brief period of low oxygen, which makes your body go, oh, I'm running out of oxygen, I need to adapt. And it's like taking the stabilizers off a bike, right? So to get really good at riding a bike, you want to take the stabilizers off. So shutting off the oxygen supply to even a muscle for a brief period. You probably know this from CrossFit high intensity interval training, right? It actually exercises the mitochondria to become stronger fitter. It's taking it slowly out the comfort zone. Right. And so we normally have on average around thousand mitochondria in our cells. But after a protocol of these breathing techniques, it can go up to 2,000, up to 4,000 even. Right? So you're increasing efficiency of using oxygen. Now we are constantly battling against oxidative stress. Life is a battle against oxidative stress because every time we breathe, we age, right? Because the process of making energy in the body creates oxidative stress. That's why we need antioxidants. But oxidative stress is what ages us. It's what causes wear and tear on our internal combustion engines, which is the mitochondria. So all of the primary techniques we do makes you super efficient at using oxygen, right? And the ones that treat symptoms, they actually also work by making you more efficient using oxygen and using the breath to create balance of the nervous system. So the net effect of everything we teach, insomnia breath, is to slow your breathing rate down to make your breathing more efficient. So you need the least amount of oxygen to make the same amount of energy or more. Right? It's oxygen efficiency. Now the net effect of that is longer lifespans, better quality of life, less risk of disease, and better tissue oxygenation, which means getting oxygen to your body tissue cells. So that means that you're going to have less risk of disease because most chronic diseases and disease of old age is a result of low body tissue oxygenation. So our whole system is designed to do all that, give you all of these benefits and more. Right. And this is our first foundation of what we teach in summer breath. Once you can do that, well then in more advanced yoga practices you can go into very powerful to states of consciousness, incredible divine bliss states and all of this. So we kind of have two halves of training. The second half is all about exploring spirituality and the spiritual qualities of the breath, right. In terms of connecting some higher source, breath therapy of going back and reprogramming your past, reinstalling new beliefs and patterns that make you more effective. So we have the two sides. We have functional breathing and breath therapy, right?

Okay.

And then we have somatic therapy. So somatic therapy is then now bringing the breath and the body together and using the body to create change, transformation, but also as a way to relieve stress, let go of emotion that's unresolved because this is what holds us back. This is our real dominant thoughts is the negative belief patterns. It's the I can't, I can't and I hate, I blame, I'm jealous, I'm envious. All of those thoughts is really what drives us forward. So using these more advanced techniques, we can correct this very fast. And that's why we train our instructors to be like breath therapists as well. And then, so what I wanted to do was to make practices that are advanced breath practices like that, that work very well in a more one on one therapeutic experience, but also stuff that people can do every day that gives you all the benefits. I was telling you about oxygen efficiency, where I created this energized meditation routines, which gives you the benefits of meditation and breath work, of functional breathing for oxygen efficiency. All right. And improve breathing rates in a fun sequence that people can do every day. So that what I found was the most effective way was done through music. So I made this really cool, groovy, uplifting music that became the soundtrack to these. And the cool thing with what we do, because you're breathing in a rhythm, right? Everyone in the group practice is breathing at the same rhythm, which is magic. Imagine like 200 people, for example, all breathing together in unison. Now, heart math scientists, they studied this phenomenon and they found this phenomenon of collective coherence. So when you breathe in a perfect rhythm, it creates balance to your nervous system. Because when you breathe in, heart rate goes up a bit. When you breathe out, heart rate goes down a bit. So that's your sympathetic nervous system going on and parasympathetic going on when you breathe out. So when you breathe in a perfect aligned rhythm, you actually create balancing of sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system, so it creates more of a harmony. And every single function in your body is rhythmic in nature. So we have biorhythms, circadian rhythm, menstrual cycle, so the ultradium and fredian circadian rhythms, right? They're all the bio functions of life, biorhythms of life. So with just a few minutes of rhythmic breathing a day, we can restore balance to this. So what I created was sequences of rhythmic breathing and breath retentions where you're holding your breath for extended periods. That creates this intermittent hypoxia state that are really fun and cool to do, but also has guided meditation over top. Because also when you breathe in a rhythm, you go into a trance naturally, you go into a meditative state where you're more able to program the unconscious mind, you're more susceptible to suggestion. So our instructors are trained to implant positive statements, affirmations, suggestions during these practices that start to reprogram people to make them feel kind of happy for no reason whatsoever, like, you know, throughout the day, more high vibe, right? And to let go of a lot of these beliefs that holding back. And also even this kind of mechanism of holding your breath for long periods, like where you're holding your breath 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minutes, some people for 4 minutes plus after an exhale, imagine breathing in, breathing out, holding a breath for two or three minutes. It's crazy, right? But this is what creates this amazing intermittent hypoxia state and a meditative state. Because when you hold your breath on an exhale, so pressing pause on your thoughts, it's like pressing pause on life. Because life is a series of inhales and exhales. Press pause on your breath, press pause in life. So if you do that for long enough, even just a minute, right, you actually create like a defrag switch for the mind. So you get these very powerful benefits of breath based meditation. So these energized meditation routines and these breath journeys are amazing things you can do every day, even just in 22 minutes. We had a scientist who studied this neuroscientist called Jeff Taren, who showed we make the same impacts and changes in the brain as a dose of psilocybin or mdma, currently used for treating severe depression. So for depression, which is a huge problem now in the world, if just 22 minutes of breathing a day in this certain way can help store, fix that, that's we're onto something great, right? So that's why I want to train lots of instructors who can deliver these practices in a group. Because when you breathe in a group, this collective coherence strengthens the bond. It creates a harmonization, as I said, internally, but also it amplifies the electromagnetic field from the heart and it gets everybody in sync with each other. So people Collectively rise together. It's amazing experience to see. So this is my great conspiracy, because conspire means to breathe together. Actually inspire me to expire. When you breathe together, right. It means you're conspiring. My big conspiracy is to spread this around the world, get people breathing together to make the world a better place. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. I love it. And there's so much to dig into there. I think, you know, just the way that you combine so many different things into this compact 22 minutes is really incredible. So on its own, we know, you know, meditation has all. There's plenty of research and science on the benefits of meditation in terms of our physiology. We know that there's a lot of science around, even the healing power of music. I've had a composer on recently, Barry Goldstein, talking about some of the research and the healing power of music. We know that, like you talked about this intermittent hypoxia therapy using. Using this lower oxygen state as a hormetic stressor. The same way that we use exercise or cold therapy or other things to stress our bodies briefly so that then we respond and it creates this healing response. But then packaging and then. And then what we know also about, you know, the power of suggestion and visualization, the subconscious mind, you're packaging them all together in this very efficient 22 minute session, which I find really incredible, because when I've been exposed to breath work in the past, it's always been a very long. Like you mentioned before, it's long. Usually it's at least an hour. And I tend to. I always love the benefits afterwards, but it tends to be something that I dread before because I'm like, oh, I have to get in the state. And it's hard work and. But making it really fun and engaging and knowing, okay, 22 minutes, I can do that. I have time for that. It's something that's a lot easier, I think, to wrap your head around when you're just getting started with something like this.

And we do do longer sessions as well. So these are more like ceremonies where people go on these amazing trips and they speak to the divine. They have, like, divine downloads. They feel like completely new people at the end of it. So we do do this a lot, actually. But here's the thing. So the difference between what we do and what is traditionally been done, you know, in more recent times is like holotropic and rebirthing.

Mm.

The thing with this is these practices revolve around free form, kind of hyperventilation, where you breathe at your own rhythm and Usually like a deep inhale for the mouth and letting go on the exhale over and over again for like an hour. Right.

Almost the type I've done before.

Yeah. But mouth breathing, Even just for 20 seconds, you can try it now if you want. Makes you feel not good. It frazzles you. Right.

There's usually some anxiety at the beginning that you have to sort of push through. For me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you might get a release at the end. So. But what I found was when you do it rhythmically and into the nose and out with a tone.

And also bringing in the life force by using this ashwini mudra, which is the muscles around the sphincter, you draw up like you're breathing through there.

Ah.

So gradually building up the speed of the rhythm. Right. With really cool music that takes people into blissful samadhi states rather than that like, you're gonna die feeling. Right. Which can sometimes take people into bad trips. With traditional kind of common breath work that you hear about. And it can put people off completely from doing it again. Right. Some people love it. Others especially. So that what we also take in cerebral breath is that it's a customized approach. So our breath therapists are trained in ayurvedic principles of there's no one size fits all and that we're all different. Right. In fact, you're probably different from me. You have a. More of a. Probably a pitta body type. And you, you know, you're an athletic sports person and you can handle probably more intense breath work than somebody who's very skinny and frail frame who would actually just float away. And they're the more vatter people. You're the more maybe pitter.

Body. And then there's the kapha, who are the big, heavy set people. You can handle even more of this intense breath work and thrive on that. So we customize breathing practices for each individual and take that into account when we're doing the very intense breathwork stuff.

Stuff.

Whereas that you don't see very often. Like, they just throw people in. Doesn't matter who they're from, where they're from. Into very intense, extremely cathartic practices that could sometimes you'll get. You're always going to get the 1. The reactions of people go, yeah, that was amazing. Oh, my God, you changed my life. But your dudes, they don't always talk about the ones who. The nervous system got fried, they can't sleep now, they've got insomnia. All the symptoms of high vata are things like Intense anxiety, higher blood pressure, not able to sleep, feeling like disconnected, so not grounded. So this you may not hear about unless you've done this for a long time or the harm that can be caused from intense hyperventilation. So, so breath, we try and use the right breath attending for the right situation to prevent any harm being caused. And we also like, we build people up right in our courses to be able to be so well optimized with oxygen that they can handle and, and their nervous system to handle more advanced breath work practices. So yeah, we really take this into consideration.

I think that's really important context. I think that, you know, I talk to most people when I first bring up breathwork. I think a lot of people have been exposed to things like 4, 7, 8 breathing or box breathing and they think of breath work as more of a calming exercise which as you mentioned it can be. And there are, there, there are those indications and then there are also more activating breaths. But I think people are not always exposed to those as much. But as you said, if you go straight to that, like maybe I've done in the past, you know, specific holotropic breathing sessions, just like any tool, I think back to CrossFit, we have a very specific charter of mechanics, consistency, intensity. So you build up before you add on this layer of intensity. But if that isn't followed and you just go straight to intensity all the time, there can be some negative effects there too. So understanding the full scope of the tool that you're using and when is the right time for which tool or which variation is so important in finding success with this long term?

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

So I love that, I love that. What are. Now speaking of, I'd love for you to share some of the, the other healing stories or healing benefits if you can. I know your story is very powerful from ulcerative colitis, but if others are listening that are suffering from different health conditions, what might they expect if they start a practice like Soma Breath?

Yeah, so, so breath is breath based transformation. So we don't cure people. Cure means just bring people back to who they were before they got sick. No, you become a different person from inside out. Right. So we, we help first teach the lifestyle practices that define good health. From the right type of food to eat, nutrition, sleeping routines, to even finding your more fulfilling life path. Because that actually if you think about it, is one of the most impactful things to help if you're spending eight hours a day, ten hours a day in a full time job hating Your life, then you're going to get bad health without, you know, even any effort because you're going to make the wrong choices at work for your diet. You're going to maybe not sleep at night. You're going to just be spending your day feeling miserable. And this in itself is chronic stress. Because if you wake up not enthusiastic for that day and you don't feel enthusiastic to be kind and compassionate to people, this is onset chronic stress. So we help people to answer that question every morning honestly. And if they feel like they hate their life, right, then they know they need to do some work. But if they wake up feeling I love my life, which is our aim with what we do as sound breath, then they're going to have much more of a better experience in general. And also they're going to take better actions, you know, for their own health in terms of lifestyle, diet, you know, even sleeping routines and the people they hang out with. And they may have a wake up call and find another life path. So we're very holistic. We actually help people to figure all this stuff out. Right? And the breath is an amazing awakening tool. So it wakes people up to who they truly are. Okay. So our more therapeutic breathing practices can wake people up to really understanding what they really want. We're manifesting all the time, constantly. So not often we're manifesting stuff we don't want. So we help people to start manifesting based on truth rather than what culture the cultural hypnosis has told them to be. And this is like the foundation. We're all about alignment. Okay. So, so this is what we teach our coaches on how to, to help people. Because this is what I did. I had to figure who I was and to figure out what I needed to do to be myself rather than what my parents wanted me to be, what the corporations wanted me to be, what the society want me to be. Right? So yeah, so that's what we're really holistic. And then we also show the relationship of all of the things you do in your lifestyle from sleeping, eating, exercise, all of these things, how it affects your breathing. Because the perfect human breathes, they don't breathe at all. Lao Tzu said this back in ancient times that perfect human breathes like they don't breathe at all. So when a human is very healthy, efficient, they're using oxygen, they are not needing to breathe much at all. So when they're at rest, they hardly look like they're breathing. So natural default state is their breathing is silent, subtle, it's naturally Rhythmic, it's slow and it's diaphragmatic and you wouldn't even tell that person's breathing. But somebody who's got a heavy breath, wheezing, breathing through their mouth instead of their nose, all of these things is usually somebody who's got internal stress going on or just generally low quality health. And you can also measure someone's breath all time. You can measure how healthy somebody is first thing in the morning to measure how long you can hold your breath in a certain way. There's a method of doing it, tell you straight away what your oxygen capacity is and how well oxygenated you are. So, and your CO2 tolerance, these are the primary factors for good health. And somebody who has a very fast breath mouth breathes, has a lot of congestion, wakes up feeling sluggish and tired, will generally have a very short breath hold time of maybe around 20 seconds or less, right? But somebody who doesn't have congestion, who's clear headed, who's enthusiastic for life, who has no little or no symptoms of any disease, doesn't need to go to the pharmacist or a doctor or hasn't done for years, we'll have a breath hold time in the morning of over 40 seconds, right? This is a normal inhale, normal excel, hold until first sign of stress. This is a tool we teach our instructors to use to check in with a client's health. And you can do it yourself, you know. And then what we teach is all of the way the lifestyle affects this. So people notice, they become breath aware of how easily their breath is affected by outside forces. So it makes people then mindful of what they do. It's magic, right? And then we make all these fun practices or bringing in yoga into your life dance, standard dance movement, stretching and breathing practices in a routine you can do every morning a super fun and exciting. And then what we also have is advanced therapeutic change techniques that. So what sometimes affects your breathing more than anything is the monkey mind and all the thoughts going around your head and the dominant thoughts of like envy, judges, grudges, hatred, anger, right? All of this internally stored will affect the quality of your breathing in a negative way. You'll end up hyperventilating without even knowing or suffer from chronic mild hyperventilation where you over breathe throughout your life, throughout your day. So this over breathing results in less oxygen, not more. So what we teach people how to do is to reprogram the operating system to let go of fears, anxieties, grudges, blame and all these things that negatively impact Your quality of breath and then your thoughts. So in, in tantric yoga practices, the philosophy is that it's very foolish to control the mind through the mind because the mind is constantly being programmed by outside forces. It's like a, it's a monkey, right?

Yeah.

And you, it's like if you're anxious is really ineffective. To say stop being anxious, stop being anxious to yourself. That's just not going to work. In fact, it'll probably make you more anxious. So the smart thing to do is we control the mind through the body. So what we teach people to have is mastery of the autonomic nervous system through breath control. Because the breath is a bridge between the mind and the body. Right. And then through this you bring tranquility to the mind, which is actually the main aspiration of yoga. Actually aspire means to breathe life into. That's what aspire means. So the main aspiration of yoga, the goal is to bring peace of mind, you know, so that's what we teach people, how to, we arm them with a whole lot of different techniques to become self sufficient. So that's why I call our instructors instructors because they're passing it on, they're instructing. Not like the problem with therapy world is that you become dependent on the therapist and the therapist becomes like your doctor in a way and you can't do without them. Right. So sometimes people spend years in therapy not getting anywhere because actually the business model benefits from that. Right. Just like a pharmacist doesn't want to cure the patient. Right?

Yeah.

So what we teach our instructors to is to pass on techniques that actually really help people from within become a better master of their inner world. Right. And then through that alignment, then amazing things happen. So that's what, that's the real philosophy behind sober breath.

I love that. And as we heal from the inside out, then, you know, our bodies return to alignment and symptoms start to disappear, like you said. Not, not just returning to the old state that we were in before, but an even better state that's more aligned maybe with our, with our best version of ourselves.

Yeah. And actually we like, we talked a lot about stress and disease and actually imagine like you're totally healthy and everything's fine, but you want to get the edge or you want to go next level. Let's say you're an athlete like yourself, right. Who's very healthy, but you want to go next level. Right. Breath is the, is that one thing that would give you the edge in competition? Breath control. So as I said about making your Mitochondria more efficient. Imagine instead of 2000 little mitochondrial in every cell, you now have 4000. How much better would that be for your energy.

Utilization? Right. And then also the mindset. So one of the things that actually stops performance is worry, anxiety, and also maybe one thing that said to you as a taunt or gesture from an opposition in competition, it can throw you off completely. So what happens there is your breathing also goes off. Your breath is a mirror of your thoughts. So with breath control, you can control the mind, bring it back to balance, and then when you go into performance, you are going to be really on fire, right?

Absolutely.

You can use this throughout your, you know, competition, wherever you're at. And just one little tip I'll give you, like, yeah, this is one of the things we teach our instructors and breath therapists in much more detail is this phenomenon of nostril dominance. Your nostrils switch dominance between left and right throughout the day. Right. Your left nostril is your parasympathetic and it's connected to your right hemisphere, the feminine brain, your right nostrils connected to the masculine brain, your left hemisphere, your sympathetic nervous system. Now, throughout the day, it fluctuates. So when your left nostril stretched on, you're more likely to be in a dreamy, floaty, creative state and rest, resting state. And it's when you need to kind of rest and recuperate. So it's your parasympathetic. Your right nostril, though, is alertness. So if you're going to play a game and you want to be at your best, you need right muscle dominance. Now, there are techniques which will switch nostril dominance within minutes. Now, if you find you have to do a presentation and you need to be on, on it, but you're a little bit floating, can't remember things, facts. Well, if you have to do interview like I'm doing now, right. Check your nostril dominance, you might find that your left is on. So you just switch to the right and boom, you're going to be full power back on it. But if you want to be more creative and get to sleep as well, yeah, you want left nostril dominance. And if you find your mind's racing, can't get to sleep, you just check your nostril dominance. I bet your right nostril is more active. So boom, you switch to your left and you're going to get a really good night's sleep.

So interesting. I did not know about that. And I'm sure that people could learn then how to distinguish which nostril is dominant and how to switch those.

Yeah, we teach all of this in great depth.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, I can speak to all of those things from, you know, my time as an athlete to even as you talked about some of the more advanced things, doing those longer breathwork sessions, bringing up, you know, for me, bringing up different events from earlier in life that had created limiting beliefs for myself and being able to then bring those to the surface and address them and rewire some of those beliefs, so allowing a lot of emotional release from emotions that have been stored in my body for a long time. And so there's so much to this. Whether you're coming at it from a strictly, you know, scientific, I want to start healing myself from a disease, or whether you're coming to this from, I want to perform better as an athlete or because you want to, you know, reach a higher sense of spirituality or a better sense of who you can be. And so it's all incredibly powerful. I love the work that you're doing. Before we wrap up and let people know where they can learn more, I'd love to ask three questions that I ask at the end of every. Every interview. So the first one is, what are the three things that you do on a regular basis that have the biggest positive impact on your health?

Okay, so the. The one that I just told you about, the switching left, right, nostal dominance is like a general way of life for me now, because now I can manipulate nature to my advantage. If I want to be alert, I can switch on alertness. If I want to get to sleep or relax and be creative in the studio, I can switch on that side of the brain. So that's pretty profound. I'll give you another tip. Like, one thing I used to suffer from in northern hemisphere countries where I used to live in, like, Europe, where I am actually right now, in the fall season, well, autumn generally, it becomes more cold and damp, and I'm much more prone to rhinitis. Like where get runny noses, right?

Yes.

So it doesn't necessarily mean you got a virus. It just means there's a kind of an allergy reaction to the climate. Now, here's one amazing thing about the breath. And I. When I learned this, it changed everything, right? Because you can. If you wake up, I'll give you this one tip for everybody, right? If you. So this can be really annoying. Imagine you're running nose all day long. It's like really annoying. And it stops you, you from participating in Things and being productive. Right. So if you could just switch that off, right. How cool would that be? So what you need to do when you wake up in the morning, you need to switch on the right nostril. That's the alert brain. It's also called Surya fire. It's usually more active when the sun comes out. It's the sun, the left is the moon, Soma. So what you want to do is to turn on the right nostril. You have to sleep on the left hemisphere, the left brain. That's what activates the left brain. So when you wake up, if you find your left nostrils awake, right. And not your right, then if you got out of bed in that moment, you're more likely to get runny nose throughout the day. So what you want to do is you sleep on your left nostril for a bit. Within a few minutes, your right nostril wake up. Right. And your left nostril will be less active. And then you get out of bed on your right foot. So you know, getting out your bed on the right foot is actually a thing because when you get out of bed, you should get out on your rep. You step out. The first step you make on the floor is with your right foot. Then you're going to have a much better start. Today just doing that one thing has changed my life completely. You don't need it. So many stimulants or any stimulants in the morning. You don't get so many runny noses. You can like prevent colds and flus happening and you're much more productive in the morning. You're more looking forward to doing exercise and all this stuff. So yeah, that's just one little hack.

I love that. And you put with it a little, a little affirmation like today's gonna be a great day. And now you've got, you've, you've got it all. That's awesome.

So, so things like that, breath control for sure during anaerobic exercise. So that's exercise with reduced oxygen. So high intensity exercise are what you do. CrossFit is definitely one example. I do more of a kind of a thing that doesn't involve needing machines and going to a gym. More body based using your own body weight exercises like Hindu squats, Hindu push ups. Just certain way of doing push ups that activates a lot of your different muscles. With holding your breath whilst doing it or slowing your breathing right down is like game changing, right. And doing squats where you're breathing very slowly in and out. With each pose, each move is incredible for anaerobic exercise. So just within a few minutes a day of exercise, you can get more impact than like going to the gym for an hour, two hours. So that helps with cardiovascular strength. So I do that and then I eat a ayurvedic based diet. So I follow my, my eating prescription based on the, my Ayurvedic blueprint, and that's made an amazing impact. So those are some of those things, but also one more because you asked.

The three, but there's always some extra.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, these, these are very, very important stuff.

Yeah.

But I would say the most important is to wake up every morning and ask yourself question, am I waking up feeling enthusiastic to do a hard day's work, or do I feel like I can't get out of bed and I feel like I have to get out? Or are you waking up feeling enthusiastic to be combat kind of compassionate? Or you've been out waking, like waking up going, I'm just doing this because I have to, to fit into who I'm surrounded by. The moment this goes on for a period of time is the time chronic stress is kicking in and you need to do something. That's your wake up call. Yeah, that's what I call a wake up call.

Good. Check in. I love that.

Ask that questions yourself every day.

I love that. What's one thing that you think would have a big impact on your health but you have a hard time implementing it or something you're working on?

I think getting out more in nature and being more, doing more exercise out in nature. Even though I live in a most beautiful environment in Ibiza, because I'm working so hard, we're trying to build this mission.

Yeah.

I'm almost too often glued to this computer in the studio, working on beats, doing interviews, writing. And that means I'm not spending as much time in nature as I should. And actually that's some of the best things you can do for your health, is to be out in nature.

I love that. All right, last question is, what does a healthy life look like to you?

A healthy life?

Yeah.

Healthy life is one that is full of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the God of passion. Right. And gratitude and joy. And so you need to, you know, channel the God of enthusiasm every day to a loving partner, like a supportive loving partner who is with you no matter what is paramount to health. If you have a partner that doesn't support you, that is always putting you down, makes you feel less of a human and. But you're Just staying with them. Our convenience, I think, is you need to really think about this because this can have a serious impact on your stress levels and your emotions. So I've gone through a few experiments to get to now. We're super happy, in love with one of the most amazing women ever. And I have a beautiful daughter, Natasha and Anastasia. It's just amazing. So I feel complete in that. And the third thing is to be doing something that gives value back to the world.

As. As your mission. So if you feel like you're not giving value, like you're spending 8 hours, 10 hours a day and you're doing something that you don't feel like you're making an impact in the world, this. If you're a spiritually minded and soulful person, your soul will start to make a disease until you wake up. So for me, I. That happened to me. Right. I know that firsthand. A lot of people wait till it's too late and then they get this negative impact on their health and boom, they end up very sick, you know? So I think these are three things that are very, very important. Give value to the world. Feel like you're giving value. Giving back. Contributing in a way that feels aligned to great sex with an amazing partner who supports you.

Yeah.

And you know that connection. And first one is obviously breath control. Learning breath control.

I love that. I love that. Well, this has been amazing. I've really enjoyed hearing more about your story and about what you do. How can people learn more? Can they get involved with Soma Breath or follow what you're doing?

Yeah. So what you can do is go to my Instagram neerajnaika official and DM me the word breath.

Okay.

B R E A T H. Right. And you'll get a free masterclass from me. And I. I recommend following my Instagram too, because I believe a real a day keeps the doctor away. Right.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah, it's cool. So do that. And what else? Soma Breath, we have an amazing YouTube channel filled with amazing content. And we also have a Soma Breath Instagram. Again, loads of great content on there, but DM me breath to get on my Instagram Neuroshnake official to get a free jumpstart pack of some of our amazing breath meditations and routines you can start using for free from today.

Amazing. We will do that and we'll link to your Instagram in the show notes for people who want help finding it. So thank you again so much, Niraj. This has been awesome and thank you for using your story and your struggle and your pain to now help so many people.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please consider subscribing and giving it a five star rating on itunes. It really does help to get the word out to more people.