Niraj Naik demonstrates breathing techniques that shift heart rate from 70 to 108 bpm, then back down to the 30s within minutes. Longer exhales and breath-holds activate the vagus nerve to trigger calm; quick inhales do the opposite. He explains how yogic practices like mulabandha control your nervous system for stress and sleep.
Questions this video answers
About 71 beats per minute
About 108 beats per minute
As low as 37 beats per minute
Chapters
The yogis have also been doing this for years, right? And one of the tricks that yogis do is they show you how you can raise your heart rate on command and lower it on command, which is absolute proof that you can tap into the autonomic nervous system, which is what controls all of the function of the body on absolute autopilot. Right. So I've actually got this little toy, okay, which is a pulse oximeter. And you may have seen a lot of these over Covid, but what it also does is it measures your heart rate. So if you look here.
So, 71. Yep.
Yeah. So this is something I can teach you how to do, which you can use as a proof that we all have control of the autonomous system with the breath. Right. Because it's something that we can consciously control. That also runs on autopilot. That's why it's the remote control for your mind, body, spirit. So let me show you that in action right now. You ready? So I'm going to raise it by about 30 beats per minute and then lower it down by around 30 beats a minute as. And it's going to look like a magic trick. All right? But let's go.
Wow, that's fast. That's going up real fast.
Faster than just breath retention. That's.
Very noticeable. Wow.
From 70 to 108.
Back down.
Wow. Down to 56. 55. From 70. 40, 53.
52. That's lower than the average resting heart rate of a person, let alone having raised it as high as that, down to 49. Nice.
How low can it go? 40, 39.
Just so you know, guys, his heart is beating remarkably slowly now. 37. Back up 40. Holy smokes, buddy.
There we go. Normal.
So, looks like magic, right?
Well, this. Well, it is. I mean, this is clinical research. This is data. And that I just want to point out for me as a researcher, physician, that was not over 10 minutes. 15 minutes. That was really quick.
Okay, we're not going to ask you how you did it, but that is freaking cool.
Well, I can show you. I can tell you the principles, how to do it. All right? Because you, the doctor, if you want to convince someone, is a great little trick to have, right? So.
Simple rules. When you breathe in, sympathetic nervous system goes up, right? Switches on. When you breathe out, exhale, parasympathetic switches on. Right. Now, here's the thing. In yoga, you will know about the mulabanda or the Ashwini mudra. Okay? When you contract up, the Ashwini mudra is basically the sphincter muscles, right? And when you contract them up, like you're pulling something up through your butt, right? And you hold your breath on the inhale and contract and you put tension at the back here, right?
Huh?
Like that. What happens is you get a surge of adrenaline created. Okay. And it's actually what some people do when they're stressed and constantly mulling over thoughts in the mind because every thought creates a sympathetic reaction. Quite often people get uptight up their own ass, you heard that expression, and they're constantly squeezing their butthole up. They get constipation as a result, and they're getting sympathetic nervous system reactions in the body. And that leads to chronic tension pain, hypertension, all those problems, right? So I just, what I did was I just produce adrenaline on command. When you do it with the right intention, that's why we. So in breath we use this. But with the right context, you get a positive stress response in the body rather than negative stress, you produce adrenaline. But dhea, which has anti aging effects. And this is an expander rather than a contractor. Cortisol constricts, right? You need a little bit of cortisol, but not too much. So you can, in the right context, create like a euphoric rush and awakening, which has an anti inflammatory effect in the moment and also kind of creates a strengthening on the nervous system like what I just did there. But you should do it in the right seat.
And what happens in that regard when, when you change your energy like that? Are we talking? Because I want to quickly, before we move on, say this is. This was really cool. Just to reiterate, you literally, you're explaining how when you exhale, that's stimulating the parasympathetic. Is that correct?
Yeah. So the exhale does the opposite and that slows down the heart rate. And when you hold your breath after exhale, your heart rate goes right down. So I was holding. I. What I did was I gen. So first I breathed in contracted, right? And the heart rate goes up. Then I exhale very slowly like I'm breathing out through a small straw, then hold my breath after exhale, you know, for like a minute and you'll see my heart rate goes right down. Right? So I. What I was just doing there was quickly showing you how you can tap into the autonomic nervous system. But the context of this is that you can use extended exhalation techniques, right, to turn on the parasympathetic. It taps into the vagus nerve and you can create a protocol of extended exhalation techniques. To help people do all the things that you normally take medication for to tap into the parasympathetic stuff like lower blood pressure, lower stress, anxiety, get to sleep. If you use commands like affirmations, you can go to sleep very quickly with extended exhalation techniques. So we do rhythmic techniques that do that. Yeah, yeah.
So just to be clear, for those watching that don't understand the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system, most of us are over regulated in the sympathetic fight or flight or freeze stress response and then we hold that tension in the body. So what Niraj is talking about is being able to understand that you, when you breathe in, you are increasing the sympathetic, but when you breathe in certain ways, but when you breathe out, you are stimulating a relaxed, beautiful, peaceful, healing state. So if you're uptight or stressed, a good technique to use could be firstly understanding the breath and doing long exhalations as we've just learned. So this is a takeaway technique for you guys to practice, should you be interested, you know, for 30 days to really see what effect this is having on the nervous system. I love this and thank you also from your background as a pharmacist, to be able to explain the biochemical responses in the body because this is really valuable when it comes to the autonomic nervous system, vagus nerve, etc.
