SOMA Breathwork Can Change Your Life | Niraj Naik Interview | TAKE A DEEP BREATH | Breathcast

Hello everybody and welcome to Take A Deep Breath. Today's breathcast is with Neeraj Nayak. He runs Soma Breathwork and some of you might know him as the renegade pharmacist and he runs soma. Didn't know too much about Soma at the start, so it's really wonderful to sit down with somebody who could just explain what's going on with it. Compliment to Wim Hof. But what I really like about it, it's very much using the nose. So we actually run through an exercise. It was a 20 minute breathing exercise and we did the exercise. I will put that as a separate clip.

So.

So if you want to watch that, I'll just put a little bit in this episode. And if you want to watch the full 20 minutes and go along with it, you can do links to SOMA in the bottom as well. Fun episode, really great guy, really enjoyed it. A couple of messages before we get into it. Please hit that subscribe button. Please like and share the podcast. Please leave a little message for us in there as well. Without further ado, thanks for being with us. Thanks for watching. Let's get that podcast started.

Cheer.

Right.

Good morning Neeraj and thank you so much for being on the Take a Deep Breath podcast. How are you doing today, sir?

Amazing. Beautiful.

Could you explain to those people that don't know who you are and what is soma?

Sure, yeah. So Soma is actually an online school.

Where we basically teach and train instructors in therapeutically proven Pranayama breathing exercises and techniques as well as train people in how to facilitate our core technique which we call Soma Awakening, which is a combination of different breathing techniques from Pranayama into a sequence that has many different, numerous health benefits. And then we have created a course which is a 21 day course. We call it the Awakening Journey or Awakening Protocol which features this method and it delivers this dose of what we call intermittent hypoxic training protocol over a. Sorry, intermittent hypoxia over a period of three weeks in a step by step fashion which gives you this. It follows this intimate hypoxic training protocol which has many clinical health benefits. And what I have I've added is an extra layer onto it which is the. The really understanding meditation and self awareness, finding out who you are. Because breath and breathing techniques like this can actually really peel off the layers of the conditioning of who you have been conditioned to be and you can start to understand more of who you truly are and then be able to choose the right foods for who you are. You Know your body types different from everyone else. Your psych, your mind state is very different. And we have a different kind of matrix of different energy levels according to Ayurveda, which dictates who you are, your personality type, your, the type of.

Food you should be eating, what diseases you might be more prone to. Also all of these things can be revealed by doing this program. But you also get all of these incredible health benefits from doing this special. We call it an energized meditation. It's a routine which combines like different elements with movement and chants and mantras. But really it's just using your voice to tap into your water and our nervous system and then breathing techniques all driven by music. So I've created this music that is rhythmical and the breath is timed to the music. So it makes it like a very easy to follow meditation program because the music is kind of guiding you through the journey. And then we add the extra layer on top of the visualization techniques, guided imagery through the words and this kind of creative visualization which leads people into a specific result from.

The session. So that's done over a period of three. We have incredible results with that. We've had thousands of students go through that around the world. Dramatic improvements in people's health, people even getting their eyesight coming back. They've worn like thick glasses for years.

People recovering from chronic incurable illnesses. In fact, we just had this 80 year old lady from Iceland called Hilda who she just messaged in the group. We get something like this every week actually saying that she has been trying to cure.

This illness that doctors have said were incurable for most of her life. And it was pretty bad until she joined us. And even to the point where doctor said she hasn't got much time to live. And she wrote in the group that.

We saved her basically and she's become an instructor now. So she, as a soma breath instructor is now facilitating workshops with people over the age of 70 in Iceland. So it's amazing what's happening. Like every instructor has their own kind of character, personality, they have different skills and they all. We show instructors how to bring in all these different elements and skills into a. Into their system, into their method. Yeah. And so it's a very powerful way for people to get into this world of holistic transformative techniques where you're, where you're not separating the mind and body from each other and you're not using synthetic chemicals or drugs or anything like that to treat. You're actually going right to the root cause of of why people get sick or stressed or unhappy. And that is the nervous system itself, the soul, the center of your personality, your ego, mind. The default mode never.

Changed. The core of who they are, their operating system and their hard drive and their hard disk, and just starting again according to their own will, reprogram themselves according to who they really want to be. There's a very powerful reprogramming system for unraveling, of conditioning and changing who you are. And through that amazing spontaneous healing that's gonna happen. Because I really believe that we hold on to diseases based on our personality. So if we hold on to grudges from the past, if you hold on to anger for too long, we have resentment. If we're fearful of the world, and we can't even, like, step out the door without freaking out. And now it's got even worse because of the shenanigans that's been going on, you know, and so people are getting divided and socially isolated. And my whole point always was, before this community is a cure. Through community.

We can really save this humanity, the soul of humanity. And right now, what we're actually facing right now is a global challenge of.

The crushing, the destruction of the spirits of humans, of what makes us human. That is connection. Hugging. Yes. Present with people, looking into people's eyes, you know, hugging, touching, dancing, celebrating life together. And, you know, people who live a long period of time in these blue zone environments around the world, there's one thing in common with all of them, and that is that they have a very strong emphasis on social interaction. Connection.

Yes.

You take that away, people stop living so long. People get depressed, they get isolated. So we are bringing it back together. And we're using the Internet, you know, we've. We're using things like this, zoom, to connect with people. And, you know, they. They can take away our.

You know, they can make us distant, they can put us apart, but they'll never, ever take away our breath, and they can never take away the spirit. And that's what we're focused on.

Yeah. Oh, that all sounds wonderful. And I can't wait to kind of dig into some of that. I'm really keen to really understand kind of your journey, where you've come from. But I'm just curious, do you have any idea, the person with the eyesight and the glasses? Do we have any idea what might have caused that change? Or is it just something that's just unknown?

Yeah, there's a mechanism, an explainable mechanism, and I think it doesn't. It's not going to happen with everyone. But quite often why people lose their eyesight is because you've got a thing rationally. And this is one thing scientists don't do. They don't think rationally anymore. Right. They, they think in terms of. They get a piece of paper and they see some stats and numbers and. And unless they see that piece of paper, the stats and numbers, and somebody above them telling them that this is the way it is, they don't think for themselves rationally anymore. You know, you'll see a lot of doctors who don't believe in the fact that ginger or garlic can have antiviral properties, even though there's. There are studies out there. But because they haven't been told by their establishment, they won't believe it. They won't even look into things like Ayurveda or breathing techniques. So you just go think rationally. I don't want to keep making a dig at what's going on. I'm just a little bit, you know, fired up at the moment. Yeah, of course. But basically.

Why does cell. Why do cells stop functioning? Like if I stops working properly? Why is it? It's quite often it's because the cells in those areas have not got the nutrients or the circulation from the blood, which is what supplies the nutrients that it needs. So you may have heard of things like glaucoma, right? Yes. One of the treatments, very powerful treatments of glaucoma is cannabis. Yes. Right. Because it improves blood flow rapidly to the eye and. And then the glaucoma goes away. So things like glaucoma are actually result of diminished blood flow. Right. So I believe most diseases are the result of diminished blood flow. So what causes that? Well.

Certain things can change if you're under stress, if you have high blood pressure, you are under tension, for example, often under stress and tension, which a lot of people are, or you don't get the right nutrition at a young age, or there is some genetic component as well, then you may not be getting the blood flow to the eye that you need. Now, what our technique does, kumbhaka, the breath retention part is.

Boosts a low production of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a wonderful healing molecule.

Yes.

Anyone who's into breathing techniques, breath must like, pay attention to nitric oxide and do all their research into nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. It improves circulation, the ability for oxygen to be utilized properly by cells. So what you're doing right in our somas technique is you're creating a Lot of vascular.

Open up of blood vessels, vasodilation, and you're getting blood flow going to the eye at much better rates. Now here's another phenomenon. So what we do is we create this intimate hypoxic state for a brief period of time. This has been shown in studies. And there's one guy in particular, you can check out his paper, Prakashmal, who's on our board of advisors for soma. He shows that under this positive stress that is created by this ancient breathing technique that we use in soma, you lower the oxygen for a brief period of time. And that.

Has potentially the ability to activate certain stem cells. And the one that I believe is the one being activated are called very small embryonic, like stem cells. And I spoke to a.

Stem cell scientist, okay, who has a lab, and they do very expensive treatments and all this. And they talk about this very small embryonic stem cells and that they use.

They use certain ways to activate it. Intense heat. So the sauna, for example, in my opinion, also activates stem cells. And that's one of the reasons why saunas are so therapeutic and beneficial, in my opinion. So intense heat, even cold, right? And trauma are known. So physical trauma known to activate stem cells. The other thing is low oxygen. This is what this, this is what's talked about by this, this lab. They use low oxygen to activate these certain types of stem cells, and then they'll cultivate them and then stick them into people in certain areas, right? Like if they want to lower inflammation, if they want to help regrow tissue, things like that. However, I believe with this breathing technique, there's no need for doing this because what you're doing is you're waking up your innate.

Stem cells. Using this technique takes a bit of practice to get to that point where you are mobilizing these stem cells. Now, stem cells hate oxygen. They thrive in a hypoxic environment. So when you are in the womb, stem cells are found in large number in the bowel, in the stomach, sorry, in the womb. And they are rapidly dividing. And that's what creates who you are. Right. But that environment in the womb is a very low oxygen environment, a hypoxic. It's like the same level of atmospheric oxygen as top of error is, right? So but when you're born, all these stem cells hide into areas of very low oxygen, the bone marrow and certain areas where there's normal cells, and then they're in the center, the normal cells use up all the oxygen. So these very small embryonic stem cells are in the bloodstream, but they're inactive. And then when you. You give a dose of this intermittent hypoxia, they get activated and they go to areas where there's inflammation or healing. Respiration, rejuvenation, restoration needs to happen. And I believe the yogis knew this. And they would use the power of intention and different.

Like certain exercises you use with your. Your body at the same time as doing these techniques. And this would initiate the healing response. It would, like, rapidly activate this healing. So I actually got really deep into this. And our techniques we teach the Soma breath are all kind of designed to use power breath to create this intimate hypoxic state to potentially wake up these stem cells. That's why we call it the awakening journey, is awakening up these stem cells and then move to areas where they need. Now, there is science out there that backs up what I'm saying. So. So remember, think rationally. Mechanisms, always. Whenever you get told anything by a doctor or a scientist, you must think rationally. Is this. Does this make sense as a mechanism or. They're just showing me some fancy numbers. Okay, there's really.

Fancy numbers. So mechanistically, this makes sense that we can wake up stem cells. They're already doing it in labs. They use low oxygen, and when you put on a pulse oximeter, for example, and you get into breath retention states, you're going down to like, 60%. Yes. Or less. In some cases, oxygen saturation for, you know, 30 seconds or more. Right. So, and then at least below my. I can hold my breath for like four minutes after the exhale, and I can bring my oxygen levels down to like 50%, even 45%, then it will take at least a minute to get back to normal. And according to the doctor that works with us, it only takes a minute for two minutes for blood to completely circulate around your body. Right. So I believe in a minute of the right breath retention time, or up to two minutes, you can, if you hit the right hypoxic level, activate these things. Now, intermittent hypoxic training is already being used using machines. There's a huge therapeutic field of research out there on this, and they use machines to do the same thing. So they'll use, you breathe in, like, normal oxygen and then very low oxygen for several minutes, and then your blood spo2 goes down. They have scientifically shown this phenomenon of intimate hypoxia, and they explain. There's Russian scientists who've done a lot research that it's this hypoxia activating stem cells and those stem cells are going around the body and doing the works. But remember, this is.

Science, it's theory. We don't know for sure. We can't go in there and like, very difficult to actually study this. And then there's no money in it. Yes, there's money in extracting stem cells and injecting into people, but there's no money in giving people the power to do it themselves. So there isn't going to be a lot of money going into this either. But I know mechanistically it makes sense. And I can see anecdotally in our group you've got like thousands of people gone through our courses. There is a large percentage of them, significant percentage who are reporting dramatic improvements in their health. And the eyesight is a common one.

Wow.

More common than we thought.

Okay, so a question I'm really interested to know a bit more about is can you tell me what are the differences between SOMA and the WIM HOF method? What complements each other and what are the differences?

Yeah, great question, man. So there's something we get asked a lot because I also have a very close connection to wim. Wim is a good friend and actually we even have an album together. We recently made an album that's up on his website on YouTube. You can check it out. It's called Set you free. We just type in WIM HOF music. You can check it out. And I've known Wim for years. I actually went over there to interview him a long time ago. We had a lot of things in common and he's on a big mission as well. It's very similar to mine. And he basically.

Really gave me a lot more proof that there is other amazing, incredible things you can do with the breath. I used it for the healing benefits. And the method I got taught.

Back in 2011 revolves around this pranayama techniques using rhythm and using breath retention and a meditation as well to basically reprogram your operating system. You imagine your mind is like an operating system so you can go in there and fix things that have gone wrong over time due to stress.

So I was fascinated like that there's all these superhuman abilities out there which you get taught about from, you know, you hear about them, you don't know if it's totally true. And so me and him was like amazing because I'm not alone. I'm not the only crazy guy out there. And you know, so that was really amazing to meet that. And for a while actually we worked together. I actually Even hosted some events with him, went on tour with him and did all sorts of stuff. But I wanted to make a school.

That was based on these traditional techniques, so pranayama and also brought in my other interests like the music side. And I'm into hypnosis, hypnotherapy, guided meditations and certain neuro linguistic techniques that are very powerful. When you combine that with the breath and music, you have a super powerful transformative tool. And for me, I was already really fascinated of using the breath to help people to discover who they truly are. Like the spiritual side of it, rather than just the physical stuff.

So.

So actually that's where the distinction happened. I had the outlet that WIM couldn't do because they want to really take away anything that has anything too mystical in there because it's really smart idea because it just means that they can cross over to a lot more people than you would expect. I also found that with the Hofs that they would attract mostly the guys.

Yes, I've seen this a lot of.

The peak performance people and things like that. And you know, I come from a pretty hippie island. I live in Koh Phangan at the moment. You know, I lived in Bali and I'm in more of the yoga kind of, I would say also the shamanic spiritual world.

So I felt like, you know, we needed a way to reach that audience as well.

So it's great, you know, like we've kind of got our this very similar what we do, but.

We reach a lot of people. And the great thing is there's no competition. And with Soma Breath, we're not just about one technique. There's actually a plethora of different pranayama techniques. We also show how to use a breath with yoga and we also.

Teach people guided meditation, how to do guided journeys. So it's a very multidimensional like training. And I think that's why it's really taken off in an amazing, remarkable way.

And we have a lot of crossovers. So we have people who do our stuff, go over to do stuff with WIM and vice versa. But one of the things I will say is that okay, and whim is great. He's reached so many people open the doors. Everyone is that there is sometimes some confusion of should I breathe through my mouth, should I use my nose? Some people get a bit stressed out.

From that, from the WIM HOF technique. Because if you just use your mouth and if you're already a stressful person that you're already experience a Lot of stress in your life. It can actually make it a little bit worse.

Not for everyone, just for some cases. And therefore, nose breathing is. We focus on nasal breathing. That's the key, because it produces nitric oxide, and it's a filter for the air. It's generally a good idea, a healthy habit, to breathe through your nose as much as possible.

And also what I found is when you do the more slow, rhythmic breathing, where it's perfectly timed to the beat. Okay. You can go much deeper in the. In the breath retention phase. You can do much longer breath retentions.

Oh, that's very interesting.

And that adds that. Yeah, the depth for what I'm talking about with the intimate hypoxic training. And also it adds.

This meditation element, because when you hold breath for a period of time on the exhale, if you imagine when you breathe in, you breathe in oxygen, Right. That produces energy. That's the source of thoughts, is the inspiration. Inspired actually means to breathe in. It comes from the Latin root meaning espiritu, and you have conspire means to breathe together, actually. And spiritual means to breathe, and inspire means to breathe in. So when you breathe in is when you get thought. So when you breathe out and you hold your breath and you don't breathe again, what happens is you're lowering the oxygen and you'll find. And you do this. When you do this. Right. Your thoughts completely quiet down, like. And it becomes a very powerful meditation. Because, after all, what we're trying to do in meditation is this. We're trying to turn off the vocal, the verbal part of the mind, the speaking part that. The chatter in the mind. Yes. And we're trying to bring into a single line of focus. That's like the defrag for the mind. Right. So with soma, we put a lot of emphasis on this and getting into that really still meditative state. And it's like a defrag switch for the mind. So that's why you get a lot of mental clarity from doing that. Sounds wonderful. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of like the distinction. Yes. We just go more to the traditional, and we have much more techniques. Yeah.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you for answering that. I love to reference the defrag as well, because that brings me back to my computer days a bit. So I want to pick up on the sauna piece because what happened to me, I did Wim Hof in 2016, and I was terrified of the cold, and I still practice cold exposure whenever I can, especially in winters in Poland. But for me, I was drawn very Very heavily to the sauna. To the point where I was going every single day. And I would do long sauna sessions. My friends thought I was crazy. I would do 20, 30 minutes cold shower, relax for 20 minutes back in. I could do a three hour set like that and just. I'd come out. I don't know if you ever remember in the 90s, there was a tree ball, Mr. Soft Mint. And I feel like Mr. Soft at the end of it. I'm all loose and relaxed feeling in the world. Love it. And with this lockdown right now in England, I don't have my own sauna. There's no sauna to go to. I feel like I'm missing out on some really decent medicine which I just can't get my hands on. Can't have a hot bath either.

So anyway, so gone.

The sauna is one of the best things you could do for your health, especially if you want to protect against viruses.

I wonder how it's going to work with social distancing measures. Maybe masks and sauna. I don't know. I mean, probably you've seen this in other countries. England, it tends to be a bit more relaxed and sauna, but in Poland you have to have a towel. You can't touch the wood with your body. It's a very clean environment. I can't say it's always the same in England, but what's going on?

A virus. A virus. Can't stand that.

No, it's too hot for it.

Yeah, that's interesting. And you know, like I'm a pharmacist, so I can see shenanigans when it's presented to me. And the problem is, is that most people aren't pharmacists, they're not doctors, they're not nurses. And the problem is what? I'm a pharmacist who used to be a pharmacist, so. Right. I'm out of that system. And when you're in that system.

It'S very difficult for you to say anything or do anything because you'll lose your job. You'd be struck off the register. That's the first thing that's gonna happen. So most people don't say anything, they don't question anything. And that's the problem. And I think that, okay, yeah, there may be a case that you may get more risk of infection going to a gym, blah, blah, blah. I actually think that there's more risk of serious second waves coming from lockdown measures. That's what the science is showing. Lockdowns you're away from sunlight. Not getting vitamin D. Yes. Getting depressed. You're socially isolated and you probably will drink more when you're in a lockdown situation. And if you're not going to the gym and you're not doing that thing that gives you a bit of joy, it's just going against your nature as a human. And then the sauna is so therapeutically beneficial. It boosts your immune system. You increase growth hormone by several times. You actually, there's no way a virus can survive that temperature. It just doesn't. That's one of the reasons why very hot, humid countries just don't have any real cases. Like, it's just not. I mean, where I am the zero, Thailand's got hardly any cases. Right. Same as Bali. And they're trying to say, okay.

So like, you know, it's Costa Rica, I have a lot of friends in Costa Rica and things like that. So I think that.

The sauna is like one of the most powerful. It's like going to church. You know what I mean?

Yes, yes.

And when you use the breath with it, magic literally happens when you use breathing techniques, rhythmic breathing and getting into those all to states of consciousness. It's the most profound, like deep meditation you get into. And if you're into things like magic and manifesting, that's the time to do it.

Yeah. You know. You know, I have actually used the phrase a couple of times. The church of sauna.

Yes.

And I really do feel like I have to go there and I have to spend my time and there's no phones. And I find as well, I have some of the best conversations with strangers when I'm in the sauna. Because you're not naked. Naked, but you're almost naked, aren't you? There's nothing there. There's no screen in front of you.

You're just bare.

And you can just have some really open conversations with strangers who you probably walk past in the street. So lovely to find a kindred spirit of sauna there as well.

Oh, yeah. And a lot of my.

Clients who now use, you know, while they haven't been able to recently. But because part of our Soma Awakened journey is an emphasis on sauna. And what we do is we create protocol using niacin. And you do this breathing technique in the sauna. It's special rhythmic, bringing in for four, out for eight.

Niacin isn't magic. I don't know if you've tried this. So we do is you take like, you do it in stages. Start with 100 milligrams. It has to be the. No, the full flush. The full flush. Nice. Not the no flush, but the full flush. Nice. And the one that creates the flush. So you do the flush.

Whilst. So you do a lot of exercise. You get really deep into exercise. Like 20 minutes high intensity. Yes. And that will make you sweat a lot and get your blood circulating. And you take the niacin before that, you'll start feeling this crazy flush. Like you're just flaring up with heat, intense heat. Like you've taken the most intense chilli of all time. Then what happens is that will start to subside a bit. Then you go into the sauna and what niacin does is it flushes. It dilates all your blood vessels amazingly. Right. You get crazy blood flow all around your body. And when you go into sauna, then it has to be a dry heat, full, you know, 80 degrees, 100 degrees. Yeah. All of the benefits. Saunas, like, dramatically accelerate, especially with the detox getting heavy metals out of the system.

Yeah. Oh, that sounds fantastic. Right, I will look at that. And as soon as these saunas open again, I will be straight in there. Can you just tell me a bit about. So how did you go from pharmacist to renegade pharmacist? What was that? What was the story behind that?

The sauna man. Okay, yeah, no, I would like go to. So I had a job as a community pharmacist and I was really depressed. I hated my job. I just saw so many problems in the healthcare system. Like people weren't getting better. Let's face it, people don't get better with the modern healthcare system, right? They're disease is prolonged. Okay. And then what happens is they end up taking like 20, 30 pills. They're like literally rattling when they walk in, going away, shopping bags full of drugs. Nobody wants to be on these drugs. They just don't know anything else to do. So I was like, screw this. You know that something has to be like, this can't be the life. I was so unsatisfied with life. I was like, this cannot be how it is. I mean, like, you'd think like, oh, if that's how it is for them, that could be me in a few years.

And anyway, I had a brick breakdown. I got dragged to Tony Robbins event, believe it or not, or kicking and screaming to the same Robbins event and somebody bought me a ticket. I had no choice. Anyway, changed my life on the last day. Was the first time I heard anyone talk about health in terms of how to reverse diseases using diet. And then you know, the Hippocratic oath. And I was learning. I learned more in that one seminar that last day than I did entire time.

Wow, that's incredible.

And so I was like, right, I'm in a pharmacy, I can test this out. I'm going to put Tony Robbins to the test. So going to the pharmacy and I wrote out healthy shopping list for patients based on their conditions. Those who took the drugs. Sorry, didn't.

Those who followed my advice changed their diet literally. I was just giving them like tips and websites they could go and get. They could learn how to make the foods I was recommending, the meals I was recommending. And those who followed it, they were getting incredible results for their health. Coming drugs. I had doctors phone me up going, what are you doing? This is a miracle. This is amazing. I'm like it doesn't seem that much that obvious to me. I mean it seems pretty obvious to me. That's a miracle to me. But they were baffled. I couldn't believe it. So I started educating doctors in my community. Helping local people got me a bit of a reputation. Got fired from my first job. Won't go into the ins and outs but I got promoted eventually to the head office one of the biggest corporations in the world. And I was going to come out with this healthy shopping service. They love this concept. Then it got labeled too renegade. The idea was to renegade and they shelved the idea after six months because the middle management not agreeing with it. So I just got disillusioned. I was like, it felt like a total crush to my values to every. I just couldn't believe a corporation would do such a thing, right Withheld such a powerful, amazing service of people. You know, I had amazing result with diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is easily to solve with changes of diet, really easy. And patients want to not be diabetic. They want to change, they're committed but they don't know how because they don't get good advice and they need practical ways to do this, easy ways to do this.

And so I actually could have helped a lot of people. Type 2 diabetes is a massive problem in the world. Actually people who get issues complications of this Covid.

Generally they've got Diabetes is quite common amongst the ones who get their more serious cases right. So it's because their metabolic function is not right. And so that's a big thing we can solve so just by changing diet. Anyway, so what happened was at that point I got hit like a lightning bolt with an autoimmune disease or ulcerative colitis left me housebound for, like, almost a year. And it was going through that healing journey.

Which where I learned from Swami. She taught me the foundations of Pranayama yoga, Ayurveda meditation, And I discovered the work of another pharmacist. Actually, Joseph Murphy wrote a book called the Power of the Subconscious Mind. And that's where I started learning about the use of mantras to reprogram the operating system and to get into these deep brainwave states. And anyway, I actually, within a few months, healed myself.

And that took me on this journey I am on now. And actually, I started this cycle the renegade pharmacist. And I wrote an article with an infographic all about.

Coca Cola and my experience in the supermarkets and how many people I observed who were drinking fizzy drinks like Coca Cola, which are full of sugar, were getting things like diabetes. And why, just by changing, swapping that for.

Like, lemon juice, for example, just transform people's health. And I made this infographing massively viral all around the world, and it got me known as the Renegade pharmacist. The site was the Renegade Pharmacist. It was. It was crazy. I think it's still one of the most viral infographics of all time.

Oh, fantastic. One of my family members actually has type 2 diabetes and had a scare with a doctor a couple of weeks ago. Made a couple of changes. Alcohol, food, and they've gone below the level now. The levels are dropping every single week. And, you know, it's incredible how quickly something like that can. Can turn around with the right changes. Fantastic. So I think we're gonna do breathing exercise. Are we now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So adding. Adding to that. So what I did realize, though.

Is actually the breath is where it all begins, Right? All right. I believe that actually, just with the breathing techniques and the system that we've made, we can actually.

Give people the energy, the will, the desire to make other changes in their life. When you teach somebody how to take control of their autonomic nervous system, just with the breath, magic happens. And with this breathing technique, you have less need for food. You don't need to consume as much. Your whole.

System is optimized. Your mitochondria is functioning effectively, your nervous system is balanced, and what happens. So before we go into the technique, I want to just explain a little bit of science. This is. This is what differentiates us from a lot of people, because.

My method is based on Pranayama and the Yogis. Thousand years ago, they observed Animals in nature, that's where they got a lot of the inspiration for yoga from. And they found that animals that live a very long period of time, elephants and turtles, they're very, very, very slow breathing rates, right? Like two to four breaths per minute. That's their natural breathing rate. And animals that don't live a long time, like squirrels, rabbits.

Mice, rats, they are very, very fast breathing rates, like 30, 40 breaths per minute. And they don't live very long time, like two years. Now, there's a weird anomaly to this, okay? One of them, one of these weird anomalies is the naked mole rat. The naked mole rat actually lives. They can hold their breath for up to 18 minutes at a time. And they live mostly underground in hypoxic environments. They live up to 30 years, right? And they live free from disease. They can't get cancer. They've injected them with cancer and the cancer doesn't survive and they just don't get disease. So this makes scientists understand, like, actually maybe there's something about this hypoxia. And then humans are anomaly because we have the conscious ability to control our breath. Yes. Okay. And so pranayama is a method, actually, if you look at it, to bring the overall breathing rate down to around four breaths per minute, because that will expand your life. The reason, again, think of it in terms of mechanism, right? So there's a scientist called Helmut sees, right? Helmut sees create the term oxidative stress. And he showed that actually oxygen, although it's very difficult for us to live without, it is also very difficult for us to live with it because it causes stress on the body. Cause it. You've seen things oxidize in nature, right? Like cars. The metal rusts. Rusting. That rusting happens inside our circulatory system as well, leads to plaques, and that causes heart disease. All right, and where does that rusting come from? Actually, it comes from over oxidation from the oxygen. So when you. When you over breathe, and Patrick McKeown will back this up, you breathe out carbon dioxide, you get too much oxygen stuck to your red blood cells. It doesn't go to where it needs to go. So that's one of the big problems, is you don't get blood oxygen going to where it needs to go. Secondly, if you have over oxidation for too long, it can lead to oxidative stress, which damages DNA. It causes arthritis in the arteries. It also causes inflammation, which is the precursor to the disease. So basically, the antidote is training your mitochondria to be super efficient for using oxygen so you have less need to breathe. The less you need to breathe, the slower your breathing rate. The slower your breathing is in general, the less likely you are to hyperventilate as well. And actually what that means it translates into is you live longer. All right? And that's why. So this, with what we do, so breath is we teach you the core pranayama techniques. They're designed for oxygen efficiency. And you'll find, you'll find if you do this, this course.

You'Ll be able to hold your breath for longer and longer periods of time. That's one measure of how well you're doing, is how long can you hold your breath without doing any tricks beforehand. You shouldn't be. And then hold your breath, but just at rest.

With no air in the lungs, how long can you hold your breath? Right? And also how long can you make a tone, a single tone.

Like a full breath in? And how long can you do your aunts. You'll find that if you do these techniques. And we also have physical exercises, which I call intimate hypoxic training exercises, like doing push ups or lunges or running around holding your breath.

All this will train you. And yoga as well should be an anaerobic exercise where you're holding each pose.

You'Re drawing the breath. What that does is it creates this short period of insulin hypoxia, and that strengthens the whole body. Right. And it makes you more efficient using oxygen. That's the point of yoga. So I believe that the ancient mystic yogis, they hacked death, right, became immortal. Whether you believe or. I don't know for sure if they're immortal or not, but there is a theory that there are immortal yogis who live up in the Himalayas. Perhaps it's because they can live without oxygen or they've adapted to have to be able to survive on the least amount of oxygen as possible. And hence why they also choose to live at the top of the Himalayas where oxygen levels are very low, carbon dioxide levels are higher. Carbon dioxide is what triggers us to our brain to breathe again. If you can have high carbon dioxide tolerance, it means your breathing rate drops as well. So everything in sonogram breath is about improving carbon monoxide tolerance. Yeah. And I really believe that this is one of the key things for lowering inflammation, expanding your longevity strength, your nervous system and all these things. And, and that can maybe explain the science of pranayama. You know, like, people don't really understand pranayama, but I think this, what I just told you, is a true reason for pranayama and I'm all about mechanism. Okay, so if there's ancient yogis that live forever, why? And there's people go, yes, they do it. I'm certain. I've seen Babaji. I'm like, well, how? How are they doing? And then I. So when I met this doctor and he taught me the science of yoga from a medical perspective, because he's a doctor and he uses it patients, he sees the results for himself every day with his patients, I was like, that's it. Now I get it. Now I get why we do these ancient techniques. What they were doing, what they had hacked, why they figured out, and perhaps even why they're so shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Because maybe they don't want some of the techniques to fall into the wrong hands.

Fascinating. You know you've just awoken something. Additionally, I'm already obsessed with breath work, but I feel like I need to go further down the rabbit hole.

Now.

I'm going to ask you while I've got you here, because you never know. I've started to get swell. I have spasms in my back and started to develop carpal tunnel. And I think that's from years of being on computers and that sort of thing. And I'll do my stretching and I'll do not enough yoga, but I do some yoga.

Could you.

Would you recommend anything in that area to maybe help with the back spasms or is that not really kind of your field of expertise?

No, 100%. So. Okay, so again, mechanisms, why have you got this in the first place? Well, it's super.

Common, right. Carpal tunnel syndrome from people who work on computers all day. So it's probably that's the problem. I've created an app just for you guys. It's called Cheguru. Alright. You can get it on our website. You can maybe put a link to.

Yeah, I will chat.

It's a Google Chrome plugin at the moment. Okay. And what it does is it pops up at any interval you say with a two minute exercise you go do and it's either a breathing technique or a stretching technique. Each exercise you should follow up with a walk to go and get some water or toilet or whatever it is, but some kind of walk at the end and it just breaks up the day. So there'll be hours that go by because you're so deeply into concentration, you may not actually move from your chair and you're constantly. So that firstly is the problem is.

Unnatural for humans to sit in one place. Yes, Working. That's Unnatural. So you've got to become more natural. So what do animals do? They stretch, they shake, they move around. You know, they do stuff. They never. They very rarely sit. Even cats, although look like they sleep all day long, they spend a lot of time walking around and doing stuff. Stretching a lot, a lot of stretching. So definitely doing yoga is going to be one of the best. But you should do the yoga where it's the long, very long poses, the ones that really strengthen the nervous system. So the way we do, so we call it Soma Yoga is you're holding each pose. It's just like all the yoga poses that you're doing in Vinyasa. But each pose, you do it until you can't do it any longer. You hold your breath into the pose. So a good one for you would be to you want to strengthen and stretch. The back is doing sequences that involve like forward bends and then followed by back bends like cobra and.

Forward bends and downward dogs and things like that. And what you do is you do each pose till exhaustion you can't do any longer.

So when you do a four bend, for example, you've got to get all the air out of your lungs. So what you do is you take a sip in. When you breathe out, exhale into the pose, then you can do another. You hold it until you can't hold it longer. And all you need to breathe and you breathe in and breathe out into the pose again. You'll find it to stretch even deeper. And then you hold that pose, you can't hold it any longer, right? And then you just repeat the breath until you get exhausted physically, you can't do it. Same thing with any of the poses that you do. That's how you build strength in yoga. And that then what I'll do is I'll strengthen your bones, your tendons, your joints. You'll get better blood flow to those areas so you won't get tired as easily. Because what is all this stuff? It's being stumped down, not moving, you're not getting blood flow. Yes. And you're. And that strain means the muscles get cramped and tension. Chronic tension means blood flow is diminished to that those muscles and joints. Diminished blood flow means nutrients aren't getting there, so you get disease. So our breathing technique, Wim Hof, achieves the same result as well. But our Soma Breath Awakening 10, which you're about to do now, what it does is it creates massive vasodilation, especially because we're all about nose breathing. So when you're using Your nose, okay. And you're doing the breath retentions and you're creating the state coherence. You're maximizing the.

Transference of oxygen from blood cells into the cells where it needs to go, raising carbon dioxide tolerance. And what you're also doing is you're creating massive vasodilation and getting all the blood vessels dilated so you start to get blood flow. So what you should do is, once you've done this technique is lie down and shavasana, just allow just the blood to circulate freely. And just by doing that for a few minutes after this breathing technique will make sure you're getting good blood flow to all the cells in your body. Right. That's why in yoga you do shavasana at the end and watch what happens. I want you to do this every day and tell me, okay, you improve. Yeah. Right.

I can do this sitting on the chair. Do I need to lie down for a second?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, are you. Do you have a tendency to pass out?

No, not I'm aware of, no.

Okay, okay. Okay. So never do this in a place where you might fall over if you pass out. Right. You should try and do this in a comfortable position.

You know, it's best to do this, actually, this technique with your back straight. However.

You. I mean, you can. You should always sit up, have your back straight. You can also do this lying down. But if you're going to do sitting up right now, you should use the energy locks. So the energy locks that we're going to use is the neck lock. And when you get into the breath retention phase, you're going to breathe in, breathe out.

Let your head drop forward, let your chin go towards your chest.

And hold your breath like that. With no air in the lungs, completely relaxed. This keeps the energy in and it holds the breath in. The energy in. Okay, okay.

And it's in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Yeah, that's how I teach it. You're always breathing in through your nose. That's the key. Right. And the rhythmic breathing part at the beginning, you're breathing in through your nose.

And out through your mouth.

To the count of the music. This track is a more faster session. Like a lot of the other ones are more slow and more gentle. This one I'm giving you is like a full power one. Again to say it's consciousness, about 22 minutes. So. So you can choose the different ones that we have, what you prefer. And then the other thing, important thing is we use tones toning, so the first part of this session, because it's all guided, you'll hear the voice guiding. The whole thing is when you get the command, you're going to breathe in.

And you're going to make a turn.

You know it has three syllables.

Yes.

And.

Is three syllables. Okay? And each, if you. When you do an R, your fetal. If you go, your fill.

Goes down to your sex and your digest glands. These are creative glands. And then when you do oo, you're feeling your heart. You feel it in your heart? Yes.

You feel the vibration in your mind.

Now, here's the thing. Brahma, the God of creation in Hinduism, or the Vedic God of creation, is Brahma. It's a symbol for the aa, the tone.

Vishnu is the God of preservation. There's all of the preserving glands, the thymus gland, the heart, BHU Vishnu. Brahma is the creative glands, the sex and the digestion. That's what creates stuff, right? The creativity. And then the.

Mahesha, or shivam, it's known as Shivam is a God of consciousness.

That syllable is the pituitary up there. And the pineal, it's the upper glands. And these deal with consciousness. And they're the master glands of the control of the glands. So when you do it in the sequence, you get aum. So I just demystified aum for you. And the Hindu religion, which has become full of dogma, right? It's actually codes and symbols for how to tap into the operating system, which is the human body and the mind. The mind of the human. So.

That'S it. So that's the things to bear in mind. So you're going to start with rhythmic breathing. Oh, because you're advanced, you can add on an extra dimension on the rhythmic breathing phase. When you breathe in, you're breathing into your belly.

Then chest. That's a full yogic breath.

And then you pull up the pelvic floor muscles. You squeeze. You can even use your fists to guide you. You pull up the sphincter muscles, basically the muscles that you'd use if you really.

Need to go for a shit. And I imagine you're holding onto that, okay, pulling up, you're squeezing, and then you're letting go on the exhale. So it becomes like a pump from your root, your mulabanda is called. And you're sending this energy out, these feel good sensations up. So the sphincter muscles there are connected to.

Your autonomic nervous system as well. And actually, I can teach you. You can see this in my webinar, actually, how to raise your heart rate up and down by just breathing techniques, by breath and the mulabanda that actually you can check out. Maybe we don't have time for it now, but you can check that out in the. In our webinar that we have. But. But for this, you'll feel that when you do that, that when you're doing the rhythm, you squeeze.

And let go. All right. You start to feel really good sensations. Moving the body circulates dopamine and endorphins. Yeah, Much better. All right, so you're gonna do that. Yeah. And then when you get the command, you take a deep inhale in. And then you will either do a beginning is orms, and then the second half is breath retentions. Okay.

How long is the entire thing? Sorry, 20 minutes in total.

Okay, cool. Yeah. So you take a deep breath in, breathe out. Hold your breath as long as you can. And then when you get the urge to breathe, you count down in your mind 10 to 1. That will help you hold your breath even longer. Okay. Because you trick your mind to be as old by just counting down your mind. And you'll feel this adrenaline rush. Feeling comes up from the base of your spine. And when you feel that, you breathe in. Imagine you're pulling all that energy up from the base of your spine like a rush sensation. You hold your breath in as long as you can. And at this point, you pull on the pelvic floor. At the same time, the sphincter muscles up, and you can even screw up your forehead. Do the neck lock like that? This sends energy up into the brain. Right? And that has all these amazing effects of lighting up the pineal gland and pituitary. You ready?

I'm ready.

Welcome. Welcome to the Soma.

Journey into the Lights.

Sit comfortably in an upright position or lie down on your back.

Where you will not be disturbed.

Bring your awareness to the sound. And the sound of my voice will be your guide.

Along with the rhythm and groove of the music.

To tune in to the sound and all your thoughts. Be like a streak.

Hey. Welcome back.

It was quite a bizarre experience for me because I'm conscious, the camera's there. But at the same time, at the same time, I actually went really deep, which I wasn't expecting at all. Probably tell by my talk a different state. I haven't had that level of visualizations since my Wim Hof experience in 2016, where there was 20 of us in the room doing the breathing for about an hour. So, yeah, it's a visual. I haven't had that color display to that severity for years. And that one with the nose as well. And actually I find with the mouth, I get so dry so quickly. And normally after a couple of rounds of doing hofest breathing, it's a bit of a chore for me. I have to really fight through that. Whereas I felt with that I could have kept going and kept going and kept going and kept going because the nose is doing a lot of work for me, so. Oh, thank you so much. That was.

Thank you, mate.

Beautiful experience to go through. I feel so privileged.

So imagine an hour of that. Yeah, it's much deeper with acceleration towards the end. The climax is unreal.

Yeah. Incredible. Oh, wow. Okay. How can people find you?

So Soma Breath YouTube channel. There's a lot of great sessions like this on there. Also we have a masterclass which you can sign up for@somabreath.com and there you can learn all about the science of breathing techniques like this. And I also show you how to raise your heart rate, lower your heart rate by will. And I also explain this method in more depth. And you can also test out the 22 minute daily dose. We have another one which is super powerful, quite potent as well. And then you can learn about our 21 day awakening protocol journey, we call it, which is a deep dive into this method with all these other layers on top, as I was talking about. But we also have the instructor training site. So if you want to be an instructor of this, you also have the career building instructor training site as well. And we're actually creating careers for instructors using this 21 day framework. And it's been amazing.

People can do it all through zoom as well. You can do it from home. Beautiful.

Lovely. Well, Niraj, thank you so much for your time. I think you've just given me and my viewers a real gift there, so I'm very grateful for that. Guys, go and check him out. Well worth the experience. If you're into any sort of breath work, which I assume you are because you're here, go and check out Soma because that was another level. So it's really, really wonderful. So, Niraj, thank you for your time. I hope we can do this again in the future at some point. Guys, thanks for watching. Take a deep breath and we'll see you on the next Breathcast.

Thanks all. Take care. Peace. Thank you.