The Power of Breathwork: The Natural Medicine You’ve Been Looking For

But what if I told you the secret to transforming yourself is actually getting high, but not on substances, but on life itself. I know it sounds crazy, but let me explain. So having osteocolitis is one of the most challenging things anyone can go through because the symptoms are so debilitating. I'm housebound for almost a year, shitting blood 40 times a day, losing a third of my body weight. And the conventional treatments had stopped working completely. In fact, they were giving me more side effects and more pain. However, there was this moment where I made a big turning point. A dark night of the soul moment. The consultant said to me, you got two choices left. One, be a guinea pig for a drug hasn't been tested before. Two, have your colon removed and have a colostomy back. Obviously, I didn't want any of those choices. I was only 32 years old, so to have those options is not the best news. But that's when I went inward and started to pray. They say God stands a gift of desperation. When my most desperate moment came Judgment Day, a moment where I had to make another choice, a third choice. And I prayed and prayed for this third choice to appear. But now a dear friend of our family, Swamiyamakananda, came to rescue. She said to me, you actually have a gift with your tenacity and drive and motivation to help people. You now have an amazing story because if you can turn this around, you're going to be an amazing, inspiring role model to others. And this gave me my hope back. She started to make me see my condition as a gift and my situation and everything that happened to me in my life, to stop seeing it with blame and shame and start seeing it as opportunity. So she said she can teach me some simple but profound ancient healing techniques from my own culture of India. And now I come from a very academic, left brain traditional family where even though yoga and breathing exercises like Pranayama are actually part of a culture, it's still considered a little bit woo woo and unscientific. So I'd never taken these things seriously. So I had to let go of my disbelief and follow my swami's advice because I had no other choice. So very first thing my swami taught me was these simple breathing exercises from Pranayama. Pranayama is the ancient school of breathing or breath work from India. I was so blown away by the relief I got from these simple techniques. It's motivated me to go really deep and learn as much as I can about these ancient sciences. So I started to research and study as much as I could about these ancient practices. And that's when I discovered an ancient sequence of pranayama techniques that gets right to the cause of the problem, how we produce energy from within. Pranayama is actually like a pharmacy of different breathing exercises. And there's a breathing exercise that can create a similar effect to most of the medications you'll find in the pharmacy, such as, if you want to unblock your nose, you can do that. If you want to fix constipation, you can do that. If you want to relieve pain and tension, you can do that. You can even lower your blood pressure and so on and so forth. There's a breathing technique that can mimic the effects of almost every drug that you'll find in a pharmacy. And this was an absolute paradigm shift for me, considering that I'm a pharmacist, that we already have an inner pharmacy, and the breath is our way to awaken it. In particular, rhythmic breathing is the foundation of yoga. If you think about it, almost everything in nature has a rhythm to it. A cycle from your sleep, wake cycle, the menstrual cycle, to the sun and moon cycle, the lunar cycle. There's so many different cycles and rhythms and patterns to nature that the same thing goes with our breath. And the pattern of your breath can tell you a lot about yourself. But with rhythmic breathing techniques, we can restore harmony and balance within. Now, one of the other most revered techniques of all is, is called kumbhaka breath retention. And it involves holding your breath in various ways. We can hold your breath for 60 to 90 seconds or more. After a full exhalation, some real magic can happen. We release a dose. These positive neurotransmitters and hormones that make us feel, feel good and also strengthens us from within. It works by creating a state called intermittent hypoxia and lower than normal level oxygen. Now, why would we do that? Why would we want to take away oxygen from the body? Well, when you take away anything from the body for a brief period, it actually makes the body think you're running out of it. And this leads to adaptive changes in the body where your body becomes more efficient at using that thing. Now, this famous scientist called Helmut Sees coined the term the oxygen paradox because he says it's impossible to live with oxygen and impossible to live without it. Because of this problem, every time you produce energy in the body, there is byproducts of that which causes wear and tear on the cells. Actually, your mitochondria are like little tiny car engines. And this is where we produce energy Inside every single cell, mitochondria are the vehicles of producing energy in the body. And unfortunately, they're just like a car engine. When you drive a car engine, what happens, it produces a lot of heat and stress and wear and tear and eventually that car engine will break down. The same thing happens with the human body. So the whole system of yoga and pranayama is designed to make you so efficient using oxygen, you hardly need to breathe. And then in the end, your breathing rate slows down. And if you have a slower, calmer breathing rate, rather than huffing and puffing all the time, you actually have a calmer mind because your breath is a reflection, a mirror of your mind. If you look at very advanced yogis, you'll notice they hardly look like they're breathing at all. In fact, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu says the perfect human breathes, but they don't breathe at all. And this is the sign of a healthy, happy human. The less you need to breathe, the more calm your breath is, the more calm you are within. So Ayurveda is the ancient Indian system of medicine, and here we look at the body as a whole, and there's no one size fits all approach in Ayurveda because it takes into account that we're all unique and individual. And I realize this is the mistake of pharmacy and modern medicine is this blanket treatment as though everybody is exactly the same. And it couldn't be further from the truth. So Ayurveda in simple terms, is based on three core principles. One, you are what you think. Two, you are what you consume. Three, you are what you do. And that corresponds to your mind, body, body and spirit. So you need an alignment between all three. So the breath has something to do with each one of these. First, let's talk about your mind. The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your decisions, actions and results in your life. And your very best thinking has got you as far as you are today. So in order to go to the next level, you have to upgrade the way you think. Your breath is a mirror of your mind. So it's by changing our breathing pattern in a few minutes, we can actually change how we feel. You can go from feeling anxious and stressed to calm and balanced. That will then affect the quality of your thoughts, your decisions, your actions and results. Number two is you are what you consume. Now think of all the things you consume on a day to day basis. You consume food, you eat, you drink, but you also read and listen and hear all different sorts of information continuously. So you're constantly being bombarded by information that you consume. And the quality of that will determine the quality of your thoughts, actions, results. But then the third principle is you are what you do. And this is your life path, your dharma, your job, your career. Now, if you're spending eight hours a day doing something you hate, guess what's going to happen? You're going to have a miserable life. Now let's talk about your body. Your breath is responsible for every function in your body because of oxygen. Oxygen produces energy in the body in the form of ATP, is what drives all the functions of your life. So if you're not getting that vital oxygen efficiently to every cell of your body, you're going to get sick. But here's the thing. With breath work techniques, we can increase the efficiency of how we produce energy in the body. We can have more vitality. We can also improve oxygenation of our body tissue cells, which is where we need that oxygen to go. And oxygen is actually a double edged sword. You can't live with it and you can't live without it because of this one factor, oxidative stress. This is what makes us age. But the ancient yogis discovered that with simple breathing techniques, breath control, we can actually reverse aging. The way we do that is by becoming so efficient using oxygen, we hardly need to breathe. And in yoga, you actually measure lifespan through how many breaths per minute someone takes. Swami Sivananda, a famous yogi, said you can measure how long someone's going to live by the way they breathe and the number of breaths they take per minute. If you want to live the average lifespan of around 70 to 80 years, breathe like an average human, which is like 15 to 20 breaths a minute. But if you want to live longer, you need to model animals like elephants, whales, turtles. They live much longer than human beings do, and they breathe much slower, around two to three breaths per minute. In fact, a whale can live over 200 years and hold its breath for one to two hours at a time. The animals, like most mice and rats, they don't live a very long time, maybe one to two years. And they breathe at two to 300 times per minute. So there's a real strong correlation between your breathing rates and how long you live in the animal kingdom. Now let's look at the naked mole rat, a strange anomaly in the animal kingdom that lives 30 times longer than a normal rat. Here's the difference. They live primarily underground in a hypoxic environment, a low oxygen environment where the CO2 levels are higher. Plus they can hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time, and they live 30 times longer than mice and rats. Well, scientists have studied these creatures in the lab, and they found that they don't get diseases like cancer or diseases of old age like we do. And it's probably to do with this protection they have against oxidative stress. There's a famous book called Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda. It talks about these famous yogis who live up in the Himalayas, who have cheated death, become immortal, or live significantly longer than most human beings. In fact, if you go to India, up to the Himalayas, there's many legends and stories and proof of yogis living much longer than average humans. So what is it about the Himalayas? Well, the top of these high mountains, the oxygen level is much lower than at sea level. So this lower oxygen level may be why naked mole rats are outliving normal rodents and why superhuman yogis choose to live up in the Himalayas. In yoga, one of the most important pillars is sound and music. And aside from research, sound and music in ancient India. And I realized that we can create transformational music by mimicking what these ancient yogis were doing, but also combining with a breath. This is what led to my development of the Soma Awakening technique, which is a system of rhythmic breathing followed by breath retention techniques and making sounds. Humming, vibrating. This sequence started to become very popular. I started to share it places like YouTube. In the end, I caught the attention of someone called Wim Hof, who became a personal friend. And he's a living legend, a real ambassador of the breath and the power of the breath to transform and reach peak performance. So I actually collaborated with him and created the music, the soundtrack to the Wim Hof method. And now if you look at his YouTube videos, the one with 90 million views, his most popular video, arguably the most popular breathwork video of all time, has my soundtrack to it. And through whim and seeing the effect of these breathing techniques on large groups of people, I realize we're really onto something. Breath is the medicine that we've been looking for.

Breathe.

So I set upon myself to put as much science and evidence to these techniques as possible. And I also wanted to share the entire pharmacy breathing techniques and the most scientifically validated techniques with the world. But I also wanted to make those techniques more fun, engaging and inspirational. And that's why I created somagraph, the school where we teach you all of these different pranayama techniques, but also with transformational music that makes the practices more fun and engaging. So around 2015 was when I created a fully automated business around my passion, that allowed me to go and travel. So I ended up in this amazing island, Koh Phangan in Thailand. I started to live with some incredible Tantrikas and other yogis and started to share this modality with them too and started to combine it with some of the things they were teaching me about manipulating the life force, the energy from within, using various energy locks and different postures. And this really refined this process, the Soma Awakening technique, into a very powerful system of transformation. It brings in another component, the art of guided meditation, speaking deep within the unconscious mind to reprogram it from a core level. And another dear friend of mine, Marissa Peer, she taught me the art of guiding people through transformation through the power of words and language, metaphors and images. So I put together a trifecta of the three most powerful techniques of breathwork, transformational music and guided imagery meditation. And then along my way on my journey, I met another amazing Dr. Yogi called Prakash Marsh, who in the near the Himalayas has a clinic where you. So he teaches patients with both normal conventional medicine, but also Ayurveda, this ancient system of medicine and yoga techniques. And the results I was seeing in his clinic were mind boggling. And he gave me an amazing medical understanding of these practices from ancient India. So together we join forces and create the curriculum of Samabr. After eight years, we've got over three and a half thousand instructors in countries all over the world, all sharing these routines. I developed with this powerful transmission of music and breath as a foundation and it's absolutely mind blowing. I can go to almost any major city in the world and there will be a summer breath instructor doing classes. Just that feeling alone, knowing that my work is now out there being replicated by so many people is just incredible. This way we've made a global community where it's spreading like a butterfly effect all around the world. And I've been witnessing incredible transformations. People healing themselves of chronic illnesses like I had, healing themselves on things like depression, but not just healing. I'm seeing people who are already healthy, improving their lives dramatically. Even their power to manifest attract the things they really want in their life. And athletes are using these techniques now too for peak performance and really get into optimum states of health and well being.

My wife and I have been searching the world with some of the top facilitators and instructors. In particular, being a physician, I'm really interested in the science we ended up discovering Niraj and Soma. Niraj really understands the science and Thousands of years of not just the spirituality, but the technology that these yogis have utilized. And we're just beginning to reclaim this ancient old technology, these ways of reclaiming health, vitality, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. And Niraj has this amazing ability to culminate all of that and create an experience.

So what I believe I've prayed with sort of breath is the antidote to a broken healthcare system. A system that's actually keeping us locked and trapped away from the truth. That is we all have the power to heal deep within us already. And it's all been underneath your nose this whole time. So Soma breath is really unique in this respect. That is is the pharmacy of different techniques, many different techniques with different uses. It's really a way of life, a breath based lifestyle that we're teaching here. Whereas other breathwork schools tend to focus on one core technique, usually conscious connected breathing, for an emotional release or some form of pranayama. But to really transform, we need to be holistic in our approach. And some techniques may be good for one person, but not good for another. And that's what we teach you in sewing breath, is how to know what's the right technique for you.

I discovered a lot of different breathworks in my journey, but it eventually led me to soma, which honestly, I fell in love with immediately. I did one free webinar. I could not believe how it felt in my body. I couldn't believe how energized I felt after just using my breath. I started applying all the breathwork techniques into my own life, realizing how empowered I felt and that actually I could use the different techniques to experience different results in my life, depending on what I was wanting to create at that time. So I took this framework of breathwork techniques, Soma breathwork techniques, and I applied it to the coaching that I had already been doing for a few years. But I really was able to create a blueprint to help women move into their most authentic life. And for me, that was about being in your body. And I had always tried to be out of my body body my whole life, whether that be through addiction or sex or whatever it was anything to get me out of my body. And for the first time in my life, breath work allowed me to move into my body and to actually move forward in my life and make changes in my life and work with my energetic system on a way that I had never done before while being in my body. And that for me was the biggest transformation. And now I'm able to walk women through that same Same exact process so that they can then step into their most authentic life. And for me, breath work is the vehicle that gets you there. Breath work doesn't only put you out of your mind, as in only meditation, but breath work puts you back into your body. And that's really what we need, is to work with our entire energetic system to create that most authentic life. And I got to watch these women have huge breakthroughs. I got to watch people go all in on themselves and these really powerful breath work ceremonies. I got to watch them clear trauma. I got to watch them step forward in their life, step past their comfort zones and do things that they've never been able to do in their life before. Their businesses are changing, their relationships are changing, their self confidence is changing. All because they have learned to use their breath in a different way and therefore show up in their life in a different way.

My mom always said to me, if you study really hard one day you can go to Cambridge University. Now, ironically, Cambridge University are studying me. They recently did a now peer reviewed study, which is the biggest breathwork study of its kind on the Soma awakening protocol. And they discovered in just 21 days participants were able to reach transformational states of consciousness where they reported feelings and effects also confront confirmed by EEG brainwave machines to have the same experiences and effects in the brain as a single dose of psilocybin or MDMA used to treat severe depression. So the conclusion of this study was that one day summer breath, with some further research, could become a very safe natural alternative to things like prescription medications and psilocybin used to treat severe depression and anxiety.

I actually suffered from chronic anxiety for 14 years of my life. And breathwork has helped me to move through a substantial identity shift. For me, Soma breath just opened up something from within and created this channel for my true to accept, express, to express more of myself. I believe that we store energy in our body from our traumas. And Soma breath gave me a way to start releasing that stored emotion.

Soma breath actually healed my PTSD in five weeks. I was in a really bad shape. My mom had a stroke. She said, I've paralyzed. I went from a type A career person to a full time caregiver. Couldn't breathe, hyperventilating. It was really horrible ptsd. I couldn't get any call from a doctor. I would just panic, freeze. Oh my gosh, I'm going to die. I'm going to do this. Like my mind would just go really in the bad spot. Now I just got a call the other day for a. For a checkup, and I was completely fine. My heart didn't start beating really fast. Ptsd, Niraj, with your system. Not even five weeks. To be completely honest, I had had a terrible, terrible experience in 2020 where I was going through post traumatic stress disorder. I had been having night terrors, and they had been going on for a couple years. And I asked Niraj if he could do something to make it so I don't see that event anymore. He performed that technique on me in November, and I'm still unable to see. Has totally transformed my life. It has brought me so much peace.

I have a teenage daughter who is nearly 15, and she suffers with anxiety at school. And I am so grateful to have been able to use Soma breath techniques to help guide her out of these panic attacks, really. So she now understands that breath is the key to everything. And she absolutely loves the techniques of Soma breath. She joins lots of my classes in my studio. And I am very passionate about sharing the power of Soma Breath with our teens to be able to help them in this crazy world that we live in.

In 2021, I had a terrible breakdown, and I suffered from anxiety, depression, and insomnia. I even started taking anxiolytics and sleeping pills. Then one day, somebody sent me a Soma Breath meditation. And I like it very much. I can't describe all the positive changes because I didn't believe in magic, but believe me, it was magic. I started to feel alive again. I started to have clarity in my life. I stopped taking pills, and the best of all, I started to sleep.

Well, think about some of the common substances people get addicted to. Alcohol. Why do we take alcohol? Usually it's to forget about all other our pains and sorrows. It's a way of escape, and it's also a way to lose a bit of inhibition. Well, with the breath, when you create this inner alignment, you start to feel naturally good. You actually get a new sense of confidence. You get more energy, more vitality. When you start to learn how to control the life force within us, you actually gain more confidence and you become magnetic. You start attracting people too. Another big problem is all them amount of people addicted to things like painkillers and opiates. What if I told you that we can, with simple breathing techniques, create our own endorphins on command? That's right. These are our natural pain relievers and actually work just like morphine does, but without any of the side effects. Another common substance of abuse is cocaine. And cocaine Words are giving you a big boost in dopamine and adrenaline. But with just simple breathing techniques, we can actually create a natural increase in dopamine and adrenaline on command. And you don't get the come down as you do with cocaine because it's working with your own body's inner intelligence. So this is what really sets Soma Breath apart from all the other breath work schools is we teach you how to make your own medicines, your own drugs, wake up your own inner pharmacy so you're not dependent dependent on the external world so much.

I ate some LSD previous night and I had been up all night and I was just like, you know, I'm tired of this, I need something better. So I just played a mantra and I started breathing. And I got to about a minute and a half to two minutes. And then I felt like a full body orgasm. And so I stopped because I was like, what is that? Is that normal? And then I said, don't know, but I'm going back. So I continued my breath work and then I held again for approximately two, two and a half minutes. And then that's whenever something said release. And then I, I got something from that that was. I was never religious. I don't really care much for the word religion, but I felt the spirit of Christ. And my Christ like mind took all my wants to use drugs or chase women or do anything other than what I'm here to do.

I want to share this with the world. How come people don't know about this? This is a drug free high. This is an amazing experience to have as a human being, just through the power of the breath. Now the name Soma and Soma breath comes from the ancient legend of Soma from the Rig Veda. This is another really inspiring story that my Swami taught me. So imagine thousands of years ago, there was a golden age on our planet. Humans lived much longer than they do now. In fact, they're regarded as immortal beings. And during this time, this golden age, these ancient Rishis were addicted to a substance called Soma. The Soma gave them everything from medicine to vitality to profound spiritual experiences. And they've divine connection, but it also made them immortal. So when the Soma runs out, all the Rishis freak out wondering what they're going to do. So the chief God, God Indra, orders all the Rishis to go inward to discover how to create the Soma from within. And this is the origin of Tantric yoga. So all of these spiritual practices evolved when humans went inward. Discover how to create the bliss from within. Within. If you think about today and age, there are many external somas humans get addicted to, from social media, tv, movies, Netflix, to prescription drugs, to even recreational drugs. So we're constantly being distracted from the bliss we can create from within from these external somas. With Soma Breath, you learn how to create the Soma within to reach this natural high that you can get from the breath and just by change of lifestyle. So one of the biggest misconceptions about Soma Breath is that it's only for really weird woo woo hippies who live in islands like Copangant. Well, this couldn't be further from the truth. You see, Soma Breath has spread around the world and has reached almost every major city. We have people from all walks of life, from doctors, medical professionals, to lawyers, accountants, to scientists, to entrepreneurs, billionaires, celebrities, even members of the royal family are clients of mine. And the one thing that unites all of us as one is the breath. So it doesn't matter what color you are, what religion you are, what culture you are. We all breathe. And when we breathe together, magic happens, as we've witnessed in our retreats that we've held all around the world in phenomenal locations where people of different cultures, complete opposite cultures, come together and fall in love with each other and have an incredible time together as one. So our Sono Breath certifications are designed for anybody, whether you're completely new and starting out, or if you're already a seasoned expert in these practices. We have people from all walks of life, highly professional university graduates, but also people who never went to university because it's actually fun science and not boring and very easy to understand and learn once you understand some of the principles. So we really made this training as accessible as possible for everyone to be able to use the power of the breath to transform, but not just transform themselves, but others too and get paid doing it. So Soma Breath event. We typically do Soma Breath journeys, which are lying down, transformational breath based routines that get you really into these peak water states of consciousness. But then we also have Soma Breath Raves. Soma Breath Rave is where we combine breath work with dance, music and people go there and have peak experiences without having to take anything. Now normal clubs and parties, people are usually consuming some kind of substance, but in a breath rave, people just breathing, it's magic. And you still get the same, if not more uplifting, high vibe emotional energy as you would going to a normal rave. These breath raves are now spreading all around the World. In fact, extreme static dance, which this is inspired from, is already a global movement. I just bring the breath into it and it takes things to a whole new level. So what we teach at Ceremon Breath is how to become a bdj, a breath DJ and also a bmc, a breath based Master of ceremonies. And we teach our instructors to deliver these types of experiences that, that help people in various ways. So our summer breath journeys are designed to give people a spiritual peak experience, but at the same time have a deep personal experience where you feel like you're healing from within and gaining new insights and new clarity. When you breathe in, you inspire. When you breathe out, you expire. And when you breathe together, you conspire. In fact, the word conspiracy means groups of people coming together and breathing together in unison. And when you breathe together in unison, you create this incredible group coherence. In fact, scientists from HeartMath showed this effective group coherence and how it can rub off on others around you. Just by people coming together and grieving together, you create deeper connection, a bond between each other. This is why I love these breath based practices that we share in so breath so much. Because through the rhythm of the music and the beat that the breath is dancing to, we create this connection which is like going back in time to our tribal ancestral times when groups would come together and connect with each other, where they're gaining new inspiration, new insight to solve problems they're tribal tribe might have. And that's why now with Soma Breath, we have a modern way for tribes to come together, to unite, to breathe together, to inspire together, to make this world a more harmonious place for all. So the future of Soma breath in the next five to 10 years is going to be through our Soma Breath certified teachers, instructors and coaches. I'm going to be working very closely with our most active and committed coaches and instructors to create destinations, retreats, community centers, clinics, therapy centers to bring summer breath to the communities. A place where people can do breath rays and breath journeys in the most incredible venues, with the most perfect sound systems, but also with biohacking centers and wellness facilities based on state of the art technology and equipment. And I envision these centers to be centers of learning, transformation, healing and inspiration. I also want to get some breath into the healthcare system like the NHS in the UK and through medical insurance in the us and so therefore we're putting more and more science into these practices, doing deeper and more profound studies. And as technology advances, we'll be bringing in tools like AI to create more customized approach to transformation and we're constantly refining and developing the Soma Breath App. The Soma Breath app will be the home, the core destination for wherever you are in the world to plug in to our very active and engaged community, but also to practice in a variety of variety of Somal breath techniques and a library of Soma Breath journeys. Or why don't you find a Somal Breath class near you through our Find an Instructor page? There you can actually find active Soma Breath instructors doing classes in locations near you. You can also find events, retreats, festivals in one of these amazing locations like Ibiza Koh Phangan, Colombia I truly believe that if you had a routine that you looked forward to every single day when you woke up that got you into a state where you felt naturally high, happy and healthy, you'll have a much better day result. And this will have a ripple effect that spreads across the world and planet. So just by changing one breath at a time, we can change the world. Put up a fight I just keep on breathing, keep on breathing.