Unleash Your Potential: Breath Works with Niraj Naik

Welcome to the Meditation podcast. You can find all our episodes on meditationpodcast.org my guest who was actually my third guest on my awakening podcast and with a fantastic conversation. He's a professional musician and pharmacist turned holistic health and breath work expert. He started his pattern healing others as a community pharmacist. Yet after several years he found himself a patient with stress related depression. Depression and ulcerative colatus. I hope I'm doing all these words justice.

Colitis. Colitis.

Could I ask? This was a wakeup call that made embark on a journey profound self healing and education. He created a global community of heart centered change makers by finding by founding Soma Breath the global breath work and wellness movement with over 2000 certified instructors and hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. I suppose what I can say is I don't know. Do you remember we were actually at an A fest and I remember talking to Vishen about what I was doing. I think it was the awakening book that I had written. And he said you, you need to talk to Naraj. And I think you had actually he said to you that you need. And we never got to be on on the last day or the day before. We were on like a golf boogie going from one part of the hotel to the other and I just ended up just sitting next to you and and we just introduced each other and it was like. And then you invited me to the room with a few other people and you done your Soma breath. And I remember because I had done a little bit of breath work.

I remember.

Wow. I got colorful visualization. I remember to this day it was incredible. I felt fantastic and I was like whoa, this is totally different to anything I've experienced before. So one thank you very much and Naraj, please welcome to the show.

Great man. Yeah. Glad to have been of service back then. Yeah.

Like the thing is as well is like I've been to a lot of the events with Mind Valley and both university NDA Fest and because like you're actually on. You're one of the teachers there. But you've done loads. You've done a lot of stuff kind of voluntary at the start and each time it was like incredible for me plus the others. I mean sometimes you could have I don't know is there a thousand people in the room value like you know you might do something in the morning and so many people just turn up and then in the evening as well. And I remember even at one stage you had a party and it was in a Castle. And you had your own music. And the thing is, it's like you're incorporating fantastic music into breath work as well. And I don't know, it's just got this feel good factor. Everybody's got their own thing, but you seem to have tapped into something that work. So I suppose let's talk about the breathwork, but I also want to talk about the other things you're doing.

Cool. Yeah, sure. Where do you want to start?

I suppose how it all started for you, how you got into the breath work.

Yeah, how do I get into breath? So it happened by accident. It wasn't like something I was seeking, it happened by desperation because I. I was a pharmacist and I completely got disillusioned. I hated my profession and felt completely soulless for many years. And then that turned into a chronic autoimmune disease. And then I was left with two choices after being housebound for almost a year. One, have my colon removed or to be guinea pig for a drug hasn't even been tested. And the consultant also said to me, like, you know, there's stress, doesn't make a difference. Diet, doesn't make a difference. Just shut up and take the pills. Basically, it was very cold, sterile NHS environment, like, very, very. I was just, like, ready to give it all up, to be honest. Like, I. So I'll actually go back a bit in time, because this might resonate is the reason why I got so disillusioned is because I was trying really hard to make a difference in the kind of the corporate world.

And I managed to get promoted to head office of one of the biggest corporations in the uk, which has a grocery store and a pharmacy in the same place. And I got really good. I was very successful at getting people off drugs by writing them shopping lists based on their conditions. And this actually got me promoted to the head office of this big corporation to come up with this novel concept of healthy shopping lists. It would have impacted loads of people in the uk, but they had other plans. Six months into it, they shelved the idea it was maybe too controversial, telling people not to drink Coca Cola. So I then. That's when I had the big nervous breakdown. I was like, I kind of lost my hope for humanity at this point. I was like, why? You know, I worked so hard to get out of this career and then now I'm facing having to be a pharmacist again and I didn't want to be in that system. So your soul can sometimes speak for you, right? And when you like really push against your own inner nature and your own inner calling. And I clearly was in the wrong environment to do what I want to do. It will push you into a certain situation, like a disease. And that's what happened to me. And I got autoimmune disease at like 32 years old. But that was the best thing that ever happened to me because then I had to have a. I had to make a bold choice to make a new path. And a third path opened up, which was to have some faith in my own culture, right. Of India, Pranayama Yoga, where I learned some simple breathing techniques. And that became the catalyst for full recovery. Within a few months, it took me down the whole rabbit hole of, of Indian kind of medicine, from Ayurveda, from yogic practices, Pranayama, breathing practices. And I went back into my passion for music. I was a music producer as well. That was my big thing.

So I discovered actually how you can combine breathing with music to kind of alter your state of consciousness and then use language, words, and the body with it. I call it neurosomatic programming to reprogram the operating system of the mind that gets corrupted over time. Because we're all programmed from a young age, whether you like or not, from the womb to all the imprints we have with the mom, the father, school, language we learn, you know, going through puberty, all these experiences, conditions, us and imprints, us, programs, us. You know, the media. Government has a huge part to play in this. Government merely means governing of the mind. So they create your mind, they create culture, right? Mask mainstream culture. And, you know, so I was dissatisfied with that culture. But when I had a breakdown, I had to rebuild myself. I had to reformat the drive. I had to reformat my. My version of perception, of reality, of seeing the world as a hostile, unfriendly place where there's no such thing as God. I had to reframe that into a whole different viewpoint of reality, of no, there's good in the world, that there is a divine benevolent force of nature that wants us to do well, but you have to actually evolve consciously to go into the right alignment. So for me, getting sick was a huge wake up call because I realized I'm not supposed to be in that corporate mainstream world. That's not where what I do fits. But going through this healing journey woke me up to first having like an amazing understanding now how the body works and how healing can be turned on through breathing techniques. But also it made me have a story that I could share and now add proof that this stuff works. Like the simple breathing techniques, lifestyle change can actually heal diseases. Back in the corporate world and the pharmacy world, especially, the pharmacist who I was working for actually fired me from my job because he said, you were mismatching the pharmacy when I was getting people off the drugs. That's why I ended up getting a job at another company that came with that promotion. But I had so many battles. I was constantly facing battles, working in that world. The mainstream culture up against your own friends, family will think you're mad, crazy. But now this story had proof that this stuff works. So what I did was then I leveraged the Internet. The Internet is the messiah that's come to save us all if we know how to tap into it. And I could now access millions of people, reach millions of people, which has happened over time. And I could create my own system away from the mainstream. I went through a few battles. First. I started with the renegade pharmacist website, which was very successful, was doing really well until six months before COVID they shut the website down. Google delisted all alternative health websites. So, like, me, Makola and a bunch of other sites lost like 95% of our traffic overnight. Thank God I'd created so much breath as a backup. That wasn't. It was really my passion projects that then started to take off. So I wasn't dependent on renegade Pharmacist, but that could have killed me. So I faced a lot of battle. It's not been an easy journey. But the breath was not only the awakener, like, it woke me up to so much about reality, and it changed my perception of the past to seeing it all as a, you know, as part of the journey of evolution, consciousness, evolution. But also gave me the code for how to tap into the autonomic nervous system, right, to reprogram this operating system to upgrade the brain, which is the hardware. If you think. If you imagine the brain and our entire physical body, body, the somatic intelligence is your hardware. Through breathing techniques and the lifestyle changes, you can upgrade. You can go into a whole nother. Like I say, you go from PC to a Mac. You go from a different, you know, format altogether to a much better, cleaner machine that doesn't get viruses. And that is a process that I've now, like, figured out, perfected over the years, tried and tested with hundreds of thousands of people. And now we train instructors. And this is the soma Breath school of transformation. We're transformational artists.

One of the things that I want to kind of delve into. Because, like, there's. There's a few people very close to me at the moment that are suffering from God issues. And they're trying everything. They are trying everything. You know, like, I know that taking antibiotics and everything is killing the good gut bacteria and everything. But, like, they're getting all the tests. There's no cancer, there's no this. And like, one guy can't sleep all the time, and it's. The other is just constantly, you know, on the toilet. It just. Their life is ruined. They. They're. They're afraid to travel and everything. And I know. Yeah, that was me exactly, because I remember even us having that conversation on. So I know you've got a product that helps it, but, like, there's a lot of people out there, and I know that there's a lot of the wheat and everything has been modified on the insecticides. And all the stuff that they're spraying is actually all contributing to this. And even some people are on medication as well, which in turn, they're getting the toxins in the body with the breath work and the product that you've got. Like, I'm just kind of thinking more because it's very hard. You have to kind of look at the individual. But that seems to be millions upon millions of people that are suffering at the moment.

Yeah.

With their.

But a lot of it is because people are like, yeah, the lifestyle stuff, the toxins in food, all of that has a part. But there's a lot of people who eat all that stuff, and they're fine. Right. So what it is really deep down is it's people going against the gut instinct. You've got to remember the gut is like a part of your brain. It's like. Actually, it's probably even more powerful than the brain itself, the one in the head. So we've forgotten to listen to our gut instinct. And when we go against gut instinct for too long, a fire burns up inside, and that fire turns into a disease. Right. And also a lot of people hold on to resentment from the past or anger, frustration, and they don't let it go. And that fire also builds up within us, and it can affect different parts of the body. It might affect different organs in different people, but quite often it starts with the gut. And most diseases in your Ayurvedic system begin in the gut because it's the. You know, it's where we're putting food right into our bellies. Right. So often diseases begin here, and a big part of the immune system is your gut. Microbiome, as you said. So again, you have to understand your gut microbiome. Actually, our microbiome is like an aura around us. We have more bacterial cells than human cells in the body, right. Believe it or not. And this creates a layer of consciousness, right? So when you are not a environment for these bacteria to thrive anymore because of your lifestyle, smashing Coca Colas and processed foods, or going against your own gut instinct to the point of depression and unhappiness and anger and frustration, your gut microbiome don't want to exist anymore on you either, right? They get confused, they disappear, and then you get bad bacteria. Bad juju's just bad bacteria, in my opinion, like affecting you. So. So really it begins with listening to your gut. First you've got to listen to your gut and your gut is trying to tell you something. It's going to be different for every person. But we use breath work as a way to start listening to the entire somatic intelligence. Because the breath is the bridge between this mind in our head and the body. And in.

Ancient traditions like Pranayama, Tantric yoga, Tibetan yoga.

It'S foolish to control the mind.

Through the mind. Like when somebody's having an anxiety attack, panic attack, if you tell them, stop being so worried, stop being so worried, it's not going to do anything, it's going to make them more worried. So what you do instead is you control the mind through the body. The Somali.

So the breath being the mechanism, the code, which also has this property that it runs on autopilot, but also we can consciously control, with conscious control of the breath, we can consciously control the autonomic nervous system, the functions of the body that run on autopilot. And they're the functions that go haywire off balance. These internal biorhythms through stress, chronic stress, depression, anger, frustration, bad lifestyles, you know, eating McDonald's and Coca Cola's, right? That's what is messed up. But with the breath we can, in just a few minutes a day, regain harmony of this inner world, right? And we can bring balance. So that's why the breath is the most important thing. We start with that first.

And the product that you've got. And like normally now I wouldn't be saying about products and stuff like that, but I just know you for years because like a lot of people are out there kind of peddling stuff, but I know how honest and honorable you are. So I want to know about the product that you've got for the goat as well.

Yeah, so. So some things you can do to heal the soma, right? The body is use, like, medicinal foods. Foods have medicinal properties. Now, one of the most incredible healing substances for the guts, believe it or not, is the first food that we ever consume, okay? The first food we ever consume is called colostrum, right? It's mother's nature's super milk, right? And it gives you all of the nutrients you need for your body to grow, right? So a baby is accelerating growth pretty quick because it has growth factors, immune factors, it has antibodies, it has so many different ingredients, vitamins, minerals, fats, healthy fats, that all of that builds your immune system of the gut of the baby, and it fixes the lining of the gut of the baby so that they're prepared to eat adult foods, right? Now, here's the thing. Over the years, as we go older, we destroy our guts with bad lifestyle choices and emotions that we hold on to, right? So what you can do is you can actually take colostrum to rebuild the guts. Now, I'm not saying you have to go out and get mother's milk, like, find pregnant mums who are breastfeeding mums. You don't need to do that, right? Because cows. Bovine colostrum has the same translation to humans, but bovine colostrum is a thousand times more potent, and the cow makes four times more colostrum than the calf needs. So ayurvedic farmers knew this, right? What they would do is they'll take a small portion, the calf would get exactly what they need, but they'll take a small portion, and they would give this as a supplement to humans that got diseases. And it was a potent medicine in the ayurvedic system. But this tradition started to get, like, lost because of the British coming over and messing up the whole curriculum and traditions and culture of India over the years. But it's still retained in many farms and villages in India. If you go there, they will take some of the colostrum and use it to make holy sweets. A lot of the holy sweets are made from colostrum in India, but also other cultures. Sweden, they had colostrum as a big part of their tradition. The Maasai warriors, they all have, like, a lot of colostrum. In fact, they thrive, they live off colostrum, and they're pretty strong dudes, right? And women, pretty robust people. So.

Colostrum has all these incredible healing benefits. Now, thankfully, thousands of studies have actually come out since of colostrum over the years. And so there's so much evidence out there, it's not mainstream because.

It'S controversial. Okay. It works so powerfully, so well. Right. That you'll never get.

Mainstream coverage of this stuff as you know, you know why? It's obvious why.

Right.

So. But it's still, there's a lot of awareness about it. Okay. And you can look it up, go to PubMed, type in colostrum. You'll see stacks of studies on it, especially for gut health. Right. Leaky gut, which you know, is usually what a lot of people suffer from these days. So now what some supplement companies do, okay, Like I have one, okay. We find very ethically sourced cows, organic farms, and we ethically take the excess of. The excess of the colostrum that's produced for human consumption, we put it into a powder form and we ship that out to people who need it. And I have got stacks of testimony, you just go to Amazon, for example. Stacks of testimonials from people who've healed from all kinds of issues, especially gut related issues. So if anyone suffer from gut problems, I highly recommend colostrum. Simple lifestyle change of basically going on an organic food diet rather than a factory diet and actually eating things like bone, broth.

Beef can actually be quite useful for repairing the gut depending on the situation. Who it is is that, you know, you have to figure out what your diet is, but generally getting rid of a lot of starchy carbs and very complex root vegetables and certain plants which are hard to digest, like kale, for example, is really hard to digest, which causes a lot of gas. So there's an ayurvedic profile test that we also have that tells you exactly the right foods for you and what to use to fix certain imbalances. And then the breathing techniques. The breathing techniques helps you reprogram the unconscious mind, the consciousness of the gut as well to start listening to the gut. And if you do that, you can switch off the stress that's causing the inner disharmony, which is the immune system attacking healthy cells. You can bring balance through certain rhythmic breathing techniques and breath retention techniques. Right. And my neurosomatic programming method. Right. You can do that. Really powerful for repairing the. The inner architecture of your operating system. Right. But you can also.

I mean that's. That is the. The system really my opinion, it's the colostrum, the diet change, lifestyle change and the rewiring of the brain, the operating system to see the world in a different way, to change your perception of the past, to start listening to your gut instinct, having the energy to do the things you need to Change to make your life better, to start following your gut rather than what society and culture has hypnotized you to, to do. And this series of techniques can wake you up to figuring out, what is it that I truly want? Who am I really? And what do you need to do to get there?

Just on the organic one, because I'm glad you actually mentioned obviously, sourcing it properly, because, like, for those that probably don't know when it is, the farmed ones, like, you know, not only growth hormones, but all the antibiotics and everything, so you're not getting the same thing.

And one thing, one thing about food is really important, this stuff, right? I've lived with like Himalayan yogis who, like, they don't eat very much, to be honest. They hardly eat anything, right? But there's one thing about food is information. And you can charge food up with your intention, okay? Even water, like yogis in Rishikesh and some of the more higher up north places like Ladakh, Himalayas, they will do all these rituals with water where they will charge the water with intention and give healing properties to water because water retains information, right? Now, what use you. The perception you have of the food you're eating is so important. Some of the sickest people I know are the ones who really worried about everything they eat because they're so paranoid about this contaminant, this additive, you know, Roundup and so on and so forth, gluten. And they read too much information that scares them to eat completely, right? They get scared to eat and that then they're eating food with a negative charge to it. So I've stopped giving a shit so much about that. And what I care more about is that it's just normal, real food. I don't eat processed food I haven't done for years. I don't need things that come in a packet, right? I just eat real, healthy, normal food. I don't care where it. You know, I travel so much, I can't care too much about the sauce, right? Every time. Like I, I live in Ibiza, in Spain, so we get a lot of locally farmed food, which is great, but then there's sometimes that we don't because it's impossible to always have that. So I really think caring that about the intention you give to food is so important is more important than the source of it, right? Within reason.

I think that's a fantastic point. And yeah, what I want to just.

Yeah, one other thing, I want to just leave with it. This is the most important thing of all, is Your stomach doesn't have teeth. So what a lot of people do when they eat is that they're eating in a rush. They're not mindful of eating their food, right? So what they're doing is they're scoping food down in a hurry. They're not chewing the food. And then now the gut has to do all that extra digestion. Now, one important thing for you to digest food, you have to have your digestive fast switched on, right? Now, with simple breathing technique, yogic breathing techniques called Swara Yoga, you can tell whether your sympathetic nervous system switched on your parasympathetic. For you to digest food, you need the fire switched on, which is your sympathetic nervous system. So if you check, you can tell which nose is easier to breathe out of, right? If your left nostril is easier to breathe out of than your right, okay. This means that your parasympathetic nervous system switched on. And if you eat when your parasympathetic switched on, you're going to have diminished fire. And if you're gulping through down in a hurry, as so many people do, right. They're going to get stomach problems regardless. It doesn't matter if they're not listening to their gut instincts or what. This is one of the primary causes. So if you use a certain technique, super simple to do, you switch your nostril dominance from left to right. What you have to do is put your fist like this, put your thumb in like this and clench your fists over your thumb. And if you push your fists up your left elbow, sorry, your left armpit, you push your fist up your left armpit like this and squeeze like your armpit down and just hold, right? What will happen? Within a few minutes.

You'Ll notice that this right nostril will open up.

You do that for a few minutes, two or three minutes, your right nostril will open up and your this will become clear. This nostril will be slightly harder to breathe out of, usually right. Might even completely block sometimes. Right? And this means that your sympathetic nervous system switched on and then you can eat food and your digestion will be 100 times better. If failing that, if you can't do that doesn't work. When you eat food, sleep on your left brain like this. You can even put your hand up under your armpit like this. Sleep like this for five minutes. It's like a little power nap, too, right? This will switch on in sympathetic. Because your sympathetic is your left hemisphere, your digestive fire will come on and you'll digest Your food ten times better. Right? Hundred times better. And then you won't get so many of these digestive issues. That's if it's your stomach digestion that's a problem. Some people get then the problem of the colons and the intestines digestion being problem. But if it starts with the stomach. So if you can get the digestion away in your stomach the rest of the digestive tract will be much more smooth. Right. But if you've got colon issues it's usually now emotionally related colon issues are very often. And in these intestinal issues when it gets to that level it's usually related to fear manifest as disease. And that fear is just our sympathetic nervous systems on hard drive full power. And when we're not listening to our gut instincts we end up getting into more of these fear based situations where we see the world as hostile because we're going against our own nature. As soon as we move towards our own nature the universe goes, oh great. A smart person ascendants and positive energy. And then they start to. You start to get luckier. My life, my life was so unlucky when I went against my gut instinct. When I go towards my gut instincts everything just seems to work out way better. Even if it seems insanely risky at the time.

So anyway, I just told you the entire beautiful high level from Himalayan yogis on how to fix your gut problems.

Years of study in five minutes. Perfect.

Yeah.

So like what, what I wanted to say when you were saying all that because it's so the amount of people and it's usually women when they're having a dessert. They talk negative to themselves. And I keep telling them stop saying that. Just enjoy it. It's like it's. It's like eating the forbidden fruit. And there's so many people like I know that if I'm out in this in the summer and I'm eating my tomatoes and olives and everything, I give thanks. I give thanks to the farmer and everything. I've always done that. And I know I thoroughly enjoy my food and I know that if I said it out loud people think I'm batshit crazy. But I don't care because I know there's a lot of people in the sun and give thanks to the sun and everything. But on the opposite side of the spectrum like people are actually when, when they do that, I think they're putting the negativity into their body.

100 all the self talk, right is information for your spirit within to compute and calculate. You know, whether this Is like how to behave. So if you are negatively speaking to yourself, like with guilt and shame, eating a lovely piece of chocolate cake, right, Then you're programming your gut to actually fear the food. And it will have a different, like, digestive system in place. Well, actually, fear will kick in and your digestion won't work very well. And this will mess up, you know, your digestion of the whole meal that you might have had. So the worst thing you can do is to eat food with guilt.

The best thing you can do is to do grace. So beginning of a meal is to sit there and bow down to the food and say some gratitude prayers. And in yoga, like, what we do is aum. Chant aum. So I actually learned this Himalayan mantra. It's very, very. It's like being passed down from thousands of years, right? To bless your food, it goes like this. You ready? So you breathe in the aroma like this.

And then you go, yeah, yummy. And that charge that charges up the food with positive vibrations. So when you eat it. So actually just going. When you do an extended exercise, it could be aum. Anything will tap into the vagus nerve and calm you down. So when you eat, you're eating in a more relaxed way. So you haven't got all the fear hormones going around your belly. So yum is the magic mantra. Yummy.

Well, people will remember that one.

But then also another tip, because I forgot to mention, this bit is chewing your food. So you must chew your food at least 30 times. So it's a liquid in your mouth. You can count. If you count 30 chews you're mindfully eating now you're really mindful eating and savoring the taste, then swallow. What will happen is you actually end up eating less, not more, because you don't overeat. If you eat slowly, because it gives your time for your body to register that you are full up. So these tips just here will totally change someone's life. Like what I've given you here.

And like, the other thing is, like, the water, because, you know, unfortunately this fluoride, especially in the UK and Ireland and I know parts of the States as well. I'm not sure about Ibita, but like fluoride, chlorine, I mean, you can use the Brita filter and I use a ozone generator and everything. But, you know, is this just. I mean, with putting the intentions into the water, can you eliminate all that as well? For those that don't have access to these things?

I haven't seen any, like, studies that would prove that Conclusively, but there's people who drink fluoride water, have done for many years. And they're okay, they're happy, they're healthy, you know, that they're, they're pretty renegade as well. So, you know, it hasn't, it hasn't been brainwashed. But like tap water.

Just by its nature is, unfortunately, it's. It's dead water because of the way it's been processed. Cats won't drink tap water if you just leave a bowl of tap water they don't like to drink, dogs will drink it. Cats need vortex water. They need water that's alive. That's the fourth phase water. Right. Which you can. So I actually, I don't drink so much.

Just plain water. We get water from the rain water. We have a rainwater filtration system in our house. Super unique to our house, like very few people. Our landlord is just amazing.

She.

She built this whole device that fills the water. So we're off grid. It's super cool aspects of this very living. But we tend to get bottled water. But I don't usually drink so much, just fresh water. You don't need that much water. You need real water. So you can get water from fruits, from certain vegetables, cucumbers, you know, for example. And you know, so you can consume water from plants and vegetables and fruits much better. That water is alive. It's got enzymes in it. It's way better for you. Then the water is going to come out of your tap. And plus you can also put hydrogen into water. Now these days you can actually, you can buy machines that does the whole thing. It vortexes, it adds hydrogen ions to it, which charges it up. Hydrogen, which is super good antioxidant, has many health benefits.

So, yeah, you can buy expensive water fillers. You can also just eat real water from food, drink water food, you know, from having smoothies and juices.

There's many ways to get quality water. You don't have to rely on the tap. You can use the tap for having a shower.

Excellent. So with the, the sum of breath then, because, you know, a lot of people, they kind of talk about the duration. Does it matter? Can you do shorter durations? Because sometimes people go, I'm too busy. I mean, obviously you need to be doing when you're anxious and to kind of relax. But they don't realize that once you're calm, you get a million things more done in the day. But like, how is there. Because I know even on your site you've got different meditations and everything. Out at the breath work. Like, is there a certain time limit that people should do like five minutes or should it be up to 20? You might just touch on that.

Yeah, yeah. So my whole point is that breath work isn't. One technique is a pharmacy of different techniques. And breath. Breath work that we teach comes from the root of pranayama and Tantric yoga, which is a complete science of how to use the body to control the mind, but also how to upgrade the hardware to install better software, right? That's the whole philosophy of what we do at Soma Breath. So we have different techniques with different uses. We teach functional breathing. Functional breathing is basically how you should breathe to be as close to being a normal human as possible. Because when we are off balance, our breathing becomes erratic. It becomes chest breathing, mouth breathing. It becomes stressful breathing, which reduces your oxygenation of your body tissue cells, but it also causes oxidative stress. These are two primary factors for disease, or especially like heart disease and inflammatory issues. Okay? So we're all about bringing your back breath back to normal and teaching you how to normalize your breathing so that if life throws a shit at you, you are protected, okay? Because you can go without food for weeks, water for days, breathing just minutes. So really the breath is what we should master first, right? So we show you how to do that, then we give you different techniques from this whole pharmacy of techniques for things like turning off stress in the moment, going to sleep, also promoting good bacterial growth in the stomach as a drinking air technique gets oxygen into your bowels. We also teach you.

Things like how to switch your nervous system on and off, how to use that to your advantage, how to manipulate nature to your advantage. Because your nervous system, if you think about it, if you go back in time, right.

To like, how you ended up me and you here having this call. It's your nervous system that is the thing that's triggering you to take action and do things, right? It's your nervous system responses to things, right? So it's either your parasympathetics in action or your sympathetic fight and flight. Rest, digest, move towards action, move away from, you know, danger, pain, right? So Citusa's your nervous system is what we need to learn to control. Because once you have control of that, we can actually control how we interact in this world, right? We can also improve lifestyle factors like your sleep, your digestive system, your immune system, your energy levels, your alertness. Imagine how much your life would be different if you could be alert all day long where you didn't need to.

Chill and have a break and watch tv. How much more productive could you be, right, if you didn't need to sleep as much, if you could hack sleep and bring it all down. All of this stuff revolves around breath control and understanding how your breath can influence your nervous system so that you can sleep when you need to, you can take action when you need to on command. This is complete mastery of the Soma. That's what soma breath really is.

It's giving that. I mean, I'm no master yet. I'm still on that journey of full mastery. That takes years of like practice to get super like superhuman yogic levels. It takes while, but I've got pretty far to the point where I can, you know, not get sick. Like, you know, like I used to. Like with the amount of times I got sick in a, in a month last, you know, before I got learned, this stuff was just ridiculous. Like I was sick all the time. Like I was generally always sick, you know, it's like always like suffering of something, you know, and then I'd go out and get wasted on the weekends, you know that, that is psychological sickness. I was emotionally sick and physically sick. That doesn't happen anymore. And I'm thriving now and my creativity has gone crazy through the roof. Like I've got hours and hours and hours of music that I produce for our instructors, all at quite a high standard. And I have a manager in Ibiza now as a dj. So I'm getting out there. The DJ is my little hobby practice that I like to do for fun. So. But that's turning into something that could be a full blown career as well because I've got some epic tunes. I mean that's what got me to be a mindvalley headlining dj, right? You know, so, so yeah, so so much can happen when you learn to control the soma, but not the mind. It's very difficult to control the mind. To the mind. That's why like techniques like hypnotherapy, subconscious reprogram, even nlp, they work, but only for a certain period of time because really the art of controlling the mind is through the body. The neurosomatic programming, which is what we've got in Summer Breath.

The thing is like every time I go to these events, I just love it because I don't know, like refills your tank and everything. And I wish I could find that in some place where I am much in Poland. But what I Love, you've got 2,000 kind of people that you're yeah, we.

Have, we have them in Ireland too, but I forgot to mention. So answering your question. So we have all the functional breathing techniques for controlling the inner world. Right. And like a pharmacy. But then we also have the emotional release, trauma release techniques, the spiritual journeys that take you into all the states of consciousness where you feel like you're having divine downloads. So those journeys are usually a bit longer. So. But just 22 minutes of one of these journeys, a short version was shown by neuroscientists to create the same brain changes as a dose of MDMA psilocybin used to treat severe depression, which is profound. And this is what intrigued Cambridge University so much. To expand on this and doing a bigger study using my protocol. So that should come out soon. So, yeah, so we have a whole range of different techniques. Some just take a few minutes, some. That's a way of life that you do throughout the day. Just mindful breathing awareness, breath awareness. Others are more meditative and others are full blown super trips. So as I said, there's a whole spectrum of different stuff.

And the people then that you train is like, how long does it take? They all. Do they come to you in Ibiza or is it on kind of online? What's the kind of process for people that are.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's brilliant for me to know, you know, there's going to be tough, thousands of people actually around the world doing this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we train instructors and it is all done online. Right. Like we have a mentoring system. So it feels like you're at a one on one with a mentor through Zoom. So it's like, you know, you actually get an assigned one on one mentor that guides you through the thing, which is great. So it doesn't feel like you're on your own left to your own devices.

But we also have in person retreats. So we do them in London, in America, in Denver at the moment, and we do in Mexico sometimes. And we're going to bring out more, more of these in person trains because I know that a lot of people would rather be in person. So we're trying to cater for that and have more of those. I also do these transformational retreats of my own in places like Austria at high altitude. We're going to start doing them in Colombia, in Medellin, which is also a high altitude, where you get all these benefits of high altitude training, which is next level. It's amazing for your heart health, cardiovascular health, just general transformation. You get so many benefits of low oxygen environments. Actually, all of our breathing techniques revolves around making you very efficient using oxygen. So you need the least amount of oxygen to breathe and make energy. Right? Because what kills us, what makes us age, what causes disease over the long term is the wear and tear that happens inside every single cell of our body. The mitochondria, we have these internal combustion engines which the process of producing energy creates a fire inside, inner fire. It's just like a car engine. Internal combustion, car engine wears and tears, breaks down after a while. Right? Because of that explosion that's going on constantly, same thing goes on inside your cells. It's called oxidative stress. So all of the techniques we create do creates super efficient mitochondria, so you need the least amount of oxygen to make the same amount of energy. So somebody who goes through summer breath course, they hardly look like they breathe. Their breath holds are really long. They can hold their breath for minutes at a time because they hardly need oxygen because they're so efficient using oxygen. And that minimizes the risk and the impact of oxidative stress over the long term, therefore reversing disease. Because in yoga, you measure someone's lifespan not by the number of heartbeats or, you know, how many years they're going to live. You do it by the number of breaths they take.

Right.

So most people breathe on average, 15 to 20 breaths per minute. Right. They only live like, what, 70 years on average. If you can control your breathing and slow your breathing rate down and increase your ability to hold your breath, you can actually reverse aging itself.

Very good. One of the other products that I saw on your site, so gold, what's that about?

Oh, yes. So gold is my. Is my mum's tea chai. It's her recipe. So turmeric chai latte, but it's got. This one's got like coconut milk in it for the people who might have lactose intolerance. But I want to bring out a pure masala chai version with, like, functional mushrooms. That's going to come out eventually, which is a really great tasting. My mum's tea is the best tea on the planet. There's very few that compare. I drink every day because I got the recipe, but I want to package that and sell it because a lot of the problems that people have, right, is the diminishing of fire. Their fires burnt out, they haven't got digestive fire, so they're getting gut issues. So just sipping on tea gives you drive fire and it helps you burn, like the food and digest it properly. So you have a healthy Digestion. So masala chai, you'll see in India, everyone's drinking tea, sipping tea, slurping tea. Also, if you slurp tea, hot tea, that slurping of hot tea, you know, you'll see in India, people slurp really hot tea. What you're doing is you're getting spiced water and a bit of air into the belly and that air is oxygen you're bringing in. Remember I was talking about drinking air? What you're doing is you're drinking air with spice water into the belly and this kills bad bacteria in the gut. So you do normally slurp tea when you.

Got an empty stomach. And that tea will then help with the air combination, cleanse the bowels of all bacteria and help promote the growth of good bacteria. It's a great practice to do slurping tea. Even though we're told never slurp your tea, it's rude. We're also told stupid things like don't hold your breath. Actually, breath holding can be extremely powerful. Control breath holding for your health, longevity, lifespan, lowering inflammation.

Yeah, brilliant. So finally, I know you're releasing a book. I love the name. And you might let us know when it's out, what it's called and briefly what you're covering in it.

Yeah, so I'm recent book called Breath Works. It's a play on breathwork. Two words, breath Works. And it's a complete manual how to and the why you should do these simple breathing techniques that can totally transform your life. So you're going to get this entire pharmacy of breathing techniques inside the book with my story. And also, you know, the science behind and the evidence behind each one of these techniques. And we also have an app coming out around the same time which will give you all of the techniques to do in an app form. So it's. The book is a great manual for the app.

As always, thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. You might let people know where they can find you.

Yeah, sure. So go to Instagram, go to Neeraj Naik official and DM me the word breath. B R E A T H. Just breath. Right. And you'll get a free masterclass. You'll be on the wait list for when my book comes out. All right. And you'll get a load of free content, free jumpstart pack of different techniques that can start helping you, you know, get control of this body, the soma. Yeah, yeah.

And make sure I put the link button, the audio and the video. Thank you very much.

And then we have a YouTube channel we have Facebook groups, Summer Breath, everything. So breath, go to our website, Summer Breath. Check out, check us out. Loads of free content. So many free videos on YouTube. In fact, I've put up everything for free. Okay, if you go to my Instagram, you go to YouTube. Almost everything I teach is there for free. Right? But what people come to us for is to get certified and also to have a more deep customized experience with a trained professional instructor. So the certification is for me to be able to validate that you can pass this on in a safe and effective way. And you're an honorable person and that's why we do the certification. But really, everything I teach is for free. Right? So it's all on YouTube. You can check it out.

And I know that on the website meditation podcast.org this episode you've got the profile. So you love your picture and all the website. But we also have it in the show notes. So no matter what platform you listen to, you'll be able to find all the links. I'll include all the links. So thank you very much.

Amazing, Roy. Thank you so much.

No problem. So that's all for the meditation podcast. You'll find other episodes on meditationpodcast.org until next week, take care of. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. As mentioned at the start, you'll find my six podcasts on Bio Link Podcaster. And also if you'd like to start the podcast or do a podcasting tour, you'll find the information on that or on the QR code that's there. Be sure to give us a thumbs up five star rating and share with your friends because it really helps. Until next week, take care.