Your Breath Is Your Medicine with Niraj Naik

But then also our thoughts are the product of our feelings, how we feel, our state. So if you have a really bad day, or if you wake up feeling like you hate the world, hey, going to your job, you don't want to be kind and compassionate to others because you hate people. If that's your default state, then think about the quality of your decisions. Because I know when I was miserable as a pharmacist, I made the worst decisions for my life, right? So I would not manifest many good things in my life and I would not be a very attractive person. Definitely not magnetic. In fact, I used to tell people. So when I learned to change my state using the breath, my ability to make quality decisions went to another level. And then you start to manifest all the good things. Because now you, you become attractive to ease, to ideas, to insight, to experiences that lead you towards bliss and away from all the nasty stuff that we don't really want.

Peace and riches. Blessings.

I am Michael B. Beckwith, the host of Take back your Mind.

Peace and blessings everyone. I'm Michael B. Becker, founder of the Agapa International Spiritual center, and I am your host on this podcast entitled Take back your Mind. We're seeking to pull our attention away from the noise of the world and to begin to be captured by our own inner destiny. Captured by infinite potential that lies within us. And guess what? I had the opportunity to speak to individuals on a regular basis who in their own unique way are making a mighty difference on this planet. And today I have Niraz Nick with me this morning. Look at that bright smile. And welcome. Welcome to Take Back youk Mind.

Pleasure to be here, my friend.

Absolutely. Listen, if you don't know who he is, let me give you a little rundown on him. He's a former pharmacist turned globally renowned breathwork expert, music producer and spiritual guide. He's doing the quantum 3. Known as the renegade pharmacist is the founder of Soma Breath, a worldwide wellness movement that fuses ancient pranayama techniques with modern science and music to awaken the body's natural healing potential. After battling a debilitating chronic illness in his 20s, he rejected a life of medication and instead healed himself through breath work, meditation, music therapy and nutrition. That recovery experience became the foundation for Soma Breath, now practiced in over 100 countries by thousands seeking physical healing, emotional release and spiritual expansion. And this is currently being studied at Cambridge University. His work has been featured in Forbes, the Guardian, Huffington Post and many other media outlets. His 14 day course, Breath Work for Life is available on Mindvalley. At the heart of his mission is this core belief. Obviously, you can feel it already. The greatest pharmacy is within. His work continues to inspire others to reclaim their health and their purpose, their inner power. One breath at a time. Okay, renegade pharmacist.

Yeah.

What was the moment where you actually realized that the conventional medical model couldn't fully address all the things that you were struggling with and that most people were struggling with?

Yeah, actually it started many years ago. So I was a community pharmacist in the uk and it was a job I really didn't want to do. It wasn't. It wasn't really my passion. Actually. Before that, I used to run some of the biggest raves in the UK for three years. I had a 2,000 people rave every month. And that's what I thought I was going to do. Be a dj, be a producer, promoter. And then life had other ideas for me. I. I got into a very crazy, hedonistic lifestyle, lost everything, ended up falling back on my profession that I studied for university. My mum said, you know, study hard, be a good pharmacist. And I did that in the end, like as a fallback thing. And then I was plunged into this crazy, like, cubicle environment, dishing out pills all day long. And I just noticed there was something wrong with this system because I just saw people going away taking more pills every month than getting better. Right. And I thought this system was meant to make people healthier. So, long story short, I actually, you know, got pretty sick, depressed doing this job. This career is very soulless and I wanted to do something about it, but I had a bit of a breakdown and I went to like, as a lot of people go to a Tony Robbins event, and that was the first time, actually I heard anyone talk about diet, nutrition, lifestyle change for preventing disease. And, you know, we're not taught any of this at school, right. So I thought, I'm going to put Tony Robbins to test. I'm going to. I've got a pharmacy full of sick patients, let's see if I can get people off the drugs. And what I did was I made a healthy shopping list service. Like, what I did was I just wrote what I call prescription diet. So based on whatever medications people are taking, I would write a kind of a diet plan for them. Just a shopping list, right. And I saw a correlation, you know, from the types of food that people at, like, mostly processed foods, you could see it was a high correlation with the amount of prescription meds they were on. All I did was Swap their diet for healthier food options. Saw an amazing difference and people were coming off the pills. This is what got me named known as a renegade pharmacist. I got kind of kicked out of my first job because I wasn't doing very good for the business.

I was getting ready to ask you about that. Did you get in trouble doing the right thing?

A little bit trouble. But that actually eventually got me promoted to the head office of one of the biggest corporations in the UK that's owned by Walmart. And I came up with this business concept for them for a healthy shopping list service on their website where people could get like home delivery of healthy foods. So six months into it, it looked like it was all going ahead, but the director left, went to another company, and I was left with this like kind of lion's den of middle management. Didn't really want me to be there, and they slowly shelved the idea. So wait, wait a minute.

They share the idea, but they were ABs. They were also making money on the people buying from the shopping list. Right.

Well, they. I telling people not to drink Coca Cola is not good for business.

Right. Even though you. But, but the things on your shopping list, did they sell those as well?

Yeah, well, it was all. It was just selling stuff that they find in the grocery. Right. But it was getting people processed foods.

Right.

So if that scaled, it wouldn't have been such a good.

Would have been good for them. Right, Right.

So, so something happened. They. They decided to shelve this idea. And I became really disgruntled with society, with, with the, the world at large. I lost my connection with God, spirit, everything, because I just couldn't understand, like, why would something like this be stopped? Right. Why don't people want to help other people? So, and I'd worked so hard to get out of this profession and I wanted to do something meaningful in my life. Right. Which is why I thought I did. But now I'm facing going back to being a pharmacist again. And that's when the stress kicked in. So all of the things I was telling people to, to eat those healthy, I wasn't doing so much of that anymore. I wasn't sleeping very well. I stopped taking care of myself. And then at the same time, boom. I got hit with autoimmune disease.

Yeah.

I'm left housebound for almost a year, basically on the toilet 40, 50 times a day. Like, excuse my language, at blood, like razor blades bleeding on my backside. And I remember this is one moment where I was spending more Time on the toilet seat, right? Than I was off it. And I, it was even a member of this social media app network called ipu, right? It was a social media app for people who spend a lot of time on the toilet. And we would like post in pictures of our, you know, our toilet bowl. And you know, there was moments where I would just kill the conversation by dropping in blood bowl and things are horrible. So it was, it was horrible. My lifestyle, everything, it just went to the worst state you could possibly imagine. And then there was this one day where I'm now like the last day I ever went back to the hospital for the final checkup because all the conventional drugs stopped working. I tried everything, I surrendered to the medical system and the consultant a year before told me, the diet doesn't make a difference, stress doesn't make a difference, shut up, take the pills. Basically. Now I walk in and there's this lady who looks not the example of health and she's been putting a tube up my bum, checking me and diagnosing me as having ulcerative colitis autoimmune disease a year before. Now she's telling me, Mr. Naik, you have two choices. One, have your colon removed, wear a colossal bag, or two, be a guinea pig for a drug that hasn't even tested before, right? I know what that, that can do. So she said, that doesn't work. We take out your colon. So it was a very cold, very like soulless environment. No care, no compassion. And I was like, screw this, there has to be another way. And boom, like they say, God stands for gift of desperation, right? And in my most desperate moment, actually a third path opened up and that was the path of the breath. And a friend of our family, Swami Yamikananda, she came to rescue and she said, you actually have a gift. If you can turn this around, you could be an amazing role model, example to other people. You've got tenacity to help people. You've got an amazing story if you can turn this around. And she made me see the disease as a gift and she's. I had to let go of my disbelief, right? Because I'm trained as a scientist, so anything, yoga, meditation, prayer, all that stuff was too woo woo at that time for me. You know, diet was enough right at the moment, but now I had to like do breathing techniques. I was like, what are you talking about? But I had no other choice. So I let go of my disbelief and took, took the plunge. And she taught me these basic breathing techniques. And I just remember that first breath I took, just that sense of relief when you exhale, let go. And I couldn't believe the difference it made. Just, ah, just that sense of relief that was like, wow, is there. What more have she got? So I learned some more advanced techniques and then she taught me Ayurveda, a more yogic lifestyle. And within a few months I completely healed myself. That's full health. And everyone was like blown away. They couldn't believe it. They were like, what's going on? My mom's a doctor, my family medics. And everyone was telling me, you know, shut up and take the pills, stop following that nonsense. But I proved them all wrong. So then I made a pact, right? Because something happened, something crazy happened. So a cousin of mine sent me an email when I'd got back to normal, they'd heard that I'd got better. And she, the, it was the mom actually said like, my son's really sick. He's got all sorts of clients as well and I know you can help but like, can you tell him what you did? So I wrote this huge essay. I was like super excited because I knew that could help him. Now before as a pharmacist, I couldn't, right? But now I could. So I sent him the, the, the whole essay forward. I didn't hear anything back two days go past three days, nothing. Silence. I'm like, what's going on? Why, why don't they want to pay attention to this? Then it again, other email, it turns out they died of the drug that I could have gone on myself.

Oh wow.

Was that the experimental drug?

It was, it was another one I would have possibly gone on. It was an immunosuppressant, very common on a lot of people on this drug. Right. And it does, unfortunately the side effects kill a lot of people. So very similar class of the experimental drug which was a variation of that same drug. So it's not a good one. It's like the last resort drug. So that set my mission because that's when I was like, I am going to do whatever I can to get this information out of the world. I'm going to put science to this and put evidence to it. I'm going to prove all my, you know, Indian doctor relatives wrong and like convince them with science and I'm going to make it actually something fun to do. And what I discovered was a modality which brought in my passion for music again because breathing techniques, what you can do is you can time the breath because in Pranayama, a lot of the Breathing techniques involve rhythmic breathing, breathing to a rhythm, and holding your breath to create meditative states, consciousness. And I could create music that times the breath, but also brings you into these deep, spiritual, blissful states. And that's what happened. So I made this modality which is now what we call Soma Breath. But back then I started to share it and I started to get amazing results. And then I used to teach people the more the diet, lifestyle changes as well. And I got some phenomenal results with getting people off medications and especially people with autoimmune diseases. And that's what set me on the path of creating Soma Breath and bringing it to the world. But it's been an insane journey since that amazing journey, since that point.

You're your own personal testimony based on everything you went through from being in the system, almost dying, and then you could have possibly passed over if you had stayed in the system. And then this sweet angel comes to you with the yogic breathing. You take it on fully and completely and your body then stops attacking itself and you become a revelation of wholeness. Now, why do you call it Soma Breath?

Beautiful question, actually. So Soma has a few different meanings. So Soma is also from the Vedic legend of Soma as a concoction.

Right?

The first kind of Rishis of our planet. These are these kind of yogis, ancient yogis that lived in the golden age of the Vedic myths. So we don't know like when this was. It's thousands of years ago. Don't quite know even if it's really true. But we know that there were stories about this legend of Soma and these Rishis were actually the world's first drug addicts. Believe it or not, they were addicted to Soma and it gave everything. It gave them bliss, ecstasy, gave them the pharmacy of different techniques and effects, but it also gave them immortality. So they would die if they stopped taking it. Right. What happens is then the Soma runs out. So that's when they all freak out. God Indra is the most addicted of of them all, orders everyone to go inward and discover how to create the Soma within, the bliss from within. And that's origin of Tantric Yoga, which then spurns traditional yoga as we know it, Buddhism, meditation, all these other practices, spiritual practices that we know. But it started with that legend.

So even in that, even in that legend, the. The idea was to go within and allow your own inner pharmacy to create the Soma that you need. Dht, whatever it is, you can do it in practice. Yeah.

Then the other meaning of soma is from Greek. So in the Greek tradition of soma meaning body. Right. And in, in the Tantric philosophy, it is not very wise to try and control the mind through the mind. It's much wiser to control the mind through the body, the soma. And also soma is every cell. It's the name for every cell in our body, every. And if you look at the evolution of beings, life began as single celled organisms. Single celled organisms got sick and tired of fighting with each other for space and territory. So one day they decided to come together on the basis of trust, compassion, love, to form multicellular organisms that forms us over time. So every single cell in our body, our soma is built on the thread of trust, compassion and love, the values of those.

Right, right.

Autoimmune disease is when trust, compassion, love has turned into hate. Right. This causes disharmony in the system and then healthy cells attack healthy cells, so you get, your immune system gets confused. So this is part of the system is to, is to bring harmony from within. And soma from within in the Tantrum philosophy is bliss. Right. So yeah, the current of, of, of of harmony in the body is the energy, the energetic state of bliss. So in if you look at the Tantric philosophy, the Tantric yogic, Buddhist philosophy, like the whole aspiration is to reach a profound state of inner peace and harmony and bliss. So all of these practices, the net result of doing them is to create this kind of almost permanent state of bliss that is, this is this deep sense of bliss that isn't like the kind of bliss you get from eating a chocolate, your favorite food. It's a different kind of bliss. It's a, it's a sense that is hard to describe. Right?

Yes.

When you're really healthy in your full power. Right?

Yes, yes.

So my entire system of SO breath is designed to restore that harmony, to bring peace and this state of bliss together. And the breath is the magic to doing this. But now from a more Mind Valley audience. Right. So also stands for the science of magnetic attraction.

Okay.

When you reach the state of bliss.

Yeah.

Right. From within and this becomes your default state. Right? Yeah.

It's your new normal.

Yeah.

Your baseline is raised.

Yeah. When that is your state. Right. Because everything you do is a result of feeling right. If you think about it on the outer world, your results are the result of actions. That's your outer world. So a lot of people learn new strategies, new techniques, new, new, you know, ideas to improve their results. But often they kind of plateau after a while or they have a bad day and then they don't get the results, even though they have the best strategies and techniques. So the reason why is because we have to go a layer deeper. Because the quality of your actions is determined by your quality of your decisions. And decisions are now on the inner world. And quality of your decisions are determined by the quality of your thinking. But where does thoughts come from? Now this is the great mystery, right? Where is the mind? Never mind. We don't really know exactly where the mind is, but what we can say is that thought has many layers. We have different layers of consciousness that we can tap into. Altered state or expanded states of consciousness allows us to tap into even higher quality of thoughts. But then also our thoughts are the product of our feelings, how we feel our state. So if you have a really bad day, or if you wake up feeling like you hate the world, hey, going to your job, you don't want to be kind and compassionate to others because you hate people. If that's your default state, then think about the quality of your decisions. Because I know when I was miserable as a pharmacist, I made the worst decisions for my life, right? So I would not manifest many good things in my life and I would not be a very attractive person. Definitely not magnetic. In fact, I used to compel people. So when I learned to change my state using a breath, my ability to make quality decisions went to another level. And then you start to manifest all the good things because now you, you become attractive to opportunities, to ideas, to insight, to experiences that lead you towards bliss and away from all the nasty stuff that we don't really want.

You become radioactive with the energy and you cannot help but to have that back in your life. Now let me ask you this. You know, breath work is very popular now. You know, a lot of people doing breath work, I, you know, I did like rebirthing many years ago with Leonard Orr for years and then continue to, to evolve into the breath. So what is the major difference with Soma as opposed to the other breath works that are out there that seem to be getting a relatively good results?

Yeah, that's great question. So Soma is based on pranayama, right? From which is a branch of yoga. So tantric yoga, let's say, is the origin of a lot of the breath work that you see in the world today. But there's so many different breathing techniques. And I like to see pranayama as a pharmacy of techniques. And pranayama means energy control and it gives you the ability to control the energy from within, the energy, the chi, the prana. Right. The life force. So, but it really is a pharmacy. So there are techniques if you want to unblock your nose, you can do that, fix conservation, you can do that, go to sleep, you can do that, relieve pain, you can do that, fix a headache. You know, there's. There's pretty much anything you go to a pharmacy for. There are breathing techniques that can match it. Maybe not as instantly, but definitely pretty close without the side effects, which is.

Right.

So that's firstly what in Soma Breath we teach a pharmacy of scientifically validated breathing techniques. Right? That's the foundation. But also there are protocols. So as in sequences of breathing techniques that create certain results. So rebirthing. Leonard Orr's technique is a form of controlled hyperventilation. So you do conscious connected breathing for like, you know, 40, 50, 60 minutes, maybe longer, sometimes in a hot tub, in water. And it takes you into these very divine, blissful spiritual states. Actually, the word spiritual means to breathe. It comes from Latin to, you know, spirare breath. Right, but so, so we also have techniques like that. But what is the foundation of Tantra yoga is rhythmic breathing. Rhythmic breathing. So the aha moment I had was this, when I realized that every function in your body has a rhythm to it they call biorhythms. So you have this circadian rhythm and fragian rhythm, or trading rhythm. And the rhythm of your breath, right, Is the control of these rhythms. Every one of these functions of your body is subservient to the rhythm of your breathing. So in yoga, in Tantra yoga, just a few minutes of rhythmic breathing a day brings harmony and balance to the inner world. Now what I thought was, what else has rhythm? Music. So what I decided to do was to guide the breath with music with a beat. So I started to make breath tracks that guide the rhythm of the breath. Certain rhythmic patterns have different effects to create this inner harmony. Right? And that creates, like our breath entrainment technologies. I call it breathing beats. It's like a breath meditation through rhythmic breathing. But then there's another technique. This is the most revered technique of all. In Pranayama, it's not when you breathe, it's when you don't breathe. It's called kumbhaka, holding your breath. And when you hold your breath after an exhale for 60 to 90 seconds, magic happens. Absolutely magic. You create this physiological state called intermittent hypoxia. Right? And intermittent hypoxia means lower than normal oxygen levels. And this is Your inner power. This is what creates life force, the qi from within. And they also use this in Tantric Buddhism as a method, breath retention, to generate qi. But when you do it in this controlled way, right? We simulate what they've been doing for many years now in machines, in clinics. So they, they have these IHT labs, intermittent hypoxic training labs. And the results they've shown from these machines are phenomenal in these studies. So what they do is in these, in these labs, in these clinics, they simulate like kind of high oxygen followed by low oxygen, followed by high oxygen, low oxygen over a period of like say five minutes. Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, like this. And they'll do it for progressively long durations over a 21 day period. What they get over 21 days, right, is, and this is what they realize is that your mitochondria is the cell, is the, is the organ, nails in your cells that generates the life force, right? And they are like tiny car engines. And they, without them, we die. And as you get older, they get fat and lazy and die. What I realized is if you give it a constant supply of food and oxygen, they actually burn out over time. But what they found out was if you take away food for a bit, intermittent fasting, give it back, take it away, go back. The body regenerates the mitochondria and multiplies their number. If you do with the breath, it's even more profound. So by taking away oxygen for a bit, intermittent hypoxia, giving it back, normal oxygen taken away, giving it back. So we do it through rhythmic breathing, breath retentions, advanced breath holds that take you 69 seconds and then breathing again, taking it back, right? What that does is it dramatically increases number of mitochondria that are efficient and healthy in your cells. What that does is it makes you super resilient to stress, gives you more energy, more vitality, more stamina, right? But also the stem cells in your body hate oxygen. They come out to play and stem cells start to circulate around the body, go to area that need restoration and healing, right? Another thing that happens is all your blood vessels start to multiply. You get coronary collaterals. So one of the number one killers in the world is heart disease. But we create natural heart bypasses through intermittent hypoxia that form stronger blood vessels in your heart that protects you from angina and heart heart attacks. So that's another amazing thing. You also get increased blood flow to the brain in areas of the brain that may have never had blood flow before, right. You get more use of the brain through these breath techniques. And even your organelles and organs of your body start to get more blood flow. This supercharger, you start to get this bliss that starts to generate from within. It's amazing. Now, what I found though, over 21 days, okay, is that you can even heal wounds in the brain. Now this is the thing. Trauma, which is a big word right now, everyone's talking about it. It is trauma. Even emotional trauma leaves a physical wound in the brain, just like physical trauma would. And this is why people can go for years and years of therapy but never get better.

Right?

It's good. Yeah.

Scar tissue.

But people do our 21 day program, and that scar tissue heals, the wound heals, and people go away from having lifelong ptsd. Suddenly a new person, you become a whole new character. You have a new set of, you know, brain cells.

Like, it's neuroplasticity. You can actually change the whole neurons.

Yes. And this is where it gets. Yeah, and this is where it gets even more exciting because the third layer added to it, right? So we have the rhythmic breathing, breath holds is. And we have the music third. The next layer is guided meditation. So I call it neurosmatic programming. This, the art of communicating to the unconscious mind through specific process where you use the power of creative visualization with intention. But at the right moments, when you're holding your breath and when you hold your breath in this deep meditative state that you get into with these 60 second, 90 second breath holds and beyond, your mind just goes completely still. Because in Pranayama kumbhaka, breath retention, it's how you get into the deepest meditative states where the mind completely stops because your thinking, your thoughts is linked to breathing. So when you don't breathe, your thoughts quiet and write down. So the art of deep meditation, where your thoughts go completely silent, we're talking about the monkey mind, the default mode, network. The worries about the future gets on the past, go still and you go into Zen mode. And in that mode, you can install new programs. And the power of neurogenesis is amplified here because we are also bringing up the stem cells. So the way it works is after holding your breath on the exhale for 69 seconds, you do a final inhale and you breathe in and you contract up the sphincter muscles. You send up this energy and it sends cerebral spinal fluid up into the brain with all the stem cells, the blood flow, and all the good stuff up into the brain. And you feel this incredible high from it. But here, the power of neurogenesis amplified. So what I call this is. And I got this from Joseph Murphy, you may have heard of him. The power of the subconscious mind. Amazing pharmacist as well. He talked about scientific prayers and doing affirmations, the right states. And what I've realized is that this state is so powerful. It is one of the most powerful ways to seed intentions. So with that, what we can do is create targeted, like healing. We can also use it to manifest signs of magnetic attraction.

Right.

All kinds of amazing stuff. It's this technology for prayer that I think I've kind of concocted out of fusing together a few different things that have been around for a long time.

Absolutely.

You explained it very well. I mean, I. I don't do anything without breath. You know, much of it is exactly the way you explain. I mean, I'll even like hold the breath and right at the moment of survival, program my mind, then breathe out and then hold my breath out for a long period of time. Reprogram my mind and breathe before I speak. You know, it's just. It's just a. I'm listening to you talk and a lot of what you're saying is just a part of. It's so close to me. I don't think about it anymore. Just a part of my life, you know. So your articulation is phenomenal. And the way you've put all this together with the. I like the way you talked about the fact when you have the breath out and there's no breath there, then that's when the stem cells come out to play.

Yes.

A lot of times I like to say that at the moment of survival, when you just can't hold anymore, that's when you really can program. Your articulation was quite phenomenal. It's quite beautiful. I appreciate it. I think a lot of people are going to get a lot out of this. So I can see why it's a little bit different. You formed your own niche out of the breath work that's in the world, which is all good. It's all wonderful. It's all magnificent. It's beautiful. I love it. I remember we were doing it back in the 70s with Lynn centered or. And then went to other levels of it. It was kind of weird. You know what I mean? Yeah. We were the weirdos in the hot tub.

Exactly. And I've been trying to put science to what he's been doing. I'm trying to. And. And it's. And this checks out because we've done the biggest breathwork study today with Cambridge University.

That was, that was my next question. What alerted Cambridge University to your way of doing breath work? How did that occur? What were they fascinated by?

Yeah, so it started with Another scientist called Dr. Jeff Tarrant, who did the first study on, on so breath using our, this technique, this methodology, I call it the SOMA awakening technique. And he, he, he measured this with a small group and he showed that in just 22 minutes we created the same changes in the brain. Right. As a single dose of psilocybin or MDMA used to treat severe depression.

Yes, absolutely amazing.

So, so, so this was really compelling. This scientist also actually is the guy behind the telepathy tapes. You heard of the telepathy tapes?

Oh yeah. I refer that to people who have kids who have autism. So when I refer to other people anyway. Absolutely, yeah.

So cool. So he's the one in that, he's the scientist in that. So anyway, so Cambridge University loved this and what they loved about the, the method is that it was easy to replicate because my method means breathing in beats. So everyone is breathing at the same time, same rate, holding their breath at the same time and therefore it makes it easy to measure as a protocol. That's why they love this method. They then wanted to do this with a bigger group to validate even further and then they did it much bigger with 300 different sessions and then now actually published in peer reviewed research. So now they want to go and do a phase 1 clinical trial. As long as we can get the funding to see if cerebral breath can become a non pharmacological alternative to antidepressants for depression, which will be amazing.

Yes. So basically you're going not on purpose, but you're going up against the very system that almost killed you. There's no OD on breath, there's OD on drugs, but there's nobody ever OD'd on vitamin C or breath or vitamin d. But they're ODing on all these opioids and, and things of that particular nature. And so, so do you feel that you're going to run into any resistance? I'm not putting that out there, I'm actually clearing the way.

No, I think if it would have happened, it would have happened by now. You know, there are some, I mean.

It'S not illegal to take a deep breath.

Yeah.

Like what they may do is they may class it as in some various religious countries. They may try and put it down because they say it's a spiritual practice. Doesn't align with their religion. But I think most of these secular countries where science is, is more, you know, important, I think, I think that's unstoppable. Like how can you ban breathing?

Right, right, right. So give me a basic breath that somebody can take away from right now that after watching this, obviously we're going to let them know where to find you and all of that. But what would be the basic breath of inhalation? Exhal someone could practice immediately.

Brilliant. Yeah. So what I would start with is first just to demonstrate to people the how horrible the bad breathing sound feels like. So what we need to do is let's maybe understand what unhealthy breathing is. This is what I always try to do. So unhealthy breathing is when you over breathe. Okay? So over breathing is when you let your unconscious mind control your breath. Right. Now what we're all about is teaching conscious control of breathing because your reptilian brain is what controls your breathing on autopilot. Now if you're really stressed, if you're like somebody in a which most people are working a very busy job, maybe they don't like their job, maybe they're going home to a relationship that's also not working and so on and so forth, what's happening is they're pretty much always on fight and flight mode.

Right? Right.

If they're drinking a lot or drinking coffee too much and also, you know, living a bad lifestyle, it's going to compound that. So what that means is the reptilian brain is going to breathe for you. Like you're going to battle even if you're just sitting down on your computer, which will mean you'll start to breathe faster and harder than you actually need to. This is what causes the most harm to the body than anything else. Tell you why, because when you over breathe, you let go of the number one most important gas in your body. It's not oxygen. Everyone thinks it's oxygen. It's not. It's CO2, carbon dioxide. Now carbon dioxide has got a bad rep. Okay. Like, you know, carbon dioxide has been blamed for, for the climate and all sorts. Actually, carbon dioxide is plant food. It's essential for plants to grow. But carbon dioxide is also essential for getting oxygen from your red blood cells to your body tissue cells like the cells of your heart, your brain, your organs. Right. So without the right level of CO2, oxygen stays stuck to your red blood cells and you get high blood pressure. CO2. When it's the right level, normal levels will keep healthy blood Pressure, but also keep healthy oxygenation. Now if you over breathe, because you know when you breathe out, you breathe out CO2. If you breathe too hard and if you breathe to your mouth, you let go of large volumes of CO2. So never breathe through your mouth. Always breathe through your nose. Nose is for breathing, right? Mouth is for eating and talking. Now, if you breathe through your mouth a lot, CO2 is deposited a lot. If you over breathe, CO2 is deposited at too faster rate. So then you start to get lightheaded, right? I don't know if you ever noticed this. If you talk for long periods a lot, sometimes get a bit lightheaded. If I'm like doing interviews like this, I have to just check in sometimes, right?

Right.

As the oxygen starts to go out my brain. So CO2 controls oxygen nation of the body. So what we have to do is maintain healthy CO2 levels. Now what I wanted to show you was what over breathing feels like. I'm going to do an exaggerated bit of over breathing just for the audience to experience. So what I would love you to do, if you're up for it, is just to hyperventilate like this for 20 seconds. We're just going to do 20 seconds. Like when I say, right, I'll time it and to make sure we don't do it too much. Let's go. 3, 2, 1. Hyperventilate.

Yeah.

So you can't even do it right?

You get tired already.

Horrible. Right? Like, do you feel like yucky?

Yeah, yeah. It's already a little tired and foggy.

Yeah, you got it. Right. So now what I want you to do is something different. So what we're going to do is normalize your CO2 levels. Very simple breath. You can use this at any time. Whenever you're feeling like you need a bit more of a lift, right? So what you're going to do is just breathe in, breathe out and then hold your breath for four seconds and then repeat. So let's do this together. Breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your nose. Hold for four seconds.

Three, two, one.

Breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your nose.

Hold 3, 2, 1.

Breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your nose.

Hold 2, 3, 4.

Breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your nose.

Hold 2, 3, 4.

How does that feel?

Oh yeah, feels good.

Yeah. Oxygen comes back. It's just very simple breathing technique that you can use. Now a variation of this that will start generating chi. Okay?

Yeah.

Or prana. Right. Life force is just to do this where you will just Breathe in through your nose. In through your. When you breathe in through your nose, you automatically go into your belly. When you breathe through your mouth, you'll find it goes to your chest. Right. But if you breathe through your nose, you'll find you can feel from your belly all the way up. Now, if you use a Mudra, this is, this is really interesting. Okay. Now if you do this right, you'll notice it goes, the breath goes into your chest. So breathe into your nose, it might go more into your chest. Now switch to this index thumb and it will probably go to your abdomen. Notice that?

Of course.

Yes. Yeah. So this is the, the Mudra that you can use. You don't always have to use this, but it just helps for, for deep abdomen breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. So what we're going to do is we're going to breathe. We're going to do four, four rhythm breath. I'm going to count the rhythm for a few, like, rounds and then you're going to breathe in when I tell you fully. And you're going to hold just fully in until you get the first urge to breathe. And then you're going to release with a huge humming. Produces nitric oxide, which is the miracle mark for your body. It's antiviral, antibacterial, antimicrobial, stabilizes your blood pressure. It's antioxidant, anti, inflammatory. It's the miracle model for your body. We run out of it as you get older, so this is a way to get more of it. And nasal breathing also produces nitric oxide. So let's do it together. After 3, 2, 1.

In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2, 3, four. Out, 2, 3, four. In, 2, 3, Four. Out, 2, 3, Four. In, 2, 3,4. Out, 2, 3,4. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. In, two, three, Four. Out, two, three, Four. In, two, Three, four. Out, two, Three, four. In, two, Three, Four. Out, two, Three, Four.

Now take a deep breath in and hold the breath in. Whilst you hold your breath in, contract up the sphincter muscles up. So you're pulling up and you imagine you're being pulled up by the top of your head by a rope. So you're very back straight, contracting up. Your diaphragm will probably go in a bit with pressure going down and up by contracting up your sphincter and then just hold it so you get a first urge to breathe. When you get the first urge to.

Breathe, you're going to release with a humor.

Nice. How's that feel?

Wonderful.

Yeah.

And if you repeat that times in a row, it will start to generate heat in the body. Yeah. And you'll start to feel this inner fire and that's this warmth, this. This starts to bring that state of bliss from within. So we. There's the more advanced version is holding a breath on the exhale. Yeah. And we do that is with music, because what we do is a longer period of rhythmic breathing and the whole thing's guided. It becomes like a grat. We have a beautiful one called Morning Gratitude for setting gratitude right as your state. Because gratitude is the ultimate state of acceptance and peace. So that's the intention we like to go into with a lot of our breath sessions. And then through the guided breath journey, which I'll give you a link to, you'll be able to hold your breath then for 60, 90 seconds on the exhale. And then when you hold your breath on the inhale, like you just did there, you feel this complete, like, dissolving into everything, oneness. And then you release with a hum and just everything comes together. We do a couple of rounds of that. And that gives you your daily dose of intermittent hypoxia.

I love that.

A little bit of exercise for you. There's.

Man, I love it. I do that breath. But what I do is I. On the count of four, I say to myself, I am divine love.

Yes, Exhale.

I am divine love. Well, I may take another quality.

Yeah.

But what I'm loving about what you're saying, you're really breaking down the science of what happens when you do this. I mean, I think this is really going to inspire a lot of people when they see us having this conversation.

Yeah. And a simple thing about rhythmic breathing, bit of science. Why do we do rhythm? So it's linked to your nervous system. So when you breathe, your sympathetic nervous system goes up a bit. That's your. Your adrenaline response. When you breathe out, your parasympathetic nervous system goes on.

Right.

That's your rest and relax or rest and digest mode. Right. When you breathe in a perfect rhythm, you create a harmony between sympathetic parasympathetic balances your nervous system. So just a few minutes of that is enough to balance the nervous system. It's amazing. So if you're ever feeling off, this gets you back into your center. Right.

You hear that, everyone? Whenever you're feeling off, you have a basic spiritual technology here that allows you, as he's been saying, to develop, to activate your own inner pharmacy. And they come to a state of peace. And this also is really A good preparation for meditation.

Totally. Yeah. And in, in this philosophy is the idea the aspiration is to reduce your need to breathe. So everything, as I told you, is like preventing over breathing. So you breathe just what your metabolic needs are. So you should. Only if you're at rest and in a meditative state, you shouldn't need to breathe at all. Hardly at all.

It's, it's.

Yeah, it stops. And Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, says that the perfect human breathes like they don't breathe at all. Right. This is where it gets really fascinating because that, that is contradictory to everything we've been told, Right. We should be.

Your metabolism has changed.

Yeah. We've been told that we need to breathe more to get more oxygen. It's wrong. So what, what they've realized is that oxidative stress is what makes you age. Okay. And that's the number one killer is of aging. That's why we need antioxidants, prevents stress. So think of mitochondria as tiny little car engines, right? Burning fuel that makes an inner fire that produces ATP, life force energy. Now that is what makes you age. That, that reaction, which means just breathing makes you age. Right?

Free radicals come in and everything.

Yeah. So reducing your need to breathe is the aspiration of these tantric yogis to, to live longer. Right. We can live 100, 120 years if we learn to reduce our need to breathe down to like less than six breaths per minute. Okay. And that happens. That works by certain types of exercises, physical exercises. So in summer breath we have physical exercises, anaerobic exercise. They're called exercises in the absence of oxygen. But also we have these breath control techniques. Controlled hypoxia, that makes your mitochondria so efficient using oxygen that you hardly need to breathe. So then over time, your natural breathing rate slows down and to the point where when somebody sees you is like, he's not breathing what's going on? So because it drops so much and you get, that's when you get this state of bliss. Now this is a funny thing. Animals been doing this all the time, right? The animals are amazing model of what I'm just talking about because the animals that live the longest, elephants, turtles, whales, they breathe very slow, like one or two breaths a minute. The animals that don't live for a long time are rats and mice. Okay. You know that expression being in the rat race, Right? Right. Breathe very fast. 200, 300 breaths per minute. They don't live very long. They hyperventilate all the time. And there's this strange creature, the naked mole rat. The naked mole rat is a rodent. Right. It should not live very long, but it lives 30 times longer than normal rodents. Reason why it lives in an hypoxic environment, a low oxygen environment where it's able to hold its breath for 18 minutes at a time. So you can measure your lifespan, how long you're going to live by your ability to hold your breath. So with our training and so on breath, we train you to learn how to hold your breath. You reduce your need for oxygen to such a point where your your breath hold time, which we can measure at first thing in the morning as a gauge of our health, starts to go beyond a score of 40 seconds. Average people can hold their breath after normal inhale, normal excel in the morning. 20 to 40 seconds, 40 is really high. But if you have a less than 20 second breath all the time, usually unfit, usually have cold and flu symptoms, sinus congestion, headaches, chronic pains, maybe some disease you're trying to fight off. Anxiety, stress, insomnia. When you start to hack your breath hold time beyond 40 seconds. Right. Which is what we teach you how to do in SO breath, then all your symptoms go away. You get incredible oxygenation of your body to cells because you've got the right balance of CO2 and you can get into deep medicine states on command. Then you are free of pain. And here's the thing. The goal of Soma of Soma we're trying to do is to help you reduce pain in the body and turn pain into bliss in the body. Yeah. Your quality of life is, is 100% dependent on the quality of your Soma, your body and how much pain it has. And pain is what makes us crave things that we don't really, really want. But we get them to numb the pain. So it could be prescription meds, it could be recreational drugs, it could be alcohol, it could be Netflix. Right. Because emotional pain also affects our breathing times. Right. Emotional pain is a, is a pain as well as physical pain. So with SO breath, just by working on your breath first, we can actually create this in amazing inner bliss where your need for stuff goes away. Just like the ancient Rishis and yogis back in the day discovered by creating the Soma from within the prana. That's the goal of what we're doing with summer breath.

Powerful. You broke it down beautifully. Everything was so magnificent. You gave me a greater understanding of why I do what I do on a scientific level. It's very, very beautiful. And I'm Aware that statistically, athletes have the lowest longevity rate in the Western world because they're breathing all the time rapidly, plus they're sweating out their minerals.

Yes.

You would think that an athlete would live a long time. But talk about professional athletes and college athletes, not high school or. But people who play sports for a living, they don't live that long, according to the national average.

Yep. They put a lot of strain on the heart.

Yeah, put a lot of strain on the heart. They sweat minerals out and they're hyperventilating all the time. All the time. So you're giving another. Another scientific.

If you look at yoga, yoga doesn't have those sorts of exercises. You don't do that kind of training in yoga. And yoga is static exercises. You're still. But you're creating strength from within. I'll give you a breakdown of science. It's going to blow people's minds when they heard it, why yoga works and why you should do it like this. So a lot of the yoga you see in the yoga studios is the wrong type of yoga. It's called. It's more like aerobics workouts because each person is going from one pose to the next, right. But then there's no breath control. It's more like an aerobics class. Real traditional yoga from Patanjali is where you hold your breath in each pose, like a meditation. And you go into it three qualities. One, you're going to go in the mindset, you're going to hold this forever. Two, you. It's got to be stable, so you shouldn't go in, you know, fall over with it. And it should be without pain.

Right.

If you can hold that, then it's an asana. And what that means is if you go into a mindset with that where you can hold it forever, what you do is you. If you do a forward bend, for example, you breathe out, you exhale on the back bend, you breathe in. If you breathe out and you hold, right, and you hold that pose, what happens is that reduce oxygen and the compression that you get from the tension, you exercise every muscle that you're exercising in that pose under reduced oxygen. And what that does is it forces the oxygen, the mitochondria and the muscle tissue to use what fuel it has at that time, then makes it go, oh, I'm running out, so I need to grow stronger. And that's what triggers it to get stronger, fitter, healthier, without stress.

Right?

That's what builds your resistance, strength. It builds strength, builds fitness, longevity. And you also Reduce your need to breathe over time. Whereas intense aerobic exercise for long periods of time, which professional athletes are unfortunately doing, causes hyperventilation, reduced oxygenation, stress on the heart, and a lot of them die of heart attacks.

Young, unfortunately, strokes, heart attacks, things of that particular nature. Yeah, you, you're speaking directly like my yoga teacher. Placement holding the asana, not moving, having an intention, Lee, you know, and so it's beautiful to hear the science behind all of this. It's very beautiful. This has been, this has been a great conversation. Matter of fact, in your speaking and teaching, you covered every question that I had I wanted to ask you. Yeah, every single thing I wanted to ask, I wanted my listeners and watchers to hear. You know, you, you have, you have done. I just ask you one question. What is the most transformational example that you've seen happen in somebody's life other than your own going through this process? What is the one thing that happened with somebody that like blew your mind?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the classic story is one of my, so my, my co founder, he, he's like the left brain in the business. He, he runs all the behind the scenes stuff. And his dad has a rare, he's called Reuben. Has a rare muscle wasting disease. It's called, it's a form of muscular dystrophy where they, they don't, it's a weird diet. They thought he had polio. And you know, doctors sometimes make misdiagnosis. So he was gonna end up in a wheelchair pretty soon. Right. What happened? Right. A few years ago he came to, to where we live, Ibiza. We live in Ibiza in Spain. And he came to, to see his grandson. So my business, Gary just had a son. Now he couldn't pick up his kid. He couldn't pick him up. It was, it was sad to see because he couldn't play with his grandkid. It was, it was, it was quite heartbreaking to see they can play his grandkid. He couldn't throw a ball over his head. Right. Stuff like that. So Gary said, look, neurologist made this course. It's the 21 day awakening journey. And you know, we want people to test it out. It's this 21 day breath protocol that I talked about. Intermittent hypoxia models, what they do in the clinics over 21 days. And we, you know, we'd love you to test it out. So we gave it to him. So he goes away and then he comes back six months later. This time he's like walking around like the man Right. Picks up the grandkid and he's playing, throwing him about. It's like, wow. And he's throwing catch with a dog. I was like, what? What just happened? And he goes, well, I've just been doing your course. I just did your course. And then at the end of it, you say, do this track every. Every day for. For the next six months or the rest of your life, if you want. So I did that. And I'm sleeping better. My strength has come back. I'm swimming, swimming laps every day. I never was able to swim with this. I went to see the doctor, right? The doctor said, this is a miracle. Your muscles have stopped wasting away. You're like, stable again. It's like it's blowing our minds. What. What are you doing? And he tried to explain that I'm just doing this breathing protocol, right? Didn't believe him. He goes, we need to do more checks. Then they went for more checks and they again backed up that he's actually reversed this condition. So that was the proof right there that someone else other than me is going to transform this and that this is scalable. And since that point, we've had so many hundreds and hundreds of amazing case studies like that, from absolutely. From people like that to depression to manifesting, you know, people already healthy like crazy, manifesting stories. You know, it all comes down to energy, man. If you control your state, your energy, which is what this is, is pranayama.

That's right.

If you have control of the inner world, we can't control everything that happens on the outside, but we can control what goes on inside. That's what we're doing, teaching that.

I always say, if you can master your state, then the next stage will emerge. Yes, you can have the next stage without the stabilized state. And so this is exactly what you're teaching, and I appreciate it. So let people know where they can find you and all the good stuff.

Yeah, certainly. So we have an app, if you go to somabreath.com forward/go. We have an app where there's a pharmacy of breathing techniques on there and lots of these breath meditations where you do the rhythmic breathing and breath holds in the right way, guided. And we have different intentions. Stuff for manifest, stuff for healing, stuff for abundance, stuff for, you know, creativity, inspiration. So we have all different themes and stuff. We have instructor classes as well. We have thousands of instructors. So you can actually learn how to find an instructor near you or even train to become an instructor yourself. So we have all of that@semo. Breath.com and if you go to semo breath.com go, you can get the app. And then we also have the 21 day awakening journey, which again, if you just go to forward slash go, you can find all the information for getting also access to the 21 day awakening journey, which is the protocol, the most advanced product. I developed that Cambridge University study that has this incredible feedback and research and also my Instagram at Neeraj Nake official is my Instagram.

It's been a pleasure meeting you and listening to the science behind this powerful technology. It's been, it's been great. So I'm going to go breathe now.

I'll send you some tracks. You can test them out.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely send the tracks.

Will do, my friend. All right.

Thank you. Appreciate you being here. Everyone listen, this has been a great conversation. I know you got a lot out of it. You know how to reach him. You know how to reach me. Have a beautiful and bright day. He gave a powerful explanation how to take back your mind so you're not caught up in the noise of the world, but you're caught up in your own inner consciousness, producing bliss and ecstasy and wellness and well being. Peace and blessings. Peace and dynamic blessings. Many of you have written letters about how much you really appreciate the Take Back youk Mind podcast and the life questions. So appreciate those letters. Now, our particular program here, these episodes, it's powered by spiritual purpose, but it also has powerful sponsorship. The primary sponsor is Agape International Spiritual Center. So everything that goes on here, Agape is behind it. So what I want you to do, I want you to support to Take Back youk Mind podcast. Go to agapelive.com, make a donation, put a little indication that you're supporting the podcast in that donation or text the word give to 424-321-6243. Write the word podcast. So we know you're supporting this wonderful program of Take Back youk Mind. The secondary sponsor is Neutral Rise. This is the company that actually produces my particular supplemental line called Adapta Zen. I have the super greens, I have the Elevate fermented mushrooms and a number of other products that are emerging. Just go to neutralrize.com, find Adapta Zen and you know what? Uplift your spirit, uplift your body. Remember to share all of this with your friends and support our wonderful sponsor. Have a beautiful day. Peace and blessings. This is the part of our offering.

In which we get to practice a few minutes of meditation. I think it's very important to not.

Only have a Level of understanding, a level of dynamic information that can be.

Transformational and inspiring and educational.

But as we do at Agape, we.

Have meditation before every service and we have life visioning within our staff meetings to catch new vision for that particular program or project.

So meditation is very dear to me.

And so we're going to practice now.

And you know what we're going to.

Do, since we've just been with a great teacher, we're going to add a little bit of breath work to it. So I invite you to close your.

Outer eye as we do so often.

Thumb and forefinger touching as a sign of transcending the egoic perception and allowing the breath.

To more fully go from the belly up. Now you're going to take a four count breath.

Four count in and four count out. Instead of counting 1, 2, 3, 4, we're going to say divine love fills me on the in breath and divine love fills me on the out breath. Here we go. Breathe in. Divine love fills me. Sustain. Exhale. Divine love fills me. Sustainability. Inhale. Divine love fills me. Sustain. Divine love fills me. Sustain. We change a little bit in breath. I am Divine Love. Exhale. I am Divine Love. Inhale. I am Divine Love. Exhale. I am Divine love. Do a couple on your own. Four counts in. Hold two. Four counts out. Hold two. It. On your next exhalation, establish an intention to wake up to your glorious nature. Next time you exhale, intend to wake up to your real nature and being. Do it on the exhalation and the inhalation. That is when you get to the space where you've exhaled, you have a little gap of 2 beats. Intend to wake up. And then when you come to the apex of your breath, you breathe in and there's a little two beat gap there. Intend to wake up. You can wake up to joy. You can wake up to happiness. You can wake up to abundance. And waking up to my abundance.

I'm.

Waking up to my joy. I'm waking up to perfect health. The only difference is you're not saying it out loud, you're just doing the breath and thanking it. Sam.

And it is from this state of.

Oneness with the presence that is never an absence.

That we choose to be.

In the field of gratitude at this moment, in this moment of gratitude, we're sending a signal into the quantum field, the signal into universal life Law, that we're so grateful for our existence. We're grateful for life. We're so grateful that everything we could want and hope for and desire, we.

Already have it within us.

And there is a response from the law that says, yes, you have it all, and more is coming. So we hang in this field of gratitude with a pure recognition that the great presence called by millions of names is everywhere. The great love is everywhere. The great intelligence is everywhere. Therefore it must be where we are. And so we're thankful in this moment that something amazing is unfolding in our life today. We feel this. We give thanks for this, this. And we allow it to be so. And so it is. Amen. Thank you so much for tuning in to take back your mind. Peace and blessings.

Your time is very valuable. So I want to thank you for.

Tuning in to take back your mind.

If you want to submit a life question, please do so. Email us@podcastichaelbeckwith.com and perhaps one day I'll.

Be answering your question that will touch the lives of so many.

If you've enjoyed the show, you might.

As well submit a five star review.

You might as well tell your friends and family, let's spread the love until we meet again.

Maintain your awareness. Take back your mind. Because when you take back your mind, you take back your life. Peace and blessings.

Become still and listen.