Breathwork vs Medicine: The Science Behind Niraj Naik’s Soma Breath | The Mindvalley Podcast Ep #62

Well, my mum said, why don't you work really hard and study at Cambridge? Well, actually, Cambridge is studying us.

This man has had a profound impact on the entire Mindvalley community and in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by teaching them how to master breath. His name is Niraj Naik.

Pranayama means energy control. Breathing itself is how we produce energy in the body.

What did Cambridge find about Somalia?

They found it had the same effects on the brain as a dose of psilocybin used to treat severe depression.

What?

Yes.

Psilocybin, I know is 300% more effective than antidepressants.

So there we go.

The cocktail of chemistry that one might get from certain psychedelics you're able to activate in your body by adjusting your intake of oxygen, carbon dioxide. Explain what the heck is going on. You're going to meet a really special guest. This man has had a profound impact on the entire Mindvalley community and in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by teaching them how to master breath. His name is Niraj Naik and he is the creator of what is probably the world's most popular breathwork training protocol, Soma Breath. So. So check this out. A couple of years ago, Russell Brand. And again, forget. I know he's a controversial character. That's not the point. Russell Brand was on Facebook and he asked an open question to the vast millions of people who follow him, and he said, what is the most powerful breadbook modality? And the most common reply was, soma. Soma. Soma. Soma. Soma. And some members of my team observed this and they're like, hey, Vishen, this Soma guy, Niraj, he's blowing up. We got to get this guy on mindvalley. And that was easy enough to do because Niraj Naik is such a Mindvalley fan. He was one of the 300 people who attended the first Mindvalley University in Barcelona in 2017. And it was at that event that he met his wife, his beautiful, amazing Russian wife, Natasha. Today they have this incredible half Russian, half Indian baby. And so Neeraj joined forces with Mindvalley. And today, Soma Breathwork is one of the most watched. In fact, it's number eight as of this month, the number eight most popular quest on Mindvalley out of over 100 programs. We just wrapped up the 2024 edition of Mindvalley University, and Niraj closed the event. Check out these visuals. This was so amazing. He closed the event in the conference center, and then he closed the event at the epic closing Party grand creating in a matter of, like, one or two days, this amazing new music with Estonian opera singer Elena Neva. And so I really like Neeraj because not only is he a transformative leader, he teaches people to heal themselves, to transform their lives. And the impact he's having on people's lives is really revolutionary, but he's also so much freaking fun. At every event, at every festival, Neeraj is introducing a new way of experiencing joy. Rather than alcohol consumption or drugs. He's teaching people how to go into altered states of bliss, of human connection, how to connect with your body by combining DJing with breathwork. He calls it DJing, which I've had to tell him is probably not the most appropriate term, but the results he gets is mesmerizing, and I truly adore this man. So welcome, Niraj, to the Mindvalley Podcast.

Yes. Wow, what an introduction.

Well, you know, there's a lot I can say about you, and I wanted to give a personal introduction rather than just read the bio that anybody can find on ChatGPT.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. Like, I mean, playing at Mindvalley events is, for me, the. The highlight of the year.

And you know what? When you. When you start playing your music, and so much of your music is, it's now available on Spotify. I just put up a post on Mindvalley University to your music. You guys can find this on Spotify, but also on Instagram, just search for Niraj Night. Your music is so powerful, and I love how you bring in personal growth methodologies. You have people dancing and then you have them pause and they breathe and they breathe. And I love that. So first, Niraj, what is going on with breath work? Explain that concept to us.

Yeah. So breath work has been around for thousands of years. It's not a new thing. And actually it comes from our original culture from India. The original school of breath work is pranayama. Pranayama means energy control. So breathing itself is how we produce energy in the body. It's respiration. It's how we create ATP, the life force that drives all the functions. ATP, Aden is in triphosphate. So oxygen burns. Oxygen is what we breathe in, right? Sugar, to produce this reaction that creates CO2, water. And ATP, fuel of life is what drives. It's a currency of all the functions of the body, in the body. So breathing is really important. Without breathing, we don't produce energy. And pranayama is the system the ancients created to manipulate the energy in the body. And therefore, it gives you control over various Functions of your life, your whole autonomic nervous system. It creates this ability to have a pharmacy.

And by pharmacy, you mean a set of tools that one can use to. To heal everything. I mean, when you were explaining this to me earlier, you mentioned that you can use breath work to influence your heart rate, and you're about to demonstrate that. Yes. Right. You can use breath work to help overcome a cold. You can use breath work for what else?

Yeah. And the irony is that, actually, I'm a pharmacist, so I use breath to heal myself from an autoimmune disease, chronic autoimmune disease. They left me housebound for almost a year where I was literally pooping blood, you know, 40 times a day.

That's really precise.

Yes. And I was told it's incurable, that you're gonna have to have your colon removed, you know?

And what was the disease that you were suffering from?

So it's called ulcerative colitis.

I see.

Yeah. And it is.

No. No medicine, no cure for it.

Yeah, that's what the doctors told me. So I was relegated to that, and I surrendered to the.

And you were. You were a licensed pharmacist practicing where in.

I was in the uk. Yeah.

Okay. Which is your. Your sexy accent comes from.

Thank you. Yeah, I was really hard on this one.

Right.

Yeah. So I. Yeah, I was suffering really bad, and I was at a point where, like, I had two choices. Either be guinea pig for a drug hasn't been tested before or have my colon removed.

Why didn't you do the drug?

Because I'm a pharmacist, so I know.

You know about the side effects.

I know the side effects. And especially drugs that haven't been tested before, there's a huge risk.

You don't want to be the guinea pig.

Yeah.

So how did you discover breathwork? I mean, you were a pharmacist. You were basically, for lack of a better word, a drug dealer.

I was a legal drug dealer.

Insult. You were a legal drug dealer. What made you say, okay, like, screw modern medicine. I want to go back to ancient Indian culture and figure this out?

Yeah, that's a great segue, because I actually had tried all the conventional treatments, and nothing was working anymore. So I was really on the last resort, and that's when I had to let go of my disbelief. There was this one point where I was in a real dark night at the soul moment. And they say God stands for gift of desperation. Right? God.

Gift of desperation.

Yeah. And actually, that's when this amazing lady came to me called Swamiyamikananda. She's a yoga teacher in the uk. She runs an amazing charity called Mukti with Sting the singer Singh. And she happens to be, like, known in our community. So my mum reached out to her and she came and she said to me, look, you actually have a gift. If you can turn this around, right, you could be an amazing role model with your background and your story to help other people. She said, I can't. I can't guarantee anything, but, you know, maybe you can try some of these breathing exercises from Pranayama. Because Pranayama is this original school of breathing exercises.

So the Pranayama school is saying that breath can be used to heal various ailments of the body.

Yes.

And this goes back thousands of years to ancient. Yeah, Hindu culture.

Yeah. So. And it allows you to manipulate the. The inner world, the autonomic nervous system, which is the source of our health. Right. And vitality. So she said to me, look, you're gonna have to let go of your disbelief because I'm born in a very rational, scientific way and, and give this a go. So I put some faith into it. And I was so blown away by just simple breathing exercise. The profound effect it had on relieving the stress, because with ulcerative, you get really intense pain, relation, cramps in your gut. And just relieving that stress made me able to see things in a new way. But then with deeper, like study of these brain techniques, I realized you can also alter your state of consciousness very fast with a breath too. Right. And, you know, we all know about the power of the subconscious mind. Reprogram the unconscious mind. So in. In yogic practices, you'd use mantra affirmation as a way to reprogram the mind. So I started to use the breath with mantra with affirmations to start reprogramming the unconscious mind, which has basically manifested fear into a disease. Fear, stress, anger, rage of hating my job for so long and getting so burnt out. As a way to reprogram the autonomous system, to say all is okay, the environment you're in is okay, is to kind of these confused cells of the autonomous system, which now sees your. All your healthy cells as a threat, need to be reprogrammed, reframed.

Wow. And how long did that take you to recover from your disease?

Yeah, so what I did was within a few months doing this simple breathing protocol of rhythmic breathing with this guided affirmations. And then also then back to my passion for music, because I'm a. I love music. Music was my real passion. That's what I really love to do. And I kind of suppressed it when I became a pharmacist. But going back into the love of that and making music, that now actually was a way to get into these deep water states consciousness. And you know what? One of the products inspired me in those days was Aum Harmonics.

Right, right. There's an early Mind Valley binary. Right?

Yeah, it was around that time, I think maybe even before that, you were doing some stuff around these meditation tracks, Silver Method. And that was one of the things that actually I got turned on to that inspired me to start making music again. And I used to be a music producer back in the day. I said throw raves. I used to be a dj and I had a really successful business, but I lost everything.

So you were a pharmacist and a dj?

Yeah, DJ first doing that university, built this successful brand and then lost everything, then became a community pharmacist. And that was where I went through hell in my life, where I saw there was a lot of problems in the healthcare system. I didn't feel spiritually aligned with what I was doing. And I suppressed my real passion, my real love. And I had a lot of anger and frustration for losing everything. I blamed everything, you know, but myself. But then going through that, that healing process, I found my re. My love for music again. So I start make all this new music where I said, time, the rhythm of the breath. Because pranayama is all about rhythmic breathing. Breathing in different patterns of breath, of rhythmic rhythm.

And that's how soma emerged. So breath heals you, and you innovated upon this ancient practice by combining music, Your run and DJing ended up serving you to create soma. Breath work.

That's right. And then also realize was that pranayama has so many different other techniques. Like, they've become like a pharmacy of different techniques. If you want to unblock your nose, you can do that. If you want to fix constipation, you can do that. Anything.

You go to the tracks for this?

Yeah.

Okay. But first, how long did it take you to come out of that disease that was causing you to poop blood? 40 times a day, three to four months. That's it?

Yeah.

And how long did you have this disease?

I had it for over a year. Like, almost a year and a half.

So how do you know that it was breath work that brought you out rather than the disease just, you know, evolving and going away on its own?

Because I know from other people who haven't done what I do.

Right.

Who are still suffering, they're still on.

The medication years, years and years later.

Yeah, right.

And even the medical doctor said you're either going to be on this experimental drug or we're going to have to operate and remove your cost.

And I still haven't had a relapse.

You haven't relapsed. Right.

I'm so in remission.

Something's incredible. Were there other aspects of your help that you cured with breath work?

So I had a lot of issues like you know, from being burnt out. So my energy levels, my mojo was like whack.

I mean I've seen you DJ till like 4 or 5am in the morning, but like full on energy. So you obviously don't have energy issues anymore.

So a breath based lifestyle can help you have so much more energy, much more vitality. It can really enhance your stamina.

So, so we're going to come to that breath based lifestyle because that's an interesting concept. So I used to be really skeptical of breath work. I mean I, I quit Silicon Valley to become a meditation teacher.

Yes.

And Daniel Goldman wrote this really amazing book called Altered Traits. And he's talking about altered states. Right. And he says there are four ways to get to altered states. There's meditation, which he says is, is, is one of the easiest, Most accessible over 15, 000 studies showing the health benefits of meditation. But here's the crazy thing, most of those studies happened after 2010. So this is a really recent phenomenon. Breath work is relatively new. But he says breath work is also a really legitimate way to get to altered states. And then there are two others, which psychedelics, you know, ayahuasca, plant medicine and then neurotraining. Neurotraining. I mean the best facilities like Dave Asprey's 40 Years of Zen, that's 15 grand. Neurotrading is expensive. Psychedelics can be illegal and you know, you gotta be really careful. But meditation and breath work, this is what we all have at our disposal. Meditation is becoming super popular. Breath work is just being studied right now. And you in fact are currently your soma. Breathwork is being studied by Cambridge University.

Well, my mom said why don't you work really hard and go to Cambridge and study at Cambridge? Well, actually Cambridge is studying us. That's correct.

Which is unbelievable. And so just like meditation went through an exponential curve in terms of scientific proof, I'm sure the same thing's going to become true for breathwork. I'm still learning about this breath work. I'm still relatively new, but I've experienced it and the results that happen are mind blowing. I was. So if I can share a story, this wasn't Soma, but I was in Burning man at Playa Alchemist, which is this big pyramid style tent. And they have tons of different practitioners. This was two years ago. And they had a breath work teacher. I don't remember her name, but she was phenomenal. And I'm sitting there breathing and breathing and breathing, and I'm getting kind of annoyed because there's so much that I want to do. And I'm like, wait. I'm just lying on my back breathing, and all of a sudden a Tinkerbell like fairy come to me. I feel myself going to this altered dimension and a Tinkerbell like fairy come to me. And I'm thinking, wait, I'm not on any drugs. What the hell is going on? Am I hallucinating? And this, this fairy introduces herself and says, my name is Ripple. And I'm like, what are you doing here, Ripple? And she goes, you're naturally a shy introvert, but in Burning man there are many people you need to meet. I'm going to be guiding you. Now again, remember, I'm fully lucid. I think I'm imagining these things. But this fairy like creature comes into my space. I'm not on any drugs. But for the rest of the seven days at Burning Man, I would be meditating in the temple, closing my eyes, and I'd call on Ripple and I'd say, ripple, wake me up when I need to open my eyes. I'm looking for my friend, so and so. I've not found her in the playa. Cell phones don't work. If she happens to walk into the temple, let me know and open my eyes. 45 minutes later, I literally hear Ripple go, open your eyes. I open my eyes, and there's my friend Asa.

I love it.

What?

Yes.

And across Burning Man. On the final day of Burning Man, I lose my friends. There's a sandstorm about to burn the man, and I am miserable. I'm like, fuck, I can't find Jeffrey. I can't find Peter. I'm going to just accept the fact that I'm going to be watching the closing of Burning man alone. And I'm disappointed. So I go find an Akai and I meditate. And as I'm meditating, I hear this voice, this voice that started entering my being during breath work. And Ripple says, this is not the time to meditate. And I argue with her. I'm like, no, I'm miserable. I can't find my friends. I just want to sit here. And the boy says, start walking now. And I go, will it take away the loneliness? And the boy says, In 10 minutes, I start walking in 10 minutes. Above, Takith Farazi. He introduces me to Austin Mao, whom you now know. I meet a whole new group of friends, and my burn ends up being amazing. But here's the crazy thing. What the hell is ripple? Is this a fragment of my subconscious? Is this a part of my intuition? Given a voice? Is this. But it happened during breath work.

Yeah.

And so that's my crazy breathwork story. And that's why I'm now a believer, even though I was such a skeptic. I mean, breathing. So what is going on there? Because you mentioned breath work isn't just activating ATP, it's putting you in altered states.

Yeah.

And you have helped people go into these outside states using breath work versus psychedelics. Explain what the heck is going on.

Yeah. So think of breath where as a pharmacy. So you have all different drugs for different uses. Right. So there's the. The clinical stuff for, like, blood pressure and, you know, pain relief and all that, but there's the psychedelic recreational substances that you can create through the breath as well. So there are techniques like holotropic, which is probably what you did. You did something more like holotropic rebirthing, where. Which mimics psychedelics.

I see.

Right. And these practices have been rooted from ancient shamanic cultures and even, you know, the tantric cultures in India, yogic practices. So the breath they've known a thousand years is shamans, that it is a way to tap into the spirit world. Right. Because it's the same way plant medicines work. Yeah. So what we've just done is the biggest study on breath work, like with this technique, this psychedelic technique with Cambridge University. Okay. This is my SOMA breath protocol. Right. Where step by step, over 21 days. It's actually the same protocol we have in Breathwork for Life. The quest is step by step taking you to create the soma within. The soma within is a dose of, literally stands for dose D, O S E, Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and a cocktail of tryptamines. Tryptamines are your own endogenous dmt. Right. And these are released in certain circumstances, one where the oxygen levels go to a certain point, you know, lower than normal threshold. Okay. This triggers this awakening of this endogenous dmt, but also the suppression of Oxygen blood flow to certain areas of the brain. Because this is how psilocybin works. DMT works by suppressing blood flow to certain parts of the brain, associated consciousness, ordinary levels of waking consciousness which then awakens the unconscious mind. Right. The the subconscious realms. Now from a totally materialistic perspective, what you could say is when we tap into this, it's just your unconscious speaking to you in metaphors. Right. Or in a more spiritual understanding of reality. We could, or model of reality. We could say that we are now awakening to the other dimensions of reality that exists. And therefore spirit guides come to saints, angels. You know it's very common when I do breath work ceremonies that people have conversation with God they feel like having divine downloads.

Right. So things that, so the, the, the cocktail of chemistry that one might get from certain psychedelics.

Yeah.

You're able to activate in your body by adjusting your intake of oxygen. Carbon dioxide.

Yeah. By manipulating the amount of oxygen reaching your brain.

Right.

So by rhythmic breathing in a certain rhythm like a fast pan over a period of time will suppress the amount of oxygen goes to your brain in certain areas that creates a psychedelic effect. And also that low oxygen will wake up dmt. Because DMT comes in to stabilize cells under, in low oxygen environments. This is what some studies have shown that.

So that, that's really interesting. I remember in 2017 in Barcelona at Mind Valley University which is a three week thing that we do. You were there?

Yeah.

Wim Hof was one of our speakers and I got an opportunity to interview Wim Hof.

Yeah.

Wim Hof is, is known as the Iceman. This guy's broken Guinness World records for cold plunge for being able to run shirtless across the Antarctica. There's about to be a movie made about this man's life. He's a mega celebrity. So I was interviewing Wim Hof and he explained to me, he said I don't need to take any drug cuz I can create the drug in my body.

Yes.

By just using the power of bread.

Yeah.

And then he demonstrated, he said how many push ups can you do? So I said okay, I can do easily do knock out like 30 push ups. He says I want you to breathe. And then he showed me how to breathe and then he said now go do your push ups. And I knocked out like 36 or 38. How?

Cuz holding your breath?

Yeah, holding my breath. That's the other thing. I wasn't breathing as I was doing push ups. I'm like there's no way I'm going to Be able to do more than 30. I, I did 36. 36 to 38.

Yeah.

So what, what's going on there? What's your view on what Wim Hof said and why, why was I able to do more push ups by not breathing?

Wim's actually a good friend of mine. I produced a soundtrack to the Wim Hof method. You know that's a whole.

When I was long for your music on Instagram, I saw lots of compositions with you and Wim together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's he amazing guy and we've done some crazy breath works together. Just experiment to, to reach these shamanic, you know, auto states. But so what Wimder showed you there was how to hack your physiology to have more stamina and fitness, a burst of energy. So he did a breathing technique first that gives you this positive stress response, this dose. Right, right, the dose. But it also, what it does, it will, when you hold your breath for a certain point, it triggers a positive stress on the body. So when you take anything away from the body.

Yeah.

It forces the body to adapt to become more efficient at using it. Right, right. So when we take away oxygen for a brief period and Wim Hof method revolves a lot around taking oxygen for a brief period, increasing your breath hold time for a long time. And what that does is it makes the body become more efficient using oxygen, gain oxygen where it needs to go. So therefore then when you do the physical exercise, you have more stamina, you've got more oxygen, you know, releasing capacity and using utilization of oxygen. So that's what the Wim Hof method does very well. It gives you more fitness, stamina, it makes you more efficient using oxygen.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So that's one application of breath work.

So now let's go back to the Cambridge study. What did Cambridge find about soma?

So Cambridge now so they, they studied a different technique. The technique we did with Cambridge is the, the morpher psychedelic states, auto states, consciousness. So they, they found, okay, after doing 300 different brain map studies, okay. Using a combination of this very, very intricate EEG machines, okay. Measuring all different brainwave activities, different region of the brain as well as tet, which is this tracing technique to measure a subjective experience which they use a lot in psychedelic studies. Let's say they're studying ayahuasca, you know, psyocybin, dmt. They want to find what's the actual subjective user experience like of the psychedelics though. So they measure your bliss states, they measure your things like your Feeling of oneness, connection, like feeling like you're channeled by something divine. So they make a whole score based on that. What they found with our protocol was that as the dose increases over the four week period, they found a strong correlation that is in line with traditional psychedelics. Right. In the way it changes the activity of the brain. They use this measure of the neuro complexity of the brain, it's called the Lempel zip complexity. And they found that that rises in correlation to the dose of breath work in same relationship to the way psychedelics works, the same regions of the brain being activated. Right. And they also found that the blissfulness in our protocol is very, very clear. So not all cyclings make you feel blissed out, like, like, just like orgasmic or blissed out. Right. Some make you feel a little bit sick sometimes. Right. Or troubled and nervous, even anxious. But with our technique, it made people go into bliss, blissful.

And how long does the technique last?

So we were doing so the first week, 20 minute session, second week 40 minute session, and then the third week, a 60 minute full power session that is all about releasing the soma within.

I see, I see. So participants were doing 20 minutes of soma breathing. Yeah. Week one, 40 minutes in week two, six minutes in week three. And what they found was any long term effects to this?

Yeah. So even just the 22 minute session. Right. Which is the first week.

Right.

They found it had the same effects on the brain. Right. As a dose of psilocybin used to treat severe depression.

What?

Yes.

20 minutes was equivalent to the usage of psilocybin to treat depression.

Severe depression.

Severe depression. Now psilocybin, I know in studies is 300% more effective than antidepressants.

So there you go.

So this is pretty freaking.

This is a great alternative to psychedelics. So let's say you don't want to do psilocybin.

Right. Because that's. It's illegal in many countries.

Yeah.

Right.

Now this needs to be done as a full blown.

And psilocybin, by the way is mushrooms. Commonly. Yeah, mushrooms.

Now this needs to be expanded on. They want to go and do a phase one clinical trial with this for depression compared to ketamine. And so that's the next step. But what this other neurocytes found, Jeff Taron, who studied our 22 minute dose and University of California are now actually expanding the study right now as we speak. They found that. So there's an area of the brain called the default mode network. Right. And this is the brain's Version of the ego is what worries about the future, gets hung up on the past. It judges, criticizes, it's the self talk is the monkey mind. Right. There's always going around. Well they found with psychedelics this area of the brain just goes offline, it just goes quiet. Right. And this allows the, the unconscious mind to look at past events and to reframe those events. So if you're working with a therapist, it can be a powerful tool to reframe the past. The past that's holding you back, haunting you. Right. So just with 22 minute session they found that the, the DM, the default mode network. Right. Goes down inactivity in the same way as psych used to treat severe depression like psilocybin and mdma, which is profound.

And does it mean that one can work with a therapist to maybe remove or chocolate beliefs?

And the other great thing is you can add your voice guided meditation over the top. So that's what we do with so breath is I add an extra layer to this. Right. This is what I call neurosomatic programming. Because you is working with the soma, the body somatic programming through words, language and the body to transform. That's why we get such powerful results in just 22 minutes.

That, that's incredible. So you were going to demonstrate something to us. You were going to demonstrate how you can control your heartbeat with your breath? Yes, let's, let's go into that.

Yeah. So the reason I want to show you this is because I want to show you that your breath is like the remote control for your mind, body and spirit. So it gives us power, control over things we thought we had no control over. One of those things is your heartbeat. Right. If you can control your heartbeat means you can tap into the autonomic nervous system itself, which basically means that you can control your physiology in the same way medicine, medication, drugs would work because drugs are usually used to stimulate either your nervous system or to decrease the activity of your nervous system. But now we can do the breath. So I'm going to show you how in just like a minute.

Would love to see that.

I can raise my heart rate up by 30 beats per minute and back down by 30 minutes.

Amazing.

Should we do it?

Yep, let's do it.

All right, cool. So I've got my little handy gadget.

Okay.

So, so first what I'm going to do is I'm going to just to lower my heart rate down.

What's the heart rate now?

So the moment it's. If you look at this The. The smaller number. It's 80 beats per minute.

80 beats per minute.

So it's normal. I mean, a little bit nervous talking to Vishwanakriani.

Right.

So I'm just going to lower my heart rate down a little bit.

Wow. 76.

Now I'll send it up by 30 of each minute.

Ready? From 80 to 91, it's gone up to 101. 107. 109.

Not bad. Now.

Now it's going back down. That's crazy. And you're not moving your body. You're just using your breath. 67, 66, 65, 62. That's impressive. Yeah, you took it. You took it all the way from 80 to 107. That's 27 beats higher. All the way down to 60, which is 18 beats lower. You did that, like seamlessly in, I guess maybe two minutes, what was going on? Because I barely even saw you breathing.

Yeah. So I. I mean, I can make it more dramatic. Yeah, but it's a bit hot in here. But basically, the. The simple relationship with the breath, with your heart rate, is this. Every time you breathe in, your heart rate goes up a bit.

Right.

Every time you breathe out, your heart rate goes down a bit. So breathing in stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. Breathing out simulates the parasympathetic. When you breathe in and hold and you contract up the sphincter muscles and contract it up and pull. Because your sphincter muscles connect to your nervous system. This is called mula bandha in yoga. When you contract and hold. Right. This is Antara kumbaka. It creates a shot of adrenaline and it sends your heart rate up. And that can act like a natural steroid because that's how adrenaline works. Lowers inflammation. It can also create positive stress on the body. And it can work like adrenaline, give you a burst of energy.

You can. You can give yourself that burst of adrenaline or.

Yes.

So calm yourself down. If you're feeling anxiety. How long does it take to learn something like that?

I can show you how to do it like 30 seconds in 30 seconds?

Yeah, let's do that. That sounds good. Deal.

Okay, let's do it. Cool. All right. You put this on this. You wanna do it?

Okay, great.

So let's get your heart rate first down. So to get your heart rate down right, you're already calm. It's good. You're at like 77, right? It's okay. Now if you breathe in, hold your breath now. Now on the exhale. And hold your breath on the exhale.

Am I lowering it right now?

Yeah, you should lower it.

Now breathe in fast.

Breathe in, breathe out. And hold. Perfect. And just hold it. Just keep holding it as long as you. Is that as long as you can hold it? I need to train you to hold it longer.

I can go more.

Yeah. Okay, so now let's raise your heart rate. Okay, so what are you going to do? You're going to breathe in and hold your breath on the inhale, but at the same. So imagine you're breathing in through your sphincter. You're breathing in, pulling up like you're holding on to something. You're, you know, your shits, basically.

Yeah.

Breathing in and really hold in your breath. And just imagine pulling up from the earth, the. The oxygen. Up, up, up. Watch, watch what's going up. Now really squeeze. It's all about your ability to squeeze that up and hold. Really?

Yeah.

It's starting to go. It's starting to go. Keep, keep squeezing.

77 to 98. 85%, right? Yeah, yeah, but still 77 or 98, that was pretty cool, right? Yeah.

He goes to 98.

Yeah.

Oh, brilliant.

Oh, sorry, my bad. I was looking at the wrong number. 77 to 82. Okay. Not as impressive.

Not as that, but it's coming up there slightly. So I'll give you a way to do it.

That's very cool. That's very cool. So I'm definitely going to be checking out SOMA breathwork on NAL Bell and thank you for this. This was really, really, really cool. I failed the tests, but again, I had two minutes. So a couple other questions. Well, firstly, you met your wife at Mindvalley University. Tell us about that.

Yeah, that was a really amazing story, actually. So I went to my man university. Like, really? Heart opened, right. And one of the reasons why my.

Heart only 17 Barcelona so open. Right.

Was because there was this mutual friend of my. My wife. I hadn't met my wife yet, but a mutual friend called Mariana. And she had just done the RTC course by Marissa. Yep. Who's a. Happens to be a good friend of mine. So she wanted volunteers. So she was like, begging me, can I practice on you? And I was like, well, there's nothing wrong with me. She goes, you know, there must be something you want to work on. I said, right, well, I've always had commitment issues and I do feel like ready now to have a. Have the one that, you know, that person in my life that I go all the way with. She goes, okay, let's work on that. So she did A whole hypnosis session on me, all right? And it was really deep. It was all about overcoming commitment issues and finding a soulmate and opening a heart to connection and trust and all this. So she did the session. It was very powerful. Anyway, I went with my whole heart open to Mind Value University. And I had a really amazing time. It was a beautiful time, had a lot of fun. Still hadn't found the one. And I was sat down with Marissa Pier, like, towards the end of the event, she asked me, like, neeraj, you know, how's your event been? Have you enjoyed it? I'm like, oh, it's been amazing. I've met so many cool people, but I haven't met the one yet. It'd be so nice to meet the one, you know, like, here's the perfect place. She goes, don't worry, I'll find you somewhere. The next day, I go to a party where I've been invited to dj. You're at it and a few peeps. So I go to it and within five minutes I meet Natasha. We have this instant connection and we are all over each other to a point where people are like, yo, get a room, get a room. And we've been together since that day. Like, that connection with five minutes with her as a child is. She's almost two years old.

So cute.

But the crazy story is that the other person that volunteered with Mariana for the exactly the same thing, right, Finding the soulmate connection, right, Was Natasha. What are the chances out of four or five hundred people? My value, the two people she practices, right? Happens to me and Natasha, and then.

We met to hear that story. And that's one of the reasons why you keep coming back and giving so much to the community.

Yeah.

And DJing.

Yeah, I've been. I mean, I found my tribe. Coming to Mindvalley, I found my tribe and a great testing ground for. For what I do.

So going to DJing. Tell us about the BJ thing that you do, right? How do you combine breath, work and DJing?

Yeah. So I always was, from years ago, from, Since I was 17 years old, a DJ, you know, producing music, playing on stages. And I ran a huge rave out of 2,000 people rave for three years in the UK. And that was my thing. I always loved playing on stages. But the thing with that culture is very hedonistic. It comes with a lot of sleep at nights. We were doing insane amounts of drugs back then, drinking a lot, and it was not a sustainable lifestyle. But I still love the music. Right. Then when I went to live in Copangan, which is this amazing island which is full of like conscious practices and cool stuff like what we do with breath work and ecstatic dance. I discovered ecstatic dance. So ecstatic dance was this way of having an amazing time on the dance floor without taking substances. And it's more like done like a ceremony. So I got into this world and I actually ended up running a big ecstatic dance festival in Copang. We did like seven of them over the years and it was amazing. But here is when I had the divine download of bringing the breath into it. To use the breath or techniques to get you into all six conscious to give you that burst of energy, the dose dosc that make you feel blissed out on command as a replacement for the, the mdma, the size Ivan, the drugs that people saying, the alcohol. And as a way to also open people's hearts to deeper connection. So I decided to make my own ceremonies where now I teach this to others. And we have, you know, over three and a half thousand instructors in Saint Breath who are all trained as BJ's which said this DJ sounds a disc jockey, BJ sounds a breath jockey. Right. And they, they're really good PJs and.

They bring music into it or they teach people how to breathe.

No. So what they do is they use my soundtracks, I produce with, with my amazing musicians and myself and they learn the art of mixing music together, creating an amazing journey of music. But the same time guiding people.

Wow.

Through the breath and guided language, you know, hypnotic language, neurosmatic programming. Because I take people into peak states.

I've witnessed you do this in the dance floor at Mini Mind Valley events. People will be going crazy for your music and dancing and just so into the the mood and you know, our parties and events, less than half the people even touch alcohol.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Hardly any of my friends I haven't touched haven't had a drink in seven months. Most of my friends don't really.

Yeah.

But people are in a celebratory mood. They are blissful, they are happy. And then you'll certainly get everyone to stop. You will shift the music and everyone starts breathing. Just absolutely mesmerizing to see. So it's fascinating to see dance culture and DJ culture in this direction. Okay, but now back to breath work. You say you can use breath work to help alleviate a cold. What else? You demonstrated heartbeats, but what else can we use for?

So, so let's talk about breath based lifestyle.

Okay.

Right. If you have a breath based lifestyle which is really becoming breath aware and understanding how your breathing affects everything in your life.

Right, right.

I believe you can prevent most issues. You won't need to go to the pharmacist. Right. So let's talk about just simply what breath waste.

As a pharmacist.

As a pharmacist. And then if you do get any symptoms, you can use a breath as well to alleviate symptoms. So let's talk about both sides. So in a nutshell, living a breath based lifestyle is understanding this concept that disease is usually caused by a couple of things, oxidative stress, which is actually the by product of making energy in the body breathing itself. So the less you need to breathe, actually the longer you live, I see the, the slower you age. Breathing makes us age, right? Unfortunately every, you know, everyone's watching this right now. Breathing interesting, you're aging a little bit. So yogic practices, what they real was this relationship of oxygen making a sage. You've seen it, you've seen an apple, it goes brown. That, that and cars, they rust, right? The metal rust. We have this internal rusting going on all the time. It's called oxidation, oxidative stress.

And we see that in animals as well. Animals that breathe rapidly have lower lifespans than animals that have lower.

Yes. So like elephants, whales, they have very slow breathing rates like one to two breaths a minute. Rats, mice, they have very fast breathing rates like 150, 200 breaths a minute. So if you want to get out of the rat race, right, and you want to be like a majestic elephant instead, you need to learn how to breathe slower. So simple way to do that, okay, is to go on an oxygen diet, right? So actually in this modern world we breathe too much, we over breathe. So just like over consumption of food, we can over breathe. So here's a big problem. Every time you hyperventilate, if you breathe harder and faster than you need to, you actually get less oxygen going to where it needs to go in the body. Because the second cause of disease is low body tissue oxygenation. So we, our job of our red blood cells is to drop off oxygen to the cells of our body, muscles, brain, heart, organs. Right? Now if this is disrupted right then you get disease because we need oxygen in those areas. What causes that is hyperventilation. Because every time you breathe out, you breathe out CO2. Carbon dioxide is what tells your blood where to drop off oxygen in the body. Now if you hyperventilate or if you breathe like huffing and puffing or inefficiently you get not only more oxidative stress, but you also get low body tissue oxygenation. If you just hyperventilate for 10, 20 seconds. Right now, if you did that for 20 seconds, you'll feel lightheaded, dizzy and fuzzy. Right now that's what's causing a lot of diseases, suffering in the world and heart, high blood pressure and inflammation. So many issues, symptoms are caused by this problem and that's caused by stress, being too excited and anxious and nervous and worried, having trauma and baggage from the past. Emotional issues of past also affects the way we breathe. And so the way we breathe affects all the physiological functions in the body that makes us live and thrive, right? So having a breath based lifestyle means normalizing your breathing. So if you've been hyperventilating, if you've been over breathing, you've got symptoms of disease. And you'll know this because you're fatigued in the morning, it's hard to wake up. You might have symptoms like congestion, asthma, inflammation, high blood pressure, right? You can actually turn these around by following a breath based lifestyle. And that begins just like if you were to go on a diet of food to lose weight, reducing the amount of oxygen you breathe into your body. All right? So the first step is to just focus on nasal breathing, right? Because when you breathe through your nose, you have less airflow going in and out through your body. If you breathe through your mouth, and a lot of people do unconsciously breathe through their mouth, especially if you talk a lot, if your profession involves a lot of talking, right, for long periods of time, you'll end up hyperventilating through your mouth over breathing, letting go of CO2, and this causes all the problems I'm talking about. So by controlling your breathing, becoming aware of if you're breathing through your nose, your mouth, especially when you sleep. And there's things you can do to correct your hyperventilation, your sleep, you can start to correct this and normalize your breathing. So first is nasal breathing, right? And also breathing through your nose acts as a filter for the air. So your natural air conditioner, right? If you breathe through your mouth, you're much more likely to get asthma, allergies and other symptoms, all right? Because it doesn't filter the air. So nasal breathing, second is reducing your breathing, right? So if you just spend a period in a day, it just needs to be one or two minutes, even just observing your breath and trying to make your breath as silent and subtle as possible, where you get a slight feeling of air hunger, right? Slight feeling, not like where you're suffocating, but slight feeling of air hunger. Right. Then what this will do is it raises your CO2 levels in your body and your body starts to adapt to having more CO2, which is a signal. And it. And you become more efficient at dropping off oxygen. And over time, even if you just start with a couple of minutes a day, start to expand this throughout the day and make it into a habit, what you'll find is now you're getting much more oxygen to your cells and your. Your mental clarity goes up, the alertness of your brain goes up. You. You wake up with more energy and enthusiasm. So many things your life will start to change just by this one little change. Your. Your breathing habits. Yeah.

That's amazing. And we can learn all of this in the summer, the summer program, which you'll find in my membership.

But then what we can do is we can take it to another level. So then we can use pranayama techniques that starts to hack your physiology to be more efficient using oxygen. And one technique, which is called nishesha, or chakra, this is actually what it powers our Breath Work for Life Quest. It's the most revered technique in pranayama, and it's the primary technique in our protocol. What it does is it allows you to hold your breath beyond 60 to 90 seconds. When you can do that, that's when we release the soma within. But it's when you also take away oxygen for a brief period from the body and you trick the body into thinking it's running out of oxygen. And what that does, it's just like going on a starvation diet. Like a fasting. Yeah, Intermittent hypoxia. It's called intervene hypoxia. It's very similar to intermittent fasting, where you just take away food for like a few hours in a day. So your body then adapts to becoming more efficient using what oxygen is actually got. And just think of having a company. What happens when you throw too much money at your team? Yeah, they become inefficient.

Right.

They get spoiled. Same thing happens, your body. If you have too much abundance of oxygen, it gets spoiled too. So if you take away oxygen, you limit how much oxygen it's allowed to have. It adapts that to you doing really well with less oxygen. And then over time, your breathing rate slows down. You have more red blood cells, you get better blood flow around your body. And over time, you'll slow your breathing rate down and become like a majestic whale.

Love that.

Rather than that rat in the rasta races, huffing and puffing all that up.

Thank you, Niraj. Now, where can people find you?

What's your so yeah, my Instagram is @neerajnaikofficial. Okay. But we also have the sober brand. Yeah. And we also have so breath.

Somabreath.com.

Yeah.

Awesome. And for those of you who are mindvalley members, check out Breathwork for life. And how many days is it?

It's 14 days.

14 days. And you get to go really deep into bringing breath work into your life. Thank you, Niraj. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you. Breath Work for life. Follow neeraj@instagram nirajnai official and check out soma breath.com amazing.