249 Niraj Naik: SOMA Breath For Less Stress

What's the best thing that the yogis have done for us? And that is they taught us how to have an off switch for stress. And that off switch for stress is the breath and the exhale. And by learning to exhale properly and to hold your breath and control your breath in certain ways, we actually can control the entire physiology of our body. If we modulate our autonomic nervous system further with breath retention, where we bring the oxygen levels down in the bloodstream, we trigger a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters released in the body. You start to create the chemistry in your body with dopamine and serotonin that actually makes you take action.

That's Neeraj Naik and this is episode 249 of Wellness Force Radio, where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well. In this podcast, we learn about the science story and physiology behind Soma Breath, a revolutionary advanced breathwork meditation technique. We're talking with its founder and my friend, Neeraj Naik, a musician, wellness entrepreneur and former clinical pharmacist with a truly inspiring story of how he's overcome health struggles and let go of a life that wasn't serving him, it was actually killing him. He then stood and breathed in his power. After decades of training in Ayurveda yoga and multiple wellness modalities to found Soma, which has caught fire in popularity globally this year. This podcast is huge for me too, because I'm actually recording this intro live from Koh Phangan island in Thailand. I'm here to experience this Soma breath work myself. I honestly came out here to expand this understanding from my own breath work and experience a different culture to really practice what I preach. When it comes to us discovering this physical and emotional intelligence so we can live our lives well. Sometimes we get to travel 9,000 miles from the west coast of Thailand to truly discover. I've been here for five days so far. I can say that the Thai people are some of the kindest and giving people I've ever met. I knew as soon as Neeraj and I recorded this podcast and from the two weeks after when I joined the SOMA 21 day awakening breath protocol. I knew based on my styles of breath we've talked about on the show before, like box breathing, warrior breath, I knew there was something very special about this Soma breath practice. Which is why I'm thrilled to bring you this powerhouse podcast because this, this conversation was literally 60% of what called me to the island to take this five day immersive experience with him the first week of January. I wanted to be the N equals one to speak to you not only from my own personal experience of breathwork, but also because what I believe this unique style of breathwork will be and the ripple of impact it's going to have in our wellness industry in 2019. I have this gut feeling actually after seeing so many of these diet and lifestyle trends come and go in wellness over the past 16 years, that I chose to dedicate this month of my life out here in Thailand to train and practice and immerse myself in the Soma breathwork and in its community. This breathwork stems from Neeraj's training with Wim Hof and combines rhythmic breathing and special music that he calls Breathe in Beats. So whether you're the analytical person who wants the science behind any kind of wellness practice or you're more spiritual that really wants to know the emotional and the higher connection to a wellness practice, Neeraj delivers huge in this show we'll talk about his journey from the clinical pharmacy to overcoming ulcerative colitis and depression where he healed himself with the holistic techniques of yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, breath and Pranayama to let go of his disease without any medication or surgery to found soma. We also explore the early stages of emotional conditioning in life and how this type of breath work can help to transform and heal trauma both emotionally and physically for men and women. We talk about vibration on this show, but not just the kind of vibration that you hear about in Woo Woo circles. We also talk about the science and the measurement of these lower vibrational emotions like fear and shame and guil and how this Soma breath work and breathing in Beats can deeply encode new vibrations for new possibilities for what Neeraj calls a lasting peak human experience. So make sure do not miss these show notes. Go to wellnessforce.com249 this is a very special offer from Neeraj where you can get involved and sign up for your very own 21 day awakening breath protocol and start 2019 with what we all deserve, a deep breath and a new opportunity to live our lives well. If you're listening to this show and you're already just ready to dig in and start your own 21 day breathwork protocol. Just go direct to wellnessforce.com soma you'll get 10% off. Just use the code WellnessForce to get 10% off over at wellnessforce.com soma for your 21 day awakening breath protocol. Now let's get into the show where we understand how Soma Breath can have lasting changes on our bodies and minds for less stress. With my friend, Neeraj Naik, I am Josh Trent. This is Wellness Force. My guest today is a former former pharmacist from the UK turned holistic wellness expert. He healed himself from chronic illness using yoga, pranayama and Ayurvedic practices. And he was inspired to share his knowledge about this with suffering patients and founded thereenegadepharmacist.com this is a blog where he shares with thousands of people about natural ways to get healthy, get off medications, and overcome autoimmune and digestive issues. But the real magic and the power that he is sharing with us today is called Soma Breath. He now leads a certification program giving people the ability to ancient healing protocols with modern science to help men and women clear negative patterns, heal past traumas, and reach what he calls the peak human experience. He's a Hay House author and mindvalley author and is also the host of Wim hof, AKA the Iceman events worldwide. Welcome to Wellness Force. Neeraj Naik.

Hello, Josh. Such a pleasure to be here.

What is this peak human experience that you talk about? What is that definition?

Well, the peak human experience is something that I think everyone is seeking from for which is like, how good can I possibly feel? And people resort to two various ways of doing this. Either take like, recreational drugs, they exercise like crazy, they go and dance in raves and clubs, watch TV or whatever they want to do. Having sex is another way of getting there. Yes, but what I'm talking about is lasting peak human experiences where you, it's. You create such a divine connection with this higher power, this higher self, which I believe is like a transcended version of yourself that it can feel like you've seen God, you've spoken to the Almighty. And I don't want to sound like some Bible preacher or anything like that, but the people who go through our practices with Soma Breath, they all describe having the most euphoric, the most ecstatic, the highest vibe they've ever experienced. And it lasts. It's not like something that just is there for the moment they do it. It's something that carries on into their life. And that's what I define as the peak human experience.

Yeah, I love the way you talked about that because there are so many of these states can be fleeting. You know, we had Jaden Will on the show a while back, and we're talking about these, you know, altered states of consciousness. This billions and billions of dollars that men and women across the world are spending on getting to these altered states of consciousness. But I think really when I look at your work, what I'm so excited to talk with you about today is the power of breath. You know, breath, once we have the education and experience, it's free. We can always go there. And one thing that I know about you though, is that, you know, earlier on in your life, you were not really connected to the breath. There's quite the story, Neeraj, to go from you as a young man going through your thresholds. I wanna go to a point when I did research for you, it really starts with you in pharma. You know, you were behind the counter, you were dishing out pills to people, basically upending this broken sick care system. You actually became so stressed out, you had health complications of your own. Can you take us to that moment? I think this is a fascinating threshold that you went through to be able to found soma breath.

Yeah, so actually prior to becoming a pharmacist, I actually, while studying at university for the pharmacy degree, I was actually running raves like some. I was a pioneer of this music scene called drum and bass music, which is really famous now. But I was right in the early days of it and we were running like 2,000 capacity raves every month for three years. And it was. These were just peak human experiences, drug induced by MDMA and dance music. And people used to go crazy wild. It was like a massive celebration of life. And I was a thrill seeker. I was always into how to get as high as humanly possible. And I went for a very, very hedonistic time during this period, as you can imagine. But I crashed and burned and lost everything and I ended up as a pharmacist. I went back, finished my degree, ended up being a pharmacist, and I became an educated drug dealer. Okay, so now I was like legally giving, dishing out pills. But I realized at this point this was actually the best thing that happened to me because I got massive insight into the nature of our healthcare system and how much people suffer on a huge scale. So we've become more and more aware now. I think the UK is yet to catch up with the extent of drug taking as America, America, you have TV adverts on TV telling you to buy these pills because it's going to make you feel better when at the bottom there's all these side effects telling you the truth about them. And I was getting inundated with people coming into pharmacies who were suffering from side effects and then going away with shopping bags full of drugs because they needed more drugs to counteract the side effects of the drugs they were taking. And I was depressed. My soul crushed. I went from this, like, big hippie love and light kind of like running these rave kind of environments to suddenly being in this depressed, negative, horrible situation. Because not only are you dealing with people who are suffering so much and you can't do anything about it because the system is broken, but you are working like a robot slave. Like, you're literally dishing out pills on a conveyor belt. Everyone who's working with you is, like, frantic and stressed out, and you're standing on your feet all day long. You know, sometimes you have like five, 10 minutes to have lunch. So I'd rush up and have a McDonald's for lunch. It was quite common for me to eat junk food and not sleep very well and then drink heavily and take stuff to forget about my worries on the weekends. And what actually happened was, I think I became like average, normal kind of member of society because I felt that this is actually what a lot of people, especially professionals like doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, accountants, even, who work in corporate environments or work in the healthcare system are living. This is the lifestyle they're living. And a lot of doctors die young. A lot of dentists and pharmacists, they're addicted to medications and smoking and drinking, and they die young. Actually, they have the highest rates of suicide. So I realized, actually, that I'm not much different from at this point than a lot of people on the planet. And I wanted to do something about it. I desperately want to do something, but I felt there was no way out. And then, by stroke of fate, like a close friend of mine, he was a doctor, also disillusioned with the medical system and just life in general. And a music producer, actually, who was disillusioned with the music industry. They dragged. They're like two of my best friends. They dragged me to the Tony Robbins event, and I was like, what is this Tony Robbins stuff? And I just thought this was all, yeah, kind of rah, rah, motivational guru stuff. And I, you know, I didn't want to believe in it, but I went to it and literally changed my life completely. Like, the. The last day of it was all about health. And it was the first time I ever learned anything about the effects of diet and nutrition on the body and how it can be used as a way to reverse diseases. Even. So, being a pharmacist, we don't get any education at all on Food and diet, nutrition.

And we're told, is it literally like one day or something? Like, is it a workshop?

No, no, not even, not even a day. Like, doctors maybe get a week. We don't get any of that.

You get nothing?

Nothing, man. It's just all based on drugs and the fact that diseases can't be cured and, and there's no influence on it other than medication. And, you know, it's very biased system. It's a very very, I mean, it's very obvious now you just look at it and follow the money that the educational system that we receive is funded by drug companies and their agenda is profit. So why would they want pharmacists to know a lot more outside of the box? You know? So anyway, I started to apply this knowledge in the pharmacies and I started to change people's diets by writing out healthy shopping lists. And you would be surprised how much positive transformations I had with people within like two weeks, three weeks, people were coming off their pills, couldn't believe it. Doctors were phoning me up going, what are you doing? Like, you know, this is, I'm like, oh, I used to get scared, like when they used to call me, but they would actually be congratulating me and telling me to keep going because they didn't have a clue about diet. There was this one patient who came in who was on every single heart medication you can be on. And he was in his 50s. He looks, didn't look unhealthy, right? He just, he was on all these drug drugs for blood pressure and cholesterol and all this stuff. So I just said to him straight, I said, what do you eat during the day? And he actually had a relatively okay diet. He didn't have factory foods. He yet pretty like natural whole food diet. And then I was like, what do you drink? And he goes, oh, I love my coffee and I love my Coke. And he was basically drinking 15 cups of coffee a day, right? And he was having three spoonfuls of sugar in every single one of them and in between them he'd be having fizzy drinks. So I was like, oh my God, there you go, that's the one. So I told his doctor, the doctor had no idea. He didn't even ask him this before he was on all the drugs. And we got him off that and changed his coffee addiction for something better, more healthy, and boom, he was feeling better again. So a lot of the problems we have in the world, in the healthcare system is bad education from the people that we trust to Go for our health advice.

And really in the background, there's always some type of metaphor that you could construct that is what people don't know really does hurt them. You know, what people don't know about health and what you do with the Renegade Pharmacist, I'm curious, like, how did that name even come up, the Renegade Pharmacist? There's an edge and there's a story there, right? I think you had gone to. To actually push this hierarchy of values around, the value of nutrition. And they started the program, but then at some point they turned to you and they said, we can't do this program. It's too renegade. Can you tell us about that?

That's it. That's it. So I actually, I got promoted to the head office of one of the largest supermarket chains in the world. And they own the largest supermarket in the UK Company that starts with a W. Basically, I came up with this very novel idea, which is to me, very simple, which was to hand out healthy shopping lists for people based on their health conditions through a website. And then because they have home delivery of groceries, they could deliver perfect customized meals to people through the home shopping channel. Now this seems like an amazing concept, right, which should help millions of people in the world. However, it was called to Renegade and everything was watered down that I'd said to go on this website to the point where there's no point even launching it. Then they shelved the idea. And this is when I got struck with lightning bolt. It was like at firstly, my life crumbled in front of me because I was. I just couldn't believe it. I was just totally disillusioned with the whole planet because I was like, here's a chance where I can really serve a lot of people. And for some reason, the God or spirit or whatever you want to call it, you know, Allah, Krishna, Jehovah, whatever, didn't want me to do this. And I felt disconnected spiritually from my higher self, like completely. And I got hit by this lightning bolt of a chronic illness called ulcerative colitis. And that left me housebound for almost a year. And this was actually the best thing that ever happened to me.

How is that possible? Can we pause just for a moment and take a breath? You know, no pun intended. Because I think about the incredible vice that that must have felt like for you to. To literally be housebound for a year. Like, were you angry at God? Like, did you think there wasn't a God at that point?

Oh, yeah. I became a total atheist. I was ready to surrender and die. I had enough of the world. I. I was just done with it, you know? Like, I felt I tried so many times to escape the pharmacy. And this is a great thing, like, because our subconscious mind will. Will create in your body the conditions based on what you really, really want. And what I really, really, really, really wanted was to never work as a pharmacist as again in a community pharmacy. And actually working the corporation was even worse, I think, than working the pharmacy. Like, people were even more disconnected. There was crazy hierarchies, and everyone just was soulless. Like, there was no personality. So I was also terrified of working in a corporation at the top of the game in the head office, you know, I was also terrified there was this all working. So I just wanted to be a musician, man. I just wanted to be a dj. I want to be a rock star, you know, that was my real passion, like, but I couldn't do it. I was being this pharmacist guy, and boom. I think the subconscious mind manifests in you the conditions that you most desire. And I didn't want to be a pharmacist, so I got sick with an illness, which meant there was no way I could ever go back to that profession. I burnt bridges with it completely. I had no income, I had no money, I had no job. And by grace of God or whatever, luck, fame, fortune came to me where my now very close friend of my family, Swami Ambakananda, she came and she taught me the. The foundations of pranayama yoga and Ayurveda. And within a few months, I was like, back to normal.

Wow. So hold on. She came to you? Did you feel like you said your subconscious mind manifests the exact outcome you desired? Do you think that your subconscious mind pulled in, Swami?

I think so. I think, like, attracted her. She was already knew. She knew about me. Like, she knew, you know, she real friends and stuff. But she really came deeply to the rescue during this point. Actually, I even wrote with her. I made a guided meditation, which was the translation of the Katha Upanishad, which is the dialogue with death. It's a very, very powerful scripture in the ancient Vedic texts. And it basically is all about your man's first dialogue with death. Okay. And come into terms of death. And actually, this was a point when I did this where I. I actually thought at one point I might die because I was. I lost like 20 kilos in weight, and I was only like 65 kilograms. I'm not a big guy. Yeah. So I Lost like a quarter of my body weight. And it was, there was no like hope actually. I was getting closer and closer to, to feeling like I was going to die anyway. And I was having all these weird lights and visions and all kinds of weirdness of what you'd get from like not eating and fasting for so long because I couldn't eat. Anything I ate just went straight through me, straight through me. I was going to toilet like 50 times a day. It was so nasty. But I was given two choices by the, the doctors and this was the turning point. The first one was either you become a guinea pig for a drug that's never been tested before. The second one was have your colon removed and have a colostomy bag. So the age of 30 to be on a colostomy bag, where you're shooting into a bag for the rest of your life is just, I mean, I'd rather be dead than have to even do that.

You're not going to be able to go party and dance or be a rock star at all if you have.

A bag on your hip. It's just not a good look, right?

Yeah, it's not fashionable.

Yeah, you know, it was really depressing. So, you know, so I actually was desperately seeking the third path and I knew, you know, I went back, I looked at a bit of Tony Robbins stuff again and I, but I was left like there was something missing from all of that. A lot of the stuff that was out there on the Internet even. There's something deeply missing from what they were telling you about diet, nutrition and, and actually to reverse severe problems like diet and nutrition goes to a certain point where the symptoms haven't got so bad. You can actually like type 2 diabetes, you can really solve certain conditions like that. But colitis, ulcerative colitis, you need something else. You need some deeper knowledge to really work with these spiritual stress related, emotional traumatic conditions which are autoimmune conditions. So autoimmune conditions such as ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, you know, chronic inflammation. A lot of these things, they, they stem from deep emotional trauma. And for that, that spiritual disturbance to actually reverse that, you need to go back to when we were like amazing experts at fixing these problems. And this was a time of the yogis, the, the rig veda, the, the. Even before that, the shamanic traditions, the.

Yes.

Now we have a new resurgence of shamanism where people are going to get plant medicine to, to. And it does work. You know, it reveal. Relieves a lot of stress in people and people's emotions and traumas from the past can actually be fixed. However, I actually found that actually there's a way for us to get to the same place without having to take anything. And that was a big aha moment for me.

That was a huge aha moment. And I'm sitting here smiling because I'm feeling just the incredible hero's journey you've been on, my friend. I mean, I just want to pause here and acknowledge the things that you've gone through. I know people listening, maybe they've had ulcerative colitis or any kind of digestive issues themselves. And sometimes it can feel like they're in the body pit of hell, like there's nowhere to go. And I'm curious for you, when you're at the lowest point, how did you actually transcend? Was it working with Swami, or was it something more connected to the divine?

I think everything is divine consciousness. I think we just choose to either tune into it or not. And it comes from your level of vibrational energy. L O V E. Love. I call it love. So the more love you have for yourself, the more. And others, the more connected you get to this divine energy, I call it. You know, like, it's that. It's that feeling of knowing when you know that what you're doing is in the flow and you're flowing and, yeah, what you're going to do is going to work. That's that, I believe, is when you tap into source. And it comes from knowing how to change your emotional state. And that's what all these ancient shamanic yogic practices were all about, was about changing states, changing your emotional state from fear. Fear is the one that really binds us to. To the. To the earth in a. In a way where we're. We're in survival mode, you know? Yes, fear. And then there's anger, these heavy emotions. Anger, rage, guilt. You know, guilt is actually a really, really terrifying emotion to experience for long periods of time. And it can just paralyze you. Guilt are paralyzing emotions, right, where you just can't do anything. And, you know, I've had it before, you know, so.

Yes.

So it's like if we can change that state, we can change that emotional state without using drugs, without using antidepressants, without even needing to resort to, you know, psychedelics and things like that, but do it just naturally through our own body, then we're getting somewhere. And that's why I focused on. So what happened was my swami taught me the foundations of pranayama and Pranayama is our ancient science of breath that comes from yoga, from India. It supposedly originates in the Hindu Kush region, the Indus Valley, like we're talking like thousands of years ago. Nobody even really knows true origins of yoga. Pranayama and yoga go hand in hand. So you imagine pranayama is a branch, is part of the branch of, like Hatha yoga, of yoga. Yoga has many different branches, okay? Now traditionally, all branches are very important, okay? Whereas now in the west where we have the yoga industrial complex where yoga is manufactured and in every single fitness studio, people are just focusing on the asana, okay? The asana is the physical movement and postures and all that stuff which is good for strengthening and getting a stronger physical body. However, it misses out the real purpose and the art and the beauty of yoga. And yoga is about liberation. Yoga understands that we are all divine beings and the God is within us if we choose to follow, go there, and that we are also a product of our imprinting. So tantra is actually would be more correct to say yoga comes from tantra. Tantra and yoga are the same thing. Yoga is the mind aspect. Tantra is the doing aspects, the instruction.

I think people get tantra confused with sexuality, though. That's not what I'm hearing from you.

Yeah, no, no, it should not confuse again. There's many branches. The sexual component, I'll go on to that in a moment because it's very important to yoga as well, is part of the moving of the energy that allows you to have the peak human experience. Okay? So yoga actually is designed to allow you to break free of those chains of your human conditioning. So your human conditioning occurs mostly in the 0 to 7 years of age. And all these tantra practices are actually designed to make you overcome the seven year conditioning, okay? And actually the Essenes and the Jesuits, they, they have a saying which says, give me the boy for the first seven years and I'll show you the man. Which basically they understood if you take a child who's, you know, when it's born and they condition them, they will become the Jesuit man. The Jesuit version of the man, right? Because they understood all this stuff. The shamanic cultures knew all this way back that we are a massive product of our environment and social conditioning. So you imagine when we were born, first you were in the womb. So a lot of conditioning happens there. And the fear and the emotions and the negativity of your mother will impregnate into you if they're, if their environment hostile. So I actually, my mom actually was at time, very, very hostile environment she grew up, she was in. When she was pregnant, she suffered from a lot of fear and anxiety. She was in an unhappy marriage. So. And I was born into this environment. So the conditioning begins there and these emotions start to actually condition the reptilian brain, okay. That is being formed as you are in the womb, then you're born, and again, more conditioning occurs. So the conditioning of your. You being breastfed by your mother. So if you're not breastfed enough, if you're not nurtured enough, okay, if there's a bit of fear there, that will also negatively imprint. In fact, everyone's born into a bit of a hostile environment. The moment you're born, you're born into this, this unnatural environment of a hospital with this Dr. Sarah and I, right.

We come from the saltwater bath inside of this safe cocoon. And then sometimes babies even get slapped when they come into the world. So it's not exactly a safe place, man. And I'm thinking about what you're. I'm visualizing this. I know people listening are literally seeing what you're saying from a biochemical perspective. The pathways that have just come out, new research we're gonna link in the show. There is a communication pathway that goes from the nipple of the mother into the baby. And then the baby and the mother communicate through that portal to what kind of nutrients and vitamins the baby needs. There is new research coming out that the mother will actually give that baby what the baby needs through that physical connection. So this pathway you you're talking about, it's spiritual, but it's also scientific.

Yeah. And it's really interesting that you just said that, you know, the doctor would sometimes slap the baby, right? Mm. Okay. The reason. Do you know why that is?

I think it's to shock them into breathing. It's kind of like a jump start into life. But this is the first 30 seconds they're coming into the world. It's pretty intense.

Yeah. So imagine. So here's the next conditioning that happens. And this is where one of the reasons why we get stressed and why Yogi's really figured this stuff out was the moment you're born, the first thing a baby often does is gasp. Because the cut off from the energy supply, the nutrient supply of the mother, the umbilical cord, and they are forced to now fend for themselves. Okay. It's the first time you are getting out of a nurturing environment to being able to fend yourself. So the first thing you do is gas like that and then the doctor. If you don't breathe, the doctor will slap you until you breathe. Because basically you're gasping and holding onto air like it's the last breath you're ever going to take. And this is what humans do when they get stressed. Adults do this. We all do this when we're stressed out. We breathe in. And when you breathe in, it causes tension. Okay. And in fact, what happens as well, when we breathe in, we often pull up our sphincter muscles up. So that expression of someone being uptight. Okay. Is actually. Or tight ass or, you know, stick in their ass.

Yes. Like, there's definitely some tension down there when they're holding their breath.

Yeah. What that does is you actually activate a part of the anatomy called the mulabanda. The mulabanda is actually very useful in yoga. We use this in yoga. But if you don't know how to use it, if you use it under tension and fear, because what the mulabandha does, if you suck up your sphincter muscles and tight, it actually releases adrenaline. However, if you release adrenaline in the wrong emotional state, if you release it under fear, you're going to produce cortisol, and that's going to cause a contraction in the body with passion. You release dhea. Dhea. It causes dilation and expansion. Is also very good for your health as well. It's another hormone, very good for the health. So what happens is adults, actually, we instinctively gasp holding our breath. And this is where this idea of shallow breathing comes from, is when we're holding onto our breath in. Okay. We're not exhaling. Because also when you breathe in and hold your breath in, you also stimulate your sympathetic nervous system, which, as I said, it produces adrenaline. So it creates this cascade effect of potentially chronic stress and lack of oxygen and oxygenation of the tissues. So one of the things that the yoga is all about, pranayama is all about is correcting this mechanism so that you become very good at exhaling and exhaling out. And actually, now going back to my own healing journey, what my swami told me was what you need to do is to exhale. Breathe out. Breathe out. And she taught me this routine called kumbhaka, where you do breath retentions, but an extended exhales and using vocal toning, which we commonly known as aum. Aum. What are you doing? What you're doing is you're breathing out for a longer time. You're breathing, and even just pursing your lips and making that tone, that sound as well, stimulates the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system. And that reduces stress. It switches on parasympathetic nervous system. You calm the body down. Okay. And then when you hold your breath, certain other things happen, other magical effects up in the body. I'll delve more into the science a bit, but I just want to give you a bit of background on this imprinting, where it begins and how it starts.

I love this because you're talking about the imprinting here. And I'm going back to this amazing moment that you're connecting me to right now that we all remember when Paul Czech talked about how water. We are made of water. And just like when you did that beautiful om for us, our water gets imprinted by whatever frequency that it's receiving. And so if we're going about our lives and we're drinking 10 cups of coffee and we're not actually breathing, well, then we're totally susceptible to what Dispenza calls this cycle of addiction where we can become literally addicted to a fear response. Can you talk about that a little bit and then maybe showcase how breath can undo that?

Okay, so let's just talk about the mind again and how it's formed. So over time, the mind gets formed. Okay. So the various conditionings happen from when you're born to the mother relationship to then your father relationship. Then you go out into the world as a toddler baby. And then you start to work to size yourself up against other human beings like little toddlers. And you compete and you create jealousy and envy and other negative emotions appear then. And then school comes in, and they educate you into their way of life and condition you. And then you get this tunnel vision about the world. And then you go and get. Do a job that you don't want to do and all this stuff. So this is actually like a conveyor belt that a lot of people are on now. I'd say, actually majority of the people are going through life like this. Okay. Yep. And what this is doing is constantly switching on the reptilian brain because it sees everything as a threat. We're always bombarded by negative stories from the media, the newspapers, you know, just every anything and everything these days has been. We've been kind of conditioned into believing that there is danger in the world and that there's a hostile threat going on in the world. That also is. Is put in our reptilian brain on high alert. Now, here's the thing. So we have a sympathetic nervous system. Okay. We have a parasympathetic nervous System this, which is called the autonomic nervous system. So now, thousands of years ago, okay, when we were living in the jungles, this autonomous system which creates instinctive, habitual behaviors that makes us can work on autopilot, where we don't have to think too much is really important because if a lion comes at us in the jungle, we need a quick way to run away, defend our families or kill, you know, attack. Right. Now, this has actually gone out of control because if it was useful back then. Now fast forward to now. Instead of being surrounded by a jungle that we were in back then, we now have the concrete jungle. Okay? So that's the first thing. We're still in a jungle, but it's now the concrete jungle of the city. Right now we don't have, say, lions and tigers and bears like we used to, where we'd run away and then the fear goes away. We now have lions and tigers and bears in the form of deadlines, bills, relationships, partners, the boss that you don't like. And this time, we can't run away from them, okay. We are subjected to them being around us all the time. We can't just go and kill them. Right. I mean, some people do do that and goes to jail for it, but, you know, because they're driven to the edge. But we don't have a way to switch off from this stress response. Okay. So we're constantly producing adrenaline around the body. And we further add to this by coffee, by drinking things that stimulate us. And so we're constantly producing adrenaline in the body. This makes us more and more stress, and that leads to chronic stress. And I actually was thinking about it like, what is the best. What's the best thing that the yogis have done for us? And that is they taught us how to have an off switch for stress, right?

Yes.

And that off social stress is the breath and the exhale. Okay. And by learning to exhale properly and to hold your breath and control your breath in certain ways, we actually can control the entire physiology of our body. So I can talk a little bit about where this came from. So a little bit of the history is quite fascinating of the history of yoga, where it comes from, how it relates to ecstatic experience, and then. And then how that kind of ties into what we're doing now.

Hey, Josh, here to give you a quick message about the power of breath mixed with movement and micronutrients. This combination of breath work where we go through the states that Neeraj is talking to us about today, mixed with our morning movement that we find in the Wellness Force M21 guide. Well, the missing link for most of us is that people try to get external energy from things like coffee and Red Bull. And we've all been down this road where at about 3 or 4pm in the afternoon we crash hard. And it just doesn't have to be this way. The missing link is actually to fuel our cellular health and our mitochondria from deep down in the cell itself. And we can do this through plant adaptogens. We've talked about adaptogens on the show multiple times. But for this new year, give yourself a deep breath and a new gift of organifi red, green and gold juice. We partner with organifi for an entire year because we believe in the comprehensive 24.7Adaptogen delivery system that gives you energy from the inside of the cell out adaptogens like rhodiola and cordyceps and also lemon balm and turmeric for great sleep in the evenings so you can wake up refreshed. You actually just deserve this. The real truth is that we all deserve this healthy, micronutrient, energy rich superfood powder. It's easy for you in the new year to get this too. 20% off. A deep discount for the wellness Force tribe. Our community gets 20% off your entire cart by using the code wellnessforce@organifi.com wellnessforce. You can just tap your show notes today on your phone or head over to Organifi.com WellnessForce Fill up your cart for just a few bucks a day with this comprehensive adaptogen delivery system and give yourself the energy to meet the demands of this modern world in 2019 and beyond. Now let's take another deep breath and get back to soma breath with Neeraj. Yeah, I think there's an interesting part too from the science aspect. There's a really fascinating scientific explanation of soma breath on your website. So now we're at this cross paths in the conversation. Tell people before we go into those different dyads, what is soma breath like? What does that actually mean? Soma.

Okay, so soma actually comes from the legend of soma, but it also has two meanings. So sona also in Greek means one body, one mind, one consciousness. This idea of everything is one oneness. Okay, that's, that's the Latin Greek kind of meaning of it. However, in the ancient Indian legends of the Rig Veda. So the Rig Veda were these songs that were sung and written. Well, they were written down but many, many, many years after they were Just songs and hymns. So if you imagine that there were these very shamanic cultures who were reveling in psychedelic concoctions. Because imagine back then people were living in this golden age where there was an abundance of everything, right. There was few people on the planet. It was like the Garden of Eden. Imagine it's the Garden of Eden and there was all these kind of dreadlock rasters who were just like living in harmony with nature. And they were, what else are they going to do? They were just going to get as high as humanly possible. Right. So that's what they were doing. And they were taking, they were taking like magic mushrooms, psilocybin, they were taking ayahuasca type stuff. They were taking DMT concoctions and having these profound visions, these ecstatic experiences. And through this came songs and hymns and poetry and philosophies about life and nature of reality. And they went into the spirit world and they were communing with the gods. You know, I don't know if you've ever done ayahuasca or anything like that, but I've taken it and it's, it's been the most spiritual, profound experiences of my life.

Yeah, plant medicine has played a huge role in my, in my spiritual and personal development.

Yeah, specifically, totally. So they were getting all these downloads of, of knowledge and this was then eventually written down in the Rig Veda texts and there's 50,000 residences to Soma. However, what happens is then populations start to expand and grow and it starts to move out and explore different lands and the Soma starts to run out. And because the gods, they were all gods at the time, they were known as the gods. Everyone's a God, we're all. You're a God, I'm a God, we're all gods. But they were the Rishis, okay, they were considered Rishis. They were living long periods of time and all this stuff. But slowly the population numbers start to go down, that life expenses starts to go down because of life, you know, of the emergence of population and civilization, so called civilization. So everyone freaks out because they're so hooked on the Soma. Okay. Now it could be that certain forces came into play. Just like now the government banned and suppressed all plant medicine. There were at this time there were Vedic priests. And these Vedic priests also create like a religion which is now known as Hinduism. And they started to control things and they worked with in politics and control. So obviously the renegade yogis, like people like me went underground and they were looking at ways to create the Soma within, because they were like hooked on this stuff and they wanted to find another way to get to the same state. And that is the origins of Tantra. So Tantra then became a system of breaking all this conditioning that we have that we're born with and to liberate ourselves, firstly, so that we're not dependent on anyone. We're completely in harmony of nature. We also live longer and then we can then truly reach these ecstatic states. And probably for a while what was happening was that they were also using psychedelics at the same time. So in combination to get even higher.

Than humanly possible, you're almost like a mini Prometheus, like you're stealing fire from a different kind of God. It's this fire that we all have inside of our body. You talk about this in the Science of Soma too. Like, we need the right balance of oxygen. Not too much, not too little, when we inhale. This is on your site that we'll link in our notes here. We inhale, we breathe in. But this is actually, you know, our breath combines with glucose in the mitochondria and then it produces carbon dioxide, ATP and water. What is so specific, though, Neeraj, about the breath in Soma? Like, there's many different breathworks out there, right? There's rebirthing, there's Wim Hof, we know you've worked with him. There's holotropic, there's integral breathing therapy. What's so different about soma?

Yes. So imagine, okay, what is the chemical that is that we were all using when they were taking psychedelics? It's dmt. But however, the human brain, we don't. We have a little traces of dmt, but we don't really produce dmt. What we do, we produce tryptamines from the pineal gland like melatonin. Okay. And then we also produce, in other parts of the body, serotonin, dopamine, all these feel good pleasure hormones, okay? And the right combination of them give us this euphoric, ecstatic experience where we are connected to this higher state of thinking where we can have these divine downloads. So in order to make the dmt, okay, in the brain, what we have to do is what we actually produce is called metatonin. It's the. And the human endogenous version of DMT is called metatonin. It's very similar to melatonin, right? And we produce it in huge amounts, okay. Just before we're going to die. All right? It's what can, like this be responsible for the near death experience. And we also probably produce a large amounts of this, although it's not fully confirmed yet that during the dream state we produce a lot of melatonin as we go to sleep. And melatonin, large numbers and other hormones work together to produce the same this lucid, like extravagant dreaming like state which we have every single night. We don't always remember our dreams, but we have them. Right? So what they were trying to do is how do we create the DMT in the body? Right. In doing so, what they realized was that we have to try and create almost like a near death experience in the body. So the way we do that is through breath retention. Okay, so let's just talk a little bit. I'll go backwards and just give you a little foundational look at the science of oxygen in the body and breath and how it relates to all this. So the breath is the one thing we do consciously, but it also runs on autopilot, right? So with that fat, through conscious control of our breath, we can influence autonomic nervous system. Okay, that's the first principle that you need to understand. So when we breathe in, we breathe in oxygen, we breathe out, we breathe out carbon dioxide. When we breathe in, we stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. We breathe out, you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. If you breathe out longer than you breathe in, you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and you go into rest and digest mode. And it's nice to have that periods of the day where we're in parasympathetic state so we can rest and repair. However, now if we modulate our autonomic nervous system further with breath retention, where we bring the oxygen levels down in the bloodstream below a certain point, okay, we trigger a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters released in the body because your body believes that it's going to run out of oxygen. So it adapts, and it adapts by creating vasodilation where your blood vessels expand, okay, you get more blood flows your brain and you also produce like adrenaline and different hormones that actually create a strengthening effect over your body. And actually you can actually wake up dormant parts of the brain as well. You can awaken super cognitive powers of the brain because these are parts of the brain that you haven't used before because your brain actually needs more oxygen than any other organ. So you actually wake up blood vessels by holding your breath and lowering oxygen for a long enough period of time. Okay, here's another thing, is that science has also shown that Hypoxia. This is called intermittent hypoxia. So short periods of low oxygen lower the normal oxygen can also wake up stem cells out of the bone marrow. And these stem cells can go towards areas in the body where there's inflammation to initiate healing. By using certain yoga postures with the meditation, you can actually move these stem cells up into the brain and stimulate the growth of new brain cells and enhance the function of the brain further. In yoga, this is called where you start to develop siddhi powers. Siddhi powers are like these superconscious abilities of the brain. All right then.

And this is the super oxygenation.

It's. It's more than super is. It's actually lower in oxygen for a short period in order to trick your body into thinking that you're going to run out of oxygen. So your body adapts by becoming more and more efficient at using oxygen.

Got it?

Okay. Now this is where this is very important. So the cells in your body contain mitochondria. Mitochondria is the furnace. The furnace of your cell, okay, of your whole body is the fires, where it produces, like a fire, oxygen comes in with glucose, burns like a fire to produce energy, right? However, too much oxygen, the fire burns too bright, too little oxygen, the fire doesn't burn at all. So you need the right balance of oxygen. And this is known as why we have a system called pranayama. Energy control. That's what prana means, Energy yama is control. So pranayama became like a series of techniques to control the energy in your body. Because we're all energy. Everything in every part of us is energy. We're all energy. Quantum science now shows that everything is energy. We're all just different manifestations of energy in different forms. So by this knowledge now through the breath, we can actually control our energy state of vibrational state, our frequency, so that we change our emotional state. I was saying before, our emotions are everything we need to move from low energy emotions to high energy emotions. Move up the scale of love, more love, right? So the breath allows us to do this, okay. And getting into rhythmic breathing, rhythmic breathing states actually helps us harmonize every single function of your body. So when you breathe in for the same length of time as you breathe out, you stimulate your sympathetic nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system in the same rate. So this creates like a harmonization. It's called coherence. Okay? And then we can actually use this concept of coherence, okay, by. Because if you breathe in a rhythm for long enough, you Actually hyper oxygenate, as you said, you super oxygenate the body, get a lot of oxygen into the body. However, your oxygen is now super oxygenated only in the areas of your blood cells. Your blood cells are now saturated fully with oxygen, okay? But in order to get the oxygen off the blood cells and into the tissues, which is where you really need it, you want to super oxygenate your tissues, okay. You need to then raise the carbon dioxide. So carbon dioxide acts as like the. The mechanism to allow oxygen to enter into the tissues. So through holding your breath or slowing your exhale down, okay, or chanting or like that, you actually allow the carbon dioxide to build up the oxygen to disperse and diffuse into the tissue cells, and then that helps the cells get the right balance of oxygen.

I want to pause right here because the power of this that you're speaking just to take this home for people. We've talked about power versus force, David Hawkins work. And you've mentioned multiple times in our conversation, which I love about these lower level vibrations. You know, shame and guilt and fear, like below the 2002. And then of course, love and acceptance and everything else, you know, breaching the 5 to 700 frequency barrier that Hawkins talks about. If we use breath as literally a reset for the body, mind and soul, we can become less addicted or actually be free of addiction to these lower level emotions. And let's be honest, my friend, these addictions to these lower level emotions, they're real. Like that's what this entire society is built upon right now. That's why you mentioned the news. Everything's in big black and bold capitalizations, because they know that that will stimulate fear and people can get addicted to this, this fear response. I love on your website too, you say, join thousands of people for the world's biggest conspiracy to collectively raise the vibrational energy of our planet. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. So let's go going back in time again to the origins of the word spiritual. Spiritual means to breathe. And when you breathe in, you become inspired, because when you breathe in again, you stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. You can create this euphoric sensation just through breathing in the right way, right? And you get inspired, and you may raise your vibration that way and get new thoughts. So thought arises from breath when you breathe. Okay, now, conspire actually means to breathe together, right? So imagine before the 13th century, before the word conspiracy got turned into an evil thing because the Catholic Church had decided to hate all Knights Templar and kill them all on the Friday the 13th. So Friday 13th is an unlucky number before that. There were many people who were getting together before they were deemed as heretics and breathing together because this was the shamanic practices. So a lot of the spiritual traditions that were the early Christian traditions, the Judaic conditions, the Vedic traditions, all of these things. Imagine everyone was just, like, hanging out like they are now, and sharing knowledge and integrating with each other and trading. It was only when the Catholics came in and wiped it all out and made everyone the same that it all changed. But we were all conspiring with each other because we would all breathe together and new ideas would come together. You'd think of new ways to enhance your village or your company or whatever it is that you're doing, and new works of art would happen. So it was a way of bonding people together. But then obviously conspire was like, all these weird people getting together, like, breathing together, or they must be up to no good.

Who are these weirdos? Breathing together.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm actually bringing that back, man, I love this. We have a lot of this community coming back together, doing this.

And I feel this is why I'm so deeply connected to your mission and why I believe SOMA is going to continue to grow. You know, right now the headquarters is away from the United States, but I know that people are going to become very, very inspired and want to inspire others with breath. Sitting in groups, doing this kind of pract, because as you said, man, this is really a tool. Breath is a free tool. I mean, you have to understand the education and the application, but it's such a powerful piece. You and I were talking before we recorded, and the audience has heard this before, but on my arm is se poso resperare, poso segere, which means if I can breathe, I can choose. And I've always felt this way. Like, I've struggled with anxiety in my life many years past. And, you know, when I sense myself in a place where I'm in fear, I'm not in love. If I can choose to just go to my breath, well, then any choice I make after that is going to become more connected to my heart, and it's going to make the world a better place because I'm shining my light. How do you believe that SOMA is going to unfold? How do you see this world's biggest conspiracy to raise this vibration of our planet, man? What do you see this growing in the United States?

Well, I feel that people have become confused spiritually. They've lost this hope in a higher self, a higher power, because of the corruption that we see in, you know, organized religion. And then there's this whole new age world which is totally leading people on another path, which, you know, is quite dark in some areas. I've been involved in that and, you know, got caught up in that nonsense. But the true spirituality and what the yogis are trying to teach us was that the divine spark of the higher self is within. So this practice of saying is this kumbaka breath retention practice when you lower and you train your body to lower the oxygen levels low enough, okay? And this requires you to very much have a strong physical body. That's the whole purpose of asana, is to make you super efficient at using oxygen. This way, you need as little oxygen as possible. The net effect of that is that it makes you have less free radical damage, means you can live longer. It also means you need to breathe less. So when you breathe less, you need to breathe less, you actually stay more in a parasympathetic state. You can stay more in that calm, relaxed state. You become more creative, and all of the good stuff in life happens to you. So this is one of the goals of soma is we're going to give people the tools and the techniques to strengthen their physical body so that they become super efficient using oxygen. This makes them less susceptible to diseases. It means you need to consume less. Your desire for food and nonsense goes away. Because a lot of this addiction of fear is also. It comes from just being weak physically. Your nervous system is weak. So all of this stuff makes you stronger and makes you less dependent and consumer orientated. And then this is where the magic of spirituality comes from, is that if you can lower your oxygen levels through the art of Kumbaka meditation to a point where your brain actually thinks that it's going to die, almost where it's actually not dying. It's like it's. You are going to such a still state. Because if you imagine life is just a series of inhales and exhales, when you press pause on your breath, you go into an absolute moment of stillness. So if you inhale and exhale and hold your breath and just relax or just look, even just look at this point to a flickering flame, okay? Like a candle burning. And you just relax. You will go into the most still moment of peace that you will ever experience. And here's the thing, if you can hold your breath long enough, you will start to produce the chemistry in your brain that is the same as if you're taking psychedelics and you create this higher visionary State of meditation where you'll start to receive divine downloads and you'll feel like you're being now channeled by something higher. And this is what a lot of people in our community say now that since They've done our 21 day program called the Awakening, that their health has improved, their relationships improve, their manifesting. Like magicians. They become magicians. Yeah. And. And they're having these peak human experiences where they no longer desire stupid stuff, you know, that gives you like a low level in, you know, of an experience. Now they're getting such heightened states of emotion that they don't need anything else. You know, they've got it all from within.

Yeah. This conspiracy is really about raising vibration, but it's also in turn producing less consumption, more connection, man. That's really what I'm hearing from you. Right? When we consume less, less food, less energy, we're taking less from the planet and we're actually connecting with it more. This has been such a profound conversation. I knew it was going to be great, man. People are going to learn more@somabreath.com but there is a 21 day Awakening breath protocol. So where can people actually learn more about this 21 day protocol?

Yeah, very simple. Just go to somabreath.com and on there on the homepage, you'll learn about our retreats that we do in this beautiful place called Koh Phangan. We're starting to do them in Europe now as well and hopefully in la. I'll be coming there. And then we have an online program, the 21 Day Protocol, which takes you through this learning pranayama from the original way of doing it before it got all glossed up by Hollywood and stuff. Like the real true way of doing pranayama and, and learning yoga and the science behind it. So you go through this, and each week you do this special rhythmic breathing followed by breath retention meditation with my music. So I'm a music producer. I never moved away from music. Music's always been my big part of my life. Music, as you said, you just read Power versus Fourth Force, you mentioned. That is amazing book. Right? He. He studied a lot about the power of music and certain types of music, on what it does to the physiological state and how music can make you expand or contract. So the music that I make is very therapeutic. It's very, very uplifting music. And that combined with breathing, okay. It's. It's magic. It's the soma in a audio form. So you just listen to it. It feels like you've just had an awakening spring, like a visionary experience. And so the first week is really Preparing the body 20 minutes a day, and then you have 40 minutes a day where you go really deeper and you start to wake up the higher mental faculties, the real full potential of your brain. And then you move on to the third week where you're creating the soma within you, having these divine downloads. And this attraction happens where you start to magnetically attract things you really want in your life. And your health dramatically improves, your energy levels improve. You start to create the chemistry in your body with dopamine and serotonin that actually makes you take action. So what the whole point of this is to get you closer to your goals that you want in life. Everyone has a goal, but what's holding the back? And these are the two questions that you must ask yourself every morning. Okay, and this is what I ask myself every morning. And this is what our program is designed to help you answer correctly. And that is, am I waking up every day with absolute enthusiasm for doing a hard day's work on something that I love? Or are you waking up every day because you have to do this job, whatever it is, to pay the bills to survive? You know, and if you are in this survival mode, this I have to have to do this to pay the bills mode, then you're going to get sick. So what we do is we reason the 21 day is give, make the promise. At the end of it, you're going to have a set of tools that are going to help you wake up. Your abilities to go into wanting and passion and loving. What is that you do? And it could be what you're still doing right now. It could be whatever you're doing that would give you, like this way to look into the future, into creating the perfect reality that you want to attract. And then whatever you're doing right now, you just start to make peace with it, as you know that this is just an end game towards your higher goals. And then life becomes easy and effortless. And that's what, that's what this is about. And the other second question was, are you waking up wanting to be compassionate to other people? Are you waking up feeling like you have to be nice and you're just faking it? And this is really important because these two questions, if your answer is, I have to, I'm having to do this just to survive. I don't really want to be nice, I don't want to be a nice person. But I'm just doing it because I have to fit in. If that's how you're answering it, then you're going to get stress. This is going to turn into negative stress in your body and lead to sickness. So there's no point even going to a naturopath or a healer or whatever, or a doctor until you answer these questions with conviction, the right way. Because they can't do anything for you. And that's what we're doing, is we're giving you a spiritual makeover. I call it a high intensity training for your soul and spiritual, because that's what it is. Because your spirit is where your true feelings come from, your thoughts and desires and decisions come from. So unless we can solve our spiritual problems, nothing gets solved. So that's what, that's what the awakening is all about. And that's what my conspiracy is about, is to give people a new spiritual path in life.

Well, we are part of the conspiracy with you, my friend. We so appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, and honestly, your spirit still here, man. You made it. You are alive. You did not leave the planet. And we are stoked and grateful that that occurred. These last two questions you told us, they're fantastic. And I want to tack on a third one. You know, you asked us, am I waking up every day with enthusiasm? Am I actually pouring myself into something I love? Am I compassionate? Do I have to do something or do I get to do it? Am I grateful? And my third question to you for parting guidance. How do you see wellness? What is your definition of wellness for the modern world and in your life?

What does well start with? The word? Well, wellness starts with we. W e. Right, we. So when you start becoming we, focus. When you start thinking more as a community and you find your sense of belonging and you contribute back into a community, okay. You start becoming a giver and a contributor and you give back more than you even receive, then you become truly well. That's wellness. However ill, the opposite of well starts with I. So if you are an I focused person where you're just thinking of me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, you're going to get ill. And that's it.

Neeraj, that was one of the best answers we've done over 270 shows. That was one of my favorite answers I've ever heard. Thank you so much. The I and the we. Boom, mic drop. We are out, guys. We're talking about this so much more in the Wellness Force group. Neeraj, we're gonna have to do a 20 minute Q& A. There's way too much that we went over here. We're gonna actually do this in wellnessforce.com group if you're open to it. We would love to have a Q and A session for the Wellness Force community to talk more about the power of breath. Thank you. Let's take a breath together. Thank you so much for that breath break and reminding us that it's always there. We can always go to it. My friend, thanks for coming on the show.

Beautiful brother. Love it.

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