(257) Niraj Naik: The Science & Art of Breathwork

(257) Niraj Naik: The Science & Art of Breathwork 

Niraj Naik, founder of SOMA breath, dives into the magical realm of breathwork. So much gold in this conversation:  

• Breathwork to reconnect with yourself and with the truth 
• The science behind breathwork 
• Getting started with breathwork practises 
• Balancing the nervous system 
• Combating entrepreneurial stress 

And so much more!  

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ABOUT NIRAJ NAIK 

Niraj Naik is a professional musician and pharmacist turned holistic health and breathwork expert. He started his path in healing others, as a community pharmacist, yet after several years he found himself a patient with stress-related depression and ulcerative colitis. This was a wake-up call that made him embark on a journey of profound self-healing and education. He created a global community of heart-centred changemakers by founding SOMA Breath - the global breathwork and wellness movement with over 2000 certified instructors, and hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. 

Known internationally as the Renegade Pharmacist, Niraj is dedicated to educating others on topics of holistic health, breathwork, meditation, and more. Niraj’s breathwork is advocated by some top names in wellness such as Ben Greenfield, Marisa Peer, Vishen Lakhiani, and Josh Trent of Wellness Force Radio and his techniques are currently being studied by leading neuroscientists at Cambridge University. 

In addition to the global breathwork and wellness movement, Niraj has created many other brands related to health and healing and was featured in articles from multiple news outlets across the world as well as hundreds of podcasts.  

CONNECT WITH NIRAJ NAIK 

📷 Instagram: instagram.com/nirajnaikofficial
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🎬 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SOMABreath 

Transcript

[00:00] Katie: Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Stoddart here, aka the focus b. And on this show I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.

[00:41] Katie: Very excited to be here with Niraj Naik. Niraj is a breathwork expert who created a global community of change makers by founding Soma Breath, the global breath work wellness movement, and with over 2000 certified instructors and hundreds of thousands of students all around the world. Welcome, Niraj. Fantastic to have you on the show today.

[01:05] Niraj: Pleasure to be here.

[01:07] Katie: I'm so excited as this is the first episode on breath work and it's actually something I've only been practicing for maybe a year or so, so it's quite recent and I think it's such an amazing. I don't think the word tool is the right word, but it's such an amazing practice anyway. And I'd love to begin with how it can help us to reconnect with ourselves. I heard you talk on a podcast interview how breathwork really helped you to sort of reconnect. Reconnect with yourself. Reconnect with the truth. And I feel that this is super powerful and I'd love to hear your thoughts as how breath work can help you to reconnect with yourself.

[01:45] Niraj: Yeah. So let's define what that actually means. Reconnect with yourself. What does that actually mean? So there's probably different perspectives on that, but it really means know thyself, right. To get back in touch with your know. So that's actually been a whole part of spiritual tradition and practice for forever. Right? So that's what actually these spiritual practices for is self discovery. Majority of them are, especially the ones from my culture and India yoga and the kind of hindu philosophy is all about know thyself. So the way that breath can help you do that is, firstly, you can understand that with just simple breathing techniques, you get the power back over your own body, right? So you're probably wondering, why have I got this little bit of tissue in my nostril? But I woke up this morning with a bit of a runny nose, okay? I've got a baby here, and it's also kind of very humid and cold and damp. And me being brown, I'm not from this climate, I'm from a tropical climate, right? So I tend to have more prone to these sorts of runny noses. In certain seasons. So this is like the vata seasons, the cold, damp season in Ibiza. So one trick is you just block your left nostril and just breathe in it out for your right. Just doing that stops the running notes. Within, like, five minutes, it's gone. And it may look a bit weird, but it's magic. It works like magic for me. But in a few minutes, it's gone, and I can take an hour and I'll be all right. So it's really cool because what it does is the problem is the left nostril is more sensitive to cold and damp. All right? And that can trigger it to get more runny. And your left nostril is also connected to your parasympathetic nervous system. Okay? Your right nostrils connects to your sympathetic, which is your left brain. It's the masculine brain, and it's what deals with reason, logic, day to day tasks, but also digestion, digestive fire. So actually, if you want to digest food better, you also want to have your right nostril active because your nostrils switch dominance every few hours throughout the day. So this is profound knowledge because it means you can turn on and off your nervous system at will. And that's just one of the powers of the breath, right? Just understanding which nostril is connected with some nervous system and how it switches throughout the day and what it's more sensitive to. And in the tantric yogic text, it also talks about which activities are better to do when each nostril is active. Right? So there's certain activities you do with the right nostril, certain activities you do with the left, which is, this is called swara yoga. All right? But you can manipulate this as well as I'm doing right now. So all of this gives you some incredible power over your life and your environment. Okay? So understanding yourself really starts with learning how your body works. Because in this eastern tradition, it's also foolish to try and control your mind through your mind. It's much easier through your body. The soma, hence the name Sara breath of our school. And somatic practice. You may have heard that word, somatic, right? So it's much smarter to understand the body, how it works, if you want to control your mind, because if you think about when you're sick, your mood's down, how does it affect your decisions? How does it affect your energy levels, your vibration? Are you giving out? So your mood changes a lot based on your states and how you think and your quality of life and everything, what you attract and your level of success is a lot determined by your vitality, your mojo, I call it, right? Your energy vitality, but with the breath, because the breath is the bridge between the mind and the body, okay? Also the spirit, I'd say, with the breath, because it's the thing that runs on autopilot, but we also have conscious control over. We can control all the things that happen on autopilot in the body. So things like your nervous system switching from left and right, your heart rate, your immune system, even your digestion, so many different functions that are rhythmic in nature that change throughout the day, we can actually bring more harmony and balance to them because life throws us off balance. And this affects our mood and our well being and then our level of taking action to get what we want. Because ultimately, your success depends on how much action you're willing to take or able to take and your perception of what you can and can't have. So these are all the things that determine your quality as an entrepreneur as well. And let's talk about manifesting. So manifesting is something that also spiritual schools are all about, if you think about it, right? But nowadays, like the law of attraction, all that stuff has become super popular. But the key word in that is action. What's the difference between people taking action and not is because of all these beliefs that we have and our mojo, how much energy we've got, vitality, and also the belief in something higher than themselves. Because one of the things that I've found amongst all the very successful people I know, and I know a lot now, like super high level entrepreneurs who run major companies, some billionaires, many millionaires and celebrities, and so on, is that the majority of them have a belief in something beyond themselves, that they're guided by some higher power, right. This is very, very common, and it's probably why I get on with so many of these types of people. But what that means is that you get such a conviction that you're in this flow, I call it the divine flow, that anything you do, the universe, is conspiring to make it happen. This optimism about opportunity and possibility, about the world, not just seeing the doom and gloom everywhere, is what really drives people forward. But they also have something else, the mojo. They have a lot of sexual energy, they have a lot of fire, they have a lot of spice juice. If you're around very, very successful people, they're magnetic, their personalities usually, right. I haven't met many who aren't like that. Right. There's a rare occasions, but usually not. Right. So when you combine that together this divine flow and mojo, you get flojo. So I call it and the breath. What I've created is a series of different techniques, gives you this ability to get into this state right after a ceremony type experience that we create. At the end of it, you can go away with more awareness of who you truly are, because breath work changes your state to a way where you can see your past in a new way from the old way. The old way is what got you to where you are now. But if you can change your relationship with the past, you get more excited about the future and make peace with the past and all the blocks and things that hold you back. And you can also cultivate energy, because with breath work the way breathing is how we produce energy in the body. So the whole system of breath work, the real system, the one which is more like what we do in tantric yoga, pranayama, which is more like a pharmacy. It's not just one technique of conscious, connected breathing. That breathwork has kind of been confused with breathwork to me is this whole library of different methods of controlling energy in the body. And in fact, pranayama means energy control. So with that, we can increase our vitality, our energy, our drive, our concentration, our somatic power, right? And intelligence, too. So that's something you can get. If you start this process of getting into breath work using these techniques, you can get to these places. We have all the practices to do that. We have whole courses. We have systems of doing that, like our 21 day awakening journey. We have instructors who we train to facilitate these retreats and experiences. Now, we've got over two and a half thousand around the world. But I'll tell you what, for breath work, I had no flow because I became atheist and I hated life, and I had no mojo because I was sick with a chronic autoimmune disease, ******** blood 40 times a day. So I always say to people, look, if I can do it seriously, I was like, not going anywhere in life, then I think most people can do it, because there's not that much different from most other people, especially people who are entrepreneurs, who already got something going. And maybe they've hit a bit of a plateau, right? If you learn this stuff now, it will stop you from getting to where I was, because I got really down a spiral of negativity and got burnt out and almost died in the process. So I want to help entrepreneurs get before they crash and burn, because they don't know themselves. They're manifesting what they don't want. I want to help people manifest what they really want. That's what breathwork helps you do. Discover that truth. Meditation does, too, but they'd have the energy and drive to go and do it. So they go out and do great things rather than manifesting all this wealth, money, but being surrounded by tons of people that they don't connect with, they don't resonate with, filled with stuff, mortgages, bills they can't really pay because it's all an illusion. And then boom, they have one bad month with the business, and everything crashes and burns. I've been there, and you don't want to go there. It's horrible. So my whole point is to try and give that wellness power back to entrepreneurs.

[11:59] Katie: Well, if I wasn't already sold on breathwork, you would definitely have sold me there. And I feel that the way you were saying energy in the body, and I've definitely seen the link between being in that state of flow, feeling like the universe conspires with you, and everything flows naturally, being that abundance mindset. And I've also been obviously on the reverse side. Scasty mindset. Everything's not working, everything's shutting down, and the whole world feels small. And what you said about it's in our body and not in our mind. And so often we come back to our mind and our thoughts, and why am I thinking this? And I should think at this instead, or I should do this action, or why am I demotivated, et cetera, et cetera. And then you go for a breath work session or a long walk or meditation break or drink more water or something, or even just stand up, and then you feel you're energized again. So I feel that this link and connection with the body is something that many of us don't actually think about often enough.

[13:06] Niraj: Yes, fully.

[13:08] Katie: I think that it's probably the key. So I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone listening to this who's maybe never practiced breath work. Who wants to begin? What would you say would be the first steps they could take to begin their breath work journey and to start to incorporate this, maybe in daily rituals or weekly rituals. I also love to hear your thought and perspective around building some habits to have this a bit more regularly in our lives so we can keep this mojo and energy high.

[13:36] Niraj: Yeah. So the very first thing I would do is I would learn the science and the art of normal breathing, like how to breathe when you're not doing any special techniques right throughout the day. This will make the number one impact in your health, your energy, your vitality, your mojo, more than anything else, right? So there are some schools of thought already that exist. There's the buteco method, which is all about this. That's 100% what it's about. And we are very much kind of aligned with that because buteko learn all these techniques from yoga and pranayama. And I've just gone back to the source of pranayama. So what this is, is like a system of different techniques that will normalize your breathing so that throughout the day, your default breathing is more healthy. Now, a lot of people think that they take it for granted that breathing is already healthy, like, what's so complicated about breathing? But actually, there's some serious issues. If you breathe wrong, because if you hyperventilate, if you over breathe, meaning you breathe more than you actually need to, it's like, just like food. If we consume more food than we actually need to, it causes serious problems for the health. Right. We all know this overeating, overconsumption of calories, sugar, which is heavily dense in calories, certain, like, refined foods, it makes us sick. Right. It's obvious the signs are there. But not many people are aware that the same thing goes with breathing. If you breathe heavier and harder than you actually need to, than your body needs, you create like an inner fire, and you screw up the energy centers of your cells, the mitochondria, and you also with hyperventilation, you might think that deep, heavy breathing gets you more oxygen into your body tissue cells as you get less. Right? Because you breathe out the most important gas, co2, carbon dioxide, is the signal that tells your blood where to drop off oxygen. That's why when you exercise, if you do dumbbell curls, you produce more co2 in your blood in that area. So the oxygen when you breathe in goes to the area of the muscles that you use during the exercise. Right. Rather than going everywhere. Otherwise, I wouldn't be very efficient. So co2 is very, very powerful stuff, and it's very important. But when we breathe out, we breathe out co2. So if we breathe too fast, we let go of this very important signal. That's a serious problem. All right, so this is one of the primary causes of, I would say, majority of diseases is over breathing, bad breathing habits. Mouth breathing gets rid of way too much co2 too fast. Serrate right nose is what's designed to breathe. It fills the air, and it conditions the air. And it also means you breathe into your lower lungs, where your parasympathetic receptors are and where the absorption of oxygen happens much more efficiently. Right. If you breathe into your chest. A lot of people do this when they're talking, right, for they're to give them presentations, podcasts. They might do that a lot. I do that sometimes unconsciously because it's a bad habit and you'll find you get lightheaded, right. But if during a podcast as well, if you're doing a presentation, speaking on stage, if you actually heavy breathe, like some people do this and talk like that, right? With this movement, and they're like, that's actually hyperventilation. And what that does, breathe out load of co2, you start losing your train of thought. You get dizzy. Look, I just started to almost feel that just now. So you want to try and do light breaths when you talk, right? When I'm talking, I'm hardly breathing. In fact, I am mostly exhaling because I'm just breathing out. I've got such a long exhale time now, right? I've got this funny video because I've trained myself. Everyone can do it. But where I did a challenge, where I did an inversion, I did a headstand, and I did an aurm that lasted a minute and 11 seconds or something in one breath. I told everyone, try and do it. I mean, no one's done it yet, but it was a funny little challenge, but, yeah. So what I'm saying is, if you can extend your exhale, it's a sign that you don't need much oxygen. And the less oxygen you need, the more efficient you are at creating energy. And oxygen is what makes us age. Actually, oxidative stress is what makes us age. Okay? We're just like car engines. Cars. The way they produce energy in the engine is an oxidative reaction. It's an oxygen burning fuel creates heat, fire dries the pistons, the same things going on in mitochondria, very similar. And that's what burns inside. That's why we get hot when we exercise, and that makes us age. Oxygen stress. Okay, so slowing your breathing down also, not only does it minimize oxygen stress, but it also gets oxygen into your body tissue cells because you breathe out less co2. Right. And low body tissue oxygenation is what causes most diseases. So just by correcting normalizing your breathing, let's say you've, somebody suffered a lot from very heavy congestive sinuses or asthma that's gone. High blood pressure is gone. Even like chronic pain, tension, a lot of that is due to hyperventilation over breathing, because co2 relaxes you, oxygen contracts you. Right. So people with very busy minds, they tend to hyperventilate because your mind is a mirror of your breath as well. So if you got a very active, busy, crazy mind, you'll breathe faster. If you've got calm, relaxed mind, which is what you want to be, actually, if you want to make good decisions. Entrepreneur. You want a relaxed mind. So if you're a relaxed person, you perform better generally, but you will also breathe slower, and that would mean you're getting more oxygen to your body tissue cells. So that's why it's so important to normalize your breathing. A lot of people who are entrepreneurs don't have any idea about this, and they are working really hard. They're stressed out, they're overbreathing, they're getting blood pressure issues again, diabetes, which is another symptom of this. They're getting all the stress related metabolic issues. And then if you compound that with overeating, eating in a hurry, not chewing, your stomach doesn't have teeth, so it has to do all this extra work to digest food. And also eating heavily puts pressure on the diaphragm and it deepens the breath, it makes you hyperventilate naturally. Try it sometimes. No, don't try it. But you'll know what I mean if you overeat and you'll feel that you have to breathe harder, deeper, and then this is taught to be a good thing. Do deep breaths after you eat and all this. And actually, it's not. You don't need to breathe too much. Right? So all of these little tips, I'm just showing you the, illustrating the point that we need to bring oxygen's control, need as less oxygen as possible, because it's like fire in the body, right? It makes us age, but it also gives us life. There's this weird, toxic, codependent relationship we got with it. And co2 we need to make into our friend, because it's been vilified for so long. All the media is just coming, like, giving a really bad rep. Apparently it's going to end the world because of global warming and it's some toxic waste gas. So we must breathe it all out, right? It's all bollocks. All right, it's probably going to be a bit controversial for some people, but actually co2 makes plants grow. Without co2, we don't get trees. And actually the atmosphere is only 0.4% co2. It's tiny. And man made co2 is only 1% of it. There was this crazy article that was said by the I think it was even in the Guardian that was about how some expert now says that breathing, human breathing, is causing global warming because of the co2. So what are they going to do, right? Cold, the population, maybe they're already having a go at that. Make co2 your friend and bring oxygen under control. Because that's that kind of weird relationship that love, hate. It's like you have to be with them for the rest of your life, but you want to kill them sometimes, right? And they want to kill you. That's the whole thing. That's what normalizing breathing is all about. Then I would move into more advanced breath sessions after that point. So we have a 21 day course, the 21 day awakening journey that helps you do all of that. But we start with now I recommend our breath fit course to normalize your breathing. That teaches you all the physical health activities you can do, all the little ancient biohacks for improving your mojo. And then the awakening journey is all about getting to your divine flow, but it will also improve your energy and vitality. It's epic. And we take you on this epic journey to self discovery and that's where we learn about who we truly are and also provide a tool, this ayurvedic test that shows your bio individuality. Right? So ayurveda, in my opinion, is the ultimate medical science that gives you the complete picture of how the mind body works. That we are holistic and we're not just compartmentalized like. Well, the mainstream medical system has really very dreadfully gone wrong. And with the ayurvedic system, you find out that there's no one size fits all. So what with this system, you fill out a quiz questionnaire and it will give you a report. It will give you a custom lifestyle program based on who you are. Okay. It's based on this ayurvedic system. It's a long explanation. I probably save it for another time. But you can go check it out, all the information on our website. It's very simple, easy to do, but that goes with what we teach because then you can start to choose which techniques work for you or you can use one of our transformational coaches who can guide you through a whole coaching program based on your individuality. They'll also interpret the report for you and show how it works. So it's very powerful system. Yeah, very amazing.

[24:33] Katie: And I think it's fantastic that you have different courses so people who are interested and want to get on board and want to work on it, often we get paralyzed with so many options. So when you actually listen to someone, you think, okay, this makes sense, I actually do want to do something about it. It's fantastic to have a direct action. And what you were saying about learning how to breathe and that we're breathing wrong reminds me of when I sort of got into the whole breath and breath work journey, maybe like I said about a year ago, and I read breath by James Nestor, also saw him in Stockholm at an event. And that's when I started taping my mouth when I sleep and closing my mouth when I exercise. And for all the people listening, well, first of all, yes, it's amazing. Also, I recommend the breath by James Nestor. And do start taping your mouth when you sleep. If you have a tendency to sleep with an open mouth, it did wonders. I think I need, on average, an hour less sleep every single night. Or let's put it this way, for the same amount of hours, I feel a lot more rested. So if I used to sleep eight, eight and a half, and I still sleep eight, eight and a half, I wake up way more refreshed. I mean, who would have known, right? Just putting a small piece of tape on your mat can make your sleep so much deeper.

[25:44] Niraj: Totally. It's amazing. Yeah. Because a lot of people's health problems come from sleep. Sleep in yogic tradition is considered the most detrimental time of the day or night because we're unconscious. So we're not consciously controlling our breathing. And therefore, if we're very stressed when we go to sleep, we're going to hyperventilate in our sleep. Or if we are too hot in the room, we'll hyperventilate. Or if we lie on our back and sometimes people roll over onto their back way just how it happens, some kind of vivid dream they're having and they start hyperventilating. Right? So this snoring as well is associated with lying on your back. A lot of people lie on their backs, start snoring and coughing and get tickly cough and things like that. So simply changing your sleeping position and using tape, for example, if you're somebody who snores or has this need to sleep like 10 hours, some people sleep like 10 hours. I'm like, that is like half the day almost gone. Imagine if you could get 5 hours back. How cool would that be? Like, I sleep about 5 hours now, right? So it's like, imagine if we only needed to sleep 5 hours. I mean, sometimes if we're having a cuddle session, my wife, it goes on a bit longer, but I can't sleep too long. If I go to sleep at eleven, I'm up at like, okay, let's say 6 hours, 05:00 a.m. Usually 05:36 a.m. And that goes down depending on where I am. If I'm at home, I need less sleep. If I'm traveling, my rhythms get messed up a bit. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, instead of probably nomads as well, travel a lot. So that affects sleeping a lot and your time cycles, your biorhythms, all of this. So having these practices will make a huge difference to things like jet lag, to sleeping in different unusual environments, having more energy when you wake up, getting excited about the mornings. One of the reasons why people don't get excited about the day, it's because their sleeping is so bad, right? The quality of sleep is so bad that they don't want to get out of bed because they're just so tired they might have a dry mouth and feeling like ****. I've been there. I had all of these problems when I was younger, right? And plus, on top of that university, it was like hangover central. So I don't know how that's the crazy culture in the UK. People still drink copious amounts. It's definitely less than it used to be in my time, but it's the most detrimental thing you can do to your health is to drink loads of alcohol and wake up half in a coma, right? It's crazy. And people do that like relentlessly, almost every night, all weekend. That was me. So if you change all of these bad habits and you bring in some breathing exercises, the breathing exercise as well, when you start to do normalized breathing techniques, the side effect of it is you start becoming sensitive to. This is all coming back to your question about connecting with yourself. You start becoming more sensitive to things that aren't good for you because you start to feel suddenly now pleasure and bliss. You get into a high state and you're like, well, I don't want to leave this state. And then you know that if you eat a certain food, it's going to bring you down, or if you drink a certain drink, it's going to take you off your flow. So you stop doing all that ****. You start to do more of the things that make you feel good. So this is a big part of getting back in touch with yourself is to know what makes you feel bliss. This. A lot of people don't know what pleasure feels like anymore. They forgot real pleasure. I'm not talking about a cocaine hit or anything like that. I'm talking about genuine pleasure from just living, right? So what we do is soma breath is all about that, bringing back people into their bodies to understand the soma, how the body works, to understand the science. So they're super informed because this is our hardware. This is basically, imagine you're a super efficient computer, right? Your hardware is your physical body, and your brain system is your mind, your mindware, okay? Especially in goes. Where is your mind? Never mind, because most people don't know. But just as a general analogy, hardware, software, it seems to work. It's quite relatable. But think about pcs. Pcs, especially if you don't know how to use them properly because you don't understand your own hardware and operating system. They get filled with viruses, they get screwed with viruses, right? So that's why I went from PC to Mac and I got to really know the Mac so that I don't get any viruses ever. And it runs like a machine. So with son of breath, the idea is you go from a pc, basically Bill Gates to Steve jobs. Apple. Right? I mean, just compare the two people. I'd much rather be hanging out with Steve. That's what we're about, making beautiful, amazing machines for ourselves that runs like magic and creates even more magic in the world, right? Rather than clogged down, boring viruses that break down and slow down and don't do anything productive in the world.

[31:34] Katie: I feel that a lot of people don't realize a the power of the breath or that they're overbreathing. I certainly didn't until I read that book. And then the coherent breathing, breathing, five in, five out, and more regularly, and not as much inhaling, like you said, not too much oxygen. And in general, I think people underestimate and or forget the body, and they often think the problems are with their mind or their motivation. And I often ask them, and actually, this is a very slight deviation. But I was a guest at a wedding six months ago, and I was speaking with this woman who said she had very low motivation and she was struggling with fatigue in the afternoon. And I asked her, do you eat sugar? And I don't know why. It just came to me. I think, do you eat a lot of cakes? And she said she did. She said there were quite a lot in the office. And I said, you know, I think that that could have a big impact on your energy levels. And it was a really random comment, but the reason I'm bringing it up is because six months later, she wrote to me a message on LinkedIn, and she said, you might not remember our conversation, but it really marked me. I quit all sugar, and her energy levels really picked up, and I was, like, so happy. I just randomly mentioned this. It would be like you saying, maybe you're over breathing and focus a bit more on your breath and bath tapes in the evening. And then six months later, someone says, my energy is super high. It really worked.

[32:57] Niraj: Yeah, I know. My favorite part of the day is waking up to the testimonials that we get every day. There's, like, another crazy testimonial or two, and usually from our instructors who send them to me, say, hey, look at this case study. So that's, like, super cool seeing that.

[33:16] Katie: Amazing. It's amazing. I just want to finish on what you said earlier about our alternating nervous system during the day, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And I'm thinking about all the entrepreneurs out there that are probably in sympathetic mode all day long. And I wonder, what do you feel people can do to be more in tune with the natural rhythms that naturally occur in our body, going from parasympathetic to sympathetic nervous system, to not be in sort of that constant state of stress, basically?

[33:48] Niraj: Okay, so the problem with that is that you need to know the cause of the stress. So you're going to be in a constant state of stress if you've created an environment that is full of stress or if you perceive the environment as stressful, right. So some people thrive in that. They see everything as a positive challenge, right? And they may have loads of crazy things going on at the same time, which another person might be like, oh, my God, this is insane. This is overwhelming. So this is a whole part of know thyself is what is really stressful to you. And if your life is genuinely, like, stressful, you're constantly feeling stressed. What you have to do is be rational. You look at what can be possibly solved on the outside world, right? So I can have more control over the inner world. What you can do is minimize that impact of that stress on the body with breathing exercises, because you can't control everything that's going on outside, but you can control what's going on inside. So what you can also do is change your perception of stress into more of a gift, a challenge. That's what happened with me where I had the disease, which was a pretty stressful time. I thought I was going to be ******** in a nappy for the rest of my life, and that turned around. I saw the gift that I actually had now, which was, if I can heal myself, I can actually be an amazing role model. So some entrepreneurs listen to this. You might be able to turn your challenges into gifts that you can share with your colleagues or your team to make them better. Or you can create a book one day and inspire other people. Right. There's many things you can do by changing your perception of your situation. Right. There's always a story you can tell one day. So what you can do with breathing techniques, first, become aware of your natural patterns. Okay, so there are moments of your day when your left nostril is more active than your right, which is your parasympathetic moments. And it says very clearly in swari yoga that avoid activities when this is going on where you have to do a lot of work because they won't be successful. Like intense work, which requires focus, concentration. Because you're going to be in daydream land, it's better to rest in those words, do more meditative stuff, creative stuff, read a book, listen some music, have a power nap, right? But when your right nostril is active and it will switch, and usually your right is more active during the day than your left. Your left is the moon, right is the sun, surya and soma. Okay, so the soma comes out when the moon comes out, and the surya is awake when the sun comes out, right. So hence fire and cool cold. So what you can do is understand the balance, and you can then see how it fluctuates throughout the day, which times of the day the activity is more prevalent. And then go with that dominant nostril and base your schedule around that. That's when you go really deep into this stuff. Or what you can also do is learn how to manipulate the nature to your advantage. So there are techniques where you could switch, like I'm doing right now. I need to do this podcast. I don't want to have a runny nose. Okay? Boom, this sick. In within a few minutes, the nose stops running. I had streams of running nose. Now, some people, what they'll do is they'll go to a pharmacist and get decongestion, ephedrine or something like that, pseudophed common one, and they'll bung that down their throats. What does ephedrine do? Is a stimulant. It stimulates sympathetic nervous system. Okay, so it turns on the right nostril. So that's one way of stopping the ranny nose. But then after a while, the epidural has less effect on the body because you get tolerance. You also get something called rebound congestion if you keep doing it because a drug isn't smart. This is more smart because I can do this for a bit while I'm doing podcasts and turn it off, right? And go back. There's a reason why my left nostril might be more active than my right. I might be going through a little bit of a cleanse. Detoxes. If your mucus is clear, you're just naturally detoxing a little bit. That's what you're doing, right? If it's yellow and greeny, that means you got an infection. You're trying to find infection, okay? Or you might have an allergy. So the left nostril is very much connected to the cold, damp analogies. And that's why you get runny nose. Okay, I'm going to put it back in. So these are the things you'll learn in zoa breath. We teach all of this stuff. It's very much about tapping into this inner pharmacy, all right? But then you can also use certain breathing techniques. Let's say you get stressed in the moment. You get triggered in the moment, extending your exhalation with a subtle inhale, relaxed exhale, and an automatic pause where you just naturally hold your breath for a few seconds. All right? And then you breathe in again and do your relax. Inhale and exhale. If you do that, it will calm you down instantly. Or if you breathe in with a deep, full yogic breath into your belly, then you diaphragm very slowly, and then you breathe out very slowly with the longest exhale that you can through your nose. Okay? And you just repeat that process. Right. You will also switch on the parasympathetic, but through the vagus nerve, because when you breathe out, you stimulate parasympathetic. When you breathe in, you stimulate sympathetic. And another thing you could do is rhythmic breathing where you breathe in and out to a perfect rhythm. This rhythmic breathing brings balance to the body because as I said, when you breathe in, sympathetic stimulated. When you breathe out, parasympathetic stimulated. When you breathe in a perfect rhythm, you create harmony and balance, because every function of your body is subservient to the rhythm of your breath. Believe it or not, that's why yogic breathing, the foundation is rhythmic breathing. All right? So, yeah, this is what we do. This is what we, we teach all of these things. How to bring the stress response under your control, a lot of the science behind it, how to change your state instantly. If you're low mood like guilt fear, anger, by transmuting that frequency to another frequency of joy, passion, gratitude, whatever you want to feel these energies. Gratitude, for example, wipes out anger and envy, jealousy, things like that. So we use various techniques, I call it neurosomatic programming. The use of words, language, metaphors and imagery to change the mind's perception of events and experiences, but also using engaging the body at the same time into it. So you become your own movie character in your own real inner reality. Ir instead of VR, I suppose. So we show you this process, and this can be then turned into daily practices. You do that helps you get a daily dose of these hormones. And dose stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, right? That's the feel good pleasure hormones that gives you the right state, helps you manifest there, helps you change your brain according to your mind, your control, your conscious control. And this helps you install better thought programs into your operating system. So you run better software for this time. Because we all need to upgrade our software to be able to exist in this time and thrive in this time. Because it's different all the time, it's constantly changing. We have to be aware of all these changes and keep up with it. So many new skills we need to learn. So this requires us to feel good and be in the right state in order to do that and have the energy to do that, the motivation. So this is what all this practice does. So we use all these techniques, and I call these energized breath meditations, routines you can do every day. Plus we have somatic therapy techniques like shaking dance, ecstatic dance, what I call breath raves. All right? Using a breath and cool music gets you into a super cool state. There's like alternatives to normal mainstream recreational pursuits. A lot of people go out and get wasted on a night out to have a good time, right? And forget about their day, especially alcohol. And I've been there too. But basically there's a better way, a more holistic way through and a more ceremonial way that we do with ecstatic dance. And you've experienced a bit of that. All right, so there's so much we can do with the breath. It starts with the breath, but then there's so much we can do when we get back into the body. Because through learning to control the body, we can control the mind. That's my biggest learning. I've received my life because I was one of those guys years ago where all my body was, was this tool to carry my head around. That was it. Because that was what was more active. Right? And before that, when I was a kid, I was really athletic. I played loads of sports. I played competitive sports, and I used to feel really good as a kid. Then I went to university, and it all went to **** because that uni culture in England is terrifying. I could not imagine going back to that ever again. It's insane what we used to do, like, lighting up 15 shots of tequila, smashing each one down, and then going out and then having, like, one pound pints. I don't know how I did it. All my friends are Irish and Welsh and insane like Brummies because I was in Cardiff University. I don't know how I'm still alive. But that's the remarkable power of the body as well. Every seven years, your body completely transforms and heals itself, right? So we're a new person every seven years, completely from a cellular level. A few heart cells and brain cells are the same, but majority of us changes, so that gives us hope. Like, if you're sick, if you've been an alcoholic, if you've been a drug addict, and you filled with all that ****, we can change. The hardware can upgrade. It takes some time, some practice, some effort, but it's possible. And we see it every day, like, so many people changing much quicker than I took because we fast tracked what we do now.

[45:12] Katie: Amazing. And I was smiling when you were talking about the ecstatic dance because I remembered when you were djing at Nomad Fest, which is where we met, and it was fantastic. And I remembered the song when we were all saying, I love my life, and so I just smiled because that song came back to me. It actually came back to me a few weeks ago. I was like, yeah, where did I hear that? I was like, oh, yes, it was Niraj. No, at first it's my track.

[45:38] Niraj: Is it?

[45:39] Katie: That's your track that you.

[45:41] Niraj: Yeah, I produced that. Yeah, I had all the music of breath. Majority of it is produced by myself. And quite a few of the amazing tracks are collaborations with amazing musicians that.

[45:52] Katie: We have, because you have that dj background, so now you're able to do that in a more holistic, healthy way. I was sober that night, and I had a great time so that we can have fun and enjoy and be full of life without getting drunk and having 15 shots of tequila, which is a my word.

[46:10] Niraj: I don't know how I used to do it. Insane.

[46:13] Katie: Okay, just before we go, I know we've already passed out our time, but just a few words on your book. I know your book is coming out soon in the upcoming months. I'd love to hear a few things about your upcoming book.

[46:25] Niraj: Yeah, the book is called Breath works. So it's a play on breath work. And it really is a book that shows you how the breath works for so many different things with all the tools, techniques. It's not just theory, all the application, too, and my crazy stories of breath work and how it's proven to me that the breath works time and time again. So it's quite an interesting read. I'm really excited to get it out there and it's pretty deep, so you might need to read it a few times, but I think you're going to go away feeling very enlightened and you're going to have a lot of knowledge. It's like a PhD in breathing condensed down into a book on how to now start understanding that we've had a secret power underneath our nose this whole time. There we go.

[47:15] Katie: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Neeraj. Thank you for all the input and also the science behind everything and inspiring people to actually tune into the power of their own body and not always seek it either through their mind or even externally, and find that sense of, like you said, bliss, pleasure, joy, fulfillment, inner connection through the breath. I think it's absolutely amazing. Love the work you do. Love the breath work session and the DJ session that I had at Nobit Fest. So happy to have you on the show today.

[47:44] Niraj: Beautiful. Absolute pleasure. Good stuff.

[47:48] Katie: Thank you.

[47:53] Katie: Thank you so much for tuning in today to the focus be show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback, so let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you. And feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical, and focused day ahead.