Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com
and today I've got special guest Niraj Naik on the line and we
dive deep into breath work, how to manipulate it, how to do some
breath work practices to make the most of oxygenating
yourselves, leveraging CO2, switching from sympathetic to
parasympathetic at will based off of how you are breathing a
different breath work practices. So very interesting
conversation, thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've got no doubt that you'll have some takeaways from this
one. Without further delay, sit back,
relax and enjoy the conversation.
And we are live. Niraj, How are you, Sir?
Fantastic, my friend. I'm excited to be chatting with
you. I've had several people on the
guest and we've all kind of known that the importance of
like oxygen and breathing is obviously very vital to our
livelihood in existence. But you are a master with all
things proper optimized breath work.
So this is something that I definitely need to work on
because I am guilty, as I'm sure most of us are, of just living a
very hurried life and not taking time to just simply breathe.
So I'm excited to to peel the curtain back on that man and
just learn from you. Yeah, or not breathe.
So actually the paradigm shift that I'm going to share with you
is that actually breathing less is better than breathing more.
And there's a whole science that I can explain the mechanism of
to support that very kind of counter intuitive claim that
I've just made. I, I like counter intuitive,
controversial things man. So I definitely want to put the
curtain back on the science there.
What, what guy's seen the breath work in the 1st place?
What was the catalyst for you going down that rabbit hole?
Yeah, so it's actually something that happened by accident.
It's not like it was something I was searching for.
It happened because I actually had quite barrel within the
system as in the corporate world as a pharmacist trying to get my
kind of renegade ideas out to the masses.
And I'd actually got very successful getting people off
medication using very similar kind of diet plan to what you're
talking about, but more like focus on first step as just stop
eating processed foods that come in boxes, go on a non factory
diet. That's what I'd call it.
And just teaching people how to actually make their own food
again. Right.
So, so I, I felt like as a pharmacist, I had a very
important place, you know, because people would trust
everything I said. And often they wouldn't have
time for the doctor and the doctor doesn't have much
knowledge when it comes to lifestyle changes and
interventions like food and diet, believe it or not.
So I got really good at that, but it actually got me promoted
to the head office of one of the biggest supermarket chains to do
a very like, could have been a high impact, very powerful
project with them, which is a healthy shopping list service,
which would get customized meals directly sent to people's homes,
you know, through their home shopping platform.
And then six months into it, they decided to shelve the idea.
And I, I had a real crush to my soul and my purpose.
And I was just confused. I was like, why?
And I was facing having to go back to my cubicle job as a
pharmacist and the stress and everything, the impacts and the
tension and all that just exploded.
Well, I kind of had a, you know, a serious existential crisis
ended up boom getting hit with a autoimmune disease was
ulcerative colitis. You may be familiar with that.
And I was now housebound basically shedding blood for
almost a year. And this was where I learnt like
the true, you know, mechanisms of getting healthy.
And because none of the medications worked, the, I was
facing 2 choices, either be Guinea pig for a drug hasn't
been tested or I have my colon removed.
So I was only like 32 at the time.
So, you know, wearing a nappy and having a colostomy bag
wasn't what I really wanted. And I had actually surrendered
to the whole medical system. I thought, you know, I basically
given up hope for myself. I'd lost my purpose in life, my
faith in God. Especially when you're suffering
like I was, I've you're spending like 40-50 times a day on the
toilet, you know, that's, it's really horrible symptoms.
So, you know, it's kind of like you're shitting yourself, you
know, it's like fear manifest, you know.
So luckily someone came to the rescue, a yoga teacher in the UK
called Swami Amakananda. She said to me, look, actually
you've got a gift here. If you can turn this around with
your tenacity and passion to help people, you could become an
amazing role model, an example for others by reversing the
situation. And it gave me like a hope back.
So I had to let go of my disbelief because I'm very
scientifically programmed and to suddenly take up this woo woo
type stuff, which is actually for my own culture.
But we're so educated out of it, as, you know, as first second
generation Indian immigrants to the UK, we, we don't think that
things that come from India are considered cool back then, you
know, now we all know the benefits of this stuff.
So anyway, she told me some simple breathing techniques and
the the the results were so profound just to just to stress
release and the pain relief that I got from just simple rhythmic
breathing, extending exhalation, holding your breath in various
ways was mind blowing. I couldn't believe it.
So I was like, you know, my curious mind throwing down the
rabbit hole to learn as much as I could about this amazing
wealth of knowledge and wisdom we have from India.
So I went really deep into the brilliant techniques Pranayama
and really studied that. I discovered an amazing medical
doctor in the UK in so in India called Prakash Mahesh, who
actually then ended up becoming one of my teachers.
And then we Co created the curriculum for Soma Breath.
And what I also went and fell back in love with was the music
because I used to hear music was I used to run raves in the UK.
I became a pharmacist when I was at university.
I had a massive rave actually for two 2000 people every month
for three years. It was epic.
And that's what I thought I was going to do.
Actually, I thought that's what I was going to do.
But something inside me also. Well Mike, I've learnt now.
You know your soul will choose a different path if you're not
aligned with the path you're on, right?
It will do something. It will give you a disease or it
will self sabotage or something until you you get in line right
with what you really want to do. And I realised that music back
then I was making and all that, it was great.
We're bringing people together, celebrating life, but it was
very hedonistic. It was creating a crazy culture
of a lot of people getting off their heads every weekend.
And, you know, I love the music, but the lifestyle that came with
it, not so much. And you know, I couldn't handle
it. You know, growing up, getting
into my 20s and beyond, like hardcore raving was what my
escape. But that also took its toll on
me, right? So what I realised that music
actually has a spiritual purpose and it's been around for
thousands of years, you know, hidden away in, in these like
Vedic texts as a method of transformation.
And there's entire books dedicated to music and it's
called some of yoga, a whole system of using music
therapeutically. So I started to really
experiment with that and decided to combine the breathing
techniques because a lot of breathing techniques involve
rhythms, rhythm of breathing that invokes certain effects on
the body. So I, I went deep into that and
started to make my own therapy for myself for reprogramming the
unconscious mind. Because I also learnt that
mantra is a form of self hypnosis, reprogramming the
operating system, the mind that gets corrupted with Thor
viruses. And there's those Thor viruses
that cause negative beliefs, limiting beliefs and you know,
bad habits that cause disease in the 1st place.
So boom, I found a way to reprogram myself that worked
super good. And and then I started sharing
it. And so I was uploaded onto
YouTube, got really cool results.
People were like asking me for more.
And then I went really deep into figuring out how, how can I get
this out there to the to the mainstream to get it to people.
And I started to build a in my own like online platform that
took off. And along the way I met Wim Hof,
became his right hand man for a bit and he was like, this is the
front man. This is the guy and I actually
end up producing the soundtrack to the Wim Hof method that you
can hear on his YouTube channel and courses.
And then I I wanted to go deeper into the whole pharmacy of
techniques that Pranayama has and put music and and science to
those things. So me and Prakash Marsh joined
forces, created a curriculum to some of breath, started off in
this amazing island that I was living on now in Copenhagen in
Thailand, where with a bunch of mates, we got together and built
the Soma Breath school, which then over the last like six
years or so has really scaled into an amazing transformational
school where music is a core part of it with over 3 1/2
thousand instructors growing fast.
And now I'm like attracting amazing people like yourself and
working with other kind of known, you know, like
influencers in the space, people like Asim Malhotra that you've
heard of who's big proponent of also, you know, the keto diet
and, and breath work and and so on.
So yeah, amazing stuff is happening now because I've
chosen the right path rather than the wrong path.
But what I realized was I was in the wrong system.
You know, the corporate system is not where I belonged.
I'm a bit more renegade than that.
And, and that's why we're talking to each other right now.
I love. It and I love it.
So going back from the beginning when you started to have all
these issues flaring up and it was manifesting in the ulcer,
colitis, colitis, you think that was predominantly because of the
stress and anxiety and depression that you were
experiencing with all the mishap from a career standpoint, Like
there wasn't any type of, you probably didn't have your diet
dialed in perfectly prior to that, but that probably wasn't
the main catalyst. It was more so the stress
induced. I think, yeah, I think what that
does is it leads you to to create bad habits and make bad
decisions. So it wasn't just the career, it
was relationships. They're all linked, right?
It's like a domino effect. One thing stresses you out like
severely, and then that knocks on to everything else in your
life. So, you know, my like actual
lifestyle choices have got better.
Like I because I was now going to be the face of health of this
big corporation, but I also had years of abuse right from being
a raver. So when you get a stress impact,
it becomes like a ticking time bomb and boom, it can manifest
as disease if you're weak in certain areas of the body.
Like for me it's the colon. And also according the Ayurvedic
system, it shows that my energy type, which is known as Vata
Pitta, it's combination, we're more prone to colon issues,
especially ulcers in the colon under severe stressful
situations. That's where the disease will
more likely manifest. So I figured all this stuff out
and, and a lot of it's down to your environment, like who
you're surrounding yourself with.
If you're in the wrong environment, your body will kind
of do something to shift you out of that environment.
Whether you make a conscious decision to change your soul, if
you don't listen to that, we will make that change and it
will give you a disease. It will make you self sabotage
or do something that makes you change your course of direction.
And if you keep ignoring that, it gets worse and worse and
worse. And a lot of people do that
because they mask the symptoms with substances, with alcohol,
with drugs, with prescription medications, with comfort food
and comfort eating, right? So I was indirectly doing all
that. And it was, you know, that one
hit, that one big kick in the gut, literally from this big
corporation that set me off, right?
And so it's like a chain reaction.
But a lot of this will affect right stress, how you breathe,
bringing it back to breathing and how you breathe is very much
linked to your how you think, right?
Your thinking and breathing is linked.
Your breath is the mirror of the mind.
So if you're like a stressed out person, if you're like frantic,
if you even if you're overly excited, your fight or flight
mode is switched on, right? It's on adrenaline's pumping,
going through your system. Even if you're extremely
enthusiastic and high on life, if you don't know how to control
your breath consciously, you sometimes develop bad breathing
habits like mouth breathing, and you'll over breathe and
hyperventilate. And a lot of people suffer from
what I call probably the biggest disease in the world, chronic
mild hyperventilation, which is something that's totally
overloads and people don't fully understand it.
But I've gone really deep into this.
And what that means is you get less oxygen to your body tissue
cells, not more, when you hyperventilate, even if there's
a mild form of hyperventilation where you may be talking like I
am for long periods of time throughout the day, which I was
for many years as a pharmacist, rushing, rushing, rushing, you
know, talking, talking, talking. And also you're not conscious
anymore. You're, you're an autopilot in a
stress mode. And there you start to breathe
in a faster rate than you normally should or would.
And if you don't have time to recalibrate the breath, you'll
start to get low oxygenation of your body tissue cells and you
get vasoconstriction. You know, there's a lot of
people suffer from hypertension because of this.
And if you learn how to slow your breathing down, you will
actually get more oxygen going to your body tissue cells, not
more. There's a mechanism I can
explain to you why that is and why the entire system of yoga,
meditation even, and pranayama is all geared up and design
actually for one core result, right?
Which is a beginning of enlightenment.
And that is becoming super efficient using oxygen.
We hardly need to breathe because oxygen, my friend, is
something we have a toxic codependent relationship with.
It's something that we can't live with and we can't live
without, right? Because it causes oxidative
stress. Every time you produce energy in
the body, you're crying a little bit of stress, you're aging a
little bit. So everyone listen to this right
now. You're aging a little bit as you
breathe, unfortunately. So the yogis developed systems
that train you to be so efficient and using oxygen, you
hardly need to breathe while your breath rate slows right
down. And they use meditation
techniques as well to slow your breathing right down.
This actually then makes you more adapted to low oxygen,
which then means your body becomes more efficient using
oxygen and you get less oxygen stress and you get better body
tissue oxidation. And this prevents you from
getting these sorts of diseases I'm talking about in the long
term If you, if you train like this.
So this is what we teach in summer breath.
We, we actually teach the system of becoming super oxygen
efficient by giving you techniques that trains you to
become really efficient using oxygen in the body through your
mitochondria. And then what it does is it
overall, you'll find a slowering, a lowering of your
breathing rate and a long and ability to hold your breath for
longer periods of time. That's one of the signs that
you're becoming oxygen efficient.
If you can hold your breath for a certain length of time and
beyond. And what it also does is it
raises one of the most important gas in the body, CO2, which
we've been told is this toxic gas that must be let go of at
all costs, right? Or it's causing, you know, the
climate change and we're all going to die because the tumors
seem to, right? I mean, that's a whole other
story we can go into later and some other time.
But I have to tell you that carbon dioxide is your friend.
It really is. It is the way you get oxygen
from your red blood cells into your body tissue cells through a
process called the bore effect. And if this, if this mechanism
is disrupted by hyperventilation, because that
means you let go of the CO2, you get rid of too much CO2 because
every time you breathe out, you breathe out CO2, you will get
less oxygen into your cells. And this leads to all the
problems I'm talking about. I.
Definitely want to dive into the science for, for you as having
gone through, you know, the academic rigors involved in
becoming a pharmacist. Like you said yourself, you're
much more science driven. It's kind of you get you get the
analytical background. I, I do as well, like my, my
family all are scientists. So like this sounds Boo, as you
said in the beginning, at what point you, you kind of like
we're at rock bottom with the physical manifestation of the
colitis, But at what point or at what instance did you realize
that the breath work was the the limiting factor like the game
changing component? So, so that was through the
techniques that my swami told me.
So she told me these reduced breathing techniques and also
breath holding techniques and these reduced breathing
techniques and also rhythmic breathing.
I mean, there's one thing I need to add is the way we can change
our physiological state. So from sympathetic or
parasympathetic, just with breathing with a rhythm where
you're extending your exhalation, like doubling your
excel time, breathing in for four beats out for 8 beats, for
example, over and over. What that will do is it switches
on the parasympathetic puts you into rest and digest.
Well, digest is incorrect to say that, but it puts you into a
rest rejuvenation mode, OK. And that allows you to to switch
off stress for a moment, OK, and helps you get into a trance like
state as well where you can use guided meditation techniques to
start reprogramming the autonomy nervous system.
Because remember, autoimmune is your healthy cells, your immune
cells attacking the healthy cells thinking that they're
foreign invaders. Now, here's the thing, if you go
back from back in the, you know, evolutionary times back to when
we were single cell organisms in the in the sea, those cells
decided one day instead of fighting with each other, to
collaborate with each other and to create a colony of cells,
which then became the first multicellular life forms.
They came together based on trust, love, connection,
collaboration, right. Then those cells multiplied and
became eventually through, you know, evolution us, OK, or maybe
there was some interfering through aliens or whatever, who
knows. But we eventually evolved into
who we are. So our cells are actually
connected based on love. That's the real connection
that's based on now autoimmune disease is a malfunction in this
intelligence that we have where your immune system thinks
healthy cells are, are evil cells that must be killed,
right? This is what causes the disease
symptoms. So what we're doing with with
this is we're with these guided meditation techniques and the
breath, the breath is using helping you to rewire and get
into a a more like kind of theatre brain wave state where
you can now communicate the unconscious mind and tell it
tell it that everything's OK because your environment is what
you become. So if you're in a hostile
environment like a corporate head office, I don't know if
you've ever worked in one, but they're like the most hostile
environments. Everyone's out to get each
other. You know, there's so much
competition and so much cut throat behaviour in there.
Me very sensitive person don't belong in that environment,
right? So, you know, all of this added
together with the distrust of the pharmaceutical system and
the medical system and the loss of hope for humanity and seeing
what was going on in the world, that really disturbed me through
the eyes of the lens of the corporate head office.
I was not in the right place, the right environment.
So part of the healing is to kind of reframe past events.
So guilt, shame, anger, fear needs to be kind of rewired and
transformed, transmuted into the opposite.
And that is where healing comes from.
But these slow rhythmic breathing techniques also gets
oxygen back into the body tissue cells.
And because stress will cause contraction and tension and it's
going to reduce blood flow as well.
When you start to breathe in these general rhythms, you start
to harmonise the biorhythms in the body because every function
in your body is rhythmic in nature, right?
And they're subservient to the rhythm of your breath.
Your breathing patterns really affects your physiological
functions, so this rhythmic breathing is really good for
your body anyway. But then when you combine it
with a certain pattern that switches off stress, that helps
you to really relax and get into these trance states where you
can reprogram yourself. And so the music also helps with
that because the music has a groove to it.
So when you breathe in a rhythm, breathe in in beats is what I
call it, you can really get into these amazing flow states just
with the breath. It's like a amazing guided
meditation. And then the guided meditation I
record over the top, I call it neurasomatic programming.
Now is a way of it's like an NLP, but you're bringing the
body into it and the breath is the bridge between the mind and
the body. And it allows you to start to
reprogram yourself. Like imagine you're an operating
system and it gets thought viruses over time, you can, you
can reformat this. So this is what I kind of delve
into. And what I'm explaining now is
thousands of years of wisdom from ancient India.
It's it's the it's from Buddhism, it's from Tantra, it's
from Pranayama yoga. All of these schools, these
ancient schools, these actually they're science based, in my
opinion, are all reprogramming tools.
They're all about discovering who you are.
How do you end up where you are now?
And to change, you can go in there and change the the very
apps that are installed in your mind, your mind Ware to in
alignment with what you truly want.
And this is the process of I would say waking up.
Enlightenment, you know, is another word for that.
But it's everyone has the ability to do this.
And you know, you've seen the power of hypnotherapy.
It works really well. The reason why is because it's
the same process, but with a breath, you can actually speed
up this process of reprogramming and it can happen very fast.
We've even done studies with Cambridge University now with my
protocols I've developed which showed like how powerful this
breath techniques are in comparison to psychedelics.
They used to treat severe depression, like I, I had severe
depression at the time. So psychedelics has a great use
of this because it gets you into these auto states of
consciousness that allows you to reprogram, right.
And you know, I've also had another scientist called Jeff
Taran who did one that showed how we quiet the default mode
network, which is the brain's version of the ego through these
breath retention techniques, holding the breath.
Also Cambridge showed that the breath holds is where a lot of
the magic happens with this breath therapy form of therapy.
And and so a lot of what we teach is all about increasing
your breath hole capacity because this is what is the
measure of you become efficiently using oxygen.
And and that method is the you mentioned a few times, I may be
misprinted the the par pariana or is that what it's called?
Pranayama. Pranayama.
And what is that like? If someone you know googles
that, what's what's the Webster's definition of that?
So pranayama simply means prana means energy, yama means
control. And it's the first branch of
yoga. It's like it's the one of the
most important things you do first in yoga, right?
It's kind of been forgotten a bit in mainstream yoga, but it's
the very important part. And it's actually a pharmacy of
different techniques you master. It gives you the ability to
manipulate energy in the body. And remember, energy is produced
by oxygen coming into your body, combining with glucose and
burning like a combustion engine in your mitochondria to produce
ATP, life force energy which drives all the functional life.
So breathing has something to do with every function of your
life. So with Pranayama, you have the
ability to consciously control things you thought you had no
control over, like your heart rate, your blood pressure,
digestive system, your immune system even and your way you
produce energy and you can become very efficient using
oxygen with pranayama techniques.
So pranayama is a little bit mystified in the whole yogic
literature and stuff. So we've demystified it like my,
the, the Doctor Who works with me in, in India, he is an
incredible like Yogi, but also knows how to translate Sanskrit.
So he an amazing translation of the ancient original texts.
And through that, we reverse engineered the whole system of
pranayama, which is incredible. There's so many techniques for
different things. You think of all the things you
go to a pharmacy for, there's a pranayama technique for that as
well, right? So this is what I wanted to
bring to the world because I believe prevention's better than
cure, right? And the more we could do to
prevent having to go on the pills, the better.
Because there's a pill for every eel, right?
But there's also an eel following every pill.
That's the problem. The side effects.
I saw it everyday, people getting on one medication a few
weeks later or another one, another one.
So that's why I'm on such a mission right now to get people
to not get on to that cycle, that vicious cycle.
Because medical bills are insane, right?
They can bankrupt someone and there's so much we can do.
Like, you know, changing the diet.
Not everyone has to go full on kheyo, but it does help for
certain diet, certain issues, certain conditions, for sure.
There's all the evidence out there.
And yeah. And so I'm very committed to
bring Pranayama to the world in a way that's accessible, fun,
but also scientific that you can trust to get the result you're
looking for. Yeah, and I definitely dive into
the the tactics here. So like I am a big proponent
for, you know, returning to the parasympathetic states whenever
possible. Like when I train, like I try
and wake up and before I look at my phone, before I look at
distraction to try and just do some, you know, mindfulness
practices, prayer, breathing outside, ideally after I get
done weight training in the morning, I allow myself to kind
of, you know, stretch out, return to normal breathing
before I, you know, consume a meal or anything like that.
But I am the worst when it comes to consistently, you know,
journaling or meditating or using like a mindfulness app.
Like I've, I've downloaded them all, I've played around with
them, but then I, I never stick with it.
I never adhere to it, but I feel like if I was able to commit
something and then tangibly experience the benefits in short
order, I would be compelled to, you know, obviously adhere to it
long term. So for somebody that's going
through life and they are what they would benefit from this as
most people would, how does that look like?
What are some very tangible takeaways?
Somebody listen to this could start implementing and actually
experience the benefit from on the short term.
OK, so so we teach I, I have a section on our app, the summer
breath app called Breath Farmer. And on there there's a lot of
useful breathing techniques. So I'll give you one example
very quick one easy one you can do if you've got a blocked nose
or if you've got stuffy congestion.
I have a little baby door and she's always giving us stuff
these days because she's out there playing with all the kids.
So sometimes I get a little bit congestion.
So what I do in that situation, you can try this right now if
you want. It'll it'll give you a little
kind of wake up too, as if you breathe in through your nose,
breathe out through your nose, hold your nose right and hold
your breath and just nod your head up and down, right.
And you do that until you can't hold your breath any longer.
I really do. It's your maximum effort.
And then repeat that two or three times right in a row or
your congestion will go away all clear and you're suddenly as a
breathe again. So breathe through my.
Nose out to my nose once. In through your nose, out
through your nose. Hold your nose like pinch it
with your fingers. Hold your breath until you go to
your maximum breath hold capacity.
And then do it again and again, at least two or three times, and
then you'll see everything clears up.
You want to try it now? Sure.
Sure, maybe a little silence on the the the court recording
here, but yeah, I'll give it a shot.
OK, makes. Me realize I need to be able to
hold my breath for longer. What?
How long? How long do you think people
should realistically be able to do that?
As they're pinched, their nose will hold their breath like a
minute's hold between each session.
No. When?
Maybe some people will do a minute, but people just starting
out might be more like 30 seconds.
Yeah, but 30 to 40 seconds. But how did you get on?
No, that's good as in about 30-40 seconds.
Yeah, I wasn't congested to begin with.
But I feel like if if I get congested, especially as the
seasons are changing here, being able to do that, that would that
would certainly help. Yeah.
So did that, did that, did it clear a little bit.
Did you feel anything? Yeah, I feel like it just, it
brings me to the present state efficiently, you know, like I,
yeah, just like mindfully controlling your breath and
actually thinking about as opposed to just going about it.
I do try and not ever allow myself to mouth breathe.
Like when I'm sleeping, I take my mouth so I can only breathe
nasally. So I'm, I'm, I'm try to, to, you
know, implement that whenever possible.
But I think I should probably do something like that throughout
the day for sure. Yeah, yeah.
So we have lots of other. So this is just the basic one.
Then there's like techniques for going to sleep, for example,
which is a big common problem a lot of people have.
So if you breathe an extended exhalation in a rhythm, so in
for two beats, A4 beats, so seconds, that would do in for
2A4 and just do that. If you just do that in a cycle
right, over and over for a few minutes, you'll start to turn on
the parasympathetic pretty quickly and you'll feel much
more relaxed. And if you add a little
affirmation to it, I command my subconscious mind to put me into
a deep, restful sleep so I can wake up the following morning.
And you set a time, right? Watch what happens.
You'll fall asleep and then that will happen, right.
And we actually make a track just with that, that breathing
pattern that you breathe along with that, that guides you into
that state as well. A very relaxing track with
beautiful music. And yes, sometimes I, if I'm in
a situation where I really want to sleep, maybe I'm like in a
different time zone and I want to reset, I'll use this track
and it will put me into sleep. It's amazing.
So you know, that's another example.
Turning on the parasympathetic. You can also do 4 beats, 8 beats
out. There's certain techniques you
can do like in for four, hold for eights, out for eights, for
example. So this is a really good one for
actually kind of turning off anxiety, right?
And stress, which is another useful one.
If you breathe in for about four beats where you breathe in
fully, you breathe into your lower lungs.
So imagine your nostrils are in your back and you're breathing
out, expanding your belly, your back, then into your chest,
upper back, upper chest, and then so you've got full lung
full of air. So do that'll take about four
seconds to breathe in fully. Then you hold for 8 beats,
right? You hold that for 8 beats and
then you breathe out for 8 beats, right?
Slowly, like you're breathing out for a small straw.
If you just repeat that pattern OK over and over, boom, you'll
feel very relaxed and actually helps if you've eaten loads of
food and you're a bit stuffed. If you just do that, it will
actually help you digest the food better too.
It will give you space in the bowels to get the bowels moving.
It's really cool. So the main thing is definitely
be holding or exhaling for at least double the amount of time
that you are inhaling so that you have more carbon dioxide
than oxygen. It's all about the CO2CO2CO2 is
what you want to use to turn on parasympathetic nervous system,
OK and to calm you. CO2 is a calmer, O2 is an
exciter, right? O2 is also a vasoconstrictor.
CO2 is a vasodilator. OK, big difference.
So when you know that you can manipulate the gases in your
body for whatever situation you want.
OK, so with when you actually breathe out a lot of CO2, you,
you actually, you don't get more oxygen really you don't, you
can't really fully saturate more than what you do with just a
little sniff of air coming in, inhaling a little sniff of air.
It's that's not the thing. But what, what happens is if you
breathe out lots of CO2, right? And if you, especially if you're
doing a fast freight, you generate heat in the body as
well. If you hyperventilate, short
bursts, you, you reduce heat, but you also produce adrenaline
and it can create a bit of a stress on the body, which can be
used in certain situations for certain things, like as a
natural kind of stimulant in the short term if it's just for a
short period. But also it can act as a bit of
an anti-inflammatory. But there's another way to use
that because when you do that, when you breathe out CO2
temporarily for a short period, right?
So I'd say 30 breaths in and out, in through your nose, out
through your nose fast. If you do that for 30 breaths
and then you take a deep breath in and then breathe all the air
up and hold your breath, you're now going to be able to hold
your breath significantly longer than you thought you could.
Like your normal breath whole time.
Just if you breathe in and breathe out and hold maybe about
30 seconds, the average is about 20 to 40 seconds.
Some people are much higher, but if you breathe all the CO2 out,
because CO2 is what tells your brain you need to breathe OK, if
you have less CO2 in your bloodstream, it allows you to
now hack your breath all times temporarily.
And what that does is it basically triggers a positive
stress on the body because you start to lower oxygen briefly
and you create a state called insomin hypoxia.
This is a very, very useful physiological state because when
you take anything away from the body, it tricks the body into
becoming more efficient using that thing that is being
deprived of. That's why fasting helps with
food. It basically when you fast, you
actually trick the body and thinking you're running out of
sugar and glucose and fuel. And what it does then is it
becomes more efficient. It clears out old cells that you
know are using up energy that you don't need.
It kind of cleans the body up a bit so you can become more
efficient to survive on less calories.
OK, now same thing with diet. So with breathing, if you take
away the oxygen for a brief period because it can't be too
long otherwise you die, you, your body adapts to a low oxygen
environment. And what this does is your body
will start to do what makes sense as well physiologically to
become more efficient in oxygen. So you'll produce more
mitochondria in your cells, your red blood cells count increases
and you get more capillaries growing in certain areas of your
body, right? And you can actually get
coronary collaterals, which are like natural heart bypasses that
form that increases the cardiovascular strength of your
heart, but also your brain health improves.
You actually increase more blood vessels and neurogenesis in the
brain as a result of this. So just doing this like a few
rounds of this a day, OK, can be a really good cardiovascular
workout for your system. And it's also why high, high
altitude training works. High altitude training has been
shown to be one of the most effective exercises where you go
up to high altitudes, train and then come back down and then go
back up again. You do this like protocol of
training at high altitude, coming back down to sea level
and so on. And this is shown to be a secret
weapon of a lot of athletes. But now they use machines called
IHT machines where they give you through machines a different
concentrations of oxygen, high and low.
You know you are normal and low actually.
And sometimes they use actually a higher concentration oxygen
and a low, very low concentration oxygen.
And this fluctuation oxygen tricks the body and thinking
you're running out of oxygen too.
And this wakes up as well. Stem cells are the system
because stem cells and that's why you get more capillaries
forming stem cells have the power to turn into any other
stem cells. Very small embryonic like stem
cells are the the magic weapon of of reversing ageing and
creating health within the body repair of old cells that have
died due to low oxygenation or inflammation or so on.
So this can help lower inflammation in the body and it
also stimulated rapid healing as well.
And so you know, these techniques have been preserved
in the yogic traditions of tantric yogic tradition for 1000
years. Now the science is starting to
back them up. You know, people are Wim off he
that's what he's doing. He's showing you high altitude
training techniques, simulation of how to training with what he
does. And you know, he's all about
climbing up mountains in his shorts.
And he's doing the kind of techniques that these Tibetan
yogis would do to become efficient using oxygen so they
can go and stay up in high altitudes.
You know where the oxygen supply is much lower, right?
So, you know, Pranayama has these techniques, you know, we
do our own version of this. Free divers are doing this as
well that's allow them to swim underwater and hold their breath
for long periods of time, you know, and so on and so forth.
So yeah, a lot of incredible things can be done just with
your breath that we don't even realise.
I mean, there's more, there's, there's ways you can turn on
focus creativity, also sleep, digestive fire and that has to
do with how you manipulate your nostril activity, your nostril
dominance. I can share about that as well
if you want. Yeah, yeah, definitely that As
far as the the momentary acute increase in oxygen, like I've,
I've noticed that like I used to scuba dive and prior to using
the the oxygen tanks, we were trying to increase breath hold
times and we would intentionally hyperventilate for a period and
I would notice that my breath hold times, you know, almost
doubled. It was kind of crazy.
But I'll do something similar, you know, when I'm training,
like if I'm about to do a, you know, heavy deadlift or
something and I am bracing against the belt, in which case
I'm not really breathing, I'm just keeping that core tight.
I'll hyperventilate a little bit before, you know, committing to
that pull. And I feel like that's pretty
much the the same thing is happening there.
Yeah, actually deep sea diving is a great way to see how
efficiently using oxygen because how long, how fast your oxygen
sound runs out is that measure. Because when I went, I did a
whole advance diving and all this in Thailand, and I
outlasted every single advance instructor there in terms of the
oxygen supply, like significantly longer than most
people because my oxygen efficiency is so high compared
to everybody else I've trained for it.
And so I could stay on the water for ages.
People were blown away. They couldn't understand how I
could stay on the water for so long compared to everyone else.
But yeah, because you don't need to breathe much when you're
efficient. And actually that makes the
whole underwater experience so much better when you you just go
into these meditative States and, you know, some people panic
down there and the oxygen tank runs out really fast or they're
just all the way because that's how they naturally breathe.
And I used to breathe like that till I learned that actually,
that's the wrong way. So I had to reprogram a lot of
bad habits from the past. And it's so easy to do.
And once you do it, everything shifts and changes.
But yeah, the, the the things that really fascinated me is how
we can tap into the autonomic nervous system as well.
Like literally turning on creativity, turning on focus
alertness, like in the moment, you know, literally in minutes.
You know, you hear about pills and medication for this, but I'm
sorry, there's nothing that compares to what you can do with
your breath. I mean, I can teach you one of
those techniques as well if you want.
Yeah, yeah, I'm always down to learn more about how to be
creative. Yeah, yeah, so, so basically we
have two sides, the brain, left hemisphere, right hemisphere.
OK, so the right hemisphere is your feminine brain and it's the
part that's going to emotional world.
And it's also the more dreamy creative side, OK.
It deals with kind of imagery, symbols and, and dreams and, and
it's the creative part. It's where you have the divine
downloads coming in. The left brain is your more
cognitive kind of reason and logic side of the brain.
And, but here's the thing. So throughout the day, you're
actually three people with three different personalities.
Your left brain, your right brain and both hemispheres
operate at the same time. OK, this is super interesting
because when your left brain's switched on, you're more in your
masculine, OK? You're more in that focus mode,
you're more linear in your thinking, right?
And it's actually your sympathetic nervous system.
When you're more in your right brain, you're more in your
feminine side, your nurture side, your creative side.
You're more dreamy. And actually your mind may have
a lot of thoughts. You're more introspective as
well. You're more in your mind, right?
So throughout the day your nostrils will stretch dominance
between left and right by itself.
It's actually linked to the the lunar calendar believe it or
not. And you can notice as you can
see which nostrils more dominant right now by closing 1 nostril
and just breathing in out of one.
You'll find one is much easier to breathe out from the other.
Have a go. Yeah, my right side is
definitely winning right now. Your right side, yeah.
Is this breathe from? Yeah.
So you're actually in your left brain because your left brain
controls the right side of your body, your right brain controls
the left side of the body. So when your right nostril is
more dominant, it means your left brain is more active,
right? So you're actually more in your
masculine. So while you're paying attention
to every word I'm saying right now, OK, but if you're in your
right brain, you may be drifting off right now thinking about
what I said before and going off on tangents yourself.
And, and it's interesting, you'll notice that you probably
do that certain parts of the day now also, you know, the
afternoon slump people get, right?
It's usually when the left nostril switches on because it's
also the more relaxed part of the brain.
And so you can monitor this throughout the day and you can
see which personality are you in at the moment.
Now here's the thing, we can on command switch nostril activity,
right? You can turn on creativity right
now if you want to be more creative, you need your left
nostril switched on your left nostrils, also known as soma.
It's the symbol is the moon. OK, because usually the left
nostrils more active when the moon comes out.
So and your sun is Surya is your right nostril.
And that's more active when the the sun's out makes sense
because during the day you want to be more active, sympathetic,
getting stuff done. And during the when the moon
starts to come out and the sun goes down, you want to be more
now into nurture, relaxing and being more in your creative.
That's why artists tend to be more creative in the evenings,
right? And especially during the full
moon, right? They're more creative suddenly,
right? Especially me, I'm a musician.
I feel it straight away. So I can show you how to switch
on your right nostril now, right.
So you're left. So let's do that.
So you, you know that I'm not completely insane.
So take your left hand, put your right, so all your fingers
wrapped around your left thumb. So put your basically put your
left thumb into your palm and then wrap your your fingers
around it. OK, so you make like a fist but
with your fingers over your thumb.
Then you put your left armpit. So your left, this fist under
your right armpit and you push up, you put loads of pressure
up, OK? And you close your right nostril
with your so your right hand now closes your right nostril, OK?
And you're going to push up and you're going to breathe in and
out through your left nostril only for about 21 times and put
the pressure up. You need to re put pressure up.
That's what switches on now in a few minutes your right nostril.
So try that, OK. So I got my fist around my left
thumb and I'm pushing into my right armpit and I'm holding my
right nostril closed. Yes, for 21 breaths.
Yes, yeah.
In a few minutes, maybe even before the 21, your left nostril
should switch on. Yeah definitely can breathe
through my left nostril easier now for sure.
Yeah. So switching on.
That's interesting, man. It's trippy.
I think I'm doing yoga right now here as we're talking.
Yeah. And then in a minute you will
feel more relaxed. Actually, you might start to
drift off now actually a little bit in your attention.
So your your left brain is attention.
Your right brain is, I don't want to say distraction, but
it's can't think of what rhymes with attention.
But you know, it's going to be more in your creative side.
You're more nurture female side now.
So do you actually go through the day and you kind of like
just self check and analyse to to switch as?
Yeah, I yeah, I try not to mess with the whole biorhythms too
much unless I really need to. So like, let's say I've got to
do this interview with you. I want to be really sharp and,
you know, I want to not go off on tangents.
I want to kind of stick to some kind of linear thing.
Now, you see, I was in a bit of a rush.
I had a busy day. And so usually what I do is
actually prepare a bit and get my right nostratus so I'm in my
flow. So I actually, I started this
call just checking that my left nostril is more active than my
right. So I may be going off on a bit
of a tangent, but I definitely feel more in the creative mode
right now. Actually, I'm having a few
divine downloads as we're talking.
Yeah, so, but usually I'd switch it as to and also here's the
other useful time is digestive fire.
So you need your right nostrilative to digest food
properly. All right, so you want to sleep
on your if you eat a lot of food and your left nostrils active,
you basically want to avoiding food when your left nostril
active, you want to switch it to your right.
Or if you if it's too late, what you do is you do a Soma power
nap is you sleep on your left brain.
OK, for a bit, because whatever side you sleep on is the
hemisphere that will turn on. All right.
So you sleep on your left brain, your left hemisphere switches
on. And this is your, you know, the,
the mask inside the digestive fire.
Surya, it's the fire. And after a few minutes, when it
switches on and you wake up out of it, you're not really going
to sleep. But it's like a little power
nap. You'll feel so relieved if
you're stuffed full of food. Suddenly you'll start digesting
food so much better. It's amazing and you have more
energy you feel or. Right side.
You sleep on your left, so whatever brain hemisphere you
want to switch on, you sleep on that side.
So if you want to sleep, sleep on your right brain.
Interesting. This is cool man.
This is very cool. So do you.
It's like I need to have like a bunch of diagrams or charts
taped on the wall or something where I could see all this and
adjust on the fly as needed based off of the goal.
Yeah, so cool, right? And actually, you can also say
no to things as well. Like if you really play with
your biorhythm, let's say there's something you need to do
that requires attention, but your left nostrils are active.
You can wait till it switches and then do that thing because
that thing will be way more successful if you do it in the
right nostril. So if you're going to be
creative, your creativity will be more turned on when you're
less nostrils are active and therefore you'll have a better
outcome, better result. So whatever result you're
looking for, check in with it and if you have to, switch it.
So what if you're sleeping on on your back, for instance?
Is it kind of like just a blended hemisphere?
So the back is an interesting one, right?
Because first you don't want to sleep on your back because it
will make your mouth open using your snore and your
hyperventilate in your sleep, which is one of the most deadly
things you can do, OK, for your health.
So avoid mouth breathing in your sleep at all costs.
OK? But it's also known as corpse
pose. OK, He basically dies a reason
why it's called corpse pose. It's how dead bodies lie and
both nostrils may switch on as well.
And here's the thing, you will throughout the day, only a few
moments will both nostrils be out at the same time.
This is a time not to do anything other than meditate.
This is the Shushumna nadi. It's when you're connected to
the divine right, and it's the moment you, all you should do is
meditation. If you do anything else in that
state, it's going to fail, right?
It's not going to work. You're not going to have the
best outcome because you're actually connected source at
that point, and that's the best time to meditate and have the
divine downloads. So if you wait for that moment,
you can. But you can also switch them
both on by basically using both fists of both armpits and
putting pressure on both armpits at the same time and that will
eventually switch on both nostrils.
Interesting. Again, don't mess with that too
much. Yeah.
So what what does a day-to-day look like for you?
Like when you wake up? Like how do you kind of
construct your day to optimize where?
You're well, I live states, yeah, I live what is called what
I call a breath based lifestyle. So everything revolves around
the breath. I wake up, I do breath based
yogic practices, asanas as well as stretching and physical body
weight exercises. Holding the breath is Indian
martial arts system called Kalari which is all using the
breath with body weight exercises like push ups, sit
ups, squats and so on, lunges and different types of
variations of squats. So I do that.
So you get anaerobic exercise benefits which is in my opinion
way more efficient than aerobic exercise.
You get a lot of benefits at quicker time.
I use my breath. I have an app, the same breath
app, so they have these amazing tracks on there.
And I do one dose of that usually of the intermittent
hypoxia techniques, which is an amazing, you know, way to start
your day. Then I go on with my day, right?
And I'll check in with the nostrils and if I need to switch
them because I've got something urgent to do, I'll do that.
I usually I'll play with the nostril like I'll, I'll kind of
work in, in tandem with the biorhythms that my nostrils
tells me. It's my, you know, signal of
what to do and what not to do. And I do also spend times where
I, I'm in silence, where I don't talk and I keep my mouth shut
and just breathe in and out through my nose because it helps
recalibrate the, the nervous system and get the oxygen back
to where it needs to go. It's very important that we have
these no breathing breaks, you know, where you don't breathe
much. Well, reduce breathing breaks,
you know, especially if you're a talker, if you're doing a lot of
interviews and talking for long periods of time, you need to
have at least a minute every 20 minutes just to recalibrate.
Like I'm talking a lot right now because I'm in my flow, but I
know it's now I'm getting a bit light headed because I've talked
to talk, talk, talk non-stop and I'm breathing out a lot of CO2.
So that is meaning I'm getting less oxygen to my brain, not
more. This is why it's so important
that people stop and just focus on the breath.
It's called Vipassana, where you just focus on your breath and
just breathe in and out in silence.
This is one of the easiest ways to meditate and it gives you all
the benefits of reduced breathing, which is the
cornerstone of good yoga practice, but also a breath
based lifestyle that's going to dramatically improve your
health, well-being, energy levels, your moods, everything.
Just let you do a few, a one minute break every 20 minutes of
slow reduced breathing in a rhythm in for four beats after 4
beats or infrared alpha rates. There's other patterns.
There's all you can do and just see what happens to your life.
Man totally, man, totally. I had a podcast of a couple days
ago talking about like CPAP machine, you know, sleep apnea.
And obviously, as you had said earlier, you know, if you've got
sleep apnea in your mouth breathing like the worst thing
you you can do, is there any downside to the C PAP machine as
far as like having a regulated amount of oxygen coming in?
Is that kind of like better than the sleep apnea?
I'm sure, but probably not optimal.
So therefore, like severe situations, right, they
shouldn't be first line treatments, right?
So I, I'm, I go with the mantra first.
Do no farm, you know, as my friend has seen my daughter's
mantra, because pharmaceutical invention is just putting the
Band-Aid over the of the of the actual 'cause you know of the
situation. So you need to identify the
cause 1st and then you can reverse engineer what's going
on. Why am I on the CPAP machine?
It's probably lifestyle factors, probably being overweight.
It's probably stress levels, anxieties, maybe sleeping
positions. There's so many things you can
do before you go on a CPAP machine to fix to prevent you
getting on there because once you're on that, you become
dependent on it and it means you're not actually fixing the
port, the cause of the problem. So I'm always like medical
intervention, last resort, emergencies, do everything you
can before take it all off. If none of that works, then do
CPAP machine. But you also need to give a
chance. People don't give changing in
lifestyle enough of a chance. People like, we'll go on a diet
for a day and say, oh, the diet can work, you know what I mean?
Yeah. So that's not good either.
Totally agree man. Well tell me about the the app
real quick to kind of round to here.
I want to learn more about that. Yeah.
So the app I'm really proud of, it's got a whole library of
different breath pharma techniques and also a whole
library of different breath tracks with newer somatic
programming, which is all about reprogramming you at a core
level with amazing guided breath meditations and using this
breath retention techniques to create intermittent hypoxia.
The dose I'm talking about and dose stands for DOSC, dopamine,
oxygen, serotonin, endorphins. When you hold your breath for a
long enough period and also rhythmic breathing as well
enhances this, you release a dose and that positive stress on
the body, right, is what it creates all the magical effects
I was talking about with intimate hypoxia.
Also, that dose makes you feel naturally high, makes you feel
it gives you a natural high feeling.
So in the net result, everything we do, if you follow our app and
uses your daily practice, you're going to get naturally high.
You feel like you're glowing every single day, right?
But also you will become naturally healthier and happier
because these are feel good neurotransmitters, right?
And if you feel good and happy and a high vibe, everything we
do is a result of feeling. So if you're feeling good,
you're going to start doing good stuff to other people as well.
You're going to start making better choices for your life.
It's the miserable people who go and do and make people miserable
around them and cause suffer in the world.
It's the high happy, healthy people who go on and do good
things. So that's my mission is to make
people naturally high. Right without needing loads of
drugs and also healthy and happy.
And then we can make the world a better place.
That's the real mission behind the Summer Breath app and
everything we do I. Love it man your your raves now
look quite a bit different than your than your initial raves I'm
assuming. Yeah, we call them breath raves.
Awesome man, where do I point people to to learn more?
The the summer breath app? Is it.com or?
Itssoberbreath.com. OK.
The app there and we also have various courses like instructor
training courses and and so on. Awesome, man.
Well, I'll definitely put some of this into practice.
It's getting colder now, so I'm going to start doing more of my
cold plunging and doing the breath work, breath work as I'm
doing that. So yeah, man, this is this will
be cool to play around with for sure.
Amazing mate. Well, I certainly appreciate the
time, brother. Keep fighting to keep good
fight. Keep making people help
healthier and happier and doing the good things man.
So what the world needs more of right now, for sure.
And if you go to my Instagram, Neeraj Naik official, all right,
and you send me the keyword breath, I'll send you a lot of
good stuff. Awesome man, I will check it
out. Really appreciate it brother.
Epic mate.