65: Niraj Naik, Tapping Into Your "Inner Pharmacy" via SOMA Breath - Breathwork, Dance, Ayurveda, Community, and More (Encore Episode)

0:00 How did a Tony Robbins event in 2007 Rouse, A jaded pharmacist to dive deep into the rabbit hole of the powers of nutrition, meditation and other forms of biohacking, leading to collaboration with Wimhoff Risk appear and many other luminaries in the field? How can reciting simple affirmations with absolute conviction combined with exposure to sauna put us into deep alpha brain wave states to help us leverage our intuition and heighten our problem solving abilities? And what is Soma Breath under? The one time rave DJ Slash, community pharmacist from the UK combined breath work, ecstatic dance, ayurveda and groundbreaking science to launch a worldwide movement with thousands of followers that helps us tap into our inner pharmacy to fight all sort of colitis and other chronic ailments. Stay tuned as we touch on these and many other topics on this week's episode of Untether Your Life. Welcome to Untether Your Life, a show that empowers you to own your own health and break free of templates for managing physical and mental Wellness, and looks at key issues impacting the South Asian diaspora. I am your host, Nikhil Torsakar, and I'm passionate about the power of conversation to catalyze change. This week features an encore episode of our discussion with Neeraj Nayak, founder of Soma Breath. Neeraj could be seen as the poster boy for the themes of Untether Your life, owning your health with alternatives to medication and surgery, tapping

1:31 into ancient Eastern wisdom traditions, and ripping up templates for success handed to us as members of the South Asian diaspora, also known as the Renegade Pharmacist, Newridge is a certified UK pharmacist turned holistic Wellness, brain training and breath work expert. He is one of the world's most sought after spiritual ceremony facilitators and leads breath work workshops around the world. His journey started in the midst of a burnout in his corporate career when he found himself bedridden with chronic illness for more than a year. Healing himself using breath work techniques and dietary adjustments, Neeraj felt motivated to share his knowledge with others. Today, Neerage runs a global breath work community and trains thousands of breath work experts through his Soma breath framework, which is also taught at numerous Wellness centers in the US, Europe and Asia.

2:19 And with that, let's get untethered. So Neerage, Truly, truly, this is a blessing. You're one of the most fascination people I've met in terms of your story, just in terms of the change that you're affecting in the world, and you're the real deal. So really glad to have you on the show. Pleasure to be here brother. So why don't you go ahead if you can tell us a little bit more about your background, sort of what led you from your days as a DJ in the UK to now being one of the most sought after breath gurus, I guess. Yeah. So I think I'm like you right Second generation? Yeah, parents came over to England for you as America, right? So they came over. They got kicked out of Idi Amin by Idi Amin out of Uganda. It was a super hard struggle for them. At one point they were like living in like tiny one bedroom apartment with two other families. And that was like my first year of my life, you know, act then like the toilets were outside and it was communal, the showers and everything in the street.

3:21 So it was a whole different world. And this is just like. 45 years ago, right? So it was a whole different world. Like, we've got it so good right now, but my parents really struggled. Yeah, the UK was very different back then. I mean, now we have South Asian Prime Minister. It's a very different world. Yeah. So they really had to work on My dad, like, you know, studied really hard. My mom trained to be a doctor in India, but she had me and then she was so busy that she basically. She didn't manage to finish the exams, so she didn't become a fully qualified Dr. but she kind of sacrificed her career for us. But my dad went full power. I hardly ever saw him, you know, because he was so busy not working.

4:07 So actually I didn't really get to know like my dad very well. But my mom, I was definitely more bonded to it. They were very academic and you know, so because of security, right? And the fact they're so drilled into the consciousness of Indians struggling in a very white centric population, sure to get noticed, to be, you know, to get actually a decent career, that was instilled into me. It was this extreme hard work ethic. But also you either become a pharmacist, a doctor or lawyer, accountant, you know, something like that. Or a failure. That's the. Yeah, that's the default, right? Yeah, Yeah.

4:48 Yeah, yeah, like the thing was. My family, friends circle and our relatives were very successful Indians who worked really hard. The doctors or pharmacists were big pharmacy chains. You know, Indians are generally pretty good at business. The good right is especially and so some of them have built, you know, empires. So I was groomed to follow in one of my uncle's footsteps to become a pharmacist and, you know, take over a chain one one day. Eventually it was if. I was into it even a slight bit, right? My life would have been pretty sweet. Everything was laid out for me, right? So my parents were blown away when I started to get into being a DJ and making music and not wanting to do anything like that. What happened was like, so I still followed partly by I was like, okay, I'll get the degree for security. You know, so I have something to fall back on. But in the meantime, I went really deep to my passion. So my dad's fault because he gave me my first right? It was a keyboard, 14 years old.

6:02 And that's what got me like turned on to music and making music and the electronic scene was like immersion back then. This is like 990-4995. It was like picking up. So I got really hooked into this and started. Link keyboards up and do little gigs or raves at school for fun. Where did you go to school? Cardiff in Wales in England, So I was already a bit of a rebel and you know, my parents are like, you can do what you want as long as you get your degree. And then that turned into actually then a bigger rave. Like I had a 2000 people club, we had it for three years, we ran this massive rave and I was playing live to like. 1000 people, you know, on the main stage and I was like wow, since just dream come true. But with that scene comes a lot of pieing, a lot of hedonism, a lot of drugs, alcohol and crazy wild rock'n'roll lifestyle. So I lived it to the Max, like university days were like prolific, like how hard I pie, you know? But then this dark music scene emerged, and then everything went dark after 2002 in the music scene. Other drugs going involved, that messed it all up. So one thing led to another I had to go back to what I did fall back on that way was the pharmaceutical. That's why I fell back on, because I lost this event and I crashed and burned and suddenly I'm in this cubicle as it promises, dishing out pills.

7:32 And it was like, what has happened to my life? It was like massive come down, the biggest come down ever. Yeah, like, I was just like mad depressed for years. For seven years I worked as a community pharmacist, so I had a major breakdown and my friend took me to a Tony Robbins event. Yeah, kicking and screaming. Because I didn't. He bought the ticket. But that turned out to be the best thing I ever did. Like that. The event was incredible. Like Massive, they do The Walking on hardcore. All of that. But there's this guy. He's got, like, some long name Joseph McKellen. He did this one talk on health, like all the bio hacks back then, right?

8:14 So it was the first time I heard anyone talk about diet, nutrition, breathing, even meditation, water, spirulina, all this stuff. I was like, what doesn't it like? Never heard of this. You know the reason the mid two. When was this? When was this two? 1007 Okay, yeah. So it was the first time I heard all of this. So I was like, well here's an idea. I have a pharmacy full of sick patients I'm going to put Taylor on as a test. I'll find out pretty quick if he's full of shit. So I came up with this really simple system because at first it's hard to give patients time, right? Like you only have a few minutes for the patient, you're so busy. So I'm forced myself to make time, even if I fell behind on other bits of the work, to spend at least 5 minutes over the patient.

9:02 And in that time, I basically came up with a system, a healthy shopping system. And I've given an analogy to the patient. I'll be like, look, you're on all these drugs, right? Do you really want to be taking them? Most people will be like, no, course not. I'm getting all these side effects and I'll be like, well, just imagine you are like a super efficient bioengine, right? And just like a normal engine, like have you ever put the wrong fuel into your engine? Like a diesel instead of petrol? Right. These are, these are one, most people have done that once, right? So they're like, right. So what's that feel like? What happens and allow, you know, the car breaks down or you have to clean it out. So imagine that you have been putting the wrong fuel into a super efficient bioengine for this time simply because you didn't know what the right fuel was. And and this is what's happened to you, you're basically breaking down now, right.

10:01 And that's why you're on these drugs. So imagine if you could put the right fuel into it. So literally it was so simple because you only needed to make a couple of changes. Most people lived on processed foods in the UK, right? Especially the grocery store that I used to work in at. There was a massive grocery chain like it's owned by Walmart. So I basically started to get people just to eat normal food. It's like, what is the no factory diet, right? I said this is the fuel, real food. He what you love, but learn how to make it yourself. I'd also bring in some healthy green juice recipes just so they can get like, the nutrients and hydration. Right. So just from that I started to get testimonials. I used to get like the doctors ringing me up going, what are you doing?

10:48 At first I was like a bit worried like I'm going to get in trouble right? But you know, congratulate me. They're like keep going, this is amazing. So that eventually led me to get promoted at head office and. One of the big this same supermarket chain and they gave you the opportunity to create a healthy shopping list service on their website where patients could get the healthy shopping list delivered to them. They'd have like a way to select who they want and it'll be like really the main problem I wanted to try and work with versus type 2 diabetes and it means they're to make problems you can easily solve through just diet. And it's some of the most common problems in a pharmacy is.

11:30 People with type 2 diabetes, and you solve those two issues, you do a big impact in the world, right? So it could have been amazing. But then six months into this project and then they decided they don't want to do this anymore, right? Boom. I just crashed. I couldn't believe it. Like, I was so disappointed. I was like, there is no God. It's so healthy. Wow. Like this is like. Insane. Like why would they lock this? Why would they not want this out, This information? It could help so many people. I have the proof, I have the evidence. Why are we not scanning this? And then the symptoms have also quiets kicked in at the same time.

12:12 So I started bleeding from my backside, which eventually turned into bleeding 4050 times a day. You know, I'm spending more time in the toilet. I got so sick. So you go to a console and you know you for a checkup and this. One time I remember like so this console and that she looked really, really miserable with her life. Like she did not want to do her job right because I also said what about stress, you know, So I said what about diet? I saw this in the pharmacy, people getting sick and better if you change their diet. Is there any diet that I could try? And I was so ill and tired. I was just because of all the people around me or the doctors, so worried family, they.

12:53 Kind of told me that the only thing you can do for this incurable disease is keep taking the pills, right? So she basically said to me like you have two choices. You either have your coat or removed, or you can try it being like a Guinea pig or something. Drunk. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, screw this, I already had my GP telling me that start wearing a nappy. Otherwise you're not going to go out because you're going to be some quality of life. Yeah, yeah. And I'm 32 years old or something, so I'm like, you know, I'm never going to get laid again. That's. Right. So it doesn't like that's not a good look, yeah.

13:34 Couldn't even work. I couldn't even get a job. So it was really, really the dark night of the soul. And so I went away and I was like, I'm not going to do any of those. I need to find another way and remember. Going super inward at this moment and just praying for help, you know, I was like, it was like I gave up on God and then suddenly turned to God in this moment. And they say God sounds a gift of desperation, right? Right. Literally in the most desperate moments is usually when God appears. And this has happened to me, the form of actually a couple of things, like first thing my uncle. Telling me about this book, The Power of the Soupontious Mind by Doctor Joseph Murphy.

14:19 One of the best books I've ever read on the power of this and which is mine using managers and things. And what he did was he's like a Christian Scientist or something, but he's also in the different forms. And he was in the pharmacist. So this was in the nine 40s. And he wrote this book. And he brought both wisdoms together. So he was a Christian Scientist and an aiabetic physician and a pharmacist. Very similar to me in a weird way, Yeah. Kindred spirit, Yeah, yeah. So he talks about this process of scientific prayers and how you can speak to your unconscious mind in a certain brain wave state which is the prayer and that's what churches do. You go into a church and those acoustics and then ambiance with the candle lights puts you into brain with and alpha brave with sake so you can speak to God which is the God within is your unconscious mind right all the. The houses of worship are very similar like this and I am very left brain analytical and this was a little woo, but I remember we've been talking about this sort of stuff and actually Tony Robbins also had mentioned in other things I read about Doctor Joseph Murphy, so I was okay.

15:30 I'm going to try this. So I went down that path and decided to come up with my own system of scientific prayers using certain affirmations. The affirmation I used was. I'm whole, perfect, strong, loving, harmonious and happy said with absolute conviction right here. They ordered state like an alpha brain wave state. So what I found was really soothing was going into sauna, right? And the heat shock of the sauna 80 to 9 degrees centigrade. Sauna actually stimulates neurogenesis and actually stimulates the growth in your brain cells. Also increases blood flow dramatically to the brain. This is stuff I figured out later on. I didn't know this at the time.

16:13 It also puts you into alpha brain with state right in that low alpha brain with meditative state. And what I was doing was this breathing technique because someone else came to the rescue, saw me on the cananda yoga teacher who has a traditional yoga association. Amazing lady, dear friend and family and she told me the foundation of Pranayama and are you better and. Yoga, traditional yoga. And she said to me, look, you got gift here, she can reverse this, you'll be amazing role model to other people. So that spurred me on. They gave me hope. And she said, look, I can teach you the foundations of these things, but you got to apply it and see how it goes and keep the faith. And So what I did was I took the breathing techniques from probably our extended exhalations, rhythmic breathing, charming old. So I do live in the sauna.

17:02 Extended exhalations where you breathe out twice the time as you're greeting in a rhythm, and then just praying, praying with the conviction, using the affirmation to visualize yourself. Healthy and happy, right? So boom, what happens? That then opens up a huge like rabbit hole like portal I'd say. Boom. At this time you were still suffering with the ulcerative colitis then. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm still bleeding. But what happened was I started to get this willpower to really go deep into these subjects because I got such relief from the simple breathing technique. I started to study finding I'm like a crazy person, right? And I went and studied Iveta and discovered I was eating totally the wrong diet because your Ivetic system. Basically tells you that we have buyer individuality, There's no one-size-fits-all diet.

17:58 Yeah. And those shows, right, The different personalized elements, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I turned to veganism because that was the thing that was promoted all over the Internet as being the healthy thing and also the green juices that Tony Robbins was prevented. I was drinking loads of that. That was making it so much worse. When you have also quiet, it's a batter pizza disturbance. That's my daughter type is batter pieces. There's a disturbance in that. So actually, if you eat raw vegan foods, it can make you very ungrounded. Waste away and it can cause a lot of gas and bloating. So you need actually batter.

18:39 People need to get grounded, more warm, nourishing Whole Foods, even meats, okay and things like ghee to nourish it up. And through the I of X's have also discovered something called colostrum, which for us milk of a cow. And actually the reason cows are considered holy in India is because of colostrum, the first milk. So what that means is when humans are born, right, the first milk you consume is a super potent, super rich cream milk. It's not the same as normal milk and it's got very little lactose content, if any. Yeah. And it actually is full of growth factors and mean factors and it stimulates the growth. Of cells rapidly in the gut lining, and that's what actually first improves your immune system, right? Carries on it passes on immunity right from mother to child. What it also does is it seals the gut lining so you can actually digest proper food right when you get older. Now Bovine colossum cows colossum has the same translation into humans.

19:46 It's what the cows need is essential. The calf needs it. But the cow produces so much of it like many times more right than what the calf needs. And most of that clots thrown away. And if the cow isn't milked for that clots and it gets into paint. So actually the caution in India is still used to produce the holy sweets and the desserts and the foods made. Barfy and stuff like that. Or yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of supplements out there where they freeze dietary clostrum for use in humans and there's incredible research behind it. So especially for things honestly quiet.

20:26 So I was like, wow, I'm going to get this stuff. So I got it. And that combined with a change in my eyebetic Lysol going towards a more like low carb paleo diet, bone broths, things like that and these breathing techniques. And it's just a change in mindset and look at the world with optimism and hope. I boom within a few months back to full health. I blew everyone's mind way. Music was a huge part. Going back to being creative and studying music again and learning how to create brain wave and train with music. And like relaxing music basically helps all the brain waves in a positive way and also combining breathing with the music so. Right.

21:11 Eventually, like I created a website to share all my information therenegadepharmacist.com and my first business I created because I couldn't go back to my pharmacy job, Community pharmacy I. Just really needed a way out. I read The Four Hour Work Week and Tim Ferriss, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the best business model ever that opened my own computer. So I studied like crazy to fix to create my own first business. And actually that turned into four minute workweek because I started to sell ironically the Clostrum. That healed me. The it's like burning up content on YouTube, just promoting it for free. And the supplier got in touch and told me you're doing such a good job of bringing my clostrum, you want to represent the brand.

21:55 So that's what happened and now I'm getting like a 4 minute workweek and I created music therapy business where I just created therapeutic music and licensed it out to people. So. That led to, you know, eventually Marissa Pierre becoming a good friend. She started using my music. Then I started traveling around the world and I met Wimhoff and I made the soundtrack to the Wimhoff method. Those powers heating centers were using my music around the world, so it just went into a crazy kind of snowball that sounds like, yeah. And then I moved to my dream location. We've been living there on and off the last seven years now, I mean Ibiza in Spain. So it's been like an amazing transformation, like unbelievable.

22:42 Like if you were to imagine who I was, like when I was on the toilet, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's like 9 day difference, you know? Yeah. No, I mean you're working on a book or anything like that or some working. Through. Yeah, I think because I really think that going back to what I was saying about the sort of the mission of this podcast is it's about I think it's South Asians. We are typically on this path and we're given these templates like you were told that you could basically write your ticket if you followed the straight and narrow path with going into pharmacy. And then you know what ends up happening is people go down these paths and they develop a lot of anxiety.

23:26 They neglect their own health. They're not interested in what they're doing. They're nowhere near the state of flow that's really required in order to achieve that fulfillment. And so, I mean, that's really what the purpose of this podcast is, is to hear those stories and give people who are in this bad programming and wedded to these templates that have been foisted on them. And so I think that's why I think your story is just so incredible, you know, to go from being like kind of in this cookie cutter profession to leading these really transformative experiences all over the world, so. I had to prove. All of the Indian doctors and pharmacists, so, you know, bless them, there are many people.

24:07 I had to prove them wrong as well. So my mom always said to me, you know, if you study really hard, you can grow up and go to Cambridge University, right. And ironically, they're studying us now. So yeah, you know having that like sample of approval on us as and our techniques, some of techniques to an Indian community is like. Yeah, that's how you win. That's the real win for sure. No, my hat's off to you on that. I mean I think I want to go a little bit further into one of the terms that you use because I really think the concept of 1 size fits all is dangerous regardless of what you're talking about, right. And so healthcare for sure, I mean it is not a one-size-fits-all model.

24:50 It is not a as they say pill for an ill you know that's same with us. I mean with our stem cell business is that we're trying to really get healing on an end to end basis not just like I have high blood pressure, let me take this medication and then I'm going to you know develop ulcers or I'm you know what I mean. So it's not this whack A mole type thing. What I found really interesting with your approach is your conceptualizing Soma breath as it's like the inner pharmacy. And I don't remember which podcast it was on, but you were talking about how, you know, it's just like if you go into a pharmacy, you wouldn't take Advil for an ulcer or you wouldn't take Parkinson's medication for, you know, a headache type type of thing, right? There's got to be more targeted.

25:36 So tell me a little bit more about how that applied the inner pharmacy model to breath work. Maybe if you can touch on a couple different use cases in terms of like how breath works, specific types of breath work, like how that can help certain conditions. Yeah. So actually the quote you're talking about is Doctor B. And Hector, who's one of the top doctors in India, is one of like the highest awards he can get. He's a super renegade Dr. Like, he's like kindred spirits, right? But he says there's a pill for every were ill. There's also an ill following every pill, right? These days is. Drug companies that come up with pills almost everything, right? Because like how many like new psychiatric drugs out there, you know coming out all the time and they manufacturing symptoms, right?

26:26 To prescribe drugs to what I find funny is these drug commercials a lot of times, like the listing of the side effects are usually longer than the actual ad, you know, and it's always read in this like auction frenetic style paste. But yeah, go ahead, you're saying? Yeah. Brought to you by Pfizer. And since I cannot believe America like how it's the Truman Show, the whole country is the Truman Show, it's phenomenal. So basically the problem with drugs is firstly they're not intelligent. So all drugs can do is correct or meddle with chemical changes in the body right through buying into receptors or blocking receptors or changing enzyme pathways, things like that. So with that what happens is.

27:13 It falls under the massive problem of reduction in science. Reduction in science basically tries to say that human beings are linear. We follow like linear graphs, which is so wrong because humans are so complicated. We are we're irrational nor rational, right? So there is no linear pattern for human beings. And this is the big problem. We're more all over the place and there's so many different factors that influence. Our chemistry in the body, in our mind. So I'll give you an example. Is blood pressure, right? So what do you think was Gandhi's blood pressure? Gandhi's blood pressure? I would imagine. I would imagine it was pretty good. I don't know. Yeah.

27:54 Exactly, but it was actually 200 / 100 his whole life. Oh. Really. And the doctors were so scared of this. We still trying to give him drugs, right? And he always refused. And guess what he died of? Well, he was shot. Yeah. Exactly so. And he was 80, odd years old. And when they did the postmortem of his body, really fine, right. He had a healthy body. Yeah, Despite that one marker being Askew, right? Yeah, exactly. So here's the thing. What's normal for someone may not be normal for you, right? So basically, if you were to take everybody's blood pressure in the country and plot it.

28:37 It's more like a bell shaped curve like this. OK, so around the middle falls around 120 / 80. The thing is some people are going to be 25% on this side low and the other side is going to be 25% high and that's their normal. If you go for a doctor to check up, they're going to say oh you don't have the normal blood pressure and they'll give you a pill to try and correct you and bring you into the normal right? Here's the problem. If. That's not your normal 120 / 80. Then you are actually causing problems and you're going to get these false positive readings every time we do blood pressure checks and you're going to be correcting people unnecessarily and actually causing harm. And that's why you get side effects. So it's like they're trying to fix one problem, trying to get one number to sort of fall in line, but by doing so you're saying that can cause disturbances in other parts of of the body or?

29:32 Also, the high blood pressure may be normal to them healthy and efficiently at that blood pressure, right? So if you start making them have low blood pressure for example, then it could mess up everything else in the body, right? Because that's not normal. So This is why so many side effects are being created by drugs. But also, so much disease that's manufactured by health checkups. You think about it, There's only so many people who are really sick at any given time, right until you go for a health checkup. The health checkup. Oh, you might have a, you know, we found a few cancer cells.

30:13 There's nothing to worry about. Yet there's a chance it may turn into so and so. And if they say this to you and you're in the doctor's office? Like even in the nicest way they could sell you. This is in your head. Then it becomes self and prophecy. When we're manufacturing cancer every day, everyone has cancer cells almost on a daily basis. If you check up everybody every day, you'll find there's some cancer cells because it's just normal part of the growth process, right? Whether our body is very good at getting rid of what it doesn't need, right? So I bodies natural innate system. Guess we know it.

30:56 So as soon as you go in for health checkups these days, you got this wrong with you got this wrong with you. We got to do this. Oh, it's a good, better chance that we, you know, we take this out to prevent this in the future. And when you start meddling with people in this way, unfortunately this is when you start getting adverse drug reactions. Adverse reactions, which is actually the number three killer in the world. Yeah, but it also manufactures a lot of money because of all the treatments that they can now offer, right? And you know, there's a funny stat. In India, for example, the poor outlive the rich. Is that right? Why? Wasn't aware of that in many.

31:37 Places the poor outlive have more longevity. Rich. Why is it they have a simple diet that they've always been eating forever? We don't need all this choice. Is that unique to India or is that? They're actually, if they live like traditionally like they used to and they haven't gone fully Westernized in their diet and lifestyle. Actually the older generation are out living the youth like in places like Japan or Kinawa, right? So basically the reason why is because they're not going for health checkups. They can't afford private healthcare. Yeah. Look, a lot of doctors do amazing things, right?

32:18 They sure miracles. They save lives. The emergency room doctors are phenomenal. How they sacrifice their life, their health, in order to save somebody's life, Phenomenal. But there's a lot of doctors, unfortunately, who have lost their will, their passion for what they do. They don't study anymore, you know, they stop studying and keep it up to date with their latest breakthroughs. And these are the people who people are going to. Advice on actually being healthy, which means not getting chronically sick, preventing disease or, you know, reversing chronic illness like diabetes and heart disease and all this, which are all diseases on lifestyle. And if they go into a Doctor Who's unhealthier than them, are more overweight, more depressed, and they go into them for advice, they're going to really be taken down the wrong path. This is a problem is really what I'm trying to address. Is the disease of lifestyle that are the result of dissatisfaction with life, lack of enthusiasm for life, which then leads to self loathing like pessimism, cynicism and core lifestyle choices.

33:31 Which stands? What then? And bad breathing, which is what then leads to getting sick right? And right now, the way we are in the world, this has gone through the roof. Sure. So what I'm training people in to do is to have amazing tools, taking the wisdom of the past, combining it with modern science to create preventative lifestyle transformational courses, programs that fun, engaging, cool, sticky, addictive, you know, in a positive way, right, that people wanted to look forward to doing. And that's my mission. And this is trained instructors who are the breath pharmacists. To go out there and do the big changes and it's really is beginning as simply as controlling the breath, bringing the breath and the controls, the number one impact or else there's the breath.

34:25 Yeah. And I think the other element of that, beyond the science, beyond the music, which are all amazing, I think it's just the importance of community. You know, there's that Sanskrit term Sanga, right? This network of people that you share these experiences with. Because what I always say is there's content and then there's context, And then when you add community that really, you know, brings those two together, these learnings, these experiences become so much richer. You can sit there and read a book all day long, but if you're sitting there in a circle doing Kumbaka, these exercises, Rashaka Prana and all these things, that's going to be infinitely more valuable than any you know, any book you can read, or even if you're doing it on your own. So I'd love to hear more about the role that Community has played in your journey, because it sounds like you went through some pretty dark times where you kind of went on the dark night of the soul and had to make some hard choices. Yes, yeah.

35:21 Come Unity, that's interesting for. Unity in the world, right. So yeah, So in my situation, coming from an Indian family, we both know how important the social. Cultural environment is for Indians, right? Absolutely very collectivist. Great into us as a collective spirit, right. And my mom for example was an amazing role model to me in terms of how social she is, how generous she is, how caring she is, how much she does for other people. I also had a GPA doctor and as a dear friend of our family who he knew everyone in the community, everyone knew it, you know he was so kind and. Always listen to people's Robins. And that's part of the the healing actually is a Doctor Who just listens.

36:09 Sure. So I had all these like role models in our community who were like the Indian community, Gujarat Samaj. It's all about doing stuff together, right? As a tribe, which is amazing. I loved it. What unfortunately happened to me was when I was sick was I was bashing heads with this community because there's also dogma when it comes to certain tribes, right? And you know it can form. And you know, the problem of religion is, is the dogma. And the problem with mainstream education as well is the dogma. University can create a lot of dogmatic indoctrination. Yeah, and people are rigid. With their beliefs, and it's because of dogmatic belief systems that people hold on to because. Really.

36:56 And so I got caught like a mental or philosophical template that you don't bother updating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like an operating system. So what happened was I actually had to move away from home. My friend, the guy who bought me the Tony Robbins ticket, he was also getting disillusion. And we both play music together. He's an amazing guitarist, a doctor. So I said to him, look, we got one chance in here. I can't work. Work has really strived the energy for his life, making music, right So and being creative. So he basically invited me to stay with him. And what happened was at that time in order to learn more research, more about the music and it's kind of mystical music we're making, right? What's this start like?

37:44 Learning about third eye activation and third eye grip? All this kind of yogic stuff? The Buddhist meditation? I needed to find other people who thought like me. So Facebook is evolving at that time. And through that I started to connect with new communities of people, YouTube. I started to put my music up on YouTube and I started to get banned. And through that I started to find people who thought like me. And I was like, wow, that in itself was so healing, right? There's a friend of mine, Dan Lustig. You might know him as well from when my community is an amazing Israeli. Therapist who works a lot with autoimmune, which is what I had, he says.

38:26 Autoimmune are you triggered like, who did moments Unexpected. EU stands for unexpected, says UDIN. Unexpected. So something that just came suddenly Shock, dramatic, so very high emotion associated with like for me it was worked so hard to create this project. Suddenly company doesn't want to do it. Get like a kick in the gut. Yeah. And then I is isolating. So it's only you. So imagine it was just me and the entire corporation for some of this and no one else understood my problem. Right.

39:07 So it's very isolating. And then no strategy. The end is no strategy. There's no way to get out of it. No strategy part. A lot of it stands people around you because if they can't help you. And you're on your own what you're going to do, right. And there's no tool out there available. So I had a typical Rudin moment that triggered this, which is the case where a lot of people actually have bought to me if you go back. So he said that these Rudin moments can actually trigger, Yeah, autoimmune disorders. Yeah, yeah. I learned about this site more recently, but I realized that this is what happened to me and I think a lot of people who also mean have similar issues. So one of the things that can cause isolation and. No Strategies is when you're in these very rigid, dogmatic communities where people want you to be a certain way and you want to be another way, right? So the right types of communities can help people thrive, where they don't have to be so scared about being wrong, where they can be themselves.

40:07 This has been my mission with son and Breath. We are creating a community that's based on true understanding that we're all individual. We're all different. We're all unique. We all have. Same beliefs. We don't censor people, we don't stop people from saying what they want, and we're all here to support each other's growth. This is what I love about my own value as well. Same one community, right The a fence community. All this. I started to find people like this more aligned to what I thought and this helped me to unravel and heal from this feeling of isolation. Humans are social people, sure, so that in itself can be very cathartic, therapeutic. That's when you find the others, when you find people just like you, right?

40:49 That led to getting to know more people and doing some master run groups, discovering Copangan and suddenly being around completely whole island of people like me. Yeah, and now we've created massive community people, you know, 2000 instructors and hundreds of other. When was Soma? The company is called Soma Breath, right? When was that launch then? That was tweeted as a gunner. OK. And you've got 2000 instructors, Yeah. And it's. Incredible. The way I describe your experiences, it's like the most spiritually enlightened rave you'll ever go to. You know, it's like, it's so much fun where it's like there's dancing, but it's not like when you go to a bar and you're just tossing back a bunch of beers and getting wasted and losing your clarity.

41:36 You're entering a higher state of consciousness through music, through breath, through movement. I'd love if you could tell us more about what these workshops are like to somebody who's not familiar with some of breath. Yeah, I just thought also, I've actually, since I've got more successful in what we're doing and got this side right now, the evidence and created so many more success stories. The Indian community that I was like rebelling against have a really to this because they it's all in their culture. Pranayama, yoga or the culture. I've just presented it in a scientific way. So there's not religious anymore. And actually a lot of the Indian community in America and England, for example, are actually become more Westernized than the Indians back in India.

42:21 Do you know what I mean? White than the white people, the English people are turning to yoga and traditional stuff, so. One thing I do want to say, Neeraj is just that. Folks like yourself, it really warms my heart to see that there's more S Asians taking back. I don't mean this in a confrontational way, but I just mean that there's so much of this wisdom that's just been put on the shelf because I think especially as members of Diaspora and we're going to settling these new communities. We're trying to fit in right. So we don't want to look to other and so a lot of times we'll. Change our names or we'll change our accents, or we'll do all these things just to pardon the pun, but to whitewash ourselves.

43:03 Right. And so I love the fact that people like you are bringing this culture back into the norm and doing it with the cultural imprimatur, the credibility stamp, of actually being South Asian. I didn't want to say that to you. I Really. Yeah, it's amazing. So yeah, there's a big shift happening. And what this means, it's the now the unification of community, right? So the people who would never have ever got into this stuff are finally waking up because of what has happened. We're going to get to a point where there's such a wake up happening right now that there's going to be a much more cross pollination of all the communities that have been, you know, the ones that have been really into holistic stuff, to the more mainstream medical people in the communities, they're all going to blend together and unite. So the question you asked was.

43:57 Originally had asked about community and then yeah, I was also interested more about, in a nutshell, just kind of like how would you describe your Soma breath workshops to somebody who's, you know, Yeah, so the experiences itself, what I loved about the raves I used to run was the ecstatic bliss and love and celebration and connection that people would have. But what I didn't love about it was that there's always inevitably some kind of come down. Yeah, it was. A toxic element to it, Yeah. So when I discovered it started dance, I was like, wow, this is like fixes everything because firstly, there's no one genre so you can have a whole journey. Music, dip, tiles, right?

44:41 So it doesn't get so boring. Secondly, there was always people when I went to an excited dance party, had massive smiling faces. Were dancing as hard as or harder then when everyone was off their heads? Like back in, you know, 1999, right? It was like the love was there. So I was like, wow, I want to do this now. Well, I started to then combine the breathing with this ecstatic dance stuff. So I produced all the Dars music and I bring in live musicians and all this to make it even more fun and turn that into a ceremony like. So that to me was one of the best community builders that we had was when we started to run our little excited dance events. And then I wrote a festival in Copacana and it brought everybody together.

45:28 Every Sunday there was like a dance church in a massive pyramid, 250 people coming in, celebrate, live together. It was like going to church, right? It was in church. And so I was like, we have to scale this, you have to spread this around. So, yeah, one of my experiences is this dance movement, breath experience, right? You know, there's another thing Indians would do, right? Was Gurba. Remember Gurba? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I so. I'm more of a bungalow guy because my wife is Punjabi, but yeah, it's all dancing together, right? It's a community thing. And I used to look at that when I was a kid and I was so sweet and I love this and so much love. And yeah, so I'm trying to bring that back in a cool way that it crosses over to people who wouldn't normally be into this. So that's one of the experience.

46:20 The other experience is really a transformative, ecstatic experience, but through the breath and also very healing and therapeutic. So that's our breath work journeys. Yeah, you've experienced both things. And these are the things we and we also do special yoga practices and other kind of tantric yoga techniques. What's a typical Soma breath client or participant? What, what is a typical Soma breath client look like? I mean, in terms of their profile like are they coming to you for specific where it's like they're experiencing like you know, chronic disease or maybe it's anxiety or is it a combination?

47:02 Maybe you can talk in general kind of what is the typical profile and then also be if there's some specific success stories that really has. Giving you a sense of validation about what you've been doing. You know, I get more and more surprised at the range of the types of people that are coming I. Can imagine. So in the beginning when I was in Thailand, it was preaching to the convert, right? There was all Logan teachers, Reiki masters, you know, Tantra teachers and digital nomads and the Wellness and all that. Now, like all walks of life are coming and discovering what we do. Like there's a friend of mine called Wimhoff. Super famous guy. I produced all the music to the Wimhoff method you go to his app.

47:47 I listen to Lotus 8. That's my running. Yeah. Yeah, that's my favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So he opened the doors like full bow down. Respect to Wimhoff, bringing these powerful techniques to the mainstream in such an amazing way. And that that's converted so many people to just the breathing can take care of the breath, right. And then there's been more and more breath scores coming so that they're starting to push this stuff out. And then COVID happened, which made people care about their respiratory health. Many things have just happened in the last three years to really push this into more of a mainstream environment. So it ranges.

48:31 You know, we have people who just very normal like construction workers, you know, just you never imagine would be into this stuff but suddenly get into our retreats. We have you know, medical doctors. We have dentists, we have lawyers, we have corporate CEO's. We have, you know, tech stock ups. You know, we have all sorts of it's such a cross section. I mean, if you say like the most typical, like really have to put into an average, usually women who get into it, you know, like 35 and above and somebody who's longing for, you know, something more spiritual, meaning, purpose and maybe that they are on their way to healing something.

49:14 Usually, you know, yeah, some issue health challenge. We have a lot of instructors as well. We're already certified and other techniques who come to us as well. You know, like other coaches, therapists, hypnotherapists, massage, rape. Yeah, want to bring some ref to their repertoire? Yeah. And that community, I guess to to kind of dovetail on that is to bring it back to where we're talking about earlier. As you know, you and I had met at Mind Valley and at Mind Valley University. I wanted to understand a little bit more because you mentioned a fest and maybe you can talk a little about that. But how did you get introduced to Mind Valley and sort of what does that meant for in terms of your journey with some of breath? Yeah, I go introduce to my valleys through Brisa Pier. Tom Davey, her husband and Marissa invited me. So I went to a fest and totally changed my life. It's where I started to test out the breathing technique. I actually broke my foot on the first date. Oh.

50:15 Wow, in a wheelchair. And I was like really embarrassed. I was like, Oh my God, I'm going to have to go home and wasted all this money. So what happened was I actually was living very comfortable way of life in Copenhagen, living the dream for our four minute work week. But I was just earning a pharmacy salary every month basically, you know the equivalent of that. For four minutes of work, that's quite an hourly wage. There you were. There you'd be like, Oh my God, how did you? It's like Nirvana, right? It's like you didn't need to go anywhere else. John Davey calls me up and he goes, we just went to this A Fest event. I highly recommend you go to it. And I'm like, so tell me more about it. Yeah, prove it.

50:59 And they told me the price. I'm like, for most, my heart fell out of my mouth. I was like, are you serious? And you guys look, for God's sake, invest in yourself for once. So I was like, OK, I'm going to if he tells me that with that much, you know, sincerity. And, you know, so I actually put quite a lot of money down, like cost of the flights, hotel ticket, all of that adds up. And I was like, shit, this is going to hurt, you know. So yeah, you ended up going and then you break your foot on the first day and you're. Going to start. And what the hell, It was done. Absolutely ridiculous. So I remember calling Marissa in the morning.

51:41 I was like, you won't believe what's happened. You know, I broke my foot. I mean, I got home. She goes, don't be silly, darling. You're not going home. You're going to have all these amazing goddesses looking after you. So you better stay. I was like, okay, she says. So boom, that's exactly what happened. Made some amazing friends some of them remarkable goddesses and it looks after me and was I started to test out the breathing techniques the practice that this ritual experience that I created with music and some breathing techniques and it was so popular such a big hit. Had this a fest that it went from like a five people in a room to 60 people in the basement of a hotel with that's the scientists measured people's brain waves having these huge awakening they they were like we never seen gamma frequency being created like this in the brain Wow so that got the attention of the whole mind value community and after going back to mind value events I went to Barcelona after that and so on and then I started to like get more and more in with the whole mind valley they wanted to do to create a course with me so we create offers also then and then that's not later into a quest which I launched aliens here. Yep, just doing pretty good.

53:01 It's been truly transformative. I mean, and I'm as cynical as they come. I don't fall into all this woo woo stuff. And but you know, I'm saying like if they can make believer out of me, then I think Vision and the team are definitely doing something right. And it's just. Sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming just because it's like, you know what you said about going down the rabbit hole? You can really just kind of get lost in there. So, but you know, yeah, your quest has been incredible. I love the limitless dose and then the gratitude. It's really incredible, so. Yeah, the layer tracks is some really potent tracks there on. Yeah, yeah. I know the one that I really like is The Limitless, But I wanted to tell you, Niraj, that you know, going back to what you were saying about how. This work, the work you're doing, and just this movement is getting traction and it's becoming more mainstream. I think I mentioned to you that we actually did a presentation to my 8 year old son's 3rd grade class about mindfulness and meditation because he had come home and he was telling me about this app Headspace, which I'm sure you're familiar with. They're using that in the classroom. And what was really cool was Shelly and I went in, We did a presentation where we simulated a conflict where I was bouncing a basketball.

54:13 She comes in and grabs it and I start freaking out like a typical 8 year old would do. And then I sort of put it back to the kids. I said, has this happened to you? You know, how do you deal with it? And then we redid it where I did a box breathing thing afterward, you know, where like she grabs the ball and I sit down and I put my hand on my belly and my and my chest and I start doing the breaths. So I explained the whole concept of box breathing. And then what we did was we did a simulation where we played one of your because you have on your YouTube channel, you have a box breathing exercise. So we played it for them And then afterwards it was talk about how they felt afterwards, they just felt relaxed, they felt clear. And so that just makes me really happy because I think if we start demystifying this stuff, if we start showing it to kids when their minds are more fertile, when they're very receptive, I think it's going to.

55:06 Have a ripple effect, you know, and I think the energy and the collective consciousness, the impact that's going to have is going to be epic. I mean, it's going to have economic impacts, it's going to have impacts on the environment, it's going to have impacts on everything you can imagine. So you know anybody who questions it, anybody who questions you know, like oh, this is all woo woo stuff. I think you would actually send me this study, but there was that Pub Med study about. The benefits of Richaka is it. Yeah, on the health, you know, So I think the first study that I came across when I was like trying to heal myself going into all their sure and it was really in 2011 and the doctor, who's an amazing doctor, he was like Yogi, very, very fit at his age.

55:58 He has a clinic in Haridwar, in foothills and lanes, and he basically it helps people heal themselves through these traditional yoga techniques. But as I said, the real yoga, not the mainstream military yoga, industrial complex or whatever it is. Contorting yourself into a pretzel with the yoga has actually gone off the wisdom, of course, because traditional yoga is actually more of a contraction exercise, static contraction, where you hold each pose as long as you can, maximum effort controlling the breath to create a stay of intermediate hypoxia in the local area where you're reducing the blood flow to because the stay contraction reduces blood flow. So if you contract a muscle like that, right, and hold it, it forces the muscle to use that up, and then it creates A brief period of low oxygen for a moment. This is what creates the adaptive change and makes the muscle stronger, healthier and with more staminant, right. So what's actually activated in that moment are endogenous stem cells which actually deal with the repair and rejuvenation strengthening and this also what happens during high intensity interval training where you do very intense exercise it's called anaerobic exercise right Neo sense of oxygen right. And that's what wakes up indulgent stem cells and you know produces massive amounts of nitric oxide and then creates the strengthening.

57:26 So there's a breathing technique in pranial cumbaco and the most revered way of doing it, which the doctor translated is nichesha rechako. And this technique basically means hold your breath till you no longer possibly can. That's your maximum effort, right? OK, so after full excel, right? So the way to do that is to get to the maximum breath hold you possibly can is if you do bust streaker first where you're breathing the CO2 out. Because CO2 is what tells your brain you need to breathe again, right? So when you get rid of the CO2 you actually then are able to hold your breath much longer than you need to. And when you get to a 92nd breath hold time your oxygen levels, if you use a pulse oxymia here like I got one here will start to drop.

58:24 Oxygen will drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. And when it goes below 90% you stuck it into the hypoxic range and usually you'll get it down to like 6050. Some people can go down to the 30s percentage S PO2 which medical doctor freak out if this. Also you just do it for a brief period and what this does is it wakes up very small embryo like stem cells and also bone marrow stem cells, right? Mesochinal stem cells, right? Without circulation. And they have this innate ability to turn into any other cell in the body. And stem cells hates oxygen. So you love hypoxia.

59:04 They love extreme temperatures, like what can wake up stem cells is intense heat. That's why soreness activates stem cells and extreme cold. That's why always baths work and breath holds, because with breath retention you create systemic hypoxia. For brief period, stem cells come out and it takes about two minutes for these stem cells to move around the body, right? So in 2-2 minutes, breath all time. If you can get to that point, which is bit of practice, it's quite easy to do. You actually give enough time for stem cells to proliferate and do what they need to do. It also activates a whole cascade of different effects. So stem cells is one thing that is done through the pathway of nitric oxide being activated in massive amounts, right. Also what you get is on this hypoxia is because the CO2 levels start to rise a lot and the oxides dilator, you get massive dilation to the brain and the heart and you get these coronary cholesterols forming natural heart bypasses which creates strengthening on your heart and forms capillaries around blocked archings if you have any right. And then you get increased blood flow to the brain. You get strengthening initially with the brain increased blood flow.

1:00:20 And you get basically better vascularization, capillaries and blood flow all around your body. So if somebody suffers from rain or symptom or diabetic issues where blood flows diminished to the regions, extremities can actually improve with the Senate erectile dysfunction. How does Viagra work? Right, It works through sedentic filters like WE. Does that have the nitric oxide of emulating right erectile dysfunction to be fixed by this? So many things can be sold through this one breathing technique is incredible and what it also trains to do is to become really efficient using oxygen. So all of these effects I'm talking about makes you more efficient.

1:01:00 Exhaustion, so you need less oxygen to breathe right? To create energy. So the mitochondria get optimized if you think the mitochondria is like little small combustion engines constantly burning oxygen. Powerhouse of the body, Powerhouse of the Cell. Yeah, yeah. That in a fire can cause cellular damage, right? And a certain damage can lead to mutations, cancer information and all these things. They're effective, poor oxygen efficiency. So what we do is we finely tune your Physiology to such an extent you go from being one of these banged out Ford cars that run, yeah, efficient gas to finely tune Teslas.

1:01:44 You hardly make any noise. And then what happens to the default state? The person is that the breath becomes calm, silent, subtle, smooth, right, niaphragmatic, rhythmic. And then when you see a person who's really well optimized their breathing, they hardly look like they're breathing at all. So now Sue says the perfect human breathes, but they don't breathe at all, right? And that's the aim of what we do with summer breath is to bring some of his default state to that. So when they're not doing any techniques, the natural resting state, they hardly look like they breathe. There's also a reflection of a calm mind. Calm, content mind. People's breathing gets much faster when their mind's very erratic. Thinking a lot.

1:02:28 And they're mulling about past events or worried about the future. Sure. Anger full of anger or holding on to emotion. We're only really excited. It's good to be enthusiastic for life, but you don't want to be like a maniac, right? Yeah, right. You want to have focus channel forces you really efficient and productive. So optimizing the breath has a side effect of improving how you think as well. We've talked about a lot of metabolic diseases, autoimmune diseases. Part of our podcast is talking about these modalities for mental illnesses. People who come to your workshops have you seen positive effects with like certain mental illnesses like maybe bipolar disorder or depression or a lot with anxiety and depression only if they do the work like it's not a magic bullet. You're not gonna suddenly just with a couple of breathing techniques fix everything.

1:03:19 Now there's it's a holistic process we take through people through a real holistic journey for self discovery. You know thyself with your system learn here you are and then you can customize program for you. Customization is the secret source of sound breath. That's what we do it better for us. One-size-fits-all is 1 size fits. None in my mind, I think. Yeah. And a lot of other. Unfortunately, it's a mistake of a lot of the other programs. Yeah. So we your own type of person. Yeah. So. This has been phenomenal near. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you want to say? Just touch on before we kind of wrap things up. You know, community is not always a good thing either because of the dogmatic problem, right? Sure.

1:04:05 I have this one saying though I it's all mine. And I got another one from my I'd love to meet him one day, but the person I respect a lot is BM Hectare. He's Paul's tenacity and Wealth of North Day. What is the name BM Hegde hey? Oh, BM Hegde. Hey, yeah, he's an Ayurvedic. He's a very he's a cardiologist. But. He's pretty well. He's like the expert on Ayurveda too, right? He knows everything about everything. But yeah, he says it's one line. I is the 1st letter of illness. P WE is the 1st 2 levels of Wellness. So become we focused. Understand that we're a a collective and you know the magic rule of success and is why Indians can be very successful. Where they go is they do one to others in their community and they help each other right as they expect to be gone to themselves.

1:05:02 So they constantly helping each other to succeed, right? And that's keeping in the tribe actually does that. Now what the problem with community is, right, is this dogmatic issue when they get so big. So what's happening now is the big shift that's happening in the world now, and I'm going to see it happening more is tribes for me. There's a difference between tribe and community. Tribes are like communities within communities. The problem with tribes okay as well. It can be. A good thing is that if you look back in the olden days, right the tribal ancestors, they would always be warring.

1:05:44 Factionalism. With other tribes it was more. Yeah, so we can figure out a way for tribes to exist and coexist, because not everyone can. You can't fit everyone into one box. They tried to remember it's going to happen, but make it so each tribe can get on with each other, communicate. I think blockchain and decentralization is the key to this. Then the world can thrive and people can belong to whoever they want to be, and they choose which tribe they were belong to, and they can switch without each tribe fighting war with each other. That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. It's all about the tribe. I mean, I think and I love that I in illness and we in Wellness because we can't all do this on our own and we we really have to tap into that collective consciousness and energy and spirit. And if people want to find out more about you, what is the best place so they can go to?

1:06:37 Yeah so my Instagram, Neogenek official Soma Breath, Instagram, my YouTube channel Soma Breath and go to our website somabreath.com sign up. You can also find my website neogenek.com sobreath.com. You can get free stuff, download some techniques to try out Limitless. As you said, we got a version there and get involved and maybe you want to become instructor one day. So Neeraj, thanks so much again. This was amazing to talk to you again and look forward to talking to you again soon. Peace. Good bye. Peace. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed that episode. For more of these types of conversations, please visit us at Untether Your life dot Co You can also find us on Instagram and Untether your life, as well as on Apple, Spotify, and other platforms by searching for Untether Your Life. And if you did, enjoy this episode. Please leave us a review or share it with someone who might also benefit.

1:07:34 Thanks, and until the next time we meet, stay untethered.