SOMA Breath

From running 2000-person raves to pharmacist to breathwork pioneer

Niraj shares his dramatic fall from running massive raves at university to becoming a pharmacist after a shooting incident shut down his venue, describing the soul-crushing experience of transitioning from performer to pill dispenser.

"complete fall of grace to now being pharmacist in a little cubicle, dishing out pills, wearing a lab coat. I mean, it was kind of a huge shock to the system. So anyway, that carried on for seven years. So yeah, so it was like, what happened was I went into that world and I saw straight away for the first time what it's really like to be working in the healthcare industry."

Pharmacy patients leaving with shopping bags full of drugs

Niraj describes witnessing pharmacy patients leave with shopping bags full of medications that managed but never cured their diseases, with one prescription often leading to four more drugs to handle side effects.

"It's really making people wake up now. And was that kind of what you were feeling in a way? Yeah, I felt intuitively that something was not right with it. And also the amount of prescriptions people are on is just astonishing. People would initially go away with shopping bags full of drugs like every month. And, you know, you'd see people come in with one prescription, right? A few months later, they're on like four."

SOMA Breath instructors as transformational artists

Niraj explains how SOMA Breath instructors are trained as transformational artists who blend music, breathwork guidance, and coaching to create unique healing experiences.

"SOMA Breath is unique in that we combine breathwork with original music composition. Our instructors are trained as transformational artists who blend music, creating their own soundscapes, their guiding sessions, their recording things. They're being entrepreneurial."

Breathwork ceremony induces near-death experience states

Niraj describes leading a breathwork ceremony for 200+ people at the Ascension Conference, where participants experienced profound altered states resembling near-death experiences through breath control alone.

"So that's what I did. I became a I mean, I studied to be a pharmacist, but I on the side built my DJ dream as well. Good for you, and I ended up running like some pretty big raves in the UK for about three years nine when I was nineteen, this is like nineteen ninety eight to about two thousand and two three and we had like a two thousand people rave like every month packed that was every month. So it was an amazing experience. But you can imagine it was Headonistica's help. I was wild, imagine yeah. And I went from a legal drug dealer to legal drug dealer basically in a space of like a few months because I had an amazing business, but it all fell apart, like I just got in with the wrong people and."

From pharmacist to breathwork master through personal crisis

Niraj shares how seven years of depression as a pharmacist, combined with developing ulcerative colitis, became the catalyst for discovering breathwork and creating SOMA Breath.

"Very so when they come to a b thrower to hang out, Yes, absolutely, yeah. So I I had to let go of my disbelief. I had to, like, I had no hope, no other choice, you know that the only hope left was this. So I started to try it as very simple breathing techniques from Primeyama, and it made such a shift instant It was like instant pain relief, like instant stress relief. And I was like, wait a minute, I just did this breathing pattern and it made me feel better than most of the medications I've taken. This is crazy. So within a few months I just went fully down the rabbit hole. I studied as much as I possibly could went really deep into the ivedic world as well. And then what I realized was, so there was this book that came my way called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by doctor Joseph Murphy. It was a really good book. He's a pharmacist, but he was also a Christian scientist and study like you know, tantra and yoga and all these ancient Eastern philosophies. So he married the two together and he came up this concept of scientific prayers, which is the use of these special mantras that you use, like my favorite affirmation is you are I am whole, perfect, strong, loving, harmonious and happy to say that over and over again in a translate state, and like magic happens, right. So I started to get really into the power of this conscious mind. And I realized that with the breath, with certain rhythms, right, you can create into very the trance states. And then I realized that music can be an amazing tool to facilitate the whole process."

Shifting from scarcity mindset to abundance through breathwork

Niraj discusses how breathwork helps shift limiting beliefs about scarcity, safety, and isolation, opening the practitioner to see the world as full of opportunity, love, and inspiration.

"You know. I used to see the world as hostile, no god like, atheist, like everything's out to get me. I'm on my own, like you know, and there's no hope. Money is bad. I had all these beliefs, this BS system, and I just think when you shift that and you start to see the world with opportunity, love, incredible people, inspiration, and there's a universe that wants you to be happy and healthy and succeed. And when you if you can shift those is the world becomes a phenomenally beautiful, incredible, exciting adventure. And that's why I hope to pass on to everybody."

The reptilian brain creates default anxiety through over-breathing

Niraj explains how the reptilian brain's survival focus keeps the sympathetic nervous system dominant, causing most people to have an underlying anxiety and breathe faster than necessary.

"than others, right? And this is all down to your early childhood imprints and many other things like that. So the reptilian brain, which deals with automatic breathing, because it can be triggered quite easily and it can be on high alert, it means we tend to have a sympathetic dominance, which means that our sympathetic nervous system is more dominant than"

Animal longevity correlates with breathing rate and breath-hold capacity

Niraj draws on the longevity patterns of animals to illustrate how breathing rate and breath-hold capacity relate to lifespan, from bowhead whales living 200+ years to the disease-free naked mole rat.

"Animals that live a very long time, elephants and turtles, they have very slow breathing patterns. But they also, if you look at the whale, for example, the whale can hold its breath for two hours at a time, the bowhead whale, and lives 200 years plus. Now, if you look at the opposite end of the spectrum, the animals that don't live a long time, like rats and mice, they live like one year or two years max."

Rhythmic breathing restores autonomic nervous system balance

Niraj explains how breathing in a perfectly aligned rhythm balances the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, connecting to the body's natural biorhythms including circadian and ultradian cycles.

"So, when you breathe in a perfect aligned rhythm, you actually create balancing of sympathetic parasites in the nervous system. So, it creates more of a harmony. And every single function in your body is rhythmic in nature. So, we have biorhythms, circadian rhythm, menstrual cycle. So, the ultradium, infradium, circadian rhythms, right? They're all the biofunctions of life, biorhythms of life. So, with just a few minutes of rhythmic breathing a day, we can restore balance to this."

Three pillars of health according to Niraj

Niraj shares his three essential pillars for a healthy life: breath control, a loving supportive partner, and work that gives value to the world, warning that misalignment in any area will eventually create disease.

"And so you need to, you know, channel the God of enthusiasm every day to a loving partner, like a supportive, loving partner who is with you no matter what is paramount to health. If you have a partner that doesn't support you, that is always."

Intermittent hypoxic training and its clinical applications

Niraj explains intermittent hypoxic training (IHT/IHHT), a clinical therapy that simulates high altitude by breathing low oxygen, which produces more red blood cells, better capillarization, and increased blood flow to the brain.

"But you're breathing very low oxygen. And what it does is it simulates going up to high altitude. What they found was that people go to high altitude and come back down, they feel benefits, they feel better. This is because they're holding their breath for a short period of time. It's like holding their breath for a short period of time. It's like lowering the oxygen."

The naked mole rat anomaly and disease-free longevity

Niraj explains how naked mole rats live 30 years disease-free due to their adaptation to low-oxygen underground environments, providing a biological model for the benefits of intermittent hypoxia training.

"Okay, now there's a weird, strange anomaly to this, and that is the naked mole rat. Naked mole rats are rats, but what makes them different is that they live up to 30 years, pretty much free of disease. And the unique thing with them is that they live primarily underground in a hypoxic, which is a low-oxygen environment, and they can hold their breath for."