The pharmacist who stopped trusting the pharmacy

What if the most powerful thing available to you has been with you your whole life?

Niraj Naik trained as a pharmacist. Then his own health collapsed — a severe autoimmune condition, followed by years of depression — and the shelves he worked behind had nothing that reached it. What he turned to instead were old breathing practices, and what came out of that became SOMA Breath.

In this conversation he explains what he believes breathing does to a body and a mind: the physiology of breath retention, why rhythm and music change the experience, the altered states people report, and the question he is asked more than any other — whether breathwork can take someone where psychedelics go.

We also talk about where he thinks all this is heading: breath as an ordinary daily practice rather than a wellness trend, and what that might mean for how people handle pressure.