BenGreenfieldFitness.com/niraj2 I met my friend Niraj Naik (the same guy who invented the crazy holotropic-style breathwork protocol I do in my sauna) inside a sauna in Estonia, Finland, where he led me and one of my buddies through an "omming" breathwork protocol, and I've been hooked on him as my "go to guy" for breath work ever since. He joined me first on the podcast "The Renegade Pharmacist: How To Increase The Effects Of Psilocybin, The Secrets Of Colostrum, Fixing Constipation With Breathwork & More" and also invented the breath work routine that I took my boys and I through and detail in the article "How To Blast You (And Your Child's!) Physical, Mental, & Spiritual Resilience Through The Roof With Breathwork". He also recently designed an extraordinary 8 day breath work course called "SOMABreathFit" that my boys and I also just did - a course that combines fitness, sleep protocols, meditation protocols and much more in a simple-to-implement, done-for-you short daily program.  Niraj comes from a background of working long hours for several years as a community pharmacist. Becoming a certified “legal drug dealer” at the ripe age of 24, he got to witness first-hand, many clients going home with shopping bags full of drugs each month, rarely getting better and usually going on to suffer from other diseases. He also learned of the debilitating side effects of the prescription medications which drove many of the patients to have to take more and more drugs to ease the side effects. Curious to find ways to improve his own health, he attended several health seminars and discovered an in-depth approach on how to reach optimum health and vitality by understanding the true origin of disease and how to prevent it. After experiencing great benefits with his own health, Niraj was motivated to devise a scheme to see if he could also help his suffering patients. He incorporates a lifestyle plan called his "healthy shopping lists" that includes simple food swaps, tools and websites to support their specific conditions. Within two weeks he received testimonials from patients who were starting to get better and within a few months some being able to lower their dosages or completely come off their medications. After an arduous battle trying to get his novel approach accepted into the mainstream that resulted in a lot of stress and disillusionment, in 2010 he was diagnosed with a stress-related illness, ulcerative colitis, that left him housebound for over 10 months. He was told by doctors and nurses there existed no cure and he would need to be on medication for the rest of his life. Like his patients, Niraj suffered from side effects of his medication to the point he felt completely hopeless and even suicidal. He was then left with a choice that would be a major turning point in his life. Test out a new drug or have his colon removed. He decided to choose option 3, a path not yet known by conventional medicine. So began his search to learn from people who had great success with either curing themselves or others from chronic illness. He learned a combination of natural treatments including Ayurvedic practices and dietary recommendations from Paleo and Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). He studied healing methods through meditation, yoga and mind power techniques like self-hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). He even discovered the powerful techniques of sound and music therapy as tools for reducing stress and promoting self-healing. Niraj finally broke free from the burdens of his illness, without medication. The experience of illness has allowed him to completely re invent his life and discover a new passion for helping others to do the same. His specialty is helping people recover, prevent or reduce the dependency for longterm medication for the metabolic diseases of diabetes, heart disease and obesity as well as autoimmune disease where stress is an underlining factor in the cause. Niraj is now a professional musician, ho