Unique to The Yoga Palace is our Techno Pranayama meditation. I created this several years ago because I enjoy electronic music and the hypnotic, euphoric states it can create. Combining this with breathwork made sense — music drives focus and rhythm in the same way it does when you’re running or lifting; the beat gives you something to lock onto, and the breath follows. This example uses a selection of tracks from the German techno legend Boris Brejcha, mixed and painstakingly converted to 432hz by Andrej Šunko, who posted it on his YouTube channel. 432hz is believed by many to be a sacred frequency, more in tune with nature than modern standard tuning — there is plenty of information online if you are curious. I slowed the beat to 120 bpm — exactly two beats per second — which allows the count to map cleanly onto real time, so when the voice says “four,” four seconds have passed. I used Ableton to adjust the tempo and added an AI-generated voice from MiniMax.io.
The session is 25 minutes long and features two types of breathwork.
Box Breathing A simple, powerful technique used widely in stress management, performance, and clinical settings. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers heart rate, and brings the mind into a calm, alert state. You breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and repeat. Later in the session this extends to 8 seconds per side. The key is evenness — don’t front-load the inhale or exhale. Imagine you are steadily filling a container from the bottom up, and emptying it at the same rate. The hold at the top retains the breath without strain; the hold at the bottom is still and passive.
Holotropic Breathing Developed by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and later popularised by Wim Hof, this technique uses rapid, deep connected breathing to saturate the blood with oxygen and shift the nervous system into an altered but controlled state. Benefits include stress release, increased energy, and — with practice — profound states of mental clarity. You take a series of full, forceful breaths in quick succession, then exhale everything and hold with the lungs empty. The empty-lung hold can feel counterintuitive, but because your blood oxygen is already elevated from the rapid breathing phase, you have considerably more time than you think. Relax into it rather than fight it. In this Techno Pranayama session there are two rounds of Holotropic breathwork, each with a hold of around one minute.
Before you begin: lie down in a comfortable position. On every inhale, aim to fully expand the lungs — let the chest rise upward and outward, not just the belly. A regular yoga practice supports this directly, as it opens the shoulders and ribcage over time. If you feel lightheaded during the holotropic sections, this is normal. If at any point you feel uncomfortable, return to natural breathing.