Opening Gong Activation Tuned The Human Instrument Through Sound And Breath

At Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki, Jani Toivonen Offered A Ritual Of Return

On the morning of Friday, 3 June 2022, at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki in Finland, Jani Toivonen stepped onto the stage not to deliver a dense lecture or unveil a new device, but to ask something quieter and more difficult of the room: to come back to themselves.

His session, Opening Gong Activation, unfolded as both invocation and intervention. Before the day’s information surge resumed, Toivonen invited participants to treat the body not as a machine to be upgraded, but as “the most beautiful instrument” to be tuned. In a gathering devoted to optimisation, metrics and tools, his presentation insisted on an older truth: that the nervous system cannot be bullied into peace, only guided there.

“Everything is vibrating on some level,” Toivonen said. “This human experience is an incredibly interesting journey, and it is vital for us to know our true nature.”

A Counterpoint To The Hectic City Mind

Toivonen’s language drew a clear contrast between modern urban life and the internal conditions required for balance. He spoke of a world that had become “super hectic”, one in which the system runs “super, super fast and speedy” and only accelerates further. His answer was disarmingly simple: step into nature, breathe deeply, soften.

“In this hectic time we are living in, it is more important than ever to step into nature and just breathe,” he said. “Tap into your breath, breathe deep into your belly, and allow yourself to relax.”

That simplicity was not presented as retreat, but as technology in its own right. Breath, vibration, posture and attention became the instruments of a practical biohacking method, one rooted less in novelty than in remembering what the body already knows.

Shaking The Body Free Of Seriousness

The activation began not in stillness, but in movement. Toivonen asked the audience to stand, shake their hands, loosen their hips and legs, breathe audibly, release the jaw and even welcome laughter if it came. The point was not elegance. It was liberation from self-consciousness.

“We need much more playfulness in our lives,” he said. “Don’t worry about how you look; just get the body moving and activated. This is one of the fastest ways to center yourself.”

It was a striking scene: conference attendees, often more accustomed to note-taking than spontaneous embodiment, invited to tremble their way out of social rigidity. The shaking generated heat, sensation and, perhaps more importantly, permission. For a brief moment, seriousness lost its authority.

Then came the pivot. After the movement, Toivonen brought the room into stillness and asked participants simply to notice: warmer fingers, changed breath, a body newly felt from within. The exercise suggested that regulation does not always begin with calm. Sometimes it begins with discharge.

Breath, Pelvic Floor And The Architecture Of Attention

Seated again with both feet on the ground, participants were guided into deeper somatic work. Toivonen introduced a coordinated breathing practice involving belly expansion on the inhale and a pelvic floor contraction on the exhale, what he referred to through the yogic language of the root lock.

The exercise was precise, almost architectural. Relax on the inhale. Squeeze and lift the pelvic floor on the exhale. Feel the belly draw in. Sense the spine straighten. In this framework, inner alignment was not metaphorical. It was muscular, respiratory and conscious all at once.

He framed the practice as a way of becoming healthier, more activated and more attuned to one’s own state. It also carried a subtler message, one often neglected in discussions of performance: that power and calm can arise from the same place.

Intention On A White Canvas

Once the room had quieted, Toivonen shifted from physiology to imagination. Hands were placed over the heart. Attention moved inward. He asked participants to consider what they had learned, how they felt, and what they wished to integrate into their lives.

“Focus on your heart and ask yourself what your intention is for the day,” he said. “Feel that intention, visualize it already integrated into your life, and see how it feels to be living it.”

He then guided them to focus between the eyebrows and imagine a “big white canvas” on which that intention had already become reality. The invitation was not merely to think of a goal, but to inhabit it in detail. How did it look? How did it feel? What changed inside the body when the imagined became momentarily lived?

This was biohacking translated into inner imagery: not optimisation as external control, but as a conversation between sensation, belief and embodied rehearsal.

Humming The Intention Into The Cells

The next layer of the practice merged voice with visualisation. On the exhale, participants hummed with closed lips, creating a low resonant vibration in the chest. Toivonen encouraged them to feel the sound as if it rose from the pelvic floor and traveled up the spine, carrying intention through the body.

The humming was gentle, but its purpose was expansive. Through vibration, participants were asked to send their chosen intention from the heart into “all your cells”. Sound, in this model, was not performance. It was transmission.

Here Toivonen’s background in martial arts, coaching, wellness training and sound-based healing appeared to converge. His method drew on breathwork, yogic awareness, vocal resonance and group energy, weaving them into a distinctly holistic experience aimed at returning participants to what he called their natural rhythm and balance.

The Gong As A Bridge To The Inner World

Then came the gong.

Toivonen described sound healing in functional terms, explaining that resonant frequencies could help lower brainwave activity from the waking beta state toward slower states such as alpha and delta. The ambition was not sleep, but a liminal depth, a place where the external world loosened its grip and the inner world became more available.

As the gong sounded, the room was encouraged to keep breathing, listen not only with the ears but with the whole body, and treat every passing thought or external noise not as interruption, but as part of the present moment. Cool air entered through the nostrils. Warmer air left. Attention narrowed and widened at once.

The session became, for a few minutes, what Toivonen had promised at the outset: a journey inward. Not an escape from reality, but an altered relationship to it.

Gratitude, Laughter And The Politics Of Kindness

When the sound receded, Toivonen guided the audience back with gratitude. He asked them to think of one thing they were grateful for, to feel it in the heart, to thank themselves, even to smile gently toward their own heart. It was an intimate ending, but not a solitary one.

“It is so important that we take care of ourselves, but the most important part of this journey is the company,” he said. “We need each other, and it is essential to be kind and supportive of one another.”

That sentiment gave the session its emotional center. Self-care, in Toivonen’s telling, was incomplete without fellowship. Regulation was personal, but healing was also social.

He closed with clapping and a playful laughter yoga refrain, “Very good, very good, yeah,” a deliberately light ritual that turned mood into shared momentum. It was silly, of course, and that was precisely the point. Joy, he suggested, should not be postponed until circumstances improve. It could be practiced.

A Different Vision Of Biohacking

What made Opening Gong Activation memorable at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki was not simply its combination of shaking, breathing, pelvic floor work, humming, visualisation, gong resonance and gratitude. It was the way Jani Toivonen reframed the premise of biohacking itself.

In a culture often seduced by external fixes, he argued for internal literacy. The body was not presented as a problem to conquer, but as an intelligent system asking to be listened to. Breath became a lever. Sound became a map. Playfulness became medicine. Community became essential.

The result was a session that felt less like performance enhancement and more like collective remembering: that beneath the noise, the speed and the perpetual pressure to improve, human beings still possess an ancient capacity to regulate, imagine, resonate and connect. Sometimes all it takes to begin is a breath, a vibration and the willingness to look slightly ridiculous while shaking yourself back to life.

Frequently asked questions

What was Jani Toivonen asking of the room?

Something quieter and more difficult than a lecture: to come back to themselves. His session opened the summit as both invocation and intervention, drawing a contrast between modern urban life and the internal conditions balance actually requires.

How did the activation begin?

In movement rather than stillness. Toivonen asked the audience to stand, shake their hands, loosen hips and legs, breathe audibly, release the jaw and welcome laughter if it came. We need much more playfulness in our lives, he said.

What was the seated practice?

Deeper somatic work with both feet on the ground, built around a coordinated breathing pattern involving belly expansion on the inhale and pelvic floor engagement, which he used to connect breath to the architecture of attention.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki series, recorded in Helsinki on 3 and 4 June 2022. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.