Why Modern Professionals Need Meditation to Succeed | Emily Fletcher DSH #1165

Well the thing is, so let's just talk about some of the stats on that.

Is that if women are too stressed, if their cortisol levels are too high, they become physically incapable of orgasm.

If men's cortisol levels are too high, and also their adrenaline levels are too high, they become physically incapable of having an erection.

Wow.

Because adrenaline is trying to keep that blood everywhere else in the body.

You got to outrun a tiger.

You can't afford to have an erection.

All right, guys, got Emily here.

We're going to talk Ziva Magic here today.

Yeah, we are.

Just did a wonderful breath work session.

I feel good.

Good.

Thanks for doing that for me.

Yeah.

My pleasure.

Yeah.

Breath work is powerful.

Wim Hoff is my first kind of foray into it.

What I love about Wim is that he managed to make his name a verb

about breathing.

Talk about branding expert.

Yeah, he's definitely done it.

Were you doing breath work before him or?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say probably 15, 16 years.

Wow.

Yeah.

Meditating every day, twice a day for 16 years whoa twice a day twice a day that's that's what we do at Ziva that's impressive thanks are they long sessions 22 minutes for me but what I teach in our online training is 15 minutes twice a day nice you can do a lot in 15 minutes twice a day yeah it's digestible yeah people think they don't have time but it's like let me see your phone like let me see how many minutes you spend on social media a day and you probably could fit in an extra 15.

oh yeah because then you're smarter you're faster you're more creative you sleep better your decision making is better your sex drive is better so it's like actually, the stress is making us stupid, sick, and slow.

And so we don't realize the opportunity cost of not recharging, of not plugging in, of not like, you know, bathing your brain, if you will.

Yeah, I'm very aware of the danger of stress these days.

But when I was younger, I was a workaholic.

I still am, but now I'm just aware of if I'm too stressed.

He says on his seventh podcast of the day, I used to be a workaholic.

Yeah, but before I would just let it compound and not address it, yeah.

But these days, I'll have techniques to kind of de-stress, you know.

And how's that been for you?

Like, now that you're utilizing techniques to help you.

It's helped a lot.

Yeah.

Well, I'm not on medication anymore.

Okay.

Oh, that's great.

I was on Xanax before.

Okay.

And just relying on that.

I had no holistic techniques.

Yeah.

People have called Ziva nature Xanax, and I really love that.

It feels like a big compliment.

That is a great compliment.

Yeah, because the whole deal is like nature has installed inside of us this internal pharmacy of medicine.

Right.

Right.

And anything that we would take exogenously is working on some sort of internal receptors.

You know, if you put LSD into the brain of a lizard, it does not trip because it doesn't make that particular like God chemical.

Wow, I never knew that.

And so there's a reason why the things that we take impact us.

It's because there is some receptor in our brain that we could do internally.

So it's like if you can get high on your own supply, let's start there.

Look, I'm a big fan of psychedelics as well.

I'm a big fan of using tools when they are helpful.

Yeah.

But I think they're just going to be more impactful if you know how to do it yourself.

Absolutely.

I'm big on psychedelics and learning about the biohacking space.

I know how powerful the body is now at healing.

Before, I think there's a lot of programming on like, just take a quick pill, you know, growing up, that's what I thought to heal yourself.

Well, it's the same kind of divorcing from our healing potential as we divorce ourselves from our divinity, right?

It's like we forget that we're so creative, we forget that we're so powerful, and that's been done on purpose, right?

If people stand to gain from you forgetting, you know, that you could actually plug in directly to source yourself, that you could actually heal yourself, then you're going to be, you know, people are incentivized to help you forget that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Instead, we're taught a quick pill.

I remember playing soccer.

If I was sore, I would take Advil after the game, and that was normal.

I used to do that on Broadway, you know, because you're dancing eight shows a week, six days a week, and your feet are swollen and your legs are hurting, but you got to do two more shows today.

And so sometimes you're like, okay, I'm going to take the Advil.

Crazy.

Yeah.

But I used to ice my feet.

I remember when I first learned to meditate, I asked my teacher, I said, Hey, can I meditate while I ice my feet?

He was like, No, no, you cannot.

That's funny.

Yeah, I was so relying on those.

And I took like 10 years off.

I just had to take one last week and I was dreading it.

10 years off of Advil?

Yeah.

Okay, that's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was dreading it.

My back locked up and it hurt so bad.

Oh, I'm sorry.

But I do not try to rely on those anymore.

I can give you, because I used to have really intense back pain and two things that have really helped me.

One, and I don't know what your issue is, but there's just some pillows that have helped my structure.

Really?

The other thing is that I'm really starting to believe that a lot of our pain, not all of it, but a lot of of our pain is unfelt feelings.

We just have like uncried tears in our back.

We have unexpressed emotions in our inflammation.

And there's a Lakota elder, Doug Goodfeather, who says that

the intensity of the suffering on the planet right now is caused by thousands of years of uncried tears.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it's a fascinating thing to think about.

I'm not going to say if that's true or not, but I think it's interesting to hypothesize about because we're taught since we're children, like, shh, don't cry, have a bottle.

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Don't cry.

Have a toy.

Have an iPad.

Okay.

Have some pills.

Okay.

Have some porn.

Okay.

Have some more pills.

Okay.

But whatever you do, don't feel.

Right.

And a big part of the work that I'm doing with Ziva Magic is teaching people how to feel their feelings, how to like go into the darkness and metabolize it and alchemize it so that you can make space for more joy, more pleasure, more light.

And I think if we're not willing to go into and alchemize the darkness, we're not going to have the spaciousness or the capacity that is available to us to to start to vibrate at the frequency of our dreams, which is what manifesting is.

I could see that.

Yeah, it's important to embrace feelings.

I used to suppress them.

Yeah, I think we all do to some degree to survive.

Yeah.

And what I've found is that the braver you are to go into the darkness, just the more rich life becomes.

Is that what drew you to psychedelics?

Hmm.

I mean, let's be serious.

I've been doing them recreationally.

They're fun.

I've been doing it recreationally for like over 20 years,

but it hasn't, but it's been more therapeutic and medicinal in the past maybe

10 years.

Love the honesty.

I'm the same way.

I did them in college just, you know, being degenerate at the time.

I wouldn't call myself a degenerate.

My best friend and I, we were known as the roller queens because we would throw like amazing MDMA parties.

Whoa.

Between the two of us, we had like 22 Broadway shows.

And I went back to my college.

And I, you know, I was like thinking like, oh, they're going to be so impressed with my Broadway resume.

And they're like, hey, Emily Fletcher, you're the roller queen, right?

And I was like, oh, no.

That's hilarious.

I have the wrong legacy here.

But now, so last summer, my best friend Layla and I went to on this priestess pilgrimage to Greece and we went to Eleusis and Crete and Delphi to these places where these women and priestesses were serving medicine for thousands and thousands of years.

And it woke something up inside of me.

And I had this remembering.

I was like, oh, I've been doing this for a very long time.

And, you know, you, yes, there's certainly the like hedonistic side of MDMA, but there's also like, it is the love particle.

Like it's remember, it's you remembering your capacity for love.

Right.

And so, I mean, there's, you know, every coin has two sides.

And so I really,

it changed the way,

I think, any shame that I had around psychedelics or any old programming got

integrated on that trip because I realized that we used to have whole temples built to it.

We used to have whole stadiums built around this.

You know, the kings and the generals used to go to the women for advisement.

And oftentimes those women were on either, they were doing fertility rituals or psychedelic rituals and so they were like plugged into the divine wow and i think that we've lost that in this society because it's become not only male but also hyper masculine it's like we're missing this balance of masculine and feminine um that used to exist in many civilizations greek roman um and for thousands of years this would go on so it's it's exciting to see some level of people tuning into nature through plants.

Yeah, that is exciting.

It's funny how certain locations will activate that hidden DNA memory, right?

Certain locations.

Like when you go somewhere, you feel like deja vu or you feel like you belong here.

Yeah, I just went to Egypt last December with Robert Edward Grant and a lot of our folks.

And in those pyramids, boy,

I know she had a pyramid here.

And I have this big dream of doing these activations at the pyramids, at the sacred sites on the planet.

Yeah.

And bringing people into very high states of consciousness, into even ecstatic orgasmic states, and holding a shared vision for the species.

Because I think that those

pyramids are, I mean, they're built to conduct energy, right?

Like you have one right on this desk.

And so it's like, what would happen if we had, you know, thousands of people holding a shared vision for the species in coherence with themselves and each other, and then dedicating that energy to the dream.

Wow.

Cool experiment.

Yeah.

Can't wait till you try that out.

Well, there have been people that do like these large group meditations, right?

And the energy is just noticeable.

Yes.

I mean, I used to feel it in my studio at Ziva in New York City.

We would get, you know, a few hundred people meditating and one person meditating is amazing.

You get a hundred people meditating at the same time and it's just like the consciousness goes,

like the whole collective consciousness drops.

Wow.

And the analogy here is that if you imagine that we're all sharing a field, which we are, one person meditating is like one bowling ball on the trampoline.

A hundred people meditating is like a hundred bowling balls on the trampoline.

So the field just bends.

So if your body wants a deep dive, if the body wants to have that deep rest, it will fall into it more easily.

And that's just with meditation.

Right.

Now imagine like an energetic activation at a place where these are these pyramids, which are built potentially originally for conducting energy yeah and also on the ley lines of the planet so specifically in cairo that pyramid is on the throat chakra of the planet um there's other chakra points on on the globe as well but it's uh that is fascinating yeah i can't wait to go to egypt one day and robert edward grant is the most fascinating man i've ever met i think i love him so much he's aging backwards he is aging backwards he is he just sent me a video i was like wait robert can we talk about how you're getting hotter and at this moment he i was actually setting up an altar and i was putting the pyramid on the altar for this ceremony.

And he sends me a video of him in hypnosis talking about how he was like instrumental in building the pyramids, which is wild.

And this is going to sound very crazy.

But the first night I ever met Robert, I walked up to him and I was like, Robert, hi, I'm Emily Fletcher.

My friend just came out of a medicine ceremony and she said that I was one of the non-humans that helped the

Egyptians build the pyramids.

And of course, I think this is like a crazy thing to say to someone because it is, it sounds insane.

And Robert was like, oh, of course, that means you're Arcturian.

And like, I discovered this thing and it was Alpha Chi Omega.

And that's on the ship.

And I was like, I love you already.

And so we've had that in common.

And then I was reading a book about the building of the pyramids.

And just when they got to the sound frequency part of it, I get a text from Robert saying, hey, I'd love for you to join me in Egypt and do something.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When he came on the show, I was baffled.

And then afterwards, I texted him, yo, I just did some past life therapy and learned about my lineage.

He's like, oh, I already knew about it.

Tell me something I don't know.

Yeah.

That dude's different.

He's different.

Oh, for real.

I think he had some gray hair when I filmed with him.

And then I saw him like two years later and he looked like 20 years younger.

Well, that happened to me when I learned to meditate.

I was going gray at 26 years old.

Whoa.

I had insomnia, couldn't sleep through the night for 18 months.

I was going gray at 26.

I was getting sick and injured.

I'm on Broadway living my dream.

I learned to meditate on the first day of my first class.

I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months.

Dang.

I accessed a different state of consciousness than I had ever been in.

I stopped going great.

I didn't get sick for eight and a half years.

I feel like I am in better shape now and look better now than I did even in my 30s.

And so it's just like, it's a fun game to see like what happens to the human body when you are setting it up for success and not constantly pickling it with adrenaline and cortisol, which are acidic in nature.

That's fascinating.

I never thought it could help with sleep.

Oh my God.

It's like 90% of our students are like, oh yeah, my insomnia is gone.

Whoa.

Yeah.

A lot of people can't sleep at night.

I know.

I think it was just my team just this week was like, Emily, this this is our 10x idea.

Like we've really got to like let people understand because it is like magic.

I mean, I had debilitating insomnia.

I was having nightmares that I was being possessed by the devil.

Whoa.

And on the first day of my first meditation class, I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months and I have every night since.

That was 16 years ago.

Those are some interesting dreams you're having.

I know.

I think there's a lot of meaning in dreams.

You might have to look into that.

Well, the thing is, I haven't had that dream again for 16 years.

I think it was just stress trying to leave my body.

Yeah.

You were really stressed when you were 26.

Well, I was on Broadway and I was understudying three of the lead roles.

What does understudy mean?

It means that you show up to the theater and you have no idea which character you're going to play.

What?

And they can just switch you from one to the other, or you could just be chilling in your dressing room having a snack.

And then someone's like, Emily Fletcher, we get you on stage.

And so it's very, it's like this constant fight or flight, even if you're not on stage.

Wow.

I didn't know Broadway operated like that.

I thought everyone knew their role.

Well, they do, but imagine if the lead breaks their ankle.

Imagine if the lead gets sick.

You know?

You got to know everyone's lines.

Well, you got to know the people that you understudy's lines.

So I understood three of the leads.

That's a lot of lines.

And also a lot of choreography, a lot of different harmonies, a lot of, it's, yeah.

That's stressful.

So you found out that wasn't your path.

Well, I honestly, when I learned to meditate, I was just doing it to be better at that.

And it did.

It made me a much better performer.

Not just from the stress, but also just like spiritually.

I think if you don't have a way to plug yourself in, if you don't have a way to fill yourself up with fulfillment, then of course you're going to look for that fulfillment externally, right?

Like maybe this boyfriend, maybe this zero in the bank account, maybe this next job, then I'll be happy.

But with meditation, you're flooding your own brain and body with dopamine and serotonin.

You're like actually getting high on your own supply.

And then you can see those things as opportunities to deliver your fulfillment versus where you need to go to fill yourself up.

And so that shift, it gives you this level of detachment, gives you this level of like leaning back, which is sexy.

It's attractive.

It's magnetic.

Yeah.

Versus like, please date me.

Please hire me.

Please like me.

Like that neediness is not sexy.

Not attractive.

No.

But if you're like, I'm God pretending to be human, I've got everything I need right here.

If you want to date me, cool.

If you want to hire me, great.

Like that's a much more fun way to go through life and it becomes more magnetic.

I love it.

So meditation helped with your sex life.

Big time.

Let's go.

Big time.

You're connecting a lot of dots for people.

Well, the thing is, so let's just talk about some of the stats on that.

It's like, if women are too stressed, if their cortisol levels are too high, they become physically incapable of orgasm.

If men's cortisol levels are too high, and also their adrenaline levels are too high, they become physically incapable of having an erection.

Wow.

Because adrenaline is trying to keep that blood everywhere else in the body.

You got to outrun a tiger.

You can't afford to have an erection, right?

Because it's going to slow you down.

So if your body is constantly in fight or flight, you always think there's a predatory attack around.

The meat suit is not designed to procreate in a dangerous situation.

Body has to feel safe first.

And so if you get out of fight or flight and into what I call stay and play, from that place, you just have more energy energy available.

And then also with meditation, there's something called mirror neurons that get fired.

And so mirror neurons is why porn is a multi-billion dollar industry.

It's like,

if you are receiving pleasure or you're experiencing pleasure, I can have pleasure from witnessing your pleasure.

That's mirror neurons.

Also, if I were to pull out a knife right now and cut my hand, it would hurt you.

You'd be like, right?

Like you would wince.

That's mirror neurons.

And so when you start meditating, all of your neural activity increases, but including mirror neurons.

So you could receive more pleasure from someone else's pleasure.

Also, the style of meditation that I teach at Ziva is giving your body rest that's five times deeper than sleep because your metabolic rate drops precipitously, like 30 to 45 seconds in.

And then also heart rate slows, body temperature cools.

So even for 15 minutes, you're getting like over an hour's worth of rest.

And the number one reason that people say they're not having as much sex as they would like to is that they're too tired.

Actually, 25% of cohabitating adults say that that's the number one reason they don't have as much sex as they would like to.

So if Ziva is is like a supercharged power nap for your brain, but without the sleep hangover, then it makes sense that you would have, if you're going to have more pleasure from seeing your partner get pleasure and you're feeling more rested, and you're overall just more healthy and have more life force energy, then it stands to reason that your sex life would get better.

I love that.

Yeah, now that I think about it, when I was super stressed, I was not having sex.

No, I never even connected it to that, but yeah, because your body's just trying to survive, yeah, yeah, I just wasn't getting attracted in any way.

I was busy dealing with stress, yeah.

Holy Holy crap.

I need to meditate when I'm stressed.

Indeed.

And actually, what I would recommend is meditating before you're stressed.

Like, don't treat it like medicine.

Like, treat it like a supplement.

Like a preventative.

Yeah, because if you're doing it every day, you're actually increasing your neuroplasticity.

You're reversing your body age.

You're improving your immune function.

And then you're basically setting up your baseline for bliss.

And the cool thing is you get addicted to the bliss chemicals just like you get addicted to anything else.

You know, if you were to do cocaine every day, you would need more cocaine to get high.

Well, same is true of dopamine and serotonin.

The brain has to start producing more and more of it.

So you actually get happier and happier the longer you meditate

because your brain needs to produce more of it.

So it's like you're addicted to meditation, but I won't use the word addiction because it's constructive for the brain versus destructive for the brain.

And actually they've examined brains of meditators and at 50,

the average brain age of 50 years olds, they look like more like 35 or 40 year olds.

And then you can reverse your body age by somewhere between 8 and 15 years.

So that's skin elasticity, body's ability to rejuvenate, sleep latency, brain elasticity, like all of those things.

Can you reverse body age yourself with meditation?

But the thing is, when I say

the thing about meditation is that that word has become like the word food.

And just like eating a cheeseburger is different than having a salad.

Oh, I see.

And the thing, the word meditation has become this blanket term.

And so you listening to a guided app on your phone is likely not the same thing as learning a skill and then meditating every day, twice a day.

Right.

So so you teach a skill yeah i teach a skill like i'm a meditation teacher and i give people a skill they can do on their own for the rest of their lives got it and then the more they do it the benefits become cumulative yeah so they're not following a guided meditation right like i mean i'll do guided experiences and now that i'm doing more of the sacred sexuality and medicine work like i am i'll do activations yeah but that's different than teaching people the skill of ziva meditation which is like basically you plugging in to source energy every day, twice a day.

Like you remembering that you are the ocean, pretending to be the wave, you remembering your own divinity and also giving yourself this like supercharged power nap, but without the sleep hanging.

I love it.

Yeah.

I used to love naps, but they're, they were hit or miss.

Sometimes I'd wake up even more tired.

So I was like, I can't risk that anymore.

Yeah.

Well, the thing is, if you meditate first and you do a meditation into a nap, usually people only need like 10 to 12 minutes of the nap and they still don't have the sleep hangover afterwards.

That's it.

Because when you're meditating, you're accessing a pre-hypnagogic state.

And you're so anytime the brain transitions between waking and sleeping, there's this 30-second window in between.

It's very similar to the state of meditation.

So if you go into that first and then nap, your body will need less sleep on the other side.

You mentioned sacred sexuality earlier.

I want to learn more about that.

What do you want to learn?

What is that?

Great question.

What is sacred sexuality?

Well, just even the fact that you're asking that question is so interesting to me because to me, it is the most sacred.

It is the most holy.

It is like one of the fastest ways to remember our divinity.

And yet in our society, we've been trained to think that sex is wrong and bad and dirty and a sin and you're going to go to hell.

And we've been trained on all the dangers of it before we've ever been taught about the sanctity of it or the holiness of it.

And if you, I've started interviewing people after activations and be like, hey, how do you feel after you orgasm?

Yeah.

And people say like, you know, blissful, pure, open, clean, connected, kind,

holy, even.

Rarely do people say like dirty, wrong, bad.

And so for me, if it's done with intention, just like with medicine work, it is like one of the most holy things that there is.

So what I do specifically at Ziva is that I help people to use their sexual energy to manifest.

So just like sexual energy could be used to create a human, that's one of the most divine things we could do, right?

To create another human, that energy can be harnessed to create anything you want,

to create a company, create a partner, create.

a book.

And it's really just knowing how to harness this life force energy or what i call creation energy and does that require semen retention and and like abstaining from like orgasm or can you do that both do you think you can do both um i mean i would say you know i mean i know you just had dave asprey on and he's and certainly there's like qigong formulas that will say like you're you know your age and what you're doing in life will would be like this is the optimal times to ejaculate yeah but you can orgasm without ejaculation and you can also use your sexual energy to manifest and ejaculate so they're not mutually exclusive um I think that if just like anything,

the devil's in the dose and the devil's also in the intention, right?

Like taking drugs without intention is one thing.

Like using your sexual energy without an intention, it's a similar thing.

It's like

sexual energy is like an endogenous pharmacy and one of the most powerful.

cocktails of chemicals that nature has installed inside of us, right?

Like only not only do you get the dopamine and serotonin like you do with meditation, but you also have oxytocin, the love hormone, you have norepinephrine, you have adrenaline.

And so it's like you're flooding yourself with all these powerful chemicals.

And to manifest from that heightened state and also to manifest from that place of transcendence, right?

Like in the moment of orgasm in French, they call it le petite mort, right?

It's the little death because you're practicing dying, you're transcending individuality and accessing totality.

So to manifest from that connected state is similar to manifesting in meditation.

And I find that meditation and manifesting are so much more powerful together.

Same thing.

Manifesting from this post-orgasmic state, it like supercharges anything that you're trying to call in.

Wow.

Manifesting from an orgasm.

Let's go.

I love manifestation.

You heard it here first, kids.

Yeah, you heard it here.

That's the formula.

Yeah, I'm big on manifestation, though.

I got a vision board.

Clearly.

I think, I constantly think about what I want.

Yeah, so what's your, how do you manifest?

Well, vision boards once a year.

I write write goals.

Do you look at it?

Like, do you keep it up?

Yeah, it's in my office.

Yeah.

Gratitude journal,

talking with friends, you know.

About the dream?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about you?

I mean, I say I'm doing it kind of all of the time.

And the thing that I've loved about developing Ziva Magic is that there can almost be like a toxic positivity to manifesting that allows people to bypass the pain of like, well, you know, I'm just, I'm just going to manifest this thing and I'm going towards the dream.

And so I'm not going to feel feel any of my pain or i'm not going to feel the sadness and what i've found is that in this formula which is so the ziva magic formula is visualize alchemize magnetize so first it's like have the vision right like make the board or run the movie in your mind and and that's what i'll drop people into coherence with themselves drop them into meditation and give them the space to even ask what would i love and then from there we alchemize so anything standing in the way like any if there's like worthiness or i don't think i'm good enough or smart enough or tall enough or fast enough or early enough like whatever the story is right?

That's going to create a feeling.

And I find that if you're willing to go into that feeling and feel it all the way and even let it be expressed through the body, then you can make more space for pleasure.

And I've also found that the same skill, the same muscle that is required for you to feel the intensity of your feelings is the same thing that allows you to hold more pleasure in your body.

And the very simple manifestation formula is like the better you feel, the better things you attract, right?

Like my, my very simple manifestation formula is feel good, place the order, place the order, feel good.

Wow.

Feel good, place the order, place the order, feel good.

And so these states of heightened bliss and ecstasy, these states of like physical pleasure in the body, it is a way to sort of fast track your vibrational state.

And then if you can come back to the vision from this beautiful, ecstatic, connected space, you just find that you attract things and it starts to feel like magic.

It's not magic.

There's an extraordinary amount of science and people have been doing this for thousands and thousands of years you know before like we had ketamine clinics on every corner like people had to use their own endogenous pharmacology to hack their state of consciousness yeah i can relate on a personal level because i used to live in a low vibration household and i was attracting pretty much nothing good

and um now i just go to the grocery store and like people will come up to me like that used to never happen what do they say They're like nice shirt or like nice shoes, whatever, simple comment, compliment.

And yeah, that would never happen to me before.

Bravo.

Yeah.

And how did you shift that?

like how did you shift your vibrational state uh self-work a lot more time in nature which i used to not do that at all um how do you do that in vegas there's uh red rocks okay yeah but i ground at a park next door too okay yeah there's there's a little grass here not much but there's a little i just left the city i've been in the city for 20 plus years been in new york city and i just moved to the width of living katona new york now and i have a yard i mean it's like 45 minutes from the city so it's not really upset it's kind of like the suburbs um but i'm on a lake now now and I'm paddleboarding and I have a yard and trees.

And it's really changed the game for me.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just a lot of self-development.

I've done past life hypnosis.

I've done psychedelics.

Just, I think accumulation of everything.

I don't think it was like one thing.

Do you meditate?

I don't.

You want to?

I'm down.

Okay.

My thing with meditation is, so I have ADHD.

Okay.

I'm not trying to like make excuses, but I would try these meditations and I just couldn't do it.

What would you try?

I don't want to shut up.

Like guided meditations on YouTube.

Okay.

So, so I'd love to just talk about the difference between like a guided meditation on YouTube versus Ziva because they really are quite different.

And I want to make sure that anyone who feels like a meditation failure understands the difference.

I actually dedicated my whole book to anyone who's ever felt like a meditation failure.

Like you're not a failure.

You just haven't been taught yet.

Like it really is a skill.

And someone guiding you through an experience is awesome, but it's very different than you knowing how to plug in yourself.

And lots of people can do Ziva who have ADHD.

Like I would actually say it would really help it.

It won't be a hindrance to it because you're not following anyone else's guidance.

You're using a tool to help your body de-excite and go into more subtle states of consciousness.

And from that subtle states of consciousness, your body's getting rest.

It's five times deeper than sleep.

And that rest is healing your body, not only from the stress from today, but all the accumulated stress that the body has from the past.

So that stuff gets stored in your cellular memory.

And in the meditation, it starts to come up and out.

And this is the thing that ushers us into higher and higher states of consciousness.

It's the thing that reverses body age and improves immune function and improves sleep, but it's not, you don't have to focus during the meditation and you don't have to clear your mind.

Really?

Yeah.

And this is like a big, big misconception.

I'd say it's the number one misconception that people face in meditation is they think they have to clear their mind.

That would happen to me.

It'd be like, clear your mind out and think of a white space.

And I just couldn't do that.

Because it's impossible.

Yeah, I couldn't do that.

It's impossible.

Truly, the brain thinks involuntarily, just like the heart beats involuntarily.

And I'm on a big soapbox about about this because I know that people are robbing themselves of a lifetime of bliss and fulfillment because they're basing the success of their meditation on misinformation.

And the reason why that happens is that what most people call meditation are actually derivations of monastic practices, things that were originally made for monks.

So, what I teach at Ziva is that it's actually designed for people like us, people with busy lives and jobs and kids and houses.

Like, we're householders, we're not monks.

And so, we utilize a tool that ushers you into these deep states of consciousness.

And then you get to a space where there's like, oh, I'm not Sean Kelly.

I just am.

Like you get to this space of expansiveness, but not through focusing, not through trying to clear the mind.

So just like your heart beats involuntarily, and I couldn't be like, Sean, stop beating your heart, right?

Like impossible.

You also cannot say, hey, brain, stop thinking.

And so a lot of times when people do the guided visualizations, they don't see a lot of impact and they feel like they're failing.

And so I just want to say, if that's you and you still want to try meditation, like please like know that there is like a guided thing on YouTube would be like a glass of water and like Ziva can help you access the whole ocean.

Oh, I love it.

I'll try it out.

I'm going to gift it to you.

Oh, thank you.

It's just 15 minutes a day for 15 days.

And then maybe we can have a little chat afterwards or come back on or something.

And if you commit to it, like your life will fucking change.

I'll do it.

I'm always interested in self-development work.

Yeah.

And like this to me is like the foundation.

It's like the piece that if you do this, the psychedelic work gets shifted exponentially.

You do this, then the biohacking work gets shifted exponentially.

The coaching, like any sort of therapy or religion or coaching, that's a software, right?

Like that's an operating system that you run on the hard drive of your brain.

And the meditation is the thing that is defragging the hard drive of your brain.

And you can't run, you know, brand new software from 2025 on a PC from 1995.

Like at some point, you're going to have to upgrade the system.

And that's what this style of meditation does.

That makes sense.

I'm excited about it.

Thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure.

I was watching an old podcast of you.

Yeah, from how many years ago?

Six years ago.

Okay.

Yeah, I like to do that with guests.

I like to see like what they were talking about a long time ago.

What was I talking about?

You said only 8% of Americans meditate.

Oof.

I looked up the new like statistics.

It's at 14.

So it's gotten a little bit.

I'm going to call that a win.

I'm going to put that in the W category.

I'd say you played a role in that, you know?

I would say I have too.

That's cool.

Even if not me directly.

I mean, I've taught.

probably 60,000 people to meditate directly.

I think it's been 950,000 people who've done my training on other platforms.

But I think more importantly, like the people who I've taught, you know, I've taught at Google and Apple and Viacom and Harvard Business School and athletes and Tony award winners and Grammy Award winners.

And, you know, you have one Oscar award winner tweeting about like, hey, this is what meditation has done.

And then it starts to be cool.

Right.

You know, I'd say Tim Ferriss has played a huge role in that.

He says 90% of his podcast guests start their day with meditation.

Whoa.

9-0.

And he's the high-performance guy, right?

Yeah, that's a great podcast.

Yeah.

And Ziva, we started all about meditation for extraordinary performance because I believe we meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation.

And so it's like not about how many or few thoughts you're having in the chair.

It's like, how good am I at interviewing?

How present am I?

How good am I at being a dad?

How good is my sex drive?

Do my coworkers like working with me?

You know, how is my heart rate variability?

Like all that stuff.

Like that's why we meditate.

Yeah.

Not to clear your mind.

Yeah.

That awareness that comes from it is good.

That intuition, right?

Yes, the intuition.

Because then like, think about all the time you waste making bad decisions versus just being like, boom, this.

Yeah.

Right.

And, you know, Dave talks about this where he's like, the mitochondria are actually making the decision for you.

I would say that there's, it's like the right brain is the intuition and the left brain is the intellect.

And you need both, but you want the intuition to be the king and you want the intellect to be the advisory committee.

And I think because a lot of people don't have access to their intuition, the advisory committee has become the king.

Right.

And I think that that is playing a role in the imbalance of society.

And I think if we can get back into that intuitive, more right brain, more feminine balance, it doesn't mean that like only women rule the world.

It means that all of us are balancing our masculine and feminine energies.

We have the containment and the flow.

We have the intellect and the intuition.

This, like the amount of joy and creativity and regeneration that is possible as a species on the planet, if we can get into that state of consciousness, I don't think any of us can even conceive of right now.

Absolutely.

I can't wait.

I think we're spiritually getting there too.

I think so, too.

I think we're.

I think we're having this like K-shaped spiritual recovery right now.

Just like we're having like a K-shaped economic recovery.

Like post-COVID, post-COVID, you know, the rich got richer, poor got poor.

I'm feeling the same thing happening spiritually.

So people who have had access to therapy and psychedelics and meditation and, you know, personal development work are like popping off into God consciousness, like having these massive spiritual awakenings.

And conversely, people who have not had the privilege of access are really plummeting into anxiety and depression and suicidality.

And so like this bifurcated society is not a fun place to live.

So it's like, how do we close that gap so that we have more coherence and unity?

You're right, though.

It does seem polarizing there's two extreme ends i've been on both yeah you know so i can relate and do you find that you like go up and down quickly or you've just been on the down trajectory and then back up no i'd say i was really down in high school college maybe a little after college but now i haven't been that low since

and i mean that's a rich full life you know it's like we want to play you know all the keys of the human experience you know some people like to say that the human experience is a very sought after one um by other species and because of our ability to experience agony and ecstasy even inside of the same hour.

And that's been a big learning for me in the past, I'd say, three or four years since I've had this sexual awakening and sort of working with sexual energy.

It's paradoxically allowing me, because I have it, it's like this more, it's like I have access to this more powerful medicine.

I'm willing to go into darker, more intense places.

Or maybe my willingness to go into the darkness has been the thing that has increased my capacity for pleasure, but it feels like the polarity even inside of myself is increasing.

And so because sexual energy is one of the most creative forces on the planet, it can metabolize the pain, it can metabolize the suffering, and it does it quickly.

Like I'm always amazed, like on our retreats, we'll have people who will heal like many generations of trauma.

Like they'll, I mean, it's wild, like the

the physical healings, the emotional healings, and it's simply by people accessing what has been inside of them all along.

Wow.

Yeah.

Sexual energies.

It's the more I look into it, the more I realize how powerful it is.

Yeah.

It's actually crazy.

And people just take it for granted and watch porn.

Well, I think, yeah, we're like wasting.

Well, I don't want to call it wasted, but porn is certainly like its own,

it's its own unique.

frequency and just like you wouldn't want to eat sweet tarts morning, noon, and night.

You know, at some point you want to eat vegetables and you want to nourish your body.

and so i just want for people to know how nourishing it can be how healing it can be how holy it can be um so that we don't think that sweet tarts is all there is yeah no it's definitely draining though because i used to watch it and uh the days i would watch it i'd feel drained you know that day i would be way less productive it was noticeable and i think a lot of guys are i don't know about females but a lot of guys are watching porn almost every day

it's pretty bad right now yeah and i've heard these stats that this you know generation of kids in their 20s, I don't know if you call it people in their 20s kids, but like are the least sex generation that we've had in a long time.

A lot of virgins in their 20s still.

And I think that

we're like oversexualized and undersexed.

Yeah.

Right?

Versus like we actually just need like physical touch and like hugs and cuddles and physical touch.

And I think that because we've gotten so scared of the sexual energy, we've been divorced from it,

we forget how

like sweet sweet and sacred and holy it can be.

And you got these guys making sex robots, sex AI now.

Did you see that Netflix movie that just came out?

Nope.

With Megan Fox.

No.

You didn't see this?

No, tell me.

Check it out.

She plays the role of

an AI.

Okay.

That's supposed to help her on the house.

Okay.

But

he ends up like...

Should I spoil it?

I mean, for me, I mean, maybe just to say spoiler alert.

I'm fine with a spoiler, but I don't know about your listener.

Spoiler alert.

I don't even know the name of this movie, but if you see Megan Fox, this is the the movie.

She ends up screwing the husband while the wife is in the hospital.

Well, we all saw that coming.

It's not much of a spoiler.

But yeah, there's a movement in Asia of these AI sex robots or whatever.

It's kind of weird in my opinion.

It's going to be a wild world.

And the thing I want to just let us all ponder

is that the rate of change is going to speed up exponentially, right?

So we're like, oh, things are getting crazy crazy in AI.

AI is an infant right now.

Like, and that infant is going to get faster and smarter.

And so what we can't understand is that the rate of change, how quickly that's all going to shift.

And so I really think that the single attribute of human success moving forward is going to be our ability to adapt.

And this is what meditation gives you is the ability to adapt.

Sex robots, okay.

AI running the world, okay.

You know, robots driving cars, okay.

I've got robots now in my body.

Okay, but like we're adapting, we're adapting, we're adapting with equanimity versus like resisting and suffering and resisting and suffering.

Yeah.

When's your next retreat?

Hmm.

I'm interested.

Oh, well, I'm working on one in Egypt.

Oh.

And so you just said you want to go to Egypt.

That works out well.

And potentially May of 2025, but I can let you know.

Yeah, keep it close.

But I really want to start doing these activations on the sacred sites on the planet because it's just,

it just feels like a dharmic imperative.

And I know that the magic that happens for people individually on these retreats, if we can start to send that energy out into the planet, actually, I don't know what's going to happen because I don't know if it's ever been done before.

But I feel excited to find out.

I could see it.

I mean, Robert's trying to activate the pyramids right now, right?

Well, that's what we did in December.

We went to do a throat chakra activation, and then he took us to another one and he had me lead an activation at the crown chakra, which is this wild pyramid that actually

exploded.

What?

So it's basically just a pile of rose granite, granite, but it was taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

And some people hypothesized that maybe this was the Tower of Babel.

But it's, it was intense.

And I had people do breath work similar to what we just did beforehand, but really pulling the energy from the root up into their crown.

So we, we start, we planted the seeds for the crown chakra activation last December.

Let's go.

Yeah.

Wow.

You guys are on a mission.

I love it, though.

You know, I really do.

It's kind of mission where it's like, I just keep getting little breadcrumbs.

You know, so I can't see the whole thing right now.

But I knew back in, I don't know, maybe 2008, I was like, meditation is going to be big.

And I was, there was this thing in my body where I was like, oh, why isn't everyone doing this?

And it was about meditation.

And I didn't know we'd only gone to 14%, but I think it's, you know, we're starting.

It's rising every year.

But I'm having that same feeling right now around sacred sexuality and specifically about these activations of like, why isn't everyone doing this?

And I think part of it is like going back into the ancient technologies that we've forgotten as a species.

So

yeah, it's going to be interesting.

There There was a lot of advanced technology back in the day, right?

Yeah.

I mean, we had mega cities going on.

I mean, there's some people hypothesized that the, you know, the Nile was much higher and that it would go underneath the pyramids.

And so I'm working with a woman who does,

she works with water around the planet.

And she,

anyway, I won't do a spoiler alert just yet, but exciting things coming in the world of Ziva and retreats.

And I would love to have you on.

Yeah, I can't wait to contribute in any way I can.

Water is fascinating.

Well, it has a perfect memory.

Yeah.

did you see the study of like when you yell at it and then you pour it on the plant?

Well, Dr.

Mori Umoto, he did, he has a book called The Hidden Messages in Water.

I write about it in my book as well because it's because we are water.

And when you meditate, you bring your body into such coherence that you actually change the molecular structure of the water in your body.

So when you meditate around water as well, it changes the molecular structure of the water.

Like they would put water in like places with monks meditating or they put water in like houses with domestic abuse and then they would look at the molecules underwater and one would be coherent and look like beautiful snowflakes with sacred geometry and the other would be jagged.

Interesting.

Because I just went to a baptism and we had to put water on it.

So that kind of makes sense now, right?

Could they do that there?

Well, yeah, but that water has been prayed over.

Right.

Right.

Like it's holy water.

Yeah, that's why they put it.

And I like won't eat food now without blessing it.

Like every time I eat my food.

I just had a guest talk about this.

Yeah, it's really important because in Ayurveda, The state of consciousness that you're in when you're eating is as important as the food itself.

The state of consciousness of the cook is almost more important than the food.

So it's like that intention

is shifting the,

I guess like the bioavailability or the medicinal properties of the food.

Because also food is water.

A lot of it, a lot of water is in food.

I got to start thinking about food then before I eat it.

Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why almost every civilization on the planet for since the beginning of time has said grace or done prayer beforehand.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

I used to get annoyed as that as a kid.

Yeah, of course, because we make it boring for kids.

My son, I have a six-year-old, and he, he's just now starting to say what he's grateful for.

Nice.

Yeah, I think songs, like doing little songs can be fun.

Teaching him young.

That's good, though.

Thanks.

I have gratitude at that age.

I don't know if I could say the same for me.

Well, I'm worried that I'm going to have like a preacher's kid who's like, I hate meditation because I'm too into it.

Yeah, sometimes they rebel, right?

Yeah.

But I made a kid's meditation training called Ziva Kids.

And I worked with folks from Sesame Street and Harvard Child Psychologists.

And I have a bunny.

His name is Z Bunny.

He's my co-star.

And so when my son was two, that was like the only videos he could watch would be Z Va Kids.

And he just thought it was hilarious.

I love it.

But now he's six and he's sort of like mom.

I'm over this.

Yeah, because kids are jumping off the wall.

So meditation must be a little more difficult for them, right?

Well, it's not, I'm not having them sit.

I'm having them like shake through their feelings.

I'm having them doing breath work.

Oh, smart.

And Z Bunny's training to be a superhero.

So it's basically like entertainment, but entertainment is giving your kids skills.

Yeah.

I think I saw you talk about dancing on a podcast.

Yeah, dancing to clear some energy or something.

Yeah.

So it's cool because, you know, I used to be on Broadway for a long time.

So I was singing and and dancing and acting.

So I've been using my body as an instrument for a long time.

But now to merge the worlds of meditation and dance, and basically what I'm helping people to do is like find the things that are blocking them from the manifestation.

Like

if you're listening to this, just think about like anything that you want.

It could be a partner, a million dollars, a million followers, a new company, but anything that you're wanting to call in.

And then if you tune into like, what's the thing that's keeping me from it, right?

Is it feel like I'm, there's no good men in New York City or I don't have enough capital to start the company or like whatever your story is, right?

Likely that creates a feeling in the body.

And, and the thing is that if we don't feel it, we don't allow it to be expressed, then it will energetically block you from the dream.

But if you can just feel it, name it, say it, express it, you could journal it, you could purge it, you could dance it, you could let the music alchemize it, then not only do you clear the channel, you start to, which makes more space space for more pleasure, but you can start to be an energetic match.

You come to like a vibrational match for the dream, right?

Like, like you said, I would go through the grocery store when I was living in a low-vibe house and no one would ever come up to me, right?

You've done this work, you've changed the vibration.

And they've even charted this, right?

Like shame, you know, sadness, sorrow, grief, like your body vibrates at a different frequency when you're feeling those

emotions versus love, gratitude, authenticity, right?

You said you're here here for the truth.

Yeah.

Truth is actually an even higher vibrational frequency than love.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

The truth.

And I feel like these days being authentic is winning.

Yep.

Because the modern day celebrity is not what it used to be.

The people getting attention now are like podcasters and people that are just normal people.

You know what I mean?

You think you're normal?

I don't like that word.

Because like what's normal?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I like being weird.

You know, I like weird people.

But like to your point, like that's, that's authenticity, right?

Because like the more you let your freak flag fly, like the more true it is.

And I think that the more, like, if God wanted 8 billion Sean Kelly's, she would have made 8 billion Sean Kelly's.

If God wanted, you know, 8 billion Emily Fletchers, she would have made that.

But instead, we're all unique.

And so it's like, how can we find that?

divinity inside of the diversity.

Like that feels like an exciting exercise to me that we're all these different waves on this giant ocean of consciousness, right?

I'm the wave that looks like Emily and you're the wave that looks like Sean.

But to me, the spiritual game is remembering that we're all the ocean.

And we can do that through poetry, through love, through podcasting.

I think that's why people love podcasting because it's like it reminds us of sitting around the fire.

It reminds us of these long-form conversations that we used to have.

And we get to feel people's souls.

Absolutely.

Right.

Versus just like a 90-second reel on Instagram where somebody's pitching their whatever.

It's like you get to hear what really lights someone up, their fears, their

dreams.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you can't fake it for an hour.

You know, you can fake it for a little bit, but on a podcast, the real you's coming out at some point, you know?

Yeah.

Well, Emily, it's been fun.

What do you got coming up next other than the event in May?

Well, I would say the big things we're

focusing on right now is

really letting people know about Ziva meditation, which is like our flagship offering.

And it's, it's called Ziva Online, but it's basically 15 minutes a day for 15 days.

And it teaches you mindfulness, meditation, and manifesting, but in a way that is so much more enjoyable and so much easier than what most people think.

And actually we have a free masterclass.

So people go to zivameditation.com slash podcast.

There's a masterclass that goes pretty deep into the science there.

of like, why is this different than other styles of meditation?

And then we've just launched Ziva Magic, which I'm really, really proud of.

And this is an embodied manifesting course, which is teaching people visualize, alchemize, magnetize.

And those are both available anytime.

So, and then, and those kind of like get you ready for the retreats.

Beautiful.

We'll link it all in the description next coming off.

Great, my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Yep, I got her stuff, guys.

See you next time.