Meditation for Vibrant Skin and Optimal Performance with Emily Fletcher

Trevor:             Hi there, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to the Spa Dr. podcast. Today’s podcast is on meditation for vibrant skin and optimal performance. My guest is Emily Fletcher, who is a founder of Ziva Meditation and creator of Ziva Mind, the world’s first online meditation training. She created this training to make meditation attractive, accessible, and easy to adopt in modern life. Emily was recently featured in The New York Times, named top 100 women in wellness to watch, and she’s regarded as one of the leading experts in meditation for performance. And she has been invited by companies like Google, Barclays Bank, and Sweet Green to help improve companies’ performance through meditation. She began her 10 years of training in India and was inspired to teach after experienced the profound physical and mental benefit meditation provided her during her 10 year career on Broadway, which included roles in Chicago, the Producers, and Chorus Line. Emily has been invited to speak at Harvard Business School, Bulletproof Biohacking Conference, Summit Series, Wanderlust, A-Fest, and the Omega Institute.

In today’s interview, we discuss why meditation is so powerful and how to do it depending upon your goals and your lifestyle so that you could fit it in and be realistic about it as well as getting results. And Emily actually leads us through a short meditation that you won’t wanna miss. So please be prepared to actually do this meditation with us, so go ahead and find a quiet, comfortable spot where you’ll be able to follow us. So first we talk. We do the interview, and then a little ways into the interview, we’ll do the meditation. But I wanna give you a heads up so you could actually do this with us. I promise you’ll be glad that you did. So here is the interview with Emily.

Emily it’s so great to have you on our podcast.

Emily:               It’s so good to see your gorgeous face and your beautiful smile. Thank you for having me.

Trevor:             Oh thank you. And we’re talking today about meditation, and this is part of what gives you your healthy beautiful glow is your meditation practice and how amazing you are at this. And I know that a lot of times people think oh gosh meditation. I don’t have time for that. That means I have to sit for two hours and find a quiet mountain top where I have to sit cross legged in an awkward position. What I want you to talk about is how easy you can incorporate it into your life and what impact it can have? I mean honestly for my life though, I started incorporating meditation every morning probably about a year ago, and it’s amazing how much it can help you with performance in your life, and focus, and so many things. So great to have you talking about this.

Emily:               So this is one of my favorite things. So this is one of my favorite things to chat about because most of us know that we should be meditating, like the science is in right? We know that this tuff is good for us but we always find these sneaky little excuses and these sneaky little lies to tell ourself, and the big one is I’m too busy. Because a lot of people A, don’t know how to meditate, and because it’s simple people assume that they should already know how. And so they sit down, and they close their eyes, and they’re like okay brain stop thinking. And they’re like … sure would like a snack. Snacks are delicious. Wait no I’m thinking about snacks. Wait I’m thinking about how I’m thinking meditation and I quit. And that’s usually the beginning of the end of most people’s meditation career.

And so, I really like to encourage people to know that just because this thing is simple does not mean that you should already magically know how to do it. It’s like any other skill, right? But then once you have some training, you start to understand the neuroscience behind why meditation actually makes you less busy. Right? So if we believe that stress makes you stupid, which might sound harsh, but it is true. Stress makes you stupid, and sick, and slow, and prematurely ages, which we can talk about in a little bit. But if you believe that stress makes you slow, then … and if you believe that meditation’s a stress relieving tool, then this whole excuse of I’m too busy to meditation does not add up anymore.

And as you just said, it’s amazing just doing one meditation in the morning like what that can do for your focus, for your creativity, for your performance, and I’ve seen this in my life certainly and then in the lives that I’ve taught over 7000 people to meditate so far and it’s so exciting to see them really step into their full potential and they start to find that their to-do list that used to take them five hours, starts to take them three. They use to need eight or nine hours of sleep. Now they need seven but they feel more refreshed when they wake up. They get sick less often. They’re more creative. They’re more intuitive. And so this investment of time which I believe is our most valuable resource actually comes back to, but with dividends.

Trevor:             Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so how do we meditate? How do we fit this in our schedule?

Emily:               Yeah, if you don’t have any training yet, be gentle with yourself. Like please don’t just sit down and close your eyes and assume that you should be transported into some cosmic abyss, black hole nothingness, because you decided to meditate one day. No one would do a 21 day Japanese challenge, meaning okay you guys for 20 minutes a day for 21 days we’re gonna speak Japanese. Like no one would do that unless they had some training in the language of Japanese. And yet, a lot of people are doing this with meditation. So I’d say step one is get some training. Find someone that you respect, someone that you trust. Find a technique that resonates with you, and the nonce you have then, then hopefully that person, that teacher would teach you when that particular practice is best to be done.

What we do at Ziva is that we recommend first thing in the morning, so before coffee, breakfast, or computer, and then somewhere int hat mid afternoon slump. So like where you would have had that chocolate or you might have needed that nap, that’s where I recommend you actually do a second meditation. And I know that people are like what? I wasn’t even meditating once, now you want me to meditate twice? But if you think about the time it takes you to go to the coffee shop, get your coffee, drink it, come back, and then the crash that you have after the coffee, if you’re actually filling yourself up with this sustainable for of rest, again that return on investment becomes exponential. But you don’t have to do it for hours and hours, and like you said you don’t have to move to a cave or change your whole identity, or stop drinking Jack Daniels, or whatever you like to … or stop having sex. You can still live your dreams. Like one of the things I like about Ziva is that it is meditation for better performance and we really like to give high performers tool to help them execute at the tope of their game.

Trevor:             Okay and I … if we have time, I wanna try and squeeze in a little mini-meditation with you today. So I’m excited about that. But let’s talk some about the science behind it because science is catching up with and showing us the benefits of meditation.

Emily:               It’s pretty exciting because now we’re living in this age where not only can we prove that med is good for you, but we’re able to see how different styles of meditation impact the brain differently. And so this might be interesting for folks to learn ’cause a lot of people are using the term mindfulness and meditation as synonyms. They are sort of lumping them into the same category, but they’re not actually the same thing. I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. So the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. So beautiful, so powerful, especially in this day and age when we’ve got technology coming at us all the time.

So mindfulness is also more of a directed focused style of mental technique, meaning so most of the apps out there, most of the YouTube videos, most of the drop in studios that are calling themselves meditation I would actually put in the category of mindfulness. Right? Because it’s a left brain waking state directed focus mental technique. Now this is quite different than what I would call meditation which most people have not done, which is all about giving your body deep rest. It’s all about surrendering. It’s all about letting go. The main difference between the two is that mindfulness is very good at dealing with your stress in the right now versus meditation is very good at getting rid of your stress from the past. And so this is an important distinction because let’s say your boss yells at you and you get stressed out, and you go home and you listen to your 10 minute guided app, your meditation app. Right? That’s what I would call mindfulness and it’s very good at changing your state int he now.

Now what I teach at Ziva you’re actually giving your body rest, but it’s somewhere between two to five times deeper than sleep, and that’s not an insignificant point because when you give your body the rest that it needs, it knows how to heal itself. And one of the things that it heals itself from is stress. Right? And so the way that we know that the body’s resting so deeply is that we’re watching the metabolic rate, the heart rate, and the body temperature. Like all of those things drop precipitously within about 30 to 45 seconds of practicing this technique. And so you’re basically de-exciting your nervous system and I imagine your folks will sort of like to learn a little bit of the nerdy science. But when you de-excite something, you create order, and when you create order in your body, then that lifetime of accumulated stress that we all have in our cellular memory can start to come up and out.

So if you’re defragging your brain computer, so you have all this increased computing power, all this increased battery power to be more present, more productive, higher performance more creative for the task at hand ’cause that stress isn’t slowing you down. And by stress I mean every single time you’ve ever been stressed your entire life up to today. Right? That’s what’s really slowing us down and keeping us from performing at the top of our game.

Couple other fun nerdy brain facts is that when you meditate you strengthen something called the corpus callosum, which is the thin white strip that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Meditators have thicker corpus callosums than non-meditators. We weren’t able to prove if it was causal or correlated but now we know that the longer you meditate, the thicker this corpus callosum becomes which suggests that it is in fact causal. So that’s like okay fun party trick, but why would I want a fat corpus callosum? It’s like well actually everybody should because it’s quite literally the bridge between your critical mind and your creative mind, your masculine side, and your feminine side, your past and future and your present moment.

And meditators, the longer they practice, they start to increase neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change itself, neurogenesis, which is the brain’s ability to generate new brain cells. And that’s just the brain. Right? But the thing is is that the brain is in charge of printing out every other cell int he body. And so as this machine up levels, you find that your body follows suit and I can speak to this from personal experience and then also from watching my students … Yeah. So it’s a fun time to be alive and to be in this space. I get excited.

Trevor:             Absolutely. I have so many questions for you. But let’s talk about some of the anti-aging properties of like telomeres. What is the research showing on that?

Emily:               Yeah. So I’m sure that your audience knows that stress is not really doing us any favors in the beauty department or in the aging department. And we know that stress ages the body expeditiously, and there’s some new science coming out suggesting that meditation can actually reverse your body age by up to eight years. And this was over a period of five years. So meditators who were practicing for five years, their biological age went back in time so three years. I know it gets a little crazy.

So it’s like if you start at 30, and then at 35 you have 35 candles on your birthday cake, your biological age is now 27. Right? When I first heard about this, I was like come on. This it sounds like snake oil and it’s not a fountain of youth. That doesn’t exist. But then I started thinking about it. Well it’s not that meditation is magic and it’s not that meditation is even reversing the body age. What meditation is doing is that it’s slowing down the acceleration of aging that stress has on the body, and we all know that stress does not make us look or perform well. And if you want proof of that, look at any president the day they take office, and that same president four years later. Every single one of them, regardless of political affiliation, they all get gray, gaunt, bags under their eyes, they gain weight, they lose weight, and so what meditation’s doing is that it’s just sort of slowing down that aging process that happens with stress.

Now when the body gets stressed it launches into something called fight or flight mode, and there’s some cool new science coming out that women actually have a third mode, which is flock. That when we get stressed we wanna flock together, specifically with other women, which I thought was fascinating. And I was like that’s true though. Like if I have something happen in my life, I immediately call my girlfriends. But this fight or flight thing, what happens neuro-chemically, is that our body floods with acid. Like their body actually produces a lot of acid to shut down digestion because your digestion takes energy and you need all that energy to fight or flee the predatory attack, like the saber tooth tiger, or the bear, whatever is jumping out of the woods to kill you. Now the trick here is that that acid that shuts down your digestion also starts to seep onto your skin so that you don’t taste very good if that predator were to bite into you. Right?

And so while this might have been a relevant protectionary tool 10,000 years ago, that acid on our skin all day is actually aging us prematurely. And so meditation is not only gonna get rid of that acid, but it also starts to flood the brain with dopamine and serotonin, which are alkaline in nature. And as we know, the more alkaline your body is, the easier it is to repair cells, the easier it is to fight off disease, and for things to regenerate.

Trevor:             Interesting. I’ve never heard that before. Very interesting. So definitely something we wanna do is manage our stress to help us with … and meditation certainly a great way to do that. And I love what you’re talking about about two different types of meditation. More of the mindfulness practice and then this other form of meditation, and I guess they both play their role. What I’m guessing and you can give us feedback on this is in the morning might be a better time for mindfulness and the afternoon more of the meditation. But I’m just kind of wondering for me I would think that that would be particularly helpful, but what do you think?

Emily:               Yeah I think that’s a cool theory that in the morning it’s like your training your focus muscles. In the afternoon, you’d be training the surrendering and giving your body that rest ’cause most of us are quite tired in the afternoon. So I think that’s a cool theory that you could absolutely try out. The cool thing is that with the Ziva technique, we created this beautiful trifecta of mindfulness, meditation, and manifesting. So it’s the three Ms as I like to call it. And so I sort of walk people through all three of these techniques, and then when people go through the training, they have a morning and an afternoon practice where they start with mindfulness. And I sort of use that as the run way, almost as an appetizer to the main course which is meditation.

So you’re giving your body that deep healing rest so that you can be more awake on the other side. And that might seem a little counterintuitive to what you wanna do in the morning, but the way I like to think about it is you’re filling up your tank of gas before you go on a road trip. Right? It’s like you’re filling up your reservoirs with bliss, and fulfillment, and the ability to adapt, and then you enjoy delivering that with your family, your job, your co-workers.

And then somewhere mid-afternoon where you start to feel that haze, your eyes go crossed, you want that coffee, that’s your body telling you that it’s time for that second meditation. And then you go sneak away, stairwells, cars, Starbucks, hotel lobbies, and you just pop in your headphones if you’re in public, put on some sunglasses, and it seems like so crazy that you’re like everyone’s gonna think I’m crazy, everyone’s gonna be judging me. But no one really cares about you sitting quietly in a chair. Like everyone has more important things to worry about right now, and no one really even notices. And even if you do it at work like in a conference room, what you’ll find is all these other co-workers. They’re like yeah I’ve been meditating for years, and then people start outing themselves to you. Then you feel like you’re a part of a secret society. So but even in the afternoon, you would still walk through all three M’s of that mindfulness, meditation, and manifesting.

And P.S. the manifesting piece is just you getting clear about what you wanna create in your life. It’s you taking the time to place the order with the cosmic waitress at the cosmic white restaurant, which sounds a little hippy dippy, but look at any high achiever, any Olympic athlete, any innovative leader in business, any celebrity, most of them have visualized where they wanted to be before they achieve it. So it’s just consciously creating … it’s carving out the space in your day to get clear about what it is that you actually want to create. And I find that doing that right after meditation is infinitely more effective than just doing it on its own.

Trevor:             Right. And I know that you speak to a lot of high performance people and high achievers. I’ve seen you speak at some of these events too. So you know that … you know about some of their practices. You know that people are actually … people that are doing amazing things in their lives are actually doing these practices, right? It makes a difference.

Emily:               Yeah, huge difference. And it’s so funny ’cause a lot of think I’ll be happy when blank happens. I’ll be happy when I’m a millionaire, when I’m famous, when I achieve this goal, but I work with some of these folks. Like I’ve taught … as of last week I’ve taught Oscar, Grammy, Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe winners, and athletes, hedge fund managers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. So these people have achieved a huge amount of success, but there’s always something more. DO you know what I mean? It’s our human habit to look for what’s next. And so this meditation thing, it doesn’t take away your desire. It doesn’t take away your drive or your ambition. What it takes away is the neediness. It takes away that longing, that emptiness. It transitions you from being me looking to be fulfilled, and it turns you into fulfillment, looking for need. And that is a really beautiful and powerful transition because when you start approaching your life and what can I contribute to this situation, I find that all of that success, all those things that you want, it starts to happen much more elegantly and effortlessly.

Trevor:             Yeah. And what was your journey to meditation? What brought you to this?

Emily:               Yeah I think the reason why I like working with high performers is because I was one. I mean I like to think I still am one. But I was like specifically performing for a living. I was on Broadway for 10 years and I think that’s why I enjoy working with actors ’cause I used to be one. I was just thinking about this this morning actually, because for whatever reason for the last three nights … I’m pregnant so I’m having like crazy dreams and very vivid dreams, and I’ve been having dreams about performing for the past three nights, like I’m about to sing, I’m going on for some role in a show, but I haven’t been trained it yet. I’m like what’s going on? Like what? And it’s like is this old stress leaving my body from a decade ago?

The realization I had this morning is that when you’re a performer, you don’t have any room to have a bad day. Right? And I’m sure that no one feels like they can have a bad day, but the real time feedback of you being off, like if your voice is not on and you hit a bad note, to watch 2000 people int he audience squirm in their seat because your voice is making them uncomfortable is just like immediate painful feedback form your bad performance. And it’s embarrassing. And so I was just thinking you just inadvertently start collecting all these tools to make sure that you are performing, feeling looking, sounding, at the very top of your game all the time. And so, I think what I’ve done now is that because meditation is so revolutionary, I’ve taken all these tools from my performance career, and sort of packed them together with the meditation.

But so anyway, long story short, I was on my last runway show was at Chorus Line. I was understudying three of the lead roles which means you show up to the theater with no idea what character you’re gonna play, which is probably why I’m still having nightmares about it. And so, anyway I started having anxiety. I started going gray at the tender age of 26. I started having insomnia. I couldn’t sleep through the night for about 18 months. I started getting sick. I would get sick five or six times a year. I was getting injured and I was very confused why I was living my dream, doing the thing I wanted to do since I was a little girl, and I was miserable.

And then thankfully, I found meditation due to a girl sitting next to me int he dressing room. She sent me to her teacher. First day, first class, I was meditating. I did not know what that meant, but I was in a different state of consciousness that I had ever been in before and I liked it. And then that night I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months. And I have every night since that was over 10 years ago.

Then I stopped getting sick. I didn’t get sick for eight and a half years. I stopped going gray. I’m 38 years old now. I have like two gray hairs. I was legitimately going gray at 27. I stopped getting injured and most importantly I started enjoying my job again. And so I thought why does everybody not do this? And so I left Broadway. I went to India and I started what became a three year training process to teach this. And then I started Ziva about five and a half years ago and it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

Trevor:             Wow. That’s a great story. That’s amazing. Okay. Now do we have time to do a little mini-meditation?

Emily:               [crosstalk 00:21:53]. I love doing that.

Trevor:             To just kind of show people what it’s like?

Emily:               Sure.

Trevor:             How much time do you suggest people set aside?

Emily:               Okay, so I would say that … what we’re gonna do right now ’cause it takes me a decent amount of time to teach people how to be meditators, and what we do at Ziva is that we teach people how to be self sufficient so that they have a practice to do on their own. So they don’t need apps or me guiding them or incense or finger symbols or gongs. They just need a chair, right? And then they just do it on their own. So it takes me a decent amount of time to teach people to do that. And we have a course coming up that’s 15 minutes a day for 15 days, and then once you graduate you have the practice. But I recommend once you do that, 15 minutes in the morning, and then 15 minutes in the afternoon. That’s optimal for like our online training.

If you don’t have any training yet, and you’re not really … Let’s say you don’t want to take a class. You’re like I don’t have time. I wanna just dip my toe in. You could do like five minutes of a breathing technique. You could do five minutes of mindfulness. You could do five minutes of something guided if you wanted to just dip your toe in. Less than five minutes I would say is kind of a waste, but once you have training I recommend at least 15 minutes twice a day. I do 20 in the morning and then 20 in the afternoon, unless I’m teaching in which case is … all bets are off. Then I meditate all day every day. It’s a nice perk from the job.

Okay so let’s start with something called balancing breath. So this is a breathing technique. It’s more of in the mindfulness camp, and it’s gonna help to sort of prime your brain, and prime your body for the meditation. It looks a little silly, but only you and I are on camera right now. Hopefully everyone else is … will be willing to get a little silly. So basically we’re gonna take our right hand, our thumb, and our ring finger … if that’s hard you could try your pinkie. But take your right thumb and close your right nostril. Yeah good. And then exhale through your left nostril.

Trevor:             [inaudible 00:23:41] what’s going on?

Emily:               This is like a fun … This is like exactly Murphy’s Law ’cause anytime you sit down to meditate, the kids are gonna come in, the telephone’s gonna ring, your boyfriend who’s never unloaded the dishwasher will suddenly start unloading the dishwasher [inaudible 00:23:55].

Trevor:             It’s just a perfect example of … yeah my phone goes off right when we’re getting ready to meditate. Okay, so I just put it away.

Emily:               Okay, good. I should have said that. So step one-

Trevor:             Step one.

Emily:               … put your phone on silent or like airplane mode, or put it away. And even if you have kids in the house, I’d say tell them hey mommy’s gonna do some voodoo. Mommy’s training to be a ninja, or a Jedi, and if there’s bones or blood please interrupt mommy’s meditation. If there’s no bones or no blood, then it can wait the 5 or 10 minutes that I have left. But here’s the cool thing. Ziva is all about busy people with busy minds so this is gonna happen. And noise is no barrier, destruction … stuff is gonna happen. So all good.

Oh one thing that we did not talk about that I think will just help people to set them up as we dive in is the number one misconception around meditation and that is that most people think that the point is to clear the mind. And actually the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily. Right? So the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily. So please do not try to give your brain a command to shut up during this. You’re going to have thoughts. You’re allowed to have thoughts. Thoughts are not the enemy. Okay? So just sort of … let’s be willing to be curious. Let’s be willing to surrender. And whatever happens, happens. If you have a million thoughts, great you have a million thoughts. If you feel kind of sleepy, then fine you feel a little sleepy. And that might happen as well. People might feel a little bit of head nodding happening, so just give yourself permission to fall into that. I would say best posture would be back supported but head free. So how you are is fine, just sit in a chair with your back supported, but your head free.

Okay good. So now we’ll go back to our … assume the position. So right thumb on right nostril, and then we’ve got our ring finger. So covering your right nostril with your thumb, exhaling through your left nostril. Good. Inhale through the left. And then switching sides. Covering your left nostril with your ring finger, exhaling through the right. Good. Inhale through the right. And switching sides exhale through the left. Really good. So you can go ahead and close your eyes if you haven’t already. Inhale through the left, letting this be the biggest inhale you’ve taken all day. When you get to the top of this inhale, take one more sip of air, floating there for just a moment and then switching sides and exhaling through the right nostril. When you get to the bottom of this exhale, float there for just a moment, and then allow that air to just fall back into your lungs through your right nostril, taking the biggest inhale you’ve taken all year. When you get the top, one more sip of air, floating in that space between, and then switching sides and exhaling through the left nostril just letting the air fall out of the lungs. Really good.

So you can start to take this in your own time. The pattern is simply out through the left, in through the left, and then we switch sides, out through the right, in through the right. Just letting these inhales and exhales be really luxurious and deep. Know that as you do this, you’re helping to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and because you’re only breathing through one nostril at a time, you’re starting to slow down the metabolic rate, which is the rate with which the body consumes oxygen. We’re balancing the masculine side with the feminine side, and we’re also oxygenating the blood, the organs, the skin. On your next inhale, imagine that your breath and energy are coming in through the base of the spine, and as you inhale, letting this breath and energy travel up through the spine. And as you exhale, send this breath and energy right out through the middle of your forehead. Do it again, as you inhale, imagining the breath coming in through the base of the spine … and as you switch sides and exhale, sending that breath and energy right out through the middle of your forehead. Really good.

And keeping the eyes closed, you can start to drop your hands into your lap and we’ll move through a simple, but powerful exercise called come to your senses. So we’re gonna move through all five our sense as a tool to help bring ourselves into the body, into the room, and into the right now which is the only place that we can every experience our bliss and fulfillment. It’s right here, right now. So begin by bringing our awareness to our sense of hearing. So listening for all the sounds you can detect right now. My voice perhaps you can hear the heater, the AC on in your room. And we’re not judging these sounds as good or bad. We’re not seeing them as distractions. Instead, we’re pulling the lens of our awareness back and including everything that’s happening inside of this experience. Really good.

And now ever so gently, bringing your awareness to your sense of touch. Starting to feel all the tactile sensations. Your bum and the chair, your clothes against your skin, the temperature of the air against your body. Now even with the eyes closed, we’ll see what we’re seeing. The prevalence of the blackness, or perhaps the subtlety of the light streaming in through your eyelids. Really using our five senses as a tool to bring ourselves into the body and into the right now, which is the only place that we can ever access our bliss and fulfillment, right here, right now. Beautiful.

And now even though we’re not eating anything, I invite you to bring your awareness to your sense of taste, noticing the most prevalent and the most subtle taste sensations. Is your mouth acidic or dry? Is it the absence of taste? We’re not trying to achieve any goal here. We’re just using our senses as a way to give ourselves permission to be in the body in this moment fully.

And finally moving on to your sense of smell. So noticing the most prevalent smell. Can you smell your shampoo, your perfume, flowers in the room? Really giving yourself permission to be so deliciously human. And now we’ll take a moment and hold all five of our sense in our awareness at the same time, so hear what you’re hearing. Feel what you’re feeling. See what you’re seeing. Taste what you’re tasting. And smell what you’re smelling. Playing with the simultaneity of consciousness, not judging anything going on around you as good or bad. Just surrendering to this moment. Reminding yourself that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be. You cannot veer off your destiny, and that you always have access to your fulfillment right inside of you. Really good.

So taking in a delicious inhale, starting to breathe some life and some awareness into the body, perhaps moving your hands gently, moving your feet. Taking an energizing, rejuvenating inhale. Imagining that breath, super charging every single cell in your body, all the cells in your skin, all the cells in your brain, all the cells in your blood. And as you exhale, just imagine letting go of anything that isn’t serving you, any stress, any old trauma. And one final time, biggest inhale you’ve taken all decade. Just an energizing breath, and then exhaling letting go of anything you wanna surrender. Really good. And in your own time, just taking a moment to give yourself a high five for listening to this podcast, for choosing to turn your phone on silent, for choosing to turn inwards, for choosing to refill yourself from the source, and taking a moment a gratitude for everything that you have to be thankful for in your life. Every memory, every meal, every moment. And from this space of gratitude, we can start to slowly, gently, open the eyes.

Trevor:             [inaudible 00:33:47].

Emily:               My pleasure. Yeah, so what we just did is something called balancing breath, and then we moved into something called come to your senses. So that would be like a breathing technique, and then a mindfulness technique. And those would be absolutely A-okay to practice on your own with no further training. The balancing breath is cool because if you have like a creative project, or if you’re nervous, or if you’re about to go on stage, this is a great way to sort of get all parts of the brain firing, and to just really kind of calm you down and ground you. And then the come to your senses is simply just going through all five of your sense and using those as a tool to get in the body ’cause our stress hangs out in the past and the future. We find ourselves ruminating and speculating, that’s where our stress lives. What might happen, what might not happen, why didn’t this happen? But if we can actually get here now. We’re fine. And so that’s the power in the come to your senses technique and you could do that … it could take you five minutes. It could take you one minute. So those are both tools that people can take and use and adapt to their lives.

Trevor:             Yeah, I love it. I have this breathing technique. For some reason, that’s not easy for me. And so-

Emily:               Do you have a deviated septum, or is one side harder than the other?

Trevor:             No, it’s not the breathing. I mean one tip for people is blow your nose before you do this.

Emily:               Actually people have [inaudible 00:35:08] beforehand too.

Trevor:             I don’t know. There’s something about it that’s … I don’t know … I think for me, it takes some practice for me to get used to that ’cause it’s just … I’m not used to it. I’m not used to breathing out of one nostril and the other. I’m used to having both nostrils available.

Emily:               When you’re doing this, does it feel like there’s constriction, like you’re not getting enough air and so it stresses you out?

Trevor:             Yeah.

Emily:               Yeah. Okay. So for a lot of people, they have like either smaller passage on one side or the other, and so this is something you could actually do, or if you have a cold or something, you could do it just on one side. And if both nostrils are stuffy or if you have deviated septum, this is probably not a good breathing technique for you. And if that’s the case, what you could do … excuse me … is something called the two X breath. And basically all you’re doing there is inhaling for the count of two, and exhaling for the count of four. And you can do that through your mouth [inaudible 00:36:03]. SO it’s just in for two and out for four. Super simple, but that also helps to calm the vagus nerve which is the nerve that connects the brain to the body. So that might be a better technique for you. So next time we’re in a conference and I’m doing balancing breath, you just do two X breath.

Trevor:             Okay. I mean I wanna try it some more. See if it’s just something that I’m just needing to get used to. But yeah I don’t know if it’s … yeah. Maybe it’s I have teenie little nasal passages. I don’t know.

Emily:               Yeah. It’s possible, and if your body feels like it’s not getting enough oxygen and that’s not gonna be relaxing for you, and so then that’s not a technique for you. And so it doesn’t have to be. All good. There’s lots of different breathing techniques.

Trevor:             Alright. You know and something you mentioned, just a little thing, is doing this before you drink coffee, or before you do anything else in the day, I did hear recently that you shouldn’t do meditation right after drinking coffee. Is that true?

Emily:               That’s very true.

Trevor:             Why is that?

Emily:               Don’t do that. Because I mean depending on what you’re doing … Now, if you’re a monk and the tricky thing is that mindfulness is derivative of monastic styles of meditation and so what most people are doing out there, since most people are practicing mindfulness and calling it meditation, they’re actually doing adaptations of monastic practices. And there would be monks that would like drink coffee and then focus and meditate for hours ’cause mindfulness is more about focusing. And so you could drink coffee and then do a mindfulness practice for hours if you wanted to, but the style of meditation that I teach that’s all about this rest and this surrender, people are actually given a mantra which helps to de-excite the nervous system and that, if you drink coffee, which is gonna artificially hijack your nervous system, and then use those de-exciting tools, it’s gonna feel like you’re having panic attacks inside. And it’s not fun.

But the cool thing is that if you wake up, meditate first, and then have your coffee, then you feel like a super hero. Like, I don’t really drink coffee. It’s just not really my jam and I’m already … like I already vibrate pretty high, so me on caffeine is like not that fun for other people. But I’m writing … I’m finishing the first chapter of my book right now and so I’ve been drinking some mushroom coffee. I have like a sip of my husband’s coffee and I’m like wow. It’s like the combination of the two is kind of fun to play with. But meditate first, and then caffeine.

Trevor:             Yes. Okay. And I’m not saying that everybody should drink coffee but it was interesting I heard that and I was wondering why that is. But I mean that totally makes sense what you’re saying. So thank you for clarifying that. And I’m … yeah again, I’m not saying that everybody needs to be drinking coffee. No. I think it’s better if you …can get away from even needing the coffee because we don’t want that as a need. We wanna be energized within our bodies without having any kind of crutch like that.

Emily:               Yeah. That’s exactly what meditation does for you. It’s like giving your body this rests so you can be more awake sustainably and naturally on the other side.

Trevor:             Right. So after doing that, I feel more relaxed. I feel that was very calming and soothing. I’m just kind of giving you feedback on … and I’m sure that’s one of the things that people notice as well. So hopefully as people are listening you actually did the meditation. If you didn’t, go back and listen to this again and do it, because that’s the whole point of us doing this, it was for people to actually do it with us.

Emily:               Or else we just looked really silly.

Trevor:             Right. So but that’s generally what people notice. Right? Is feeling more relaxed, more focused, more grounded. Any other things you wanna …

Emily:               Well … I mean so what we just did was like a little mini, just like a five minute thing that I was guiding people through. But what people actually start to practice on their own and become self sufficient … I mean the stuff that they report is … it is mind blowing. And it’s selfishly why I do what I do is that I love waking up to emails from people being like Emily my insomnia is gone. My IBS is gone. I was infertile. My doctor wouldn’t even treat me for IVF and now I have the fertility of an 18 year old. My Parkinson’s symptoms have really diminished. I got $120,000 scholarship that I did not apply for. My income went up to 1.2 million from being 70,000 in debt. It’s every day we get these emails from people and it’s just … It has nothing to do with me, but it has everything to do with people actually committing to a practice that’s getting rid of the stress that’s holding them back, that stress that keeping them from really being what they can be.

And so it’s an indicator of what an epidemic stress has become in our country and in our world. You know doctors are calling this thing the black plague of our century and it’s responsible for somewhere between 80 to 90% of all doctors visits. And so, it’s like once you get … if you have a tool that works to get rid of that, it’s like the benefits of that are almost limitless. I think the big ones are insomnia, anxiety, depression, migraines, and then most people come to me really for like performance and productivity.

Trevor:             Right. Right. And definitely those are all key. This is why I put clean mind as a section in my book was it says clean plate, clean slate, clean, body, and clean mind because I think it’s so important that we incorporate this. When people come in to see me as a patient, I always talk to them about let’s talk about your stress. How are you managing this? And I know sometimes people glaze over and their like oh I don’t wanna talk about stress. Let’s talk about my body. Let’s talk about my lab work. Let’s talk about … those are all important and the supplements for taking, the foods you’re eating, these are all important. But how you manage your stress and we’re all stressed. It’s part of life. It’s just human nature. But how do you manage it and what do you do about it because like you said, it is such a key component of our healthcare and we need to be doing this, and we need to be doing it every day. It’s not just like oh I’ve got 10 minutes this weekend when I can load up on meditation. You’ve gotta figure out how to do it every day even if it’s just five minutes like you said.

Emily:               Yeah. Yeah, we gotta shift this mindset that [medisthesia 00:42:09] is like a pedicure for your brain, that it’s like a luxury item that you’ll get a round to when you have extra time, and we really have to start to see it as the single most important piece of mental hygiene, that we gotta do it every day. Like that coffee that you drank on Thursday is not gonna give you more energy today. Same thing, that meditation you did last weekend is not gonna help you today. You gotta do it every day.

Trevor:             Yeah, absolutely. Alright, Emily. Well it’s been amazing. And I want people to know how to find you and to learn more because we just did a little taste of what you do today. But tell everybody more about you, where they can find you.

Emily:               Yeah. So we have this awesome free master class that’s coming out. It’s called the Stress Solutions. So it’s actually everything we’re talking about right now. It’s all the science behind everything we just talked about and I actually walk people through a different mindfulness technique and actually a manifesting exercise in that free master class. And we will give them the link to that. And then that’s leading up to this amazing new … I’m so excited about it. We’ve been working on this course for 15 months and it launches … It’s called Ziva online and this is that 15 day training that I was talking about that really gives people the tools to become self sufficient so they have this stuff to take with them for life. And then we’re all over social media. It’s just @ZivaMeditation, so you can find us on all the socials.

Trevor:             Alright, and we’ll have the links to that up on the website below your interview so that people can find out more about that. What are the dates that that’s going?

Emily:               So once we go live with the course … the masterclass is February 9th through the 23rd so people can watch that free masterclass anytime there, and then after that, they can join Ziva Online. It’ll be available whenever people want, and you can actually choose your own start date. So if you wanna come on, do the free masterclass and then say you’re busy, you wanna start the training in three weeks, you can choose your own start date if you like.

Trevor:             Excellent. Okay. Alright. I encourage everybody to check that out. Emily’s amazing. I know I’ve done some of your little events or your guided meditation and things at conference I’ve been to and truly been amazing. So thank you so much for coming on today and doing a little meditation for us. I appreciate it.

Emily:               Yeah it was my pleasure. So good to see you.

Trevor:             I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Emily Fletcher, and I hope you actually did the meditation with us. But if you didn’t, and you didn’t have a chance to, maybe you were driving and you wanna do it later, I encourage you to do that. You can just go back and watch that part, listen to it, and do the meditation because I want you to get a chance to experience it. And if you wanna learn more about Emily, go deeper with meditation practices that she teaches, you can go to the spadoctor.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. I encourage you go check it out and see if it’s right for you, so you can be having your regular meditation practices in a way that gets you the results you’re looking for. So I encourage you to check that out. And while you’re at the Spa Dr. website, I encourage you to join the Spa Dr. community. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows.

And if you haven’t taken the skin quiz yet, I encourage you to do that. Just go to theskinquiz.com. It’s free. It takes just a few minutes. You’ll find out what information your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. You’ll find out your unique skin type and root causes behind it and some solutions for you. And also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube, and join the conversation, and I’ll see you next time on the Spa Dr. podcast.