Mindfulness, Meditation and Manifesting with Emily Fletcher

Mindfulness, Meditation and Manifesting

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. In today’s podcast, we’re covering how mindfulness, meditation and manifesting can unlock your full potential. My guest is Emily Fletcher, who is the founder of Ziva meditation and a leader in meditation for extraordinary performance. Her book, Stress Less Accomplish More, debuted at number seven out of all books on Amazon when it was released. Emily has been featured in the New York times. Good morning America, the Today show, Vogue and ABC news. She has been named one of the top 100 women in wellness to watch has taught more than 20,000 students around the world and has spoken on meditation for performance, Apple, Google, and Harvard business school. Her Ziva graduates include Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Emmy award winners in NBA players, Navy seals, fortune 500 CEOs, and busy parents. Emily is back on The Spa Dr. Podcast, to cover more about meditation, but also how mindfulness ties in and how the two of these, why not to help manifest life to the fullest in work relationships love and much more so. Please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Emily is so great to have you back on the Spa Dr. podcast. Welcome.

Emily Fletcher: Thank you for having me. I was just alluding to when I was getting ready for this, I was thinking about how much I love you and how grateful I am. We just, I feel like we just dance in the same circles and I just, I see you at this conference and then this conference and I feel like every time I see you, you look more radiant. You look younger, you look more beautiful. And I’m just amazed at the fact that you’re a doctor. No you are telling me you’re going back to enrich your degree in spiritual psychology and you’re a mom and you’re making everyone else happier and younger. And so I just wanted to toot your horn for a little while and say how, how grateful I am to be your friend and how proud I am of you.

Dr. Cates: Awe, thank you Emily. Well, and you have got some amazing things going on. You’re just, you know, inspiring all amazing people, which is fully step in and be more empowered and embrace more and helping women, entrepreneurs ,and children too. And a young mom now.

Emily Fletcher: Last time I was on, I can’t remember if he was, he’s 20 months old now, so I don’t know when it was, but was I not even pregnant yet or was I expecting? I don’t know. Yeah, it’s been a fun year. My 20 month old son and I guess I have one year old book and as you know, birthing a book and a baby at the same time is not a joke. But it’s been so fun to watch people’s lives change. Through not only reading the book, but also implementing the tools that I teach inside of them. Because that’s why we do this stuff, right. We just want to hand people the keys to the kingdom and give them the driving instructions so that they can own these practices and do them everyday for life. Because you know, one detox is not going to change your life. One day of meditation is not going to change your life, but if you make it a daily ritual, a daily habit, then it really can change your life.

Dr. Cates: Yes. Okay. Speaking of changing lives, there’s so much out there about meditation. Everybody seems to know of a meditation or has been taught meditation or most people have some exposure to it, but not all meditations are the same. So tell us how, because you have worked on this for awhile and people come to you that are, you know, award-winning actors and entrepreneurs that are super successful and, and you’re helping them even up their game more. So obviously you’ve got, you’ve got some insight into the types of meditation and what is really helping people with meditation and what may not be, it maybe be kind of like an empty practice.

Emily Fletcher: Yeah. So I think when I started teaching nine years ago, I had the luxury and now I realize it was a luxury of taking people from zero to meditation. Like nine years ago, people were not talking about it like they are now. It was still French then. There were not apps, there were no online trainings, there were no books teaching you how to meditate. And so I had the luxury of taking Virgin minds, Virgin brains and being like, this is meditation and it’s so much easier to teach someone that’s coming with no preconceived, what I would say misinformation. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. And now when I’m teaching, I have to reeducate people to think that meditation is not just an app on your phone. Because that’s what everyone thinks meditation is now. It’s like, Oh yeah, I have three free apps on my phone.

Emily Fletcher: I’m like, do you use them? They’re like, no, actually you and I were at a conference together and I was speaking to someone on the balcony and we were walking in like red wine in hand and she said, what do you do? I said, I’m a meditation teacher. And she goes, Oh my gosh. And she stops in her tracks, she pulls out her phone, she hits a button, puts her phone back in her purse, continues to drink her red wine and walks into the party. And I was like, wait, what just happened? And she goes, well, I have a meditation app and I didn’t want to miss a day. And I was like, but you’re not meditating. And she’s like, I know, but I didn’t want to miss a day. I was like, Oh who are you lying to? That was so funny. Anyway, look, there’s nothing wrong with meditation apps and I think they’ve been a great gateway drug and they are helping a lot of people to deal with their stress in the now and interestingly, what I would call mindfulness is actually what most people are calling meditation apps.

Emily Fletcher: And I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. So you are stressed at work, your kids are going crazy, you’re in traffic, you get home, you do 10 minutes of Headspace, 10 minutes of calm, you feel better and then now, awesome. Great. The meditation portion of the Ziva technique is all about getting rid of your stress from the past. All that stuff we’ve been storing in our cellular, and now we even know in our epigenetic memory. And that’s what I found really gives you that ROI. I think that’s why high-performers come to me because I mean all of us time is our most valuable resource. But if you’re a CEO of a company, if you’re an Oscar award winner, if you’re an actor working 17 hour days on set, you know, time is even more precious. And what I love about Ziva is that you’re not spending your time, you’re investing your time.

Emily Fletcher: Because none of us have time to spend. None of us have time to waste. And so if your practice is not giving you an ROI, if you’re not seeing that you have more productivity, more energy, better sleep, better sex drive, better ideas then I would say, stop doing it. Like don’t do a meditation practice that’s stealing your time. You know, if you’re not really getting that precipitous, like, Oh, I have more time now, I would say it might be time to adjust practices.

Dr. Cates: So I like that. Let’s talk more about what people should expect from a good meditation practice because the things that you’re talking about are the things that everybody wants. How quickly should people expect to get those results?

Emily Fletcher: Well, everyone’s nervous system is different and everyone’s level of trauma is different, but there are some patterns that I see and, and I’ll speak now about my live classes.

Emily Fletcher: So I teach in person and we also have an online training. And I would say if you wanted to think about the different kind of levels of learning Ziva, the live is like the Maserati. The online is a really great Toyota and the book is an adorable Vesper. Like they’re all going to get you there. It’s just to varying degrees of empowers. But when I teach people in person, usually the first day they’re like, that was cool, but I’m not really sure. And like, Whoa, you know, it’s different, but they don’t, they just chalk it up to like, well maybe I was just tired or something. And then day two, they’re like, Oh, the birds are chirping and the Apple tastes sweeter. And I could feel the sponge tip applicator of my eye shadow on my face. And I was nice on the subway and, but they’re like, mom, maybe I was just as in a good mood.

Emily Fletcher: And then by day three, that’s when that’s when the S starts to hit the fan. That’s when stuff starts to bubble up a little bit because Ziva does create a bit of a catharsis or a healing detoxification and then people can get a little tired. A little sad, a little angry is that lifetime of trauma starts to come up and out. And that’s really where my job becomes a job. You know, I’ve been through that process myself. I’ve helped 20,000 people through it. And that’s why I think it’s important to have some sort of guidance if you’re going to do a meditation practice that is promising to heal the old stresses in your body. Because, most of us need some support through that because it’s, you know, there’s a reason why there’s billion dollar industry is built on top of ensuring that we never have to feel our feelings.

Emily Fletcher: And then the meditation makes the feeling non – negotiable rings you out. So if you’re looking to meditation exclusively to be a reprieve or a vacation from your brain, Ziva is not your answer because it’s not about 20 minutes of feeling good. It is about systematically eradicating the entire backlog of stresses you’ve ever accumulated. And that’s a process. So once people move into that intensity, that can be a couple of days, sometimes even a couple of weeks. With a lot of trauma and inherited trauma, it can be months, but all the while they’re seeing upgrades. You know, they might be crying, but also they’re happier. So it’s like a bit of a pendulum swings. And that happens for the first few, two to three months. And then after that, most people are just like, upgrade, upgrade, like a shedding of skin. You know, just each meditation day by day. We get lighter, we get brighter, we get happier, our sleep gets better. But it is a practice and it is probably more gradual than most of us would like. You know, we’d love to just go do Iowasca for three days and come back enlightened. And that’s not to diss that. But I think we need all the tools, you know, we can have these massive shifts, but we also have to be doing the daily practices to accompany them.

Dr. Cates: It’s so true. We just can’t expect to go and do a meditation retreat on a weekend and then come back and for it to last forever without continuing to do the work. Right?

Emily Fletcher: it’s just like exercise, just like skincare, you know? It’s like you got to wash your face every day and you gotta exercise pretty much every day.

Dr. Cates: Yes, so can you tell us like how does that work? How is, how is your meditation technique, how does that help clear and clean up things that hurt from the past?

Emily Fletcher: So the Ziva technique is a, it’s a trifecta of mindfulness. Like I said, we use that as the appetizer. The main course is meditation, which is getting rid of that stress from the past. And then we end with manifesting, which is imagining your dreams as if they’re happening now, helping you to get clarity on your dreams for the future. But the meditation really is the main course and that’s where that ROI happens. That’s why people start to see this increase in cognitive and physical performance capabilities. And the mechanism that we’re using is we use something called a mantra, and that word has been very hijacked by the wellness industry. A lot of people are using that term as a slogan or a saying or an affirmation. And look, I’m all about affirmations. I use them when I work out. I think they’re great, but they’re not the same thing as mantra.

Emily Fletcher: Mantra is a Sanskrit word man means mind. Trump means vehicle. And so we’re using these mind vehicles and the whole point of them, the ones I teach in the live class, they’re meaningless primordial sounds and the sound quality of the mantra helps to de-excite the nervous system. And that might sound like witchcraft, but if you’ve ever studied cymatics, which is the science of sound, or if you’ve ever done a sound bath or I heard a gong or a singing bowl, then you know that that vibration, that sound can do something to your body and there’s actually cool YouTube videos you can watch what they have a sheet of metal and they’ll pour a blob of sand on it and then they’ll play music at a certain frequency and that blob of sand will take these beautiful sacred geometric shapes and patterns.

Emily Fletcher: So something similar is happening in the body even though we’re thinking the mantra silently, even imagining it, even having just like we can have a visual without seeing something, I could say imagine a purple elephant and we could all see a purple elephant. I could also say, why don’t you hear somewhere over the rainbow and without you actually singing it, you can hear it in your mind’s ear. And so similarly these mantras that sound quality of the mantra helps to de excite the nervous system and when you de-excite something, you create order and when you create order in your body, that is the mechanism by which this lifetime of stress can start to come up and out. I don’t think that nature intended for us to be sick, tired and stressed all the time. I think that stress is trying to leave the building, but if we don’t ever give the body the rest that it needs, it’s very hard for the body to create order and for that stress to leave.

Emily Fletcher: Maybe a better analogy is every time you have ever been in fight or flight, it’s left an open window on our brain computer. It’s like a premature cognitive commitment or PCC. By the time the average adult is 20 we have about 10 million of those open windows on our brain computer and that’s what’s making us stupid. Second slow. And so meditation, we just go in and bit by bit, window by window, we close those windows down and then we have more of our computing power and battery power for the task at hand.

Dr. Cates: That makes sense. You know, a lot of people think that they don’t have time for meditation. Does it take a lot of time? Do you need a lot of time for meditation?

Emily Fletcher: I mean there are a lots of different styles and some people go away for 10 days.

Emily Fletcher: Some people, you know, do all kinds of things. At Ziva I get the time is your most valuable resource? I do tend to work with high-performers like you said, entrepreneurs, moms, TV, you know, folks. And so what we recommend is after you graduate from the training, we recommend 15 minutes twice a day. That’s what I teach in the book. That’s what I teach in the online course. And look even that sounds like a lot. I get it. 30 minutes a day could be like, are you out of your mind? I don’t even have 10 minutes to myself. And most people who have that narrative likely aren’t really truly, accurately one budgeting their time, but to gaging the impact of just how much stress is costing you. Right? Like it’s like this, um, we don’t even know the opportunity cost of stress if we had never seen ourselves without it.

Emily Fletcher: And if you are in overwhelm and living with anxiety and not sleeping well and not exercising, then of course you think you have no time. But if you were to insert this meditation practice and maybe your sleep became a little bit more efficient, maybe you need a little less of it, maybe your workout becomes a little more efficient because you’re not as inflamed because you don’t have that acidic, you know, adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your body. So your overall inflammation goes down a little bit. If you’re not getting sick as often as you’re getting back those sick days, if you’re making less mistakes so you don’t have to waste your time cleaning up those mistakes if you’re making better decisions. So not having to rewind bad decisions. This is all of the ways that stress is costing us. You know, they did a study at Aetna, which is a giant insurance from the CEO learn to meditate.

Emily Fletcher: It changed his life. So he brought in, and this is just mindfulness. He brought in a mindfulness training, an eight week mindfulness training for, it was something like 20,000 of his employees. And they noticed that per employee, they gained three hours of productivity a week and they saved the company about $3,000 a year. And that’s just with mindfulness. Dr Mark Hyman, who’s a mutual friend of ours, he says, for the few minutes a day, I invest in Ziva, I get back three hours of productivity a day. And Mark Hyman does not have extra time. You know, he has written a thousand New York times bestselling books. He’s a dad, he’s traveling all over the world. He’s running the Cleveland clinic, he’s speaking to Congress, you know, like he busy and yet he knows that he’s more productive. His his time is more efficient if he’s less stressed.

Dr. Cates: That is definitely a matter of being mindful of our, how we manage our time and because 15 minutes can be a long time and it can be a short time just depending on how we use it. But 15 minutes overall twice a day, that’s really who doesn’t have that especially gives you better sleep, gives you better productivity, focus, more energy now, and things that you were talking about

Emily Fletcher: And when people are really committed to that argument, I’m really like, hand me your phone real quick. And then we just check their social media usage and if it’s like, you know, an hour and a half a day, you’re like, okay, well what if 30 of those minutes you use meditating instead of scrolling through Instagram and stressing yourself out because everyone else’s life is better than yours. Might be a better usage of time.

Dr. Cates: So you talked about different ways to use your technique. You have the book, you have the course, and then you have an online program too. Is that right?

Emily Fletcher: Yes we do. It’s called Ziva online and it’s actually now become our flagship training. It’s the way that most people learn Ziva. And it’s, it’s great. I mean I’m biased, but it is not an app, meaning that you don’t just log in every day. I’m not guiding you through every day. I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom and the driving instruction. So you do 15 days of training, it’s about 15 minutes a day for 15 days. And then you have these tools to take with you for life. You don’t need me anymore once you graduate. And one thing I’m really proud of is we just learned that most online courses have a 3% completion rate, which is a Bismal 3% ours has a 70% completion rate. So I was very proud of that. So even though I want the other 30% to be graduating, it’s like, that’s like a thousand X more than most courses.

Dr. Cates: I get the in person and I get online, but how keep something in a book.

Emily Fletcher: I mean that’s a good question. And to be honest, it was an experiment when the book came out. There weren’t really any books that were teaching you how to meditate. So I didn’t know if it was going work or not. I mean, thankfully it does and the book is changing people’s lives. But basically you get very repetitive, you know, you say the same things a few times and I walk people through like I’d walk them through one section and then I say they close your eyes and practice this, you know, walk them through in writing. Okay, now close your eyes and do this because it’s hard to read. You know, meditation is an eye closed activity and reading is an eyes open activity so they can seem sort of counter to each other. So you just have to do it in digestible chunks where you read, close your eyes and do it.

Emily Fletcher: Read close your eyes and do it versus trying to walk people through the entire technique and expect them to memorize that or know it right off the bat. Also there are a lot of bonus materials and not to like Hawk my wares, but when people buy the book there is a link in there that has a lot, a lot of audio bonuses because I think that meditation is such a visceral experiential thing. I wanted people who need a little bit more hand holding and a bit more guidance to have my, at least my audio guidance and there are some videos as well. So when you get the book, there’s a link in there. This is go here if you want me guiding you through this exercise.

Dr. Cates: So I know it’s one thing to talk about meditation, another thing to do it. Is there anything that you could kind of give us a little bit of hint or a little bit of a taste of what you do?

Emily Fletcher: Yes, well I think what might be nice is actually to speak about the manifesting because there is plenty of mindfulness out there. If people want mindfulness, there’s hundreds of free apps, hundreds of videos. Like no one really needs me for just the mindfulness piece. The meditation takes me longer to teach, but the manifesting portion we could do a bit of right now, or at least speak about. So for me, the pro tip for manifesting, which I do get some eye rolls in New York city from people who are skeptics and they are like, Oh gosh, Emily, you want me to secret my dreams? But to me manifesting simply means consciously creating a life you love. It’s getting intentional about what you want your life to look like. And what I have found is the magic sauce and manifesting is one, combining it with the meditation. That’s what matters.

Emily Fletcher: The state of consciousness that you’re in when you’re manifesting matters. So I think to do it right after you meditate is very powerful. If you don’t yet have a meditation practice, you could do it on your way to sleep or right when you wake up in the morning. So just in that very d-excited state where the right and left hemispheres of the brain are talking to each other. But to me, the other trick to manifesting is imagining your dream as if it’s happening now. And that sounds simple, but what a lot of us are doing when we’re praying or manifesting is that we’re worshiping the space between where we are and where we think we should be. And that’s actually the definition of stress. The space between where you are and where you think you should be is the only thing that makes stress in our lives.

Emily Fletcher: And so we don’t want to water those weeds when we’re manifesting. Instead we want to water the flowers. And so if your dream is to buy a house, you know, what would it feel like to have those keys in your hand and put them in the doorknob and open that door for the first time? Like what would it feel like to see your home decorated? And this just happened to me. I’ve been in this house since April and we just finished decorating yesterday, but I just walked in and saw it decorated for the first time right before this podcast, and it was like a tear inducing moment. So that feeling of joy of accomplishment and enthusiasm, that’s really the gift that we’re giving ourselves when we manifest. And it’s really just about feeling good. It’s about almost tricking yourselves into feeling like that dream is already here.

Emily Fletcher: Because then a couple of phenomenons happen when you, you self sabotage less. So when the opportunity comes you already believe that you deserve it because we don’t get what we want in life. We get what we believe we deserve. And if you’ve been imagining this dream as your current reality, then when the opportunity comes you’re less likely to self sabotage. And then also what we’re doing when we’re manifesting is that we are programming something called the reticular activating system, the RAS, that’s a bundle of neurons at the base of the brain. And the whole job of the reticular activating system is to be a filter. You know, at any given moment we have millions of potential inputs available to us. And so the, the RAS has to filter out the noise and really focus on what’s important. And if we’re stressed then it’s really looking for fight or flight.

Emily Fletcher: What’s going to kill me? Is that a tiger? Is this very poisonous? Will this chair fall out from beneath me? Is my boyfriend cheating on me or my kids safe? Am I going be able to pay rent? You know, just the stress. And so if you meditate, get out of that fight or flight one, you’re opening up that RAS to have more space for new types of downloads. And then with the manifesting, it’s like you’re programming it. You’re putting in the destination into your GPS so that it can filter in all of the opportunities that are going to get you to your dream. But what a lot of us are doing is that we’re not placing the order with the cosmic waitress at the cosmic restaurant. We’re just like, I want more money. I want, I want a boyfriend. And we’re going into a restaurant and saying like, I want food. And so we have to be specific and we have to imagine it as if it’s happening now.

Dr. Cates: And when I think one thing that you talked about is not just imagine it like it’s happening now, but the joy we have in having it now, and not being like afraid of it because I sometimes that I think can create a block.

Emily Fletcher: It is all about the feeling. I mean, Neville Goddard wrote a book called Feeling Is The Secret and it was written in the forties, I believe. So it’s like a little bit misogynistic, the language in that he’s basically like the terms that he uses of like husband and wife when he anthropomorphize’s nature is a little old, but I’ll forgive him. And if you just take the concepts for what they are, it’s pretty powerful. But the secrets in the title, the feeling is the secrets all about feeling good because we’re never chasing the thing. We’re always chasing the feeling. We assume the thing we’ll bring. And that’s what I love about manifesting is that you can give yourself that gift right now.

Dr. Cates: So when it comes to tying all this together, you said that you believe that doing a good meditation practice before you do and it is kind of manifesting, is an important kind of step by step process.Is that right?

Emily Fletcher: Yes. What I have found is that the combination is so much more powerful. It’s like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Meditation into manifesting is way better than meditating alone and way better than manifesting alone. Because you could watch the secret on repeat and line your walls with vision boards. But if you’re not meditating and your body is riddled with stress, chances are you don’t believe that you deserve your desires. And again, we don’t get what we want in life. We give what we believe we deserve. And so if you meditate first and then manifest one, you’re less stressed. So that particular activating system is able to be programmed versus just being mired down with survival. And if you have the gift of stillness and DX citation that happens during meditation, it’s easier for you to hear your own intuition.

Emily Fletcher: It’s easier for you to even hear what your desires are. I ran a manifesting masterclass a few months ago and the number one thing we did, was we surveyed everyone beforehand and out of 1200 responses, 800 of them said their biggest challenge was that I don’t know what I want. So it’s like, what? What’s really going on there? What’s underneath that? And I think that people do know what they want, but I think they’re scared to admit it. I think people are scared to say it out loud or write it down because of the fear of the pain of the failure. And to me that’s the price of admission. You want to play big, you’re going to fail. You know, I, I worked so hard, you know, day in and day out with a seven month old nursing around the clock for my book launch because I wanted it to be a New York times bestseller.

Emily Fletcher: We made it to number seven out of all books on Amazon, it sold 50,000 copies. By all intents and purposes, this book has been a raging success and we didn’t make the New York times. So like I failed. You know what I mean? Price of admission. That doesn’t mean that the manifestation doesn’t work. You know, all these other things manifested. All these lives have been changed for the better because of my selfish desire to get on the New York times. But it was never about me. It was never about my happiness coming on the other side of that one particular goal, and that’s the other way that meditation can supercharge your manifesting practice is that it gets you out of the I will be happy when syndrome, I will be happy when I have a boyfriend, when I have $1 million, when I get this job, when I get on vacation, when I can finally check my emails again after this vacation.

Emily Fletcher: You know, we just play, these little loops in our minds. And if you’re in the all be happy when syndrome than likely you have a death grip on your desires and you think that if I manifest this thing, then I will be happy. And meditation flips that on its head. It floods your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin, which are bliss chemicals. You’re able to access your happiness in the here and the now and yet you still have these desires. And so then the question becomes, why do I want to sleep with that guy? Why do I want $1 million if I just meditated and I just access my fulfillment internally? And I would say that the answer to that is that your desire to become an indicator of where nature wants to use you to deliver your fulfillment. It is no longer an indicator of where you need to go to fill yourself up.

Emily Fletcher: And that is a very powerful shift to make because if you’re going through life, the bag of need, like please complete me. Please fill me up, please fulfill me. It’s not sexy. You know, neediness is not sexy. Detachment is sexy, and meditation is giving you that detachment. It’s giving you that access to your bliss, in the only place that it resides. And then you’re able to have a lighter touch, a lighter grip on your desires, which allows you to be in flow. It allows you to not be too attached to outcome or timing, which is oftentimes where people mess themselves up with the manifesting.

Dr. Cates: So you are using the word detachment in a positive way, which I am a little bit confused by that because you know, at a time when we talk about connection is so important. I don’t want people to misinterpret that word. So can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that?

Emily Fletcher: Yes, thanks for clarifying that. Because I think historically detachment has been, has had some negative connotations, especially when we’re dealing with depression epidemics. And I think detachment can be an unhealthy byproduct of depression. That’s not the way that I’m using detachment. And maybe I’ll find a better word, but to me detachment means that beautiful, confident knowingness, that groundedness that comes from knowing that you are the key to your happiness, that your fulfillment lives internally. So I don’t need, this partner, this zero in my bank account. This one particular job, in order for me to be happy. It is that X factor that celebrities have, you know when they walk in the room and they’re like the coolest person in the room and everyone wants to talk to them and they’re like, well I could talk to you or not, but either way I’m good.

Emily Fletcher: You go to a job interview and you’re like, you’re not really sure if you even want the jobs. You are just there, showing up as yourself and you’re detached, funny and fun and charming. You’re on a date and like you’re just kind of on the date to have fun and be present, but you’re not that interested. You’re not like, please, please marry me because I’m 40 and my eggs drying up and I don’t want to die with cats eating my face. Like, I’m just talking about like the opposite of that neediness, which is really self-sufficiency. That’s not to deny the importance of connections. We are all humans. We are social creatures. Yes, we need each other. So there is a level of need that we all have on other humans and yes, money and food and all of those things. Yes, they are needs. But I think for many of us, because we’ve lost that connection with ourselves, we’ve lost that ability to find our happiness internally. The need dial is too high. We’re too needy about the external validation without the internal validation.

Dr. Cates: Right. I completely agree with what you’re saying, especially when you come from that place and you enter into a relationship and you’re not coming from a place like I’m needy or I need a relationship to complete me. But that you feel fulfilled. You’re going to attract that kind of partner that’s going to just help you be more of who you are and you’re going to have this amazing union and do even more together. Like, it’s not that you can’t have a relationship because you’re so independent, you know, like, I don’t need anybody because I’m so awesome. It’s not that. It’s like you’re allowing more of your greatness to unfold.

Emily Fletcher: That’s really well said and it harkens to this concept in the Vedas, which is that relationships are an outlet for our fulfillment. That if you’re 80% fulfilled, then you have 80% fulfillment to bring to the relationship. That relationship is not giving you the other 20% that doesn’t mean the relationship is bad or irrelevant. It is great and it’s a place for learning and we need outlets for our love. I think it’s when we mess it up and we assume someone else is going to make us happy and no one can do that. And then we’re mad at the person for not making us happy and then we think, or our happiness will be in the next relationship.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, so much there that we could just keep going on. And you know, I’m now thinking like, Oh, I want to come to one of your events.

Emily Fletcher: Yes, I would love nothing more. It would be so fun to dive in with you.

Dr. Cates: Because really it’s about the experience of it. Now. I’ve done TM, transcendental meditation and the mantra is that similar to kind of what, what your program is?

Emily Fletcher: So there are some similarities between the meditation portion of the Ziva technique and TM. A lot of people think the TM is a style of meditation, but it’s actually the name of a company. Like a name of this beautiful organization and they, I think they’re doing some great work in the world. For the first six years of my career, I was just teaching meditation and then I started noticing that the world is filled with a few too many ex-meditators or people were starting and stopping, like getting the keys to the kingdom and putting them down. And that was baffling to me. I was like, what? I just couldn’t comprehend it. So I started asking lots of questions. And I have been doing a deep dive and really figuring out what was the barrier to entry, and people starting. And then also when people started, why were they stopping?

Emily Fletcher: And the barrier to entry to starting is usually the time piece, which we’ve addressed. But the reason why too many people were stopping in my opinion, is that they were actually scared of the feelings. You know, I kept talking about the detox and that purge of the stress from the past. And because a lot of teachers, and this has been historically male dominated lineages, they have not talked too much about that catharsis or enabled people to really process those emotions fully. And I noticed that a lot of people were like shooting into very high States of consciousness, but not fully doing that, for lack of a better word, shadow work or clearing the trauma or really honestly looking at their past. It was just like, Oh, don’t worry about that. Just eye on the prize. And, and so when I started asking the question, well, what do I have to bring to this party?

Emily Fletcher: How is divinity or how is divine spirit moving through me using Emily Fletcher in 2017, which is when I developed the Ziva technique, I realized that there does want to be a more of a feminine energy and that is embracing those feelings, processing them fully, not pushing them to the side and really empowering and educating people that it’s a possibility and there’s nothing wrong with them if it happens and almost celebrating that release versus brushing past it. And so once we’ve incorporated that and developed this trifecta of mindfulness, meditation and manifesting, which is one of the things that makes Ziva unique, I have noticed that the completion rate is higher, the adoption rate is higher, that the commitment is higher. People are just invested in the longterm because they don’t get so scared when the feelings come up.

Dr. Cates: Right. Okay. That makes sense. One last question for you and that is around religion and meditation. I guess there are some people believe that if they are of a certain religious, like if they’re Christian or different, I have a religious background that meditation is, against their religious practices. What do you do, how do you respond to that kind of question?

Emily Fletcher: Thank you so much for asking it because I do think that it is a big deal and it can be a big fear or block point for folks. And you know, I was raised Southern Baptist, I’m from Tallahassee, Florida. I teach in my hometown. And so it’s come up quite a bit. And even in New York, you know, I’ve had Rabbi’s take the course. I’ve had priests take the course you know, and they will ask the question, you know, I believe this and is this in conflict? And what about this? And the simple answer is that this is not in conflict with any religion. It is more of a hardware upgrade versus a software upgrade. Meaning like meditation is going to defrag your brain computer so that you can run whatever software you already have. And I’m using software as an analogy for religion or self-help or any philosophy that you believe.

Emily Fletcher: I don’t know any religion that’s saying that you should have involuntary stress reactions on people you know, that you should like flip off your people on the highway or screaming or mother-in-law. Most of us know how we should be acting, you know, exercise everyday. Call our mom more often, eat more vegetables, go bed before midnight. Like we know how we should be acting. Most of us are not doing that and that’s not because we need more knowledge. It’s because we act in accordance with the baseline level of stress in our nervous systems. And so Ziva and meditation, it’s not going to tell you how to act. It’s just going to allow you to act in accordance with what you already know to be true. And so what I found is that if you’re Christian, it’s going to make you a better Christian because you’re not having involuntary stress reaction.

Emily Fletcher: You are not losing your temper on people and not making mistakes as often. If you’re Jewish, it’s likely going to make you a better Jew. You’re going to feel more connected to your own intuition and your own, higher power, whatever you want to call that. The only folks that I say might have their world rocked a little bit are straight up, full blown atheists because, you know, I’m like, look, we’re just probably going to talk in three months because you’re going to start to notice a lot of serendipity and synchronicity. What you call that. I don’t care. I just want you to experience.

Dr. Cates: That us true. All right, well, this has been amazing. I love talking about meditation and manifesting and mindfulness. All of these things they are beautiful and juicy, but tell everybody where they are more about you, where you can get, where people can find your book, your program.

Emily Fletcher: Yes, thanks for that. So everything is available at zivameditation.com. So it’s kind of a weird word, but it’s ZIVA. It’s a Sanskrit word that means bliss. It is: zivameditation.com and you can find the book, you can find Ziva online, you can find our live trainings there and then the book is sold just wherever books are sold, Amazon, audible, Kindle, however you like to get your books. And then we’re all over social media at Ziva meditation.

Dr. Cates: Awesome. Emily, thanks so much for coming on again.

Emily Fletcher: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Emily Fletcher. To learn more about her program and her book, you can go to TheSpaDr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there I invite you to join The Spa Dr. Community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. And if you haven’t already found out your skin personality type, I encourage you to hop over to theskinquiz.com and take our free online quiz to find out what messages your skin might be trying to tell you about your health and your lifestyle and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com also I invite you to join us on social media. The Spa Dr. is on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.