A New Approach to Mindfulness, Meditation, and Embodied Manifesting with Emily Fletcher
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Hello, welcome everyone. I'm Sean Fargo, founder of Mindfulness Exercises. Today I have the honor of meeting and speaking with Emily Fletcher, who is the founder of Ziva and the host of the Spine Tingling podcast,

Why isn't everyone doing this? She's an international speaker whose superpower is making esoteric tools accessible to the mainstream audience, teaching over 50,000 people meditation and also manifesting.

Her best-selling book, Stress Less, Accomplish More, debuted at number seven out of all books on Amazon and has been translated into 12 languages. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, Good Morning America, and Vogue. She's taught at Apple, Google, Harvard Business School, and

many other places. A formerly stressed Broadway performer going cray at the age of 47, Emily was desperate for a solution when she found...

which immediately cured her insomnia and anxiety. Her transformation was so dramatic that she quit acting, went to India and studied the ancient tools that Ziva students wear by today. Over the past few years, she has dedicated herself to developing an embodied manifesting course called Ziva.

Ziva Magic. By combining visualization, emotional alchemy, somatic movement, breath work, and energetic pleasure prayer, you get results that feel like actual magic, but are backed by scientific proof of why they work. Emily, welcome to the podcast. Hi.

Hearing that bio back, I'm like, it is a pretty interesting bio. It's a Broadway, Harvard, meditation, now pleasure. Yeah, very rich. And you don't hear that work. Someone's work was featured by the New York Times and also Vogue magazine. So that juxtaposition is quite interesting as well. I'm really curious. So you're a Broadway performer in your 20s. I think you're performing...

You know, many, many shows every week, which is fascinating in and of itself. And it sounds like you're super stressed. You had insomnia. You're struggling with anxiety. Can you share a little bit about the stress that you're under and

how you found meditation in the midst of that. It's so interesting because now I feel like the epidemic of stress is just getting more and more intense. And so it's like to think back on Emily 2007, while what seemed like intense stress and it was, I just have so much compassion for people who have not yet

found a style of meditation that resonates for them that are still, you know, swimming in the run of the mill anxiety and stress that most people have. But now with the intensity of the transformation and transition happening on the planet, it feels like pouring gasoline on that. And so it's just, I haven't really taken a window back, but yeah, so it was 2009.

seven, I was doing a chorus line and my job was to understudy three of the lead roles. So that means when you show up at the theater, you really have no idea what's going to happen. Sometimes I would just chill in my dressing room. Sometimes I'll be thrown on in the middle of the show, sometimes five minutes before the show. And so even when you're not on, there's this constant state of, of,

panic of maybe. And so, you know, I'd be sitting in my dressing room, someone would get on a loudspeaker, Emily Fletcher, we need you on stage right now. Run down seven flights of stairs, someone throws me in a costume. Next thing I know, I'm on stage before I even know which character I'm playing. And so that fight or flight over time is

that adrenaline, that cortisol started to lead to me going gray in my twenties, having pretty debilitating insomnia. And I remember just being so embarrassed about my performance being like, here I am on Broadway doing the thing I'd wanted to do since I was a child. And I was

not only miserable, but also ashamed. Like I was like, I'm not doing a good job. My voice is not good because I'm not singing. I'm not sleeping. My voice is shaking because of the nerves. And, you know, for most people, the fear of public speaking is bigger than the fear of death. Because, you know, back in the day, if we got ostracized from our tribes, it meant death.

So long story short, I found meditation. And on the first day of the first course, I was in a different state of consciousness that I had ever been in before. And I liked it. And that night I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months. And I have pretty much every night since. And that was 18 years ago. I just celebrated my 18 year anniversary of every day, twice a day. I mean, you know, a

an occasional miss, but like by and large, I've had a consistent practice for 18 years. We would need the entire podcast to tell you the ways that this practice has changed my life. But, but the big ones were on the first night I slept through the night and then I stopped going gray. I stopped getting sick.

I didn't get sick for eight and a half years after learning. I started enjoying my job again. And I really asked myself the question, like, why isn't everyone doing this? It's not just the name of my podcast. I'm the type of person probably like you, where when I find something that works, I want to shout it from the rooftop. So I just thought, why isn't everyone meditating? And so I opened Ziva and I started teaching in person, like, you know, every two weeks, every month, live face-to-face. The New York Times actually did a piece and then our...

Our classes got too big. So I had to get a studio. I was teaching in my living room. I had to get a studio. We outgrew that studio. And then this is just about the time that online courses were starting to become popular. And I thought, wait, why isn't everyone doing this? Like why? You know, people would say, Emily, my mom is in Idaho. My cousin is in Columbia. Do you have a teacher in Berlin? I was like, no, I don't. There's only 50 teachers that I know that are teaching this particular lineage. And so we actually made the world's first online.

online meditation training, which was an experiment. And I didn't know if it was going to work. It took me nine months. I put every dollar I had. I spent $20,000 developing it, which was an extraordinary amount of money for me at the time. And I didn't know if it was going to work. It was before Headspace. It was before Calm. It was before Oprah Chopra. And then it did work. People were loving it. But it was like, I would do this big launch and like three people would sign up.

And then four people would sign up and it was like $199. So if my $20,000 investment, I maybe made like $600. And thankfully my ex-husband at the time, he was like, you're not wrong. You're just early. And he really encouraged me, like stay the course, stay the course. And I'm so glad that he did because I was early.

And then, you know, as meditation started to get more popular and, you know, Tim Ferriss and neuroscience started catching up and athletes started outing themselves and executives started outing themselves as meditators. I was sort of perfectly positioned in this space of meditation for performance because I was a performer and I had done this deep,

study into the Vedas and into this particular style of meditation. And it was just so beautiful to watch it catch on like wildfire. And then I had a book that came out in 2019. And that really moved the needle. You know, like hundreds of thousands of people found out about Ziva in a way that they probably wouldn't have without the book. And I would say that what I did is that I wrapped the medicine of meditation in the candy coating of like, Hey, you guys,

this thing is going to help you have better sex and make more money. Like, because, you know, I'm like, I don't care why people come to the medicine. I just care that they take the medicine. And, and since then, I think that the zeitgeist has changed, you know, meditation is not considered weird anymore. You know, there's enough science now you don't have to do it, but you can't just be like, I don't believe in it anymore. And so now people are much more, I think,

open to it in a way that you don't have to put so much candy coating on it. Yeah. Well, and certainly your enthusiasm, you know, really helps people to feel excited about it. I'm curious when you found this style of meditation, did you seek it out because you're stressed or did someone say, Hey, you know, you should try this or did it just kind of fall into your lap? Cause you happen to see, you know,

session happening the next day. Like, how did that happen? So it was actually the woman sitting next to me in the dressing room. Her name was Dionne and she was understudying five of the lead roles. I was only understudying three. And so this woman had a much harder job than I did. And every song, every dance, every bite of food, this woman H like, this is sensational. And she was Australian. And so first I just chalked it up to her being an Aussie. Cause you know, it's like, have you ever met an angry Australian person? No.

I'm like, wait, no, she is like, I want to have some of what she's having. And so she finally said, Emily, my teacher's in town. Do you want to learn? And I said, yeah. So I went along, there was an initiation ceremony and I was lucky because the first style of meditation that I tried was designed for people like us. It was designed for people with busy minds and busy lives different than a lot of styles that have become really popular or derivations of monastic meditation.

practices. And so I think a lot of people feel frustrated when they start meditating or they think it's going to take five to eight years. They think that they have to clear their mind or they think they have to be more like a monk and all of these misconceptions that sort of keep people from seeing the fruits of their labor, from seeing the results that they're seeking. And I had mine on the first session. My insomnia was cured on the first night. Within days, food was tasting better. Birds were chirping. Sun was shining brighter.

Like within truly like a matter of 72 hours, my consciousness felt different. And then it just continued to get better and better. Like the thing I love about Ziva is that it's like the benefits are cumulative, but it was really because of that woman Dionne, like she was handling such a high demand job with so much ease and grace that,

that she inspired in me something that I call worthy inquiry. You know, she made me want to learn. And that's what I say to my students now. I'm like, Emily, I want my mom to learn. I want my husband to learn. I want my brother to learn. I'm like, look, you can't go and pitch this to them. You can't be evangelical because it's rude, right? It's like, Hey, have you ever thought about a weight loss clinic? It's like, no, you can't do that. Have you ever considered a facelift? It's like rude. And I think the same can be true of meditation. It's basically saying like, Hey, you seem stressed. And so, um,

what I think is a better plan is like, keep cleaning your own house, keep shining yourself up, keeping so radiant, so enthusiastic, so filled with bliss, so high performance, whatever you consider that to be for you, that other people are drawn to your light, that other people come to you with that worthy inquiry. And then when they do, of course, you know, lead them to lead them to the water if it feels inspiring. Yeah. And it sounds like, so is this the same practice that you're

teaching now in terms of the three M's of mindfulness, meditation and manifesting? Or is that is are those three M's sort of an evolution of what you first learned? Great question. It's an evolution. So what I learned in my first class, my initiation would be the second M of the Ziva technique, what I would call meditation. So it's a style of meditation that's based on something called Nishkam Karma Yoga.

which means union attained by action, hardly taken. So yoga means union, karma means action and Nishkam is least effort, right? So it's union attained by action, hardly taken or what I lovingly call the lazy meditation. It feels kind of like a naps

sitting up, you know, so people that are used to more disciplined practices or more monastic practices, it can feel a little bit like cheating because, you know, your head gets quite slouchy. You're getting rest. It's actually five times deeper than sleep, but without a sleep hangover and you're accessing a verifiable fourth state of consciousness. So different than waking, sleeping or dreaming. And in that fourth state of consciousness, like you said, your body's getting that deep rest and

And the cool thing that happens is that in that rest, your body de-excites. And when you de-excite something, you create order. And when you create order in the body, then all that stress that we've all been accumulating in our cellular memory can start to come up and out. And it is the eradication of that backlog of stresses from the cells that ushers us into higher and higher states of consciousness.

So for really no effort, no discipline, no like deep trauma therapy, you are releasing trauma from your cells in a pre-verbal way that quite quickly ushers you into higher states of consciousness and performance. So that's the meditation style that I learned. And that is sort of the foundational piece of Ziva. What I evolved and what I created was the Ziva technique. So I added mindfulness to the beginning and,

and manifesting to the end. So sort of like the appetizer is mindfulness. The main course is meditation and the dessert is manifesting. So basically I use mindfulness and I would define the difference between mindfulness and meditation as mindfulness is the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. And so it's here and now focusing on your breath, focusing on your chakras, a guided visualization, looking at a candle, like what most people would call meditation in this day and age, I would likely call mindfulness.

Anytime you're directing your focus, anytime you're in your left brain state of consciousness, I would put that in the mindfulness category, which would be different than Ziva meditation, where you're accessing what feels kind of like a nap, where you're accessing this self-induced transcendent state of consciousness, where you're moving beyond the realm of thinking, like beyond waking, sleeping or dreaming. And interestingly, in that fourth state of consciousness, the right and left hemispheres of the brain are functioning in unison.

So mindfulness is like the appetizer. It's like giving your brain something to do, an activity, something to focus on as we transition from the activity of our busy lives into this deep, restful beingness of meditation. And then as we're coming back up and out, once you've saturated your body and brain with dopamine and serotonin, once you've reminded yourself viscerally that you are the ocean pretending to be the wave, that you are God pretending to be human, once you've really viscerally experienced that divinity inside of your humanity,

As you then transition back up into your left brain waking state of consciousness, that's where we practice the manifesting. And the key to manifesting, which is one of my favorite subjects, you know, because it's like just consciously creating a life that you love. But one of the keys is doing it from a very subtle state of consciousness, doing it where your body is closer to the unmanifest than it is.

is the manifest. So it's like, as that ocean is coming back up into the wave, as that unity is coming back up into individuality, that's a really powerful time to plant the prayers. That's a really powerful time to state the intention because you're more connected to source. You're more connected to the field of infinite potentiality, infinite possibilities.

And you're just going to get a much better result from manifesting from that state than if you're just like driving or like rushing around doing your chores or like, you know, doing the dishes, because then the wave of individuality is very high. It's very pointy. And so it's like that, that prayer, that intention has to travel from wave to wave to wave versus just like sending that prayer out throughout the, like the unified field, which is easier to access from those, I guess, like less excited states of consciousness.

So long story short, I learned meditation, Nishkam Karma Yoga, and then I adapted it into the Ziva technique, which is mindfulness, meditation, and manifesting. And what I found is that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, that doing them together...

the giving your brain an on-ramp and then having the training of really falling into that surrender and then ending it with manifestation, which just feels nice. It feels nice to think about your dreams. It feels nice to feel them as already accomplished. And I tend to work with high achievers and high performers. And so it's a little bit of a trick as well, where it's like, hey, you're going to

quote unquote, waste your time for 15 minutes. But then at the end, you get to hitch that steam engine up to your goals of like whatever your quarterly objectives are. If you want to be a better mom or a better CEO or, you know, whatever it is you're up to in life, then this practice gets to fuel your dreams. Beautiful. In mindfulness circles these days, and actually for years, there's maybe something missing. You know, it's mindfulness alone is just

not enough. We also need to be able to, you know, go out in the world and live our lives and with our prayers and intentions. And we need to be able to manifest and, you know, create the change in the world that we want to see. And so I do think that a technique like Ziva is very helpful in a

manifesting into say one technique, you know, mindfulness meditation and then manifesting. I think that conjoining them is smart to make sure that you don't forget that piece. I'm curious when you were starting your

meditation journey in this lineage. I mean, it sounds like you took to it really quickly that you started seeing benefits right away. You're celebrating your 18th year of doing this twice a day. Congratulations. I think that's a tremendous accomplishment. What do you think about it lent itself to

you like like why do you think you're so predisposed to it and do you see other people or most people also taking to it really quickly and can you talk about say a methodology you're calling it like deep breaths and it sounds like the nervous system is really getting a you know a good rest is

Like what about it lends itself well to being able to kind of take off with it quickly? Yeah, it's a great question. And look, I would love to say that I'm special, that like I took to it quickly. But now after teaching, you know, I mean, online, we're probably at like through all of the books and everything, probably 120,000 people, but face to

face are probably top four or 5,000. And I see it with a few exceptions here or there. There's been a handful of people that have some sort of a situation that they need some extra support. But let's say that 99.999% of people drop into this state of consciousness within minutes

Afterwards, they're like, whoa, that was different than anything I've ever experienced. And there's a pretty predictable path that people follow. On day one or two, they're like, oh my gosh, the birds are chirping. The sun is shining. My apple tastes sweeter. Sex is better. They feel more alive because they've wiped the stress away from their lens of perception. And stress, it numbs us. It dampens us on purpose. It's there so that if the tiger bites into us, it doesn't hurt so bad. And so since life is...

So we're living a life that is so out of balance with nature that there's this constant state of low-grade stress that is really numbing and contracting our ability to be fully in our human experience. And so when people wipe that numbness away, everything gets more heightened. And then what happens around day three or four is that

they start to have a bit of detox. Like there's like those decades of stress that's been pushed down the, the uncried tears, the unexpressed rage, like that stuff does start to come up and out. And really that was a big part of my teacher training. And that's a big part of why I teach a matriculation. I don't teach like

a guided visualization. I don't really have an app where you can just go on and do like a guided Ziva practice. Like it's a course I train people in a skill that when they graduate, they have the skill to take with them for life. And, and I do that because one, I mean, guided practices are great, but like who wants to go into the belly of the beast for their meditation practice, right? It's like you go into your iPhone to meditate and two hours later and you've

gone down an Instagram rabbit hole and didn't ever meditate. It's like to me, meditating with your phone is like having an AA meeting in a liquor store, which is like very challenging. So that's why I believe in self-sufficiency and really getting people trained up in the practice. So again, I'd love to say that I was special, but I think that why people take to this so beautifully is that it is designed for householders and not monks.

So like the way in the lineage that I was trained in, so I studied the Vedas, V E D A Sanskrit word that means knowledge. So the lineage that I teach is like from Northern India and it is a householder practice. It's not a monastic practice. And meaning that a lot of what people are practicing, even in the West and America are

are adaptations of monk practices. So if you think about it, headspace was started by Andy put a comb, who was a monk, Jay Shetty, biggest brand online in the wellness space over a billion followers, his book think like a monk. He was a monk. Were you a monk? A couple of years. Yeah. Oh, amazing.

So this, I'd love to, I would really love to geek out on this with you because of the people who have like gone on the monastic path and then been married. And my friend, I have a friend named Sadhvi G who's now running the ashram where I started my practice in 2007. And she went the opposite way. She's the only person I know who was married. She,

She was secular, if you will. Jewish American white woman from Los Angeles goes to Rishikesh, India, has a full awakening on the banks of the Ganges and goes into this full state of Samadhi and then became a nun. She became a renunciate. She was married. Her husband was with her. And she's told the story publicly on my podcast. So I don't feel like I'm outing her secrets here. But she said that

And I was very explicit because, you know, I teach sacred sexuality and I was just like, OK, but wait, tell me more. And she said she had sex with her husband one more time after this massive awakening. And she said she was in this state of pure bliss, pure love. She was in so much joy and pleasure because of his pleasure. But her body was not experiencing physical pleasure. And he said it was like having sex with a corpse.

They got divorced. They ended their marriage, now stayed in Rishikesh as a nun and teaches these amazing ceremonies, does RT ceremonies every sunset, leads these amazing pujas. And I was so glad to hear this story because she really proved me wrong about a belief that I had held onto very tightly, which is that you're either one or the other, that like you're either a monk or you're a householder. And for her, it was the first time I'd heard a story of someone organically and spontaneously. She said it was like God sucked

the physical sexual pleasure and desire out of her body, but she was in this state of pure oneness versus what I see more often than that. And I'd like to hear your story on this is people who think that if they renounce their physical desires, if they renounce their sexuality, that it will somehow make them closer to God, that it will somehow bring them closer to the divine. And in my personal opinion, that feels like,

a game of telephone gone horribly wrong. That in India, because so many of these practices were protected by the geography of India, you know, two oceans, two mountain ranges. And so for many thousands of years, we just didn't have the technology to get the ships or to traverse the mountains so that those practices were protected. And so once finally it started getting colonized and we had ships and could get over the mountains, it's like the rishis and the sadhus and the bhaktis

elders knew that this colonization was coming. So they sent the practices up into the state of consciousness, into the brains of the monks, into the recluses, into the sadhus that were living in the mountains because they knew, because it wasn't, a lot of this stuff was not in books. It was passed down orally through the nervous systems, generation to generation. And so then when it started getting colonized, it's like these folks would see these

monks in these very high states of consciousness, these renunciates doing these amazing things, breatharians, airitarians, bringing their state of conscious down to almost dead and then coming back to life, going without food, standing on one leg, like all these things that we hear about in the fables. And then it's like, oh,

The mistranslation that I perceive that happened is like, well, oh, if I live like a monk, then I will get these superpowers. When actually there are different practices for people with kids and people in commerce than there are for people who are naturally reclusive by nature.

So that's my take on it. But I'm very curious to hear your take on it. Yeah, I think I resonate with a lot, a lot of what you're saying. Tradition I was in, which is the Thai Theravada tradition, which is very orthodox. A lot of people say it's most akin to how the Buddha actually lived in his tradition. I couldn't even touch my mom, right?

I couldn't touch any females. I could not hug my mom as a monk. One of many examples. Yeah, in a non-sexual way. But yeah, I could touch men. But I mean, hugging other monks was not a thing. I was, I don't know. I mean, when I lived in Thailand as a monk, I would be around monks from other traditions quite a bit from Mongolia to partly Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma. And there was quite a

bit of affection with monks from those other countries because we were like brothers. We were like, you know, different ages. I was around kid monks and old monks and sometimes we would interlock arms or not cuddle but kind of sit close to each other where we're touching shoulders or just like playful touch. So there was a sense of brotherhood in that way. And I'm curious about what inspired you to go

go on the monastic path? I mean, did you feel like you were sort of, was it a surrendering of the preferences to be in society and to be in partnership? Or did you not have those preferences and you felt like, oh, this is my nature? It was a strong surrender. Yeah. I mean, I had dated many girls. I loved...

good restaurants. I loved seeing the finer things in life. I too had kind of accomplished my dreams and then realized it wasn't bringing true fulfillment. But I was inspired by a Taoist hermit in Northeast China who I met

And his way of being was incredibly inspiring, you know, and he had cultivated these virtues of compassion and concentration and embodied presence. And I'm like, I want that. Like, you know, whenever I die, I want to have spent my life cultivating that quality of heartfelt presence and space.

strength and fluidity and so I just kind of dove into the deep end and found a monastery that would take me how old were you late 20s and how long were you there uh two years and I worked at a retreat center at spirit rock meditation center for five years supporting all the teachers there it was kind of my halfway house things like sexuality there was quite a bit of

repression on my part. It wasn't repression wasn't taught per se, but there was this notion that, that I had felt that, you know, desire was not going to be helpful on this path that desire in general, like desire for money or just specifically physical or sexual desire. All of the above. Yeah. I was referencing sexual and physical, but, but all of the above. And

And so it's, you know, taken some time to unwind a lot of that so that I can have a healthy relationship with my wife and to be able to experience joy and bliss and freedom. You know, it's still a process of unwinding because I still find habits of monasticism kind of keeping me a little bit, say, rigid or formalized or scared sometimes.

of experiencing certain things. - What's the fear? - I think there's this notion that some of those things like unabashed, say sensuality is impure or that it's creating a false sense of me

or that it's too hedonistic or unholy, if you will. May I wax poetic on this for a moment? Because this is one of my most favorite subjects. You can throw it all out the window or maybe this would be good medicine for you. Thank you. I was practicing meditation for about

15 or 16 years. And then I had a massive awakening and discovered sacred sexuality. And it has become my new church, if you will. Like to me, sacred sexuality and specifically embodiment is one of the fastest ways to the divine. And there's been such a huge reclamation for me. And now this is my new, why isn't everyone doing this?

I've had that moment twice in my life, once with meditation and now it's with sacred sexuality. And again, like this is like if people, at least in my lineage, they believe that it's less than 1% of the world's population that is monastic by nature. And that those people know that by six or seven years old, they're like, I got to go. I don't want to be in the commerce. I don't want to be in town. I don't want to have sex with people. I don't want to share toothbrushes. I don't want to cuddle. I want to be in the cave.

So there's not a surrendering of preferences to be closer to God. It's like, this is my way to God. And to me, that's where that's a crucial component that I don't hear anyone talking about that one is not better than the other. It's just that there are different types of people. And so if you're not a monk and you're...

practicing monastic practices, not only can there be repression and sublimation, but I also feel what I see at large is that if people think that they should be doing monastic styles of meditation and they're not monks, they get frustrated. There's like, well, I can't clear my mind. I should be accessing some state of consciousness that I'm not, I can't stay still. I have ADHD. And I think that's why so many people love Ziva because it feels like they just call me like a walking permission slip. And they're like, Oh,

oh, this feels easier. It's just happening organically. I'm accessing these state of consciousness with such ease. But on the sacred sexuality piece, a little window into my journey is that it just, I asked for a divorce in 2020 and three weeks later, I had a full Kundalini awakening and then

basically discovered nature started fire hosing me with a PhD in sacred sexuality. I became best friends with this world famous Tantra teacher. I moved in with this woman who had been teaching goddess practices and pleasure practices for 30 years. I had a long distance, what I call him, my cosmic lover. And so we, it's almost like we had to increase the size of our energy bodies to

in order to connect across the field. And so all of these amazing gifts came online, which are not uncommon to, you know, like what you could say, like monks are accessing, you know, the power to see without sight or feel without feeling like some of these things, like different roads, but similar endpoint. And then it became such a massive reclamation because it was like, oh, this is a way to the divine. And if you think about it, orgasm in French is called le petit mort, right? It's the little death.

So we're moving beyond individuality into totality. And in Ziva, the style of meditation that we practice, it's like, we call it practicing dying because again, you're transcending individuality and going into totality. So in both ways, it's like that wave is becoming the ocean. So in that state of orgasm, it's like this pure beingness,

It's like you do transcend the mind. You connect with all that is. And in the way that I frame it is using that pleasure, using that state of transcendence or orgasm as a state of the way to pray. Because similar to what we do in Ziva meditation, where you're using the mantra to de-excite the nervous system and access the field of collective consciousness through de-excitation.

What we do in Ziva magic is that we excite the nervous system. We bring all of that energy from the root up through the heart into the head and into the crown. And from a different state of transcendence, from a state of excitation and pleasure, you're still transcending the individuality and then planting the prayers from there. But the way that I think about it is that like,

why on earth would nature have installed these bliss chemicals inside of us, these pleasure chemicals inside of us, if they weren't meant to be used? And what I've seen, and I know that your lineage and training is different, but like I was raised Southern Baptist and you look at the Christian traditions and the teachings of Jesus, they're so beautiful. Like you were saying, the compassion, the generosity, the lovingness, and yet there was Mary Magdalene, who oftentimes people are calling it was the feminine Christ.

And her pages were ripped out of the Bible, of the Gnostic Gospels. They've been etched off. And a lot of people hypothesize, there's many channeled texts, but they hypothesize that, you know, yes, there's some level of just like textbook misogyny of like, well, here was a woman who was likely one of the most respected disciples. So we can't have that. But my hypothesis of what I've gathered is that it was actually greater than that, that she was teaching these embodied practices.

that she was teaching these pleasure practices. And there are even theories that it's because of, you know, Mary Magdalene being a priestess, you know, highly trained in the lineage of Isis and these Egyptian, these ancient Egyptian arts and these tantric arts, that she was able to initiate Jesus in these tantric practices of why he was able to de-excite his nervous system to almost dead for many days and then reignite his life force energy. So some interesting theories there.

And we'll probably ruffle some feathers, but it's just, I think it's, it's interesting to note, like, why do you think those pages were ripped out? Why has the divine feminine been violently removed from our history? And what would happen if we were to have iconography where there was a balance of the divine feminine and divine masculine? Because I found that in my own physiology, when I feel that masculine and feminine in

balance. And if you look at the actual brain, there's a thing called the hall of Brahman or the marriage hall inside of the brain. And it's where the pituitary gland and pineal gland meet. And one looks very much like a lingam and one looks like a yoni. One is masculine and one is feminine. And if you activate them both at the same time, it's like you have this polarity internally inside of every human, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, you can balance the masculine and feminine and have these awakenings to open up the lotus flower, open up

up the crown chakra and access these very advanced states of consciousness. And so it's like, if we remove the feminine from that equation, regardless of gender, we're running a one-legged race. And so I feel like a big part of my Dharma on the planet is to just remind people that all of us, all genders,

have access to the divine feminine and masculine inside of us. And what I found was even magic is that when you balance these forces, there's a polarity that happens inside of each of us that creates a magnetism to where you can start to attract your dreams. And really my big picture goal here is to get enough people practicing this individually, individually so that we can do it on mass and really attract people.

heaven on earth, like bring the frequency of heaven to earth through our bodies, not in spite of our bodies. Fully integrated. Yeah. I'll have what you're having. I would be so delighted to gift you Ziva magic. That's a 10 week embody manifesting course. And just as a, you know, you might hate it, but it might like really be a reclamation for you of your pleasure of your sexuality and as another pathway to the divine.

I'm very touched by that. And I would be extremely grateful. I'm really resonating with everything you're saying and just to be very vulnerable here. This has been kind of my main work is unraveling a lot of this. And it sounds like you have a beautiful podcast.

path for me to take and could really help, you know, my relationship, which is great, but, you know, just take it to the next level. Right. And the beautiful thing about pleasure is that there's no ceiling. Yeah. It just keeps getting better and better and more and more expensive. I love it. Thank you. I really appreciate that. One final piece that I'll say on that is that just like

Well, two pieces. Is it similar, similarly to the way that psychedelics have been repressed and shamed and made bad and wrong because it is a way to democratize God, if you will. Well, I believe that God is already democratized, but psychedelics give you this kind of a one-to-one access to your own divinity. It's like turning up the dial on your own divinity. You know, if you look at the brain of someone on mushrooms or on

in the brain of someone meditating, like they're very similar. There's an increase in neuroplasticity. There's an increase in blood and energy through all the parts of the brain that look very similar. And a similar thing can happen in with sacred sexuality. It's just that with sexuality, you're using your own endogenous bliss chemistry versus using external or exogenous substances. But in both cases, I think the reason why we've had this war on drugs is

and this like repression of sexuality is that in each case, people are being reminded of their own divinity. Like they are reminded of just how powerful and creative we are. And unfortunately, and I don't think this is so true of the Buddhist lineages, but if you look at, you know, a lot of political organizations, certainly the, you know, laws around, you know, the war on drugs, which didn't,

make anybody any safer or stop anyone from using drugs. But it was very racist, these laws to put brown and black people in jail. And now there's just a beautiful renaissance happening. And like they were seeing a lot of healing benefits. But part of the story is that I think there's been a similar compartmentalization and shame around psychedelics and sexuality. But the thing I wanted to say is that inside of Ziva Magic, part of the visualized, alchemized, magnetized, did I say? Ziva Magic is visualized,

alchemize magnetize that's the formula visualize like basically what is it that you want to manifest and the alchemy piece is really important and I think an imperative prerequisite to the magnetize so it's like if you want to feel the full capacity of your pleasure you have to be willing to feel the full capacity of your pain and it

It's like the same muscle that can help you to hold space for your suffering, for your sadness, for your sorrow, your rage. The stronger that muscle is to hold space for your pain, the more capacity you have to hold space for your pleasure. And it's been such a beautiful part of teaching this work is that there's also a taboo around people feeling their feelings.

right? That we've been told since infancy, like, shh, don't cry, have a toy, have a bottle, have a iPad, have some pills, have some booze, have some pot, have some porn, just numb, don't feel. And so before I invite people to feel the pleasure, I make sure that they can feel the pain. And that is wildly radical in an age of numbing. Fully agreed. Yeah. And I think that's one of the beauties of

mindfulness is that we open to whatever's here whether it's pleasant or unpleasant without judging it to be right or wrong we're just being with it and as Sharon Salzberg often says it's it's

it's not only okay to feel what you feel, but important to feel what you feel. And, you know, I know you have a five-year-old son, six-year-old son. Yeah. Just allowing them to feel what they feel and allowing them to be with themselves and without shooting them or

or giving them an iPad right away to forget what they're feeling. It's so powerful to see them be able to be okay with themselves and to feel honored however they are. I would love to learn more about this journey of Ziva Magic as well as the mindfulness meditation journey.

and manifesting. I encourage everyone who's listening to check out Emily's website, zivameditation.com and World Meditation Day is coming up soon. How are you planning on celebrating that?

Yeah, we're going to do a free online global meditation. It's going to be on April 21st. And even if you're listening to this after the fact, if you go to this website, you can watch a replay, but it'll be myself and Dave Asprey, who just wrote a book called Heavily Meditated. So he's a biohacker. He's going to be talking about a bit more of the scientific side

body benefits and breath techniques and like kind of a bit more like biohackery ways to access these states of consciousness. It'll be a beautiful global meditation. We'll do some laser hot seat coaching. And so you can go to zivameditation.com slash world meditation. If you want to check that out, I'm sure I'll put it in the, in the show notes. And then

And like you said, everything else, the online course and in meditation and also the course in magic, which is embodied manifesting, all of that can be found at Ziva meditation.com. And then we're on Instagram, which is at Ziva meditation, which is not the most meditative place these days. It's like an oasis inside of the desert. One other thing.

thing is that I'm doing a big free event on July 22nd called magic maker. So again, I don't know when this will come out, but in July 22nd, this will people, if they want to get a taste of this embodied manifesting, if they want to taste the visualize alchemize magnetize with tens of thousands of other people all around the world, like using their pleasure to pray. And then that would be a really thing to cool thing to come to. And I think that's just Ziva meditation.com slash magic maker, but all that is on the website.

Great. Yeah. And we will feature those in our email newsletter to our community as the dates come. But consider me a big fan, Emily. I'm so inspired by you and your journey. Like, thank you for your devotion. And then also thank you for your flexibility of being willing to adapt and then bring bringing that training and that discipline that you developed into fatherhood and into your relationship. Like what a lucky child you have. I appreciate that. And likewise, I love how you're

packaging a lot of these ancient techniques and evolving them and combining them. I think that visualization, emotional alchemy, somatic movement, breathwork, energetic pleasure prayer, you know, all of it is helping us to integrate us into fully embodied humans. And so I tip my hat to you for the great work that you're doing and looking forward to staying connected and making a big difference in this world. So, yeah.

And yeah, let's bring the frequency of heaven to earth. It's available right here, right now. Hallelujah. Emily, thanks again for joining us today. And everyone, please check out ZivaMeditation.com for more details. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye, everyone.