Sex With Emily - Mindfulness for Better Sex

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Today I’m joined by meditation teacher, speaker, and author Light Watkins to share how we can better practice mindfulness in and outside of the bedroom. We discuss how meditation can transform relationships, reduce stress, and allow you to be more present during all areas of your life—including sex.  Plus, we’re sharing easy hacks to curate a meditation routine, how you can cultivate happiness and fulfillment, and why training your brain is important to your overall well-being. Light also shares the ways that sex is similar to meditation, the importance of following your intuition, how to foster true positive change, and the best ways to maintain a gratitude practice. In this episode, you’ll learn: How meditation enhances your sex life and keeps you present. Why managing stress is the secret to better relationships. Simple gratitude hacks to transform your mindset. Show Notes: More Light Watkins: Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Website | Podcast | Book Join the SmartSX Membership: Access exclusive sex coaching, live expert sessions, community building, and tools to enhance your pleasure and relationships with Dr. Emily Morse. Yes! No! Maybe? List & Other Sex With Emily Guides: Explore pleasure, deepen connections, and enhance intimacy using these Sex With Emily downloadable guides.  SHOP WITH EMILY! (free shipping on orders over $99) The only sex book you’ll ever need: Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure Want more? Visit the Sex With Emily Website  Let’s get social: Instagram | X | Facebook | TikTok | Threads | YouTube Let’s text: Sign up here Want me to slide into your email inbox? Sign Up Here for sex tips on the regular. See the full show notes at sexwithemily.com

I don't have time is like Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's like Star Wars. It's not real. It sounds great. It's exciting to say I don't have time and I'm doing all this. But it's a fictional story that you created to justify whatever dramas or adventures you find yourself on. You know, and we all do it.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily, and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. Today we are going to liberate it. I'm joined by meditation teacher, speaker, and author Light Watkins and we talk about practicing mindfulness and meditation, how it can help you in and out of the bedroom. I really enjoyed this talk with Light Watkins. After listening I thought there's some things I wanted to share with you before you get into the interview. First, we mentioned meditation.

We talked about it a lot, but maybe you've never meditated before. Or maybe you're like, that's not for me. I tried it once, but I thought I could share with you my own practice and how I've finally gotten to the point in my life where meditation is actually something that I crave, that I know that I feel better when I do it than when I don't do it. So I started out like 20 years ago, I went on this 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand. And for years I'd been tearing that I should meditate. I'd gone through, you know, my father died and there was a lot going on in my life. And I just thought meditation would be the key. Okay.

That's going to be the thing that's going to cure what else me. So I went on this 10-day retreat. Now, I'm telling you, you cannot talk to anybody. You can't make eye contact. And you meditate from 4 a.m. to midnight, pretty much. There's walking meditations, there's sitting meditation, there's standing meditation, but you're just basically meditating. And it was hard. I mean,

it was called a Vipassana retreat. And all they teach you is about breathing. You breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. And if you find your mind wandering, which you will, go back to your breath. Sounds easy enough, right? Until you're sitting there for ten days and you realize by like day four I thought I have not gone more than two seconds without my mind wandering off and then I kept going back to your breath. You might have to do it a thousand times a day, but it wasn't until like the eighth day that I finally had this moment. I had this this feeling that I was finally able to meditate for about five minutes where I really was just in my breath and in the moment and I was able to feel this

sort of connection with my body, with my mind, and it was all one and I was able to meditate. And I'm telling you, it might have been a three to five minute period where I got that high of meditation. But it took a really long time. Fast forward 20 years and I realized that I wasn't able to sit for an hour a day as this Vipassana practice told you and then I would feel bad I wasn't doing it for an hour. But here's my meditation hack for you. If you're much like me and you know that it would help in slowing your mind down and learning to control your mind, we can control our thoughts. Our thoughts typically are not the truth. Meditation is what allows you to take that pause that we often need before we react. It allows us to sort of train our mind to be in our control rather than in your ego's

control. So I finally had another meditation teacher years ago who was like, no, don't worry so much. You have to sit up so straight. You could do it lying down. You could do it sitting. You could do it walking. But all you have to do is just commit to it that every day you're going to do it.

You're gonna say, I am meditating, whether it's two minutes or five minutes a day. You know, I also do my meditate masturbate manifest I try to do that as many days as I can a week where I'll meditate and then I'll masturbate and then I'll Manifest what I want the day to be like because if you think about it instead of waking up and scrolling on your phone and Getting right into work if you could even take five minutes, it becomes sacred and it could be just that thing that helps you set your day on the right track. So I just wanted to share with you what's worked for me.

If you ever have questions about it, I'm happy to talk about it more in an episode because I have done transcendental meditation, I've done sound healing, but I'm happy to share. So in today's episode with Light, we get into all of this too. We talk about meditation and happiness and meditation and relationships and just how to create fulfillment and happiness and gratitude in your everyday life.

He has a great gratitude hack too. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show subscribe wherever you're listening that really helps us it just helps get the show out to more people and help everyone people just like you and you can find me at all social media Instagram YouTube TikTok threads x it's all at sex with Emily be sure to check out my new article, How to Sex Detox on our website, SexWithEmily.com. Alright everyone, enjoy this episode. Okay, I've got something you're going to want to hear about.

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And the best part, it's hormone-free, non-invasive, and works naturally with your body. All you do is apply a little on your labia before bed. So here's your sign to prioritize your vaginal health this new year. Head over to GetVHealth.com, use code EMILY25 to get 25% off at checkout. That's G-E-T-V-HEALTH.COM and use code EMILY25. Getvhealth.com, code EMILY25. I'm excited to welcome my guest, Light Watkins, bestselling author, accomplished meditation teacher.

He's an inspirational keynote speaker, workshop leader. He's delivered so many wellness-themed talks around the globe. His book, Knowing Where to Look, 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration. Light, it's so nice to meet you. I know we were at Wanderlust speaking years ago, and I'm so happy to have you here today. First of all, I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been a voyeur of your work for a while, which is a little ironic. And how I got into this world, I started going to yoga classes, and then I started going

to meditation circles. This is back when you were doing your vipassana in the mid 90s. I was up in Manhattan going to meditation classes at the Riverside Church. And then I met a meditation teacher who really changed my life. He inspired me to want to teach people meditation. So I went to India for the first time and I started teaching meditation

from my one bedroom apartment in West Hollywood. Turns out I was pretty good at it. Started traveling around the world, doing retreats, writing books, and then got into really deep into inspiration and started writing these daily inspirational emails. And then that led to my book, Knowing Where to Look. I find that so inspirational. Sex and relationships. Like how have you found that meditation impacts you and your students, your listeners, your followers?

When the stress evaporates incrementally, it's not gonna go away overnight, but when it does, as it does, I should say, on the other end of that spectrum, you're creating space, right? So the space you have in between a potential offense and your reaction to that offense is directly correlated to how much stress

you have stored in your body. So if your stress debt decreases, the amount of space increases. And it's the space that is your saving grace in relationships. Because the biggest Achilles heel of most people in relationships is their reactivity to when things are not going in the way

that they think they should go. Their expectations are misaligned with their partner. And they're prone to overreacting. And the overreacting really is the death of a relationship, a series of overreactions, because what you're doing is you're making people not feel seen and or heard. So there's that lack of authenticity. And this is a little controversial that at least for me in my circle whenever I talk about this, but I think we all want the truth. Women especially in my experience talk about, oh, I want to know the truth, true, true, true. But here's the thing with guys is, and I don't think a lot of people understand this, but everybody wants to be completely honest. Like a man to another man. Usually

you are graded on your level of honesty. Right. People say, be a man. Yeah. Your word is everything. Like, so you are brutally honest with another man. Um, we're going to keep it 100 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? That's how you engage in those relationships with a woman. If you were to impose that same level of brutality in your honesty, it wouldn't land in the same way. And we've all had this experience, right? Where you get this reaction. Okay.

Well, you know, let's, okay, let's take the classic example. Women says, do I look fat get this reaction. Okay. Well, you know, let's okay, let's take the classic example. Mrs. Do I look fat in this dress? Yeah. And let's say the man initially thinks yes, he does the fatness dress. But there's no way I'm gonna say you look fat in this dress. I don't care how much you told me you wanted me to be honest. Because the reality is you don't want me to be honest about that. You want me to be honest about how I feel about you overall. I love you. I'm here for you. I want you to feel safe. I'm providing for you, et cetera. But we have to kind of figure out these sort of more nuanced ways of

honesty. And I think what happens is when people, when you experiment with being yourself or being honest, and the other person lashes out, they get reactive, it doesn't incentivize you to be as honest the next time. Right. I'm not saying you can't be honest, but there's some trauma associated with that, that makes you just hesitate a little bit and now you're not really yourself. And then after a while, the relationship sort of, it sort of bifurcates into two versions of both of you, where you're your relationship version of you. And you show up in that way where you kind of keep walking a little bit. And then there's the

real you were you with your friends like, yeah, you know, I don't know, you have that level of communication. And I think the wider that goes, the more likely the relationship is not going to last. And so to keep that from happening, meditation creates the space so that when someone says something that you don't feel aligned with and your tendency is to react, it gives you a little bit of just a little breathing room. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the frame slows down a bit. You don't react. You don't know. You can say, well, you can work through like your own little

algorithm. Did they mean that? Is that just, are they going to, did they not sleep well last night? You can work through all of that in a span of like a second. And then you may just take a breath and just say, well, you know, let's talk about it later. It's not the time or place for that. Those little moments, those moments when they add up. And that's through the meditation. It's not about perfection. Right. Yeah. It's not about perfection, but that's what you can bring to your relationship. That's what you can bring to your, your, your parent or parenting skills. That's what you can bring to your, your company. That's so it's not just relationships. It's, it's your, it's what you can bring to your company. So it's not just relationships, it's always your relationship with everything.

You get that space and that space becomes your superpower. The practice of the meditation, not immediately, but over time if you stick to it, you actually make that flip where you actually crave it rather than resent it. I think that's been part of your genius, the way that you teach, Light, is that you've made meditation seem less of a chore and people actually get excited about you. And you're like- I'm the Emily Morse of meditation.

Yeah, and I'm the Light Watkins of sex. There you go. But do you guys, do anything come up to you about sex or relationships? Is there anything in your space that we just, I know it helps me with every area of my life when I get distracted during sex or I'm thinking about things.

Like I just meditate, I have to meditate before I go on a date, before I have sex. Well, I'll share an anecdote. Please. A few years ago, there was an article that got a lot of traction in the meditation community because it said that when you meditate,

your body experiences the same neurochemistry as when you have sex. And everyone was excited and sharing it, and everyone talking about it, writing these long Facebook commentaries about it. And this one guy that I follow, I don't know him personally, but he's a really funny writer. I can't even remember his name, but anyway, he wrote this article. I think it was in Huffington Post or something. He said something to the effect of, you know, it's interesting this whole correlation between meditation and sex. Just because when I'm meditating, I think about sex all the time.

Like I often think about sex, but I've never once thought about meditation while I was having sex. Right. So I don't know. I don't know how that translates. No, it translates to the fact that it's so deep within you that when you are having sex, it can be a meditative experience that you're not actually thinking about it. Right. It is the meditation. Yeah.

Sex is the meditation. It is. I think so. Are the breath work? Do you teach breath work as well? Because to me, that was also a game-changer in recent years to realize like How I don't breathe properly how I've learned how to just take the deep breaths I don't teach it, but I'm a huge fan of breath work. I do a lot of breath work myself but you know when you get into the nuances of these practices you understand that there they are

to the nuances of these practices, you understand that there are, there's so many layers of understanding to each one. And so you just kind of pick which, like I'm the non-directive meditation guy, which means within the meditation space, there are different styles, focus-based meditation styles. And then there's like non-directive styles, which means you let your

mind roam free. You don't try to control your thoughts. You don't, it's almost like an anti-focus approach. And so I'm really proficient at that because I find that to be the easiest one for busy urban professionals. And so, yeah, I've kind of carved a lane out for myself to be this a bit of a more higher in premium experience meditation teacher. I don't do guided meditations. I don't really do breath work or anything like that. I think those are all great as a starter techniques, but ultimately you want to graduate to a silent practice that you're doing on your own without anybody telling you what to think about or what to imagine.

Cool. You talk a lot about the power of being consistent and discipline. And it's something that I struggle with and it's something that I always think, oh, I don't have time, but I know it's about prioritizing the time. But it is really impressive,

but it also, I think I remember once someone telling me it was like some monk or somewhere and he was like you know routine is curative. I'm like yeah but I don't like a routine. I don't want to be told what to do. But you realize that why there's all these talks now about like the morning routine and getting it all you know making sure there's things that you do to set you up for success. And I feel like that's a lot of what you talk about whether it's in your book, the daily doses, or on your Instagram. But you weren't just born that way, right? Like you had to learn some of these things. No, I was not at all. And I don't even consider myself to be all that disciplined to be perfectly

honest with you. What I am good at though, is being honest with myself. I've gotten a lot better at being honest with myself. So before, of course, I would take on too much and try to go cold turkey in certain areas and then swing back in the other direction with a vengeance. And now, as I'm a lot more mature, I am able to see my flaws for what they are and accommodate for them and build in little stop gaps.

And just an example of that is when it came to the book, my first book that I wrote, which is called The Inner Gym, a 30-day workout for strengthening happiness. I had been dragging my feet with these outlines and these chapters and these edits for literally almost four years, right? And I got so tired of thinking about this book and talking about the book and telling people

this book is coming, but it never was coming, that one day I literally got out a sheet of paper and I composed a contract between me and a buddy of mine. And I said, I am contracting myself to finish this book so that it's published ready by such and such date which is probably like two months from that day. And here is a check for, I think it was $4,000, which was way more than I could afford to lose. And if I do not have the book ready to be published

by this date, friend, you are obligated to take this check and cash it and spend it on whatever you feel inclined to spend it on. Wow. And I tell you, all the excuses went out the window. All this time freed up and I was all of a sudden, the accountability invested. Yeah. I invested myself in finishing this project. I knew that that's what I needed to do because otherwise I would come up with the best sounding excuses. Yeah. Cause they're all real. Right. They're

all real. Right. That was really, but they all went real. Yeah, like they're all real. Right. That was really, but they all went away. They all evaporated. Once I handed my friend that check with that contract, and it was completely out of my hands. That's so brilliant. Yeah, tell me more about that. I think it's just about being honest with yourself. And really, the only way to do it is to be dishonest with yourself so many times

that you just can't even stand it anymore. So luckily I've gotten to the life stage where I've bullshitted myself so much that I just, I can't even tolerate my own bullshit anymore. And Elizabeth Gilbert talks about that. She's like true change doesn't happen until you get so fed up with your own bullshit that you just can't take it anymore. And that's been my experience. So I'm not in the discipline category. I'm in the I'm so tired of bullshitting myself category that I can't take it anymore. I guess you're right. I understand that.

That makes me feel like you're much more human, but you're right because some people are bored, very disciplined. Like if I don't do this thing, it will ruin my day and I've had to very carefully. Oftentimes, it does involve staff following up with me and making should happen and being accountable because otherwise I'll just run rampant. This won't all happen. Well, here's the other thing.

Okay, let's flip it then, right? Everyone's disciplined at something. But the question is, is that thing good for you? Is it good for the world? Right? So I would argue that somebody who is binge watching Netflix shows on a regular is disciplined at binge watch. I can't do it.

I can't sit in front of the television for hours and hours and hours. No matter how enjoyable the show is, because I just don't have that level of discipline. But some people are like that. Some people are disciplined every Sunday. They're at brunch. I can't do that either. I can't be on that kind of routine. So everyone has discipline

with something. The question is, is it adding value to your life or not? No judgment, just asking the question. Is it adding value to your life or not? And if there's something holding you back, it's probably the fact that you're not being honest with yourself about some aspect of your life that could be adding more value, but you're more invested in something that is not adding as much value into your life. So how do we find those things then? Research and development, just like the drug companies. You have the R&D department. Yeah, you have the R&D your life split test. Seriously, right? And eventually you'll get fed up. You get fed up eventually. I get that.

The system is rigged. The house is rigged. Everybody gets fed up at some point. Some people may take 70 years. Some people may take 20 years. But everyone will reach a point where they just can't take it anymore. And that's where change happens. It's not about someone telling you like,

I really think you should stop or I really think you should get organized or I really think you should. It's that we have to not be able to take it anymore. And that's the step. Okay, because we're the ones creating the very important sounding excuses. Change is not going to happen until those excuses go away. In my experience. Yeah, that's true. And a lot of the excuses are I don't have time. Yeah, I always store and I've just learned to say in recent years, I used to say, Well, I didn't have time. I I always say, and I've just learned to say in recent years, I used to say,

well, I didn't have time, I have time. I'm like, I often say, I haven't prioritized that yet in my life, I haven't prioritized it. Because that's so much more of the truth. We all have 24 hours in a day. And I just have to say, I haven't been able to prioritize that habit. It just makes me feel better in some ways

than just saying out of time, because I know it's a bullshit excuse. Don't you agree in a way? I don't have time is like Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's like it's like Star Wars. It's not real. It sounds great. It's exciting to say I don't have time and I'm doing all this, but it's a fictional story that you created to justify whatever dramas or adventures you find yourself on. And you know, and we all do it. How do we get out of that cycle? It's so pervasive.

How do we get out of that? I think we have to replace that story with another story that suits where we envision our lives going. Right? So we have to buy into that story enough. And I really do feel like the script is embedded in our spiritual DNA. And that's what we talk about following our heart, listening to the still, small voice. That messaging is coming from that script of our highest potential. And it's never going to go away

until we start to act upon it. The reason we don't act upon it is because there's not as much certainty with taking a leap of faith as there is with, let me just watch these 15 episodes of this show, because I know it's a beginning and there's an end and it's going to take me through the whole rollercoaster and there's going to be this payoff at the end, hopefully. With Following Our Heart, there's no obvious payoff to that, right? And there's all these cautionary tales of other people who have kind of half-assed, tried to follow their heart, but then gave up or fell short or whatever. And we're in this society, which tells us that our happiness is not in following our heart, it is in the next vacation, it's in the next, you know, paycheck

or whatever. So we're up, we're fighting an uphill spiritual battle, most of us, and there's no cheerleader saying, you know, keep going, you can do it. Because everybody's on the same hill. Exactly. We're all exhausted. We keep looking down at the people partying down at the base of the mountain, right? And we're keep thinking, well, maybe they have the, that's the answer, just to just

don't put all this effort into it. Just, you know, life is short. I only live once. Let me just relax and chill and blah, blah, blah. The problem is we can't sleep at night. Right. That's the issue. Right. No matter how comfortable you are, you can't sleep at night. So there's a correlation there between being fulfilled inside and being able to lay your head down can't sleep at night. So there's a correlation there between being fulfilled inside and being able to lay your head down on your pillow at night and fall asleep and wake up feeling refreshed instead of waking up feeling like you just landed in Shanghai and you have a whole day's worth of business meetings to attend to. Like that's how most people are living their lives, which is why Starbucks is a $25 billion corporation.

Right. We need the caffeine, we need the thing. We gotta keep going all day every day. We're all functional stress addicts. We are. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back late night, dive deep into how to find true happiness. So when was the last time you needed to go to a doctor, but you pushed it off?

You know, made the excuse that you're too busy or it'll heal on its own or that you don't really need help. All the excuses. Trust me, I'd do the same thing. But let's be real, if you're not feeling your best, whether it's like a weird rash, a persistent cough, or maybe there's like this mystery ache, it can totally affect your sex life. I mean, who's in the mood for intimacy when you're googling, is this normal at 2 a.m.? Well, that's where ZocDoc comes in. And let me tell you, it's a game changer. So ZocDoc is a free app and website where you search and compare high quality in your network doctors. And then you just click and you instantly book an appointment.

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If you have a doctor who gets you, this is a confidence booster. So stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to zocdoc.com slash Emily to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's z-o-c-d-o-c dot com slash Emily, zocdoc.com slash Emily. I know you've written a lot about happiness too and finding your internal happiness. It has to come from within. But yet we think it's from getting that job, the boat, the car, the wife, the husband, the thing, the life. And that doesn't give us happiness because it has to come from internal, our internal compass following our internal joy, right?

We got to cultivate it from the inside out. That's what she, that's what she said. Yes. Yeah. You know, I look, I think when people hear this from people like me named light, they probably, a lot of people may dismiss it. Oh, he's one of those people. And it's where woo woo woo woo. Airy types, doesn't believe in success and all that. That's not the message. I am not anti-promotion, Ferrari, orgasm, none of that. I'm pro-cultivate your happiness inside because we live in a world that is impermanent. And the Buddhists and the Eastern

philosophers and sages and gurus have been talking about this for time in memorial. Everything is changing all the time. And if you look at your day-to-day experiences and be honest with yourself, your so-called bad days are not days where someone is trying to kill you or where something really life or death happens to you. A bad day really is when you have a series of experiences that are really just different variations of this impermanent world we live in change. Things are changing in ways that are not aligning with your preferences. And if you can't adapt to those changes enough times throughout a

day, then it starts to create this sort of suffering feeling inside, which is a lack of fulfillment, a lack of contentedness. In other words, I wish something different were happening than what I'm currently experiencing. And that's a bad day. I had a bad day today. So the next time somebody says I had a bad day, you go, okay, what happened? They're gonna start listing off a series of things

that changed that they could not adapt to. That's a bad day. Now, does that mean everybody on the planet who experiences those things are unable to adapt to them and they also have a bad day. Now, does that mean everybody on the planet who experiences those things are unable to adapt to them? And they also have a bad day? No, of course not. Some people are experiencing worse things, but they're adapting to them. And you look at them in their life and they're smiling and they're joking and they're finding the silver lining and they're feeling optimistic. So that same type of thing that happened to you

that caused the bad day could have happened to someone else and that could have been the best day they've had in a long time because of the way they adapted to it. So I think that's what it comes down to. Let's talk about that. Our choice in the moment when something happens, how do we decide what choices to make?

You're seeing it as the glass half full instead of half empty, right? That's kind of like the same things can happen to people and it's how we interpret it in the moment throughout the day. Right, but here's the mistake we make. We are depending upon it to be an intellectual choice, right? And I've written about this before.

Happiness in the sort of spiritual community, people go, oh, happiness is a choice, choose to be happy. I don't think it works like that. I don't think happiness is like, oh, I'm going to, instead of wearing a blue shirt, I'm going to wear a yellow shirt today. It's not like this. It's not that easy. I think happiness is more like doing a pull-up, right?

Emily, can you do a pull-up? Sort of, sometimes. A full extension pull up? Probably not. From a dead hang? Yeah. And pull yourself all the way up. Yeah, I can.

Chin over the bar. I might need a little help with my feet, but yeah, I'm pretty strong. So that, I think happiness is like that. I think people think about it, okay, when the demand comes to be happy, I'll be able, I should be able to do it, you know, maybe with a little bit of help, I can, I can, I can knock that out. But with pull-ups,

it's not arbitrary. You have to train to do that, right? Nobody, nobody can just jump up on a bar. You've never done any kind of back exercises or arm exercises and you just pull yourself up, right? It's one of the most deceptively hard things to do. But if you can do a pull-up, you are fit. If you can do five full extension pull-ups, you are a fit person. Right. So happiness is like that in the sense that you have to train the inner muscles that are responsible for you feeling content, even in the face of discomfort, even in the face of the impermanent world that we live in. And the way to do that, of course, meditation is very, I would say meditation

is the most efficient way to do that. Meditation is kind of like going to the pull-up analogy. It's kind of like having a band that you can put your knees in that can give you support and you can pull yourself. So that way you kind of cultivate the muscles. So meditation is important and daily meditation is the only way to make meditation really pay off in the way that it's designed to. Every now and again, I'm doing, following, listening to what my body, I'm going to try this one week and that in the next week, that's nice, but it's not going to think about meditation like your, your investments,

right? It's the cumulative effect. It's being in the market every day over time that leads to the big dividends down the line. So what meditation does very, very well, probably better than anything else, is it counteracts stress. And stress is the reason why you can't get it up at night. Right. Right. That's what it comes down to. If we're talking about root causes here, we can again, BS ourselves, think it's about the quality of the mattress or the perfume the person's wearing. No, it's stress. It comes down to stress. And meditation is a very powerful way.

It's like kryptonite to stress. It is. Right? Stress cannot survive in a deeply meditated nervous system. But here's the thing, we're getting stressed every day. Every day where there's an incoming amount of stress, just like every day you get bills. The bills pile up. So your whole intention with being a working adult is to make sure you're in a profession

where you're getting more money coming in than you have money going out. And if you can do that, then you can have some pretty enjoyable experiences in life. If not, life becomes very unenjoyable and time consuming. You don't have time for anything. Everything is busy. Right? So think about stress like that. There's a stress debt that a lot of people have from childhood and from burning the candle at both ends as a young person. And then when you get to be like a mature adult in your thirties and forties, you have this stress debt, which usually starts to inhibit your ability to sleep at night, which is what we talked about earlier. So that's when people get really interested in meditation

and they start doing it. And guess what the first positive symptom they experience is in almost every case they can sleep at night. Why? Because the meditation burned off that stress that was causing them from being able to rest in a horizontal position. And so my job is really not to sell anybody on meditation, because I think we're all pretty much sold these days. Yeah. Everyone should give it to me. But to help make the practice as accessible as possible.

So you stop talking yourself out of it. So you take it out of the chore category and you put it in the the puppies and the Sunday brunch and in the category with all the things that you like to do already. How do we do that? Put it in the category. How do you make it fun? Like I've done TM personally.

I've done three silent Vipassana retreats over the years. I am better at the twice a day, but sometimes it's just once and then I beat myself up. It's not twice. But I know when it is the twice, two times a day, I feel so much better. Still of stress, still of anxiety, but I'm just clearer and it helps every other area of my life. The key to accessibility with meditation is really about the relationship you have with your mind, with your thoughts. That's really, that's what it comes down to because most people will berate their mind or I was going to use some kind of BDSM reference, but they'll whip the mind and treat the mind as though it's wrong for thinking thoughts. And what the masters are proficient at doing is making love to their mind, to treating their mind not like the enemy, but as their beautiful partner in this meditation journey.

And so because of that shift in their attitude, and that's really all it is, is to shift in your attitude because there's nothing you can really do about it. You can't stop your mind by thinking about not thinking, because that's a thought. But if you start to embrace the mind as perfect, whole, and complete, and not intellectually, but sensually, like you really feel that way,

what you're gonna find over time, this is not gonna happen overnight, but over time what you're gonna find over time, this is not gonna happen overnight, but over time what you're gonna find is that the thoughts become fewer and farther in between and the mind becomes more settled and then meditation becomes more enjoyable. It does, yeah. Well let's talk about meditation and relationships. I often hear from people, let's say daily, who have a really hard time being in the moment

during sex, being present. And I would say, well, have you ever meditated? Your breath anchors you, paying attention to the senses, your five senses of the moment that allows to ground you in the moment so you're not as distracted. But what have you found? Like how has meditation impacted relationships

in people's sex life and intimate lives? What do you think? I'm so glad you brought this up because I have a lot to say about this actually. I love it. Well, I think there's, I wouldn't call it a misconception, but I think we put a lot of weight on the practice of meditation to improve our sex life or to

improve our life in general in ways that aren't fully realistic. And I equate in this regard, I equate meditate to, it's kind of like, you know, Jiffy Lube. It's like getting your oil changed in your car. Like it's definitely a necessary maintenance thing to do, but it's not gonna fix your transmission. It's not gonna fix your carburetor if it falls out. So you still have to go to a body shop sometimes. I'm a huge fan of lube, so it does fix a lot of things.

I love a good lube. So I just wanna make that disclaimer. So for myself, like I've been meditating for 20 years, am I some kind of sexual God because of that? No, I would never put myself in that category. But I'll tell you what has changed. What has changed is I have to have a connection with somebody in order to engage sexually with them. I can't do the whole casual thing anymore. Like I used to back in the old days, back in my premeditation days. I mean, granted I was younger,

but still it's just, it's very clear to me. I have no, there's no ambiguity around that. And here's the thing, even though I've been meditating, if I'm with somebody that I don't have a heart connection with, I can't get excited. I literally can't get excited. But if I'm with someone who I have a heart connection with, even if we have an argument or whatever, it's like, I'm still engaged. I'm still invested literally and implicitly. And, um,

and I would say that's been the biggest difference is that your body speaks to you in the same way that, you know, a roommate would speak to you. You just can't ignore it. Right. Right. It's not that still small voice that people talk about it in, in, in metaphysical circles. It's more of a loud, annoying voice that you just, you have to hear it. You may not do anything about it, but you, you have to hear it.

And, and whether you choose to take action upon it or not is, is really up to you. Now you talk a lot about this following your inner guide, your inner tuition, like, or that's even more, being more embodied, knowing that this person isn't resonating with me right now I'm not gonna feel that connection But also I mean that's something that I'm always working on too. Like I have all the answers. I have everything I need

What am I doing to sabotage that belief of following what I know to be true? So that's where split testing comes in and it's gonna be it's gonna take time Just like if you're running Facebook ads, you're not going to find out overnight which one is working best. You have to split test the voices inside. There's the, there's the, there's the intuition voice. There's the voice of fear, voice of pain, voice of social conditioning. All these voices are in there competing for your attention.

And unfortunately the fight flight voice is the loudest because that's where we give them the most attention to. Right. So the still small voice is just trying to be heard. And in order to allow that one to kind of over to override the other pain voices and trauma voices and all that, you just have to follow it in the little moments, the baby steps, follow it. So an example I often get is if you're in an elevator, we've all had this experience, you're in an elevator with one or two people. And what do people do in an elevator? They

stare up or they stare down, right? And if you're staring down, fine, that's what people do. And you notice the person next to you has these amazing shoes on. Don't keep it to yourself. Compliment them. Say, hey, those are really cool shoes. That's a great choice. Right? So that's your voice of intuition. That's your still small voice telling you that, you know, offering someone a compliment or an expression that helps to brighten their day, it also helps you to feel connected to

them. That stretches you, stretches you out of your comfort zone. It's a small thing. Anybody can do it. It's a great point. But it adds up and that's what causes the voice to get louder and louder. If you do that a hundred times, then you're going to be able to take bigger leaps of faith and follow your heart in bigger ways later on. I've never drawn that parallel between like that is actually trusting in the moment. I'm not overthinking it. I'm not editing it. I'm just like, you look great, girl. That's awesome. I mean, obviously you don't want to go up to the, you know, scary looking person and say, Hey, how are you doing today? You know, you don't want to start a conversation

with someone who looks dangerous or whatever. But if someone if it's a situation feels safe to you, and again, this is a feeling you have, not some, the whole of the racism, that's all this intellectualizing things. That's not really your heart telling you those people are bad. It's your conditioning telling you that that's the voice you want to override ultimately. So you have to start, that's how you start trusting that voice. And then you may find yourself maybe going up to a homeless person one day and saying, Hey, you know, because no one's ever really talked to this person or seen or made them feel seen or heard. And you have a connection with them. You're not

afraid because a lot of times it's just like with dogs, your fear attracts that fearful reaction, right? And that's what causes the drama. But if you're not afraid, you're confident in your own skin because you're now trusting your inner guidance, you know your inner guidance is not going to lead you into a dangerous situation. It's only going to lead you to situations that allow you to expand and grow. Then that translates to the way you express and the energy that they feel coming from you. And that's going to create an otherwise harmonious situation out of two people who may not have been harmonious otherwise had you not embodied that feeling. So a good way to put it.

So going back to your previous question, meditation is important, gratitude is important. You have to be grateful, right? Because gratitude keeps you present. The moment you stop being grateful, you get yank keeps you present. If you're, the moment you stop being grateful, you get yanked out of the present moment. Now you're in the future. Now you're anxious. That's what anxiety really is. Or you're remorseful. You're in the past. Oh, why didn't I do this? Why the, what was that thinking? Shame, remorse. Now you're in the

past. Anxiety, panicking. You're in the future. Worry worrying, you know, that's not present moment awareness. So when you're not in the present moment, you're not lifting your baseline level of gratitude. You're in a situation where you're hoping that everything goes your way, which chances are it's not going to go your way, which is only going to compound into this so-called bad day that you potentially are having. But being grateful, and sometimes you have to really dig in the bottom of the barrel to find the gratitude. Yeah, can you give some good, because whenever I hear gratitude,

people are like, oh yeah, I'm grateful. I gotta do my gratitude journal at night, I gotta be grateful. Like what's a way to get people, because I know it really works for me, even if I'm going to bed at night, I'm like, what are the three things that went well today that made me happy that were good?

I really try to do that practice, because we can always find the shit wrong. Do you have a way of embracing gratitude is something that also becomes fun, just like your meditation practice. Okay, so here's an algorithm that I find that works really brilliantly. Okay, take something awful that happened to you. So I'll use myself an example. I was with a girl one time, she got pregnant, right? I wanted to have the kid. She didn't want to have the kid. She got an abortion, but the way she did it was very suspect in my opinion, at the time of my life, very difficult, challenging moment for me. I thought I was going to be a father for several weeks. Turned out not to be the case.

So obviously, you wouldn't wish that on anybody on any side of that equation. But shit happens to everybody, everyone and far worse. So what I say is take a situation like that, something really awful that happened to you, not not something that traumatizes you to think about, right? If you're still working through it in therapy and it takes you into a state where you're psychotic or whatever, thinking about,

that's not what I'm talking about. A situation that you've kind of healed from, a situation that you've already kind of worked your way through, take that situation, but it's not completely resolved. You may still find yourself to be a little bit of a victim from it, like, oh, I wish that that didn't happen some regret that you have from your past take that and then start reverse engineering the gratitude

Okay, so oh, I love Engineering gratitude tell me more my example You know situation didn't work out. Okay, what's what what am I grateful for? I know I want to have a child. I know I want to want to be a father. That's that's something to be grateful for. I know for facts because of the way I felt. Yeah, I have a greater appreciation for communication

because I didn't feel like I communicated as well as I could have to keep that situation on the rails. I'm grateful for listening to my heart. When my heart said, you know, I'll support this situation, even though it didn't go that way, I knew that I was capable of that, even though I didn't really have a lot of hard evidence. Cause you don't really understand what you're committed to

until something is on the line, right? So all those different aspects of that challenging situation are reasons to be grateful. And if you can be grateful there, then it's a lot easier to say, oh, I'm grateful because I had pancakes this morning, or I'm grateful because I have legs, or I can see, and you know,

those kind of more surface level aspects of gratitude. So grateful for the lessons, yeah. But then you can apply it to anything. And then hopefully the lag time starts to decrease so that when something crazy happens to you in the moment, you can just automatically switch into reverse engineering gratitude. What am I grateful for about this happening in this moment? Right? And it's not about denying and all that.

It's just about you can do both. You can have the experience, you can go through it, you can feel the pain and whatever extent of grief you have. And you can find some semblance of gratitude, which may keep you present enough to see an opportunity that's also in that moment. And that's, that's, that's also in that moment. And that's where you start to find all the serendipity and all that in life. Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's like, because I know that like even in last year, I made a lot of mistakes. I always make a lot of mistakes. I've made so many mistakes. I learned from them all the time. But there's one area in particular where I keep going, I can't believe I did that. But ultimately, I see I learned so much from this. On the moments where I'm tired,

I'm going to bed at night or something triggers it. I'm like, yep, if I didn't make that mistake, I wouldn't be able to, I wouldn't have this problem right now. Sometimes it's really hard. But I guess there's gotta be another way of like, I learned so much by this process of trusting other people when I didn't trust my own gut or whatever it is.

Because- I used to have this thing, this agreement with myself and when I was a yoga teacher, I taught yoga for several years back in the day. And I'd have these big yoga classes and they were obviously like really attractive women in the class. And it's hard to not give them attention, right? As a straight male who loves women.

Yeah, I've been in those yoga classes. I got a lot of corrections. Yeah, it's hard to not give a correct. But I had to deal with myself. I said, if I ever go and correct an attractive woman, then to balance that off, I have to find the hairiest, sweatiest guy and give him the same adjustment,

just to keep myself honest. I have to give him the same adjustment. So it kept me from getting all, you know, how some of these teachers can be all touchy. Yeah people I've been in there because I didn't want to have to put my hands between the thighs of some hairy sweaty guy Right, but anyway point is you can apply that same approach to Gratitude right in other words if things are going amazing in your day or in your week, and naturally you're grateful for that. Like we were really good at taking credit for things

go well. Oh yeah, manifested that put on my vision board. Yeah, I was positive. Yeah, this is what you have to do to make sure you can do the same thing. But we're so good at evading responsibility when it comes to the bad stuff that happens. But what if we took that same energy when good stuff happens and we apply it to the worst things in our opinion, the worst things that happened that week. And we force ourselves to find the gratitude in that. So, you know, you have a week where you get fired. Yeah.

Okay. So, you know, you have a week where you get fired. Yeah. Okay. I now have an opportunity to do exactly what my heart is telling me to do. This job wasn't right for me. It wasn't right for me. Now I have time there. Like you just listed out. It doesn't mean that you necessarily even have to believe it fully. Even if you just believe the 20%, right? That's enough to offset the suffering that comes from being entrenched in, you know, why did this happen, you know, the kind of victim mentality that we all are subject to from time to time. And then again, it's a practice, it's the pull-up. You have to practice. It's not going to feel easy at first, but the more you do it, guess what?

Doing one pull-up is going to be easy one day, but the more you do it, guess what? Doing one pull-up is going to be easy one day, but doing five pull-ups is gonna be hard. But then a year later, doing five is gonna be easy, but doing 10 is gonna be hard. And then next thing you know, you're gonna jump up there, and without even thinking about it, you're as light as a feather doing your 10 pull-ups.

And so you've developed the strength to be able to apply that level of happiness to almost any situation. And so now only the big things knock you off your, your balance or, you know, little things may knock you off temporarily for five minutes here for an hour there, but no longer will you have days where something happens to you for five minutes and it hijacks your entire month?

Well, that's what happens. It's the hijacking that's a problem. But you're saying it's a skill set. It takes practice. It's a muscle. It's a muscle. You got to build it from like communicating with your partner to masturbation practices. Light, this has been fabulous.

I could talk to you for hours. I know. I want to ask you the five questions we ask all of our guests. They're quickie questions. So you don't have to overthink. Love a good quickie. This was our quickie. Biggest turn on. Biggest turn on is self-awareness. Biggest turn off.

The lack of self-awareness. Narcissism. What makes good sex? Connection. Heart connection. Something you would tell your younger self about sex and relationships. self-awareness, narcissism. What makes good sex? Connection, heart connection. Something you would tell your younger self about sex and relationships. Go for inner beauty as much as you go for outer beauty. What's the number one thing you wish everyone knew

about sex? That if you really care about someone, it's so much better. Oh, try it without alcohol. Oh yeah. In your system. Or any altering substance. Sober sex is the best sex. I agree.

I bet you. Oh, thank you so much, Light Watkins. Tell us all the things. How people can find you, get on your plan. Tell us about it. So the book is called, get on my plan, Knowing Where to Look, 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration. You can find all the information,

booksellers at lightwatkins.com. I'm at Light Watkins on all social media platforms that matter. I have to do retreats and I'd love to meet you and connect with you digitally or in person. Okay, amazing. Thank you so much for being here, Light. You are wise and inspirational

and this is really going to help all of our listeners. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Sacks with Emily and be sure to like, subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or a partner. You can find me on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or X, and Facebook. It's all at Sex with Emily. Oh, and I've been told I give really good email. So sign up on SexWithEmily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles

for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. And if you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating, or relationships, call my hotline 559-TALK-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or just go to SexWithEmily.com slash ask Emily. Was it good for you? Email me, feedback at SexWithEmily.com. you