Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: Meditation for Stress with Emily Fletcher & Tom Cronin

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Join Hala for a live recorded episode of Young and Profiting podcast featuring Emily Fletcher and Tom Cronin, experts in meditation and mindfulness. They will share actionable advice on how meditation can positively impact your health, explaining the different types of meditation, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Hello everybody, you are listening to a live episode of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast. I'm your host Talitaha, and today we are discussing the power of meditation to alleviate stress. According to the American Psychological Association, US adults are reporting the highest levels of stress since the early days of the pandemic, and more than 80% report emotions associated with prolonged stress. Daily stressors and that constant underlying strain that we can feel can take huge emotional, mental, and physical tools

on our bodies. So today I've coordinated this panel to help us understand how to best thrive through stressful times in our lives. On stage with us today is Emily Fletcher, who is the founder of Ziva, a company that blends three key elements, mindfulness, meditation, and manifesting to help their clients

become more balanced and present in life. Emily is also the author of Stress Less, Accomplish More, Meditation for Extraordinary Performance. Also here on stage with us is Tom Cronin. He is a meditation teacher, transformation coach, speaker, and author of six books. The newest book is called The Portal, How Meditation Can Save the World, and it has an accompanying film and app. This is how today's session is gonna work. If you guys are familiar with these app live sessions, this is how they always go. We'll have an hour of guided conversation

where I've perhaps really meaningful questions for Tom and Emily to go through. And then we're gonna open it up for Q&A. So if you're in the audience, we want this to be an interactive session. So we're in for an amazing session. Like I mentioned, we've got top meditation experts. Emily has helped Navy SEALs athletes, Emmy and Grammy award-winning artists. Tom has worked with top companies like Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Mind Valley. So needless to

say, I am super excited to learn from the best when it comes to meditation and how we can reduce our stress. So, I see Emily is here, happy to be with you guys, Emily and Tom. And I want to start off with how you guys both got into meditation, how you became experts in this field. And I want to start with ladies first, even though Emily just got here. We'll start with ladies first. I know Emily, you had a 10-year career on Broadway.

You say that you were stressed, anxious, and we're suffering from premature aging. So tell us, how did you turn to meditation and how did meditation first begin to change your life? What you said is correct. I used to be on Broadway for 10 years, singing, dancing, acting. And my last Broadway show was a chorus line where I was

understudying three of the leads. So it's like, imagine going to work and having no idea what job you're going to do, which role you're going to play. So it's basically in this constant state of fight or flight, and that led to going gray, a 26 debilitating insomnia, and it's confusing when you're living your dream and miserable. And so thankfully I found meditation and on the first day of my first class I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months. I have every night, if it's left every night since that was 12 years ago, I stopped going

gray. I'm 42 now and I have like three gray hairs or legitimately going gray in my 20s and I didn't get sick for 8 and a half years, like not even a cold. And so I just thought, why does everybody not do this? So I left Broadway, I went to India, and I started what became a three-year training process to teach. And then since starting Ziva, I've taught about 50,000 people how to meditate on their own, and my book is called Stress Less, Accomplish More, and it's been translated into 14 languages. And we just came out with the Kids' Course, is really exciting, because I have a son now. And people are always asking, can I teach my kid?

I want to share this with my kid. And it's a different deal. So anyway, it just feels so exciting to be alive at this time in history when people are waking up to the fact that we can't just caffeinate all day and drink ourselves to sleep at night, that there are these ancient technologies and modalities that make us better and that also make life so much more fun.

It's like, if we can be less stressed and have better sex and have more fun and make more money, like, why would we not be doing that? Oh my gosh, I totally agree. I feel like there's so many benefits to meditation and I feel like we've only just tapped the service. So I want to move over to Tom. I know that you worked as a finance broker and like Emily, you felt super stressed and anxious and you previously said that your stress wasn't so much about the job that you had, but rather how you related to your job. And you mentioned you had a lot of red lights that were flashing.

So can you talk to us about some of the biggest warning signs that you needed to change your relationship with your work and what drew you to meditation initially? Yeah, thanks. It's great to be here. I started out in finance very much at Wolfelwalstreet style broker. When I saw that film with Leonardo, I just couldn't believe how well I captured the industry that I was in back then. I started the same year as Jordan Bell Fort, 1987, and I was in a massive trading room

floor, and I got swept along into that very much that sort of decadent 1980s, 1990s, sort of lifestyle. And it was kind of really unchecked. And it was just kind of wild, crazy, wild west of the finance industry back then. And before long, I was just into the lifestyle of all of that, a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, a lot of late nights, and really a very reckless type sort of behavior. And the symptoms, these red lights that we're showing up in my body, and I like in symptoms in our body as red lights on the dashboard, that really are

alerting you to an anomaly that needs to be addressed, not the anomaly itself, but the cause of the anomaly. But I was ignoring all of that and I was getting start off with insomnia like Emily was saying, then it sort of continued to morph into a lot of anxiety and then that continued to grow and morph. So it's like a red light. If you don't address it, it starts to just doesn't go away, it starts to exacerbate. Well, the problem starts to exacerbate and this continued on until eventually I was having these extreme panic attacks, which I didn't know what they were. I didn't get them diagnosed. I didn't see a doctor. I just had these episodes of complete fear and dread, curled up in a ball, couldn't breathe, cold, clammy sweats, you know,

couldn't face anyone, couldn't leave the house or was stuck in a cubicle at work and just really didn't know what the hell was going on. But I kind of just kept pushing through them for quite a while, you know, years almost. And then eventually this morphed into even a deep dark depression. And finally into a full-blown nervous breakdown at 29. And so that was kind of like at the end of a 10-year sort of period of me being in a very chaotic sort of lifestyle and the start of my journey into meditation and mindfulness. And that was, it was a complete game changer for me. It was, it was a bit like what Emily was saying that I, when I discovered this and the first thing that I noticed as well, like Emily, was that I started to sleep.

It was the first time in a long, long time that I could start sleeping. So that blew me away, how quickly I could fall asleep. But then the anxiety dropped away, the depression dropped away, and I continued on in that job, I actually continued on for another 16 more years. It wasn't the job that was the problem. It was the lifestyle, the habits, the way of living, the response, mechanism in my body to all of that. And so I had a 26-year career in finance. The first 10 years was with extreme stress responses and the next 16 was a very calm, non-drinking

little drug-taking broker. And it allowed me to have a great deal of sustainability. Unfortunately, the grays didn't stay away. I've got plenty of grays, so I didn't have the same luck as Emily there, unfortunately. I think that's so funny. And I know you guys are talking about sleep as a benefit. So I guess it makes sense to kind of move into the benefits

of meditation. And a lot of people believe that they have their health routines covered. They exercise, they have good physical activity. They eat well. And we forget about meditation. And including myself, even though I'm a self-improvement podcaster, I've had episodes about meditation.

And I think I meditate to a degree. But I don't think that like I'm, you know, have fully developed my practice of meditation. So what can daily meditation add to a perceived healthy person's life? Why don't we start with Emily? Like, what are the benefits of meditation that people often don't realize is a benefit of meditation?

So I also was a perceived healthy person. I was singing and dancing on Broadway. So your body is your instrument. And so I was very aware of, you know, eating for my performance, moving my body, but the thing is that if you're stressed, then your body is going to be riddled with adrenaline and cortisol, which are stress hormones, and they are acidic in nature. And when your body becomes acidic, it leads to inflammation. And according to Ayurvedic Medicine, inflammation is the basis

of almost all chronic disease. And so even though you may feel okay in the now, if you're chronically stressed, which means too much adrenaline and cortisol, then you likely have a high acidity level. And that can impact your digestion, your skin age, your brain age. It can lead to a premature atrophying of the brain and fertility, erectile dysfunction,

lack of female ability to orgasm. It's a whole range of things where people think like, oh, meditation is just like a cute bubble bath for my brain or like a pedicure. Like I'll get around to that when I have some more time. When really I feel like Tom and I are on a bit of a pedestal saying like, no, no, this is the single most important piece of mental hygiene that you really need to be practicing every day. Like you wouldn't think of going a day without brushing your teeth or sleeping or eating vegetables

while on earth are we allowing this poison, this literal poison of stress chemistry to continue to swirl around our bodies. When there is of scientifically proven, totally enjoyable antidote that doesn't just remove the stress chemistry, it also floods your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin, which are bliss chemicals. And the cool thing about dopamine and serotonin is not only do they feel good, not only do they make you happy, but they also are alkaline in nature. And just like when we eat vegetables, the body becomes more alkaline. Similarly when we meditate, when our body becomes more alkaline, we can reverse our body age, we can become a less hospitable place for disease.

Like I said, sex drive can improve. Decision making abilities can improve. Your general presence gets better because you're not constantly reviewing the past and rehearsing the future. Meditation is taking your right brain to the gym in a way that allows you to be in the right now. And you could really argue that if you're not present, if you're not in the actual driver's seat of your brain and body and life, then what's the point? You know, if you're just a zombie going through your life, scrolling through your phone and worrying about the future, then why are you even here? Like, are you going to regret that on your deathbed?

And they're like, oh, why didn't I savor that kiss or make that person laugh or write that book or start that company while I was too busy in the past and the future. I wasn't fully available in the now. And so it's really, I mean, it feels miraculous and I'm sure that Tom would agree with me on this. Sometimes I feel like a used car salesman when I really go through and list all the scientifically proven benefits of meditation. But the question that I wish people would ask is not how can meditation improve so many things, but rather like why is stress messing so many things up? Because we have a solution for it.

Oh my gosh, I love this. I feel like this is going to be such a good session. I'm so excited. If you guys are enjoying this room, make sure you ping your friends into the room, because I think that we've got two incredible experts and I want everybody to hear all this value. So, Tom, I don't know if you have anything to add in terms of the benefits. I know Emily covered a lot of ground, but maybe you can talk more about the benefits or even some of the myths or misconceptions when it comes to meditation. Yeah, you know, it's interesting Emily just covered so much ground. That was beautiful. So listen to her speak so well about all of that.

And I've just come off a coaching call with a client who's actually a free diver. And she wanted some support with being able to go to deeper levels of depth in her free diving. And she was referencing one of the world's greatest free divers, William Trubridge, I've never heard of him before. But one of the things that she quoted from him just was so relevant to what we're talking about now. And he said that thoughts take up oxygen. And what they're trying to achieve in their free diving to get deeper and deeper is to have less and less thoughts. And what just came to me while you're asking that question, how was that we have morphed into a society that has become extremely cerebral.

We do not have any gaps in our day that is not consuming information, whether it's, and there's nothing wrong with clubhouse, but whether it's clubhouse or Instagram or Facebook or emails, Netflix, it's really a saturation of mental stimulation. And what we're underestimating is the impact of that degree of stimulation on our mind and how that trickles down into

our body. And why meditation is starting to become such an important part of our society is because it's got to balance out the extreme mental stimulation that we're facing right now. And you know, I always come back to Dr. Bruce Lipton from Stanford University Medical School's quote that he says that 95% of all sickness is a result of stress. Exactly what Emily's saying, you know, we should be asking, how can we let this toxic thing stress affect our society so much?

And a 95% of all sickness, if we want to remove 95% of sickness from our society, we simply have to eliminate stress. And that comes from the amount of neurological activity that we have. So meditation is going to play an incredible part in quieting the mind so that we get the incredible healing capacity in the body

to get activated. And this, what blew me away the most was that I was really, really not in a good place. I had suicidal tendencies, anxiety, depression, insomnia, agrophobia, panic attacks, like I said. On top of that, I was constantly having colds and flus. And obviously we're in a world right now that's having a lot of sickness coming up. What Blirmy away was when I started meditating, all of that went away, like literally all of it went away. Not just bits and little bits and bobs, but all of that went away, like literally all of it went away. Not just lips, little bits and little bits and bobs, but all of it went away.

It went away because just one thing happened. I was having less thoughts. I was using a technique. My technique is a mantra-based meditation that enabled my mind to get into a state of stillness. Now, when my mind went into a state of stillness, the corresponding relationship with my mind and my body meant that my body went into a state of stillness, the corresponding relationship with my mind and my body meant that my body went into a state of stillness. And what that did was activate a healing mechanism within my body called the parasympathetic

nervous system to start to reorganize the body. And the body's got this remarkable capacity down to the cellular level of intelligence to optimize itself. It's actually designed to optimize itself and heal. But we just haven't been creating the environment for that to happen. Stillness of mind and body is one of the environments that is the most effective for that healing capacity to take place. So when I realised that I didn't need to take drugs, I didn't need, as in pharmaceutical drugs to heal a problem, I didn't need to see psychologists, I kept therapists or

psychiatrists. My body literally fixed all of that up. It was quite remarkable. And that's why I became so passionate about it and why I started this film as a project and created the film The Portal to get this out to the world. And today's conversation is really centered around meditation for stress. That is the main point of today's conversation. And we're about to get into the meat and potatoes of the conversation.

I think a great way to kick it off is to start with Emily, because Emily, you've got a pretty well-known quote that stress makes us stupid. So I'd love to talk about that. Why does stress make us stupid, tell us? Yeah, it's actually on the back of my book. It's stress makes us stupid, sick, and slow. It's like I know that sounds like a harsh truth, but it's true, because when the body gets stressed, when it goes into that fight or flight, it basically starts preparing for a predatory attack. And so the body's in the luncheon to a series of chemical reactions. Blood will thicken and coagulate, bladder and bowels evacuate so that we're light on our feet, and so we can really, you know, fight or flee. Our skin will become quite acidic so that we're light on our feet. And so we can really fight or flee.

Our skin will become quite acidic so that we don't taste good if a tiger were to bite into us. It's one of the reasons why stress prematurely ages us. Sex drive goes to the back burner because like who cares about making another meat suit if this meat suits in danger. Blood pressure increases. Adrenaline and cortisol go through the roof, which I mentioned earlier. And so this series of chemical reactions is very useful if your demands are predatory

attacks, but if your demands are in laws, kids, homeschooling, pandemic, emails, then this fight or flight thing is now disallowing us from performing at the top of our game. This fight or flight thing is taking so much energy from our prefrontal cortex, which is the decision making, which is the fear center of the brain. And, you know, we've all experienced this, when we're in fight or fight,

when we're afraid, we simply don't make great decisions because we can't even access the decision-making part of our brain. And it's like, if you get into a fight with your partner and it gets heated, and then finally, you would retreat to the bedroom, and then two hours later, when you calm down, then you start coming up with all these witty comebacks.

And you're like, why couldn't I have thought of that? And well, that's the amygdala takes over. And all of that blood, all of that energy goes to the fear center instead of the creativity center instead of the decision-making center. Also, when we start meditating, like the reason why we get so much smarter, which now scientists have proven that you can increase your IQ by 12 point meditation practice. You can also reverse age by something crazy like 20 years. We've known for a while you could reverse your body age by somewhere between 8 to 15 years depending on which study you're looking at, but now they're starting to look at the brain

of meditators and they're seeing 50-year-olds with brains of 30-year-old neuroplasticity, with the brain's ability to change itself, neurogenesis, which is the brain's ability to generate new neurons. But the other way that we get smarter when we meditate is that the right and left hemispheres of the brain start dancing with each other in a new way. And if you've ever looked at a human brain, it actually slips right down the middle. It's two separate entities. And the only thing that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain is something

called the corpus callosum. And now, you've known that meditators, this meditators, the non-meditators weren't able to know if that was causal or correlated, but now we know that the longer we meditate the thicker that Corpus Colossum becomes, which okay, like cool party trick, but why why? Colossum. Well, it quite literally is the bridge between your creativity and your critical mind. It's the bridge between your masculine and feminine. It's the bridge between your planning and your presence. And so we want these two parts of the brain dancing with each other and the longer we

meditate, the thicker the corpus callosum becomes. And the way that shows up in your performance is that you're able to come up with those amazing, flowing ideas even in the middle of a high stress, high demand situation. Super interesting, Emily. Thank you so much for breaking down what happens to our brain and body on a biological level. Tom, I'm interested if you have anything to add in terms of how meditation can actually

reverse the stress or response in our body. And I know you talk a lot about the difference between overwhelm and anxiety. So I'd love for you to kind of go into that and talk about how meditation can reverse stress. Yeah, look, I think it comes back to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. And why we have these two systems in our body

and what they're there for. And sympathetic nervous system, I think of that as S for stress response and parasympathetic P for peace response. And the sympathetic nervous system, that stress response is beautifully designed to protect us from life threatening situations and Emily just mapped out a lot of the symptoms and things that will happen when we go

into that stress response, which is really something that we wouldn't be spending naturally a lot of time in. It's like if you're on a battlefield or a side-sabot to tiger pounces out or you've got a precarious situation, but usually it's very short-lived, it's very temporary, and then we revert back to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really that peace response that we would be in most of the time. And unfortunately, what's happening here now in our world is that we're sustaining longer and longer periods of time, if not even sometimes days, weeks, or months in that sympathetic nervous system state.

And that's simply what had happened to me was that I had been sustaining these long term states of sympathetic nervous system state, not just on the day job, on a trading room for yelling and screaming all day, but in the evenings in noisy nightclubs, doing lots of drinking and drugs, and my body was in this constant state of sympathetic nervous system. And it just was not having any windows of time

to get into the parasympathetic where it could start to heal itself. And so that just builds up and builds up and builds up into this state of eventually going from anxiety into overwhelm. And that's into that sort of tipping point where it sort of starts to really melt down on itself. But what meditation was able to do very quickly was to not just in the moments of meditation put me into a parasympathetic nervous system and it was quite remarkable how much I could physiologically notice my body changing during the meditation. It's quite a profound physiological shift that takes place during the meditation. And I just want people to understand it's not all peaceful and loving and joyful in meditation.

Sometimes it can be extremely uncomfortable as the body is reorganizing itself. And it's really important, one of the, I guess, myths you asked about before, was that meditation itself isn't necessarily, and after meditation isn't necessarily always a peaceful, blissful experience. For me, sometimes it was incredibly uncomfortable. I don't want to turn anyone off it, by any means, but it's when the body needs to reorganize itself and come back from a long way, you know, in a state of disrepair, then a fair bit of work has to happen for it's a real line and reorganize. And a lot of anomalies have to be sort of reversed and checked.

So this process can sometimes be a bit uncomfortable. And I'd run a lot of retreats and particularly on retreats where we're ramping up the process of what would happen in a 20 minute meditation into a six day window of time. There's a lot of clearing. A lot of it's a very physiological process of clearing a lot of dark substance that's in the body, sadness, anger, shame, guilt, all starts to sort of kind of purge itself out of the system. So I just want people to understand that a busy meditation and uncomfortable

meditation doesn't necessarily mean that you're not meditating well. It just means that you're probably getting a lot of change and a lot of reorganizing happening in the body, which is really, really helpful. Yeah, let's stick on that and kind of dig deeper and talk about kind of the right way or the wrong way to meditate, because to your point, I think people think it's just like silence, combi-ah, happiness, and maybe that's not the full picture. And I think that there's lots of excuses that people come up with when it comes to fitting meditation in their schedule. They have lots of different fears.

A fear of failure, a lot of people feel like the practice of meditation is too vague. That's kind of how I feel. I feel like it's so vague. What is even meditation? And I think that those fears or obstacles or perceived obstacles make people feel really stressed out about the right or wrong way to meditate. So what are some of your rules of thumb

for meditation beginners? Since Tom just spoke, why don't we go to Emily and then Tom? So I would say that some misconceptions are some things that keep people from really starting or committing to a meditation practice. It's pretty simple but powerful changes. One is that a lot of people think that the point of meditation is to clear the mind. is that a lot of people think that the point of meditation is to clear the mind. And while what Tom is talking about of like, quieting the mind and de-exciting the nervous system, like all of that is happening, it doesn't mean that you sit down in a chair and say, okay, brain, shut up.

Because if you do that, next thing you're brain's gonna do is be like, I sure would like a snack. You're like, oh no, no, I'm thinking about snacks. Oh no, I suck at meditation, I quit. And that's the beginning and the end of most people's meditation career because they think that the point is to quiet the mind. But the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily. So, trying to give your brain a command to stop thinking is as impactful as trying to

give your heart a command to stop beating. It simply doesn't work. And actually the more you fight against it, the more frustrating it is. And then you feel like a failure. And all of us will do if anything for very long that we feel like we're failing at. And so the thing to know about meditation is that it is a skill. It's simple, but it is a skill. And actually the profundity in these practices usually come from their simplicity. And so just because something as simple doesn't necessarily mean that it is easy. So I would say for people just starting out or people who feel like they are meditation failures

because they can't clear their mind, I would say, hey, would you expect yourself to do a 20-day Japanese challenge if you would never take in one Japanese class? Like, of course not. You would expect yourself to speak a language you never trained in. You would expect yourself to tap dance or do gymnastics if you would never take in a class. And meditation is the same, it really is a skill.

And that gets confusing for people, especially in this day and age, when there's a million meditation apps out there, which are really like guided audios usually. It's people guiding you through an experience, and there's a lot of power in that. But it ultimately is not what I would call meditation. Like most of the apps out there are teaching what I would call mindfulness, and this is a big important differentiator that I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the pre-p… versus meditation is all about getting rid of stress from your past. Right? So as far as the techniques go, mindfulness is more where you're directing your focus,

healing your stress in the now, whereas meditation is all about surrendering, giving your body rest that's actually five times deeper than stress, which is one of the reasons why we can get rid of some of that toxicity that Tom was talking about, but when we give our body that deep rest, it knows how to heal itself. And it's healing not only stress from today, but all the stress that we've been storing in our cellular memory. And when we start to do that, we engage in a daily practice, carving away, carving away the stress.

This is what ushers us into higher and higher states of performance. And that's really what we have been about and are about at Ziva is meditation for extraordinary performance. I think on my tombstone will be written, we meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation. Because no one cares how good you are at sitting quietly in a chair.

No one cares what style of meditation you're practicing. Everybody cares how kind are you, how present are you, how smart are you, how are you as a lover, as a friend, as a creator? And the more we engage in these practices and optimize our physiology and our neurobiology, the better we can be at all those things that really matter. I think that's super powerful. We meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation. That's awesome. So Tom, I'd love to hear your guidance for beginners, people who are just getting started in meditation.

What are the things that they should consider? And how do you advise that they get started on the right foot? Yeah, I just want to add to what Emily Sangle just so beautifully said that my meditation when I started 26 years ago, I've used the same technique for that period of time. And my meditations haven't really changed as far as the experience.

I have in meditation, I was having deep meditations and shallow meditations then, and I have deep meditations and shallow meditations now 26 years later. And exactly what Emily said, I haven't got better at meditation, but my life has got better and I've become better in life. And that's, I think, is one of the key things. A lot of seekers are seeking an experience and that in itself is the challenge or the problem. So first let's go of the need to be great at meditation or good at meditation. It's a natural ego tendency for us to try to be good at something when exactly what Emily's saying. It's

really more about surrender and letting go. But when it comes to starting out, a lot of people ask me this, you know, where should we start? What should I do? Should I do one minute a day? Should I do this type of meditation? What I really recommend doing is if you want to learn to meditate, do a technique that is going to give you an experience that's tangible and identifiable

that it's going to have a benefit on your life. And it's something that you feel drawn to doing on a regular basis. And there's thousands of meditations now. I think gosh, there's one app out there. I think has 10,000 meditations in it. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack because it can get overwhelming and confusing.

Firstly, if you've got the capacity, whether that's through locality or financial, to learn with a qualified meditation teacher, then I always recommend that not because I'm trying to sell something because you're just going to get the best experience. I know that definitively through my own personal experience that I learned with a qualified meditation teacher 25 years

ago. And that gave me a very profound and direct experience that I couldn't find in other sort of young and profitors. Do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to

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And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk 2 week trial at trinom.com.shap. That's trinom.nom.com.shap for 50% off trinom.com.shap. I guess less intense processes to learn to meditate in. And so if you're going to fluff around and try this and that and it doesn't really cut it for you, you're probably not going to stick with your meditation practice or you're probably going to give up on the idea of meditation if you're just not going to get any sort of benefit out of it. Now, I'd recommend doing research, you know, looking around firstly at a technique that's

going to resonate with you. And then when you find a technique that resonates with you, then find a teacher within that technique that's going to resonate with you. Some people like to learn from everyone likes to learn from someone else, someone different and finding someone that you really resonate with as a teacher because not everyone will want to learn with me. Some people might prefer to learn with Emily and vice versa. So you're just going to have a certain resonance with a particular teacher that's going to be someone that you're going to go on ideally on a long-term journey with. I've had students with me for quite a long time

that have been studying under my guidance. And I, gosh, I was probably studying under my teacher for good 10 to 15 years. And learning to meditate is just the starting point and getting the ongoing support. If your teacher's offering that, they should be offering that ongoing support for the student.

And I've chosen a particular style of meditation to not just use myself, but to teach because I found that the most efficient and most effective. If I was going to allocate time each day to meditation, then I wanted it to be something that really impacted me, that really I could see significant results. And I was blown away even just in the first week how impacting that technique was on my life. So I want to get back to the main topic of managing stress with meditation. So again, I want to get into the main Maintainment of the conversation which is all about managing stress. So Emily, I love for you to explain this concept of

So Emily, I'd love for you to explain this concept of accumulated stress because I feel like it's really important. So talk to us about the difference between stress and the now and accumulated stress. Yeah, so this was news to me when I first learned about it because when we think about stress, we think about like, oh, I had a stressful day at work or my job is really stressing me out or my kids are stressing me out. We think of that as a present moment phenomenon, which it is. But it also leaves a little open window on your brain computer. So every time you have ever been stressed, every time your body has ever launched into

fight or flight, it's left an open window in your brain. And these are called premature cognitive commitments or PCCs. And by the time the average adult is about 20 years old, we have about 10 million of these in our brain. So imagine sitting down to your computer to do some work, to type an email. And then you're like, let me just take a break and open up YouTube, Facebook, Clubhouse, Instagram, whatever else you want to open.

But let's say you had the ability to open 10 million tabs on your computer. And then your boss walks by and you're like, oh, maybe I should go want to open. But let's say you had the ability to open 10 million tabs on your computer. And then your boss walks by and you're like, oh, maybe I should go back to work. And you try and type that email, but the cursor is 20 spaces behind. And you're like, oh, this is frustrating. This computer can't even type this email.

It can't even do this one simple task. And it's like, no, no, the computer is plenty capable of typing an email. But if you're using all of its computing and battery power to run 10 million open or relevant windows, then you simply do not have the capacity available for the task at hand. And the same thing is happening in our brains and bodies. Right?

Like if you have 10 million open stress windows on your brain, and then you go to say read a chapter of a book or hang out on the floor with your toddler for an hour and not look at your phone. It's almost impossible if your body is riddled with stress. And so what meditation is doing, and when I say meditation, I do not mean like a guided mindfulness app. I don't mean like a calmer headspace. They're awesome, but those are teaching what I would call mindfulness, which is very good at creating a state change, which is stress in the now, versus the meditation, you know, Talm and I teach a similar style where you're giving your body this deep healing rest, and this is healing your stress from the past, okay? And so the mechanism by which that happens is that you're using a tool, something called a mantra, and that word mantra has been very

hijacked by the wellness industry. People when they hear the word mantra they think affirmation, like I'm a strong angry woman, or I deserve abundance. And those are really affirmations. Mantra is a Sanskrit word. Mun means mind and trut means vehicle. So when you use a mantra, you have a mind vehicle that is custom designed to take you from these active layers of left brain thinking, from these active layers of stressy mind, and drop you down into pure being. You have this mind vehicle that is taking you from your left brain individuality, and transporting you into your right brain totality. And when we do that, when we de-excite the nervous system, we create order. And when we create order in our bodies, this is lifetime of accumulated stress, can start to come up and out.

And the beautiful news here is that nature did not intend for us to be sick, tired, and stressed all the time. That would be mean, and nature is not mean. Nature wants you to be radiant and full of vitality and full of creativity and joy. It's just the stress that keeps us from being at our birthright state, which is 24-hour a day bliss. And so if you start to engage in a daily meditation practice and I would even argue twice a day,

what you're gonna be doing is peeling away all the layers of stress accumulated in our cellular memory. And then over time, we start to really shine brighter. We become smarter. We are more intuitive, more creative. And one last thing that I'll add is that now we know that we're not just healing our stress from our lifetimes, that we can actually start to heal stress that we've inherited from previous generations. We've scientifically proven at least two,

some people are hypothesizing up to seven generations, that we can inherit stress up to seven generations back, that impacts our genetics, our epigenetics, and so that with meditation and diet and sleep and lifestyle, we can actually shift what we're passing down to future generations. Oh my gosh, that's so interesting to think that we could get stress from previous generations and it's kind of like genetics that's super interesting.

The ramifications of that are not subtle. I mean, if you believe in inherited trauma, like the impact of descendants of people who were owned as slaves, people who survived the Holocaust, like this stuff we know has a physical impact on, you know, on previous generations. And so it's like, what can we do now in the nervous systems of the humans that are alive now to make sure that future generations aren't dealing with the same sort of trauma? Tom, I'd love to hear if you have anything to add to this. Yeah, I'm really so good with all the science. It's beautiful. One thing I want to touch on is Sam Skara. It's a beautiful Sanskrit word that if we take, and a lot of English is derived

from Sanskrit, and if we take the central word out of Sam Skara, which is Skara, And if we take the central word out of samskara, which is scar, a samskara is an embellishment in the vessel in the body that is lingering from a previous experience. And if you think of a scar, a scar is an embellishment on the skin from some previous experience. And these samskara is a riddled and filled into the body. And they are generally low frequency energy points. And the thing with data, the data is held in our mind, that's memory, and it's like sort of files in our computer and it's information. The body doesn't hold those as files of information,

what it holds it as energy. So that sadness is an energy, guilt is an energy, anger is an energy, fear is an energy. And what I find when we meditate, particularly when we're doing things like retreats where we're doing a really long-term expansive process of meditation over a long period of time, what happens is that there's a frequency change in the body and the body is rising up in its vibration. And we can see this on the love frequency chart. If you Google that on Google, just go love frequency chart.

And you'll see these measurements of Hertz, H-E-R-T-Z, which are sort of measurable degrees of vibration. And you look at where guilt, shame, and anger, and fear, they're very, very low frequencies, sort of 20, 30, 40, 50. And as we rise up the frequencies, what happens when we get into the really high frequencies of up into love and above. So love is 528, and then above that's bliss,

love and enlightenment. And as we're meditating, what's happening is that the frequency of the body's actually changing. And what's happening as the frequency of the body changes, and it elevates and elevates and elevates and it gets lighter and lighter and lighter, then the ability for the lower frequencies to coexist in that vessel now become and congruent. And there's a there's a releasing that starts to happen. There's is purging as those energies in the body start

to clear out. And when we eventually sustain long-term states of these high frequencies of love and above, the inability for those, there's just not the ability for those lower frequencies to coexist in the vessel. And so that the vessel becomes so clear that you don't get the resonance of those lower frequencies. It's like trying to get AM radio on FM, you just can't do it because the frequencies just misaligned. And this is one of the things that's a really interesting phenomenon that I've found with meditation and meditators over the long term. It's this ongoing elevation into these higher frequencies allows them to sustain and maintain those higher states with less of the capacity to have those lower frequencies coming into the system. This episode of YAP is brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show.

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This reminds me of something that Emily talks about called adaptation energy. So I'd love to learn and have our audience learn about adaptation energy and how this is really related to stress relief. Yeah, so adaptation energy is simply your ability to handle a change of expectation or a demand. You wake up one day and think, oh, maybe there won't be a global pandemic.

And you're like, oh, nope, wait, there is a global pandemic. Or then maybe you think, oh, we're done. And're like, nope, still, still going. These are all huge adaptations that we're being asked to do as humans. And to put this into like a real life example, well, like a beautiful line from the Vedas would be, there is no such thing as a stressful situation. There are only stressful responses to given situations. And if I say that at a live event, people are like, excuse me, you don't have kids, do you, or excuse me, you don't know my job, you don't know my in-laws, but I'm not trying to negate the intensity of anyone's life.

What I am offering is that if you have the ability to adapt, then the ever-changing nature of life and the world is not going to cost you as much. It's not going to be as challenging. If every day you are filling up with something called adaptation energy. So let's say you leave your house, are you wake up? You set your alarm for 8 a.m. for work on Monday morning, but you oversleep your alarm. So with a tiny change of expectation, it burns up a little bit of adaptation energy but you get ready quickly leave your house on time. Then you get on the highway to go to work it's gonna be 20 minutes you get on the highway

it's 40 minutes. Change of expectation burns up more adaptation energy. You pull over to go to the Starbucks because now you're late you need to amp it up you order a coffee and they're like hey we're at coffee, here take this chamomile tea on the house. I don't want your chamomile tea, I want a coffee. More adaptation energy burned. You go to work, your boss fires you. More adaptation energy burned. You call your partner, hey babe, I just got fired from my job, can you make dinner tonight?

They text you back, thanks for everything, I'm going to have to let you go. Wait, did you just break up with me via text message? Burns up more adaptation energy. You get home after the worst day ever and pour yourself a glass of You know water and then the glass slips out of your hand and breaks on the kitchen floor Now at this point you're likely gonna have a full blown stress reaction You're likely gonna start crying punching the wall running away from the glass even though it's a two-dollar likely going to start crying, punching the wall, running away from the glass, even though it's a $2 piece of glass you could replace tomorrow at the Creighton Barrel. But it doesn't matter how big or small the demand is if you're out of adaptation energy. This becomes the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

If you're out of adaptation energy and then life throws you one more thing, you're going to launch into fight or flight, whether you've, eat, pray, love, or not, whether you read the seven habits of highly effective people or not, because we don't act in accordance with what we know, we act in accordance with the baseline level of stress in our nervous systems. And so what meditation is doing is that it's not only eradicating the baseline level of stress in the nervous system,

it is also topping up your reservoirs of adaptation energy. And so, right now, we as a species are being asked to adapt again and again and again, and I think we're just getting started. I think that the rate that technology is about to change, that currency is about to change, that medicine is about to change. I think the defining feature of successful human beings on the planet moving forward will be your ability to adapt and I have never found a better tool to help you adapt the meditation. Oh, so powerful. Thank you so much Emily.

And now I want to get into some tactical advice. I really want to get some actionable tactical advice that everybody can implement today that's easy to remember and ways that we can kind of quickly alleviate our stress. And I'd love to also talk about how to quickly alleviate our stress in professional settings. Because I know that there's some techniques that we can do even when we're in public that can really help us reduce our stress. So let's kick it off to Tom. Can you talk to us about some tactical exercises that we can use to alleviate stress? Yeah, I think the first thing we can do

when we're getting stressed is this excitation happens in the body and it's really starting to stimulate more and more activity and everything starts to become overstimulated. And that's the third law of thermodynamic states that as excitation occurs, this audit increases. And as de-excitation occurs, audit increases. And they use boiling water as a sort of example of that.

So if we're experiencing some degree of stress response in the body, in the mind, then the simplest thing we can do is just try to regulate everything. That means you need to, because what's happened is that the autonomic nervous systems kicked in, you've kind of been hijacked, you don't have control anymore. Now what's happening is that there's an override system that's happening and we need to regulate that and take control back from that situation. And the best thing we can do is to regulate the breadth.

If we can take control back over onto the breath and slow that down, I just did a recent post on my Instagram about this just a few days ago. I call it the Bellows breath. And I was actually with my mama noticed that when she breathed in, the time you would go in and just breathing up into a upper collarbone region. And it was a very short and shallow breath. And really, when we breath in, our belly should be going out to allow the air to go all the way down into the lower regions of the lungs. So we have a nice, slow, deep, regulated breath.

And I could see my mum was, she was getting a bit, she's 85 now, she's getting a bit, sort of, uptight. And I just sort of notified her about her breathing and got her to regulate her breath so that when she breathed in the belly would go out. When she breathed out the belly would go in normally for most people particularly when we're stressed it's the other way around. When we breath in the belly comes in and we want to flip that. So that's the first thing I find just in an emergency sort of situation to slow everything

down through the breath and just let everything just de-excite and then you'll start to get mental activity become a little bit more organized, a little bit more cohesive, your physiology will start to get a little bit more de-excited and a little bit more organized and coordinated and then you'll be able to move into that situation with a lot more ease and calm. And Emily, I'd love to hear if you have any kind of like, quick exercises that you could walk us through in terms of alleviating stress

and getting started with meditation and mindfulness. Well, I think that my time set is great. I think that if you're really like in a fight or flight panic attack, you don't really have time, unless you're already an experienced meditator, you're likely not going to sit down and do your first meditation when you're in the middle of a panic attack. And so I think you want to keep it really simple in those instances. And the breath is a great way to just calm everything down. And so this might be similar to the bellows, but I call it the 2x breath, where you're simply inhaling through the nose for 2 and exhaling through the mouth for 4.

So in for 2 out for 4, and the cool thing about this is that you can do it while you're walking. You know, some people just need to like, if you've been sitting in a computer all day, and sometimes the stagnant energy is part of what's adding to the stress. Sometimes getting up and taking a walk and breathing in for two steps out for four steps is enough to just really like bring your awareness into the right now. It's enough to wear your, when you double the length of your exhale from your inhale, you're softening and easing the vagus nerve, which is the super highway between the brain and body, but also just accounting of it. It's a bit of a mindfulness exercise

because you don't have as much bandwidth to speculate about the future, which I like to think that all speculation leads to suffering, but just simply in for two out for four. One, two, one, two, three, four. Like sometimes that's enough to do a bit of a pattern interrupt, and then you can come into the now. And our ideas are problem-solving tendencies.

All of our creativity happens in the now. And so that's where mindfulness really shines. It's like back to the now, back to the now. And if you have the bonus feature of doubling the length of your exhale, that's going to down-regulate your nervous system. Like Tom was talking about. That's super helpful. So I want to move into Q&A

and I feel like the question that feels relevant, I was DMing some of my moderators here on stage, is Holly. So Holly, I'd love for you to kick off open Q&A. And if you're in the audience, we want to make this as interactive as possible. Raise your hand, put your question in your bio, and we'll bring you up if it's relevant.

So Holly, what is your question for the panel? Hi, Emily. Hi, Tom. Thank you so much. Everything you're saying is just so incredible. I think we are all getting so much from that. So, you mentioned that there was a line in the sand kind of between mindfulness and meditation. And Tom, you had also brought up that there's different types of meditation. So I don't think I'm speaking just for myself. I'm sure everybody in this room has Google's mindfulness and meditation.

And I think probably some of the big SEO engines probably drive us to headspace and calm. But you're saying that meditation is a very specific practice. So could you maybe share with us two or three different types that might be accessible to beginners and or beginners like myself that start and stop all the time and use those apps and maybe I'm not getting the right value? Thank you.

My name is Holly. Hi, Holly. I'll be happy to jump in. I'm sure Tom has right value. Thank you, my name is Holly. Hi, Holly. I'll be having to jump in. I'm sure Tom has awesome things to share as well. But you're right. Like in this day and age, when you say meditation, people think calm or headspace. And I'm not here to diss anybody's app.

They have done a huge service. And there are millions of people who are now have a gateway drug in. And I think there's a lot of beauty in someone guiding you through, but just like when you watch TV, it's almost like the TV is thinking for you. Similarly, if someone is, if all you're doing with meditation

is having someone else guide you through, then you're never really becoming self-sufficient. You're never really allowing your body to heal itself in the way that it does say when you sleep. Right, like when you're sleeping, no one's guiding you through, and your body to heal itself in the way that it does say when you sleep. Right? Like when you're sleeping, no one's guiding you through and your body is running a whole host of healing operations. And a similar thing can happen when you meditate, but not necessarily if you have external

stimulation. Right? So, and I would argue that you're just going to get a much higher ROI, because our time is our most valuable thing we have to give. And I would argue that no one has time to waste. I would even argue that no one has time to spend, but everyone has time to invest. And what I have found is that you get a higher ROI

on your time expenditure with meditation than you do with mindfulness. So again, just a quick delineation, mindfulness is anytime you're directing your focus. Anytime someone's guiding you through, anytime you're focusing on your breath or imagining a chakra, anytime your left brain is engaged, I would call that mindfulness, which is very different than meditation,

which is where you're giving your body rest that's five times deeper than sleep. You're in a verifiable fourth state of consciousness and you're creating a trait change versus just a state change. And so easy ways to get started. I am sure that Tom has ways for people to get started with his program. I would love to gift everybody here who's listening the first three days of my most popular course. And it is a course, it's not an app, this is a matriculation, it's 15 minutes a day for 15 days. And it teaches you, yes mindfulness, we start there as like the appetizer, but then

we move into meditation and then we finish with manifesting. So mindfulness to handle your stress in the now, meditation to get rid of your stress in the past and then manifesting to help with your dreams for the future. And so you guys want to check that out, I'd love to give you the first three days and it's zivameditation.com slash podcast. And you can just check it out. There's no credit card required. It's not like a free trial. It's just a gift. And then if you like it, you can enroll

and go on to the meditation training. I know that Tom has amazing online courses as well. But I think rather than trying to give you like, oh, here, like try this thing once or twice, which is likely going to end up with the same result of like, oh, I downloaded a free app and then never stuck to it. It's like, if you invest in a training and actually schedule it and do it, then you're going to see like, oh, actually the benefits build on top of each other.

I'm getting a cumulative benefit from this versus like, yeah, I did 10 minutes a day for 10 days and then I quit. And then my cat died and I started back for five days but then I got busy and I quit. It's like meditation just like the coffee you drank two weeks ago is not going to give you more energy today. The meditation you did last year is not going to help you today. We really have to commit to it and it's part of why common I think we're so passionate about this or it's like yes you teach the technique but you also have to train the intellect on why it's so important to do it every day. Thanks Emily and I'll just add to that that yeah I

I have a weekend workshop that I run in person obviously during we're in lockdown here in Sydney another one and so we've moved those to zoom but I also have created a 21 day format of that meditation program where it's self-paced learning and you get a video from me every day for 21 days teaching you how to go deep into what I call transcending styles of meditation. And that would be sort of like transcendental meditation, Vedic meditation, primordial sound technique, or come under that sort of transcending banner of meditation. And so I put that into a 21 day format, which was, to me personally,

a bit of a challenge at the time because I was really conflicted between maintaining a beautiful ancient tradition and maintaining the way it was taught. And then having to deal with the conflict of a world out there that is crying out to learn these techniques and how do I bring these ancient techniques in a way that tries to maintain some purity but at the same time still deliver

it to a world that needs to access it and not everyone lives in a trendy suburb like, you know, Santa Monica or, you know, he's Bondi Beach in Sydney so I put that into a 21 day format and it's a beautiful program but what I found with that and now that we've got things like Zoom is that I could then support my students from around the world who've learned that technique and meditation on a weekly basis. So we have live group meditations and we have students coming in from all over the world now

joining us every Monday. That's Monday, my time. So it'll be Sunday in America for those group meditations. And it allows this ongoing support mechanism for the student. I see that's a really integral part of the process that you get assistance to stay connected to the teacher, but also refine your practice and refine the way you're doing your technique.

Because sometimes there's a little bit of slippage with our practice and it gets a little bit unrefined, just because the way we live our lives. And so having that regular contact with me through the Zoom, whether that's the online version of the course or whether that's the in-person or on Zoom version of the course is still available. So we've got a discount for everyone who wants to explore that program. You can just reach out to me on Instagram.

It's probably the best place. Just a yummy. I'll send you a link and the discount code for that program if you're interested in it. Cool. And while we're on the topic of different trainings and programs, really quick Emily, I'd love to understand why meditation is useful for children because I know you mentioned earlier that you have a new program that's geared for children. So help us understand why that's I guess good for kids and how kids can use us too Yeah, so I'd say this is the number one most requested thing from my students

I've been teaching for about 10 years and people have been like please give me up something for my kids Can I teach my kids and I was just like no? No? No? I don't teach kids and then I became a mom and everything shifted and I was like oh, I get it Now I know it's like to live with your heart outside of your body. And there's no question that children have had likely the worst of this pandemic. You know, I'm in school, I'm out of school, I'm socializing, I'm not socializing, I'm being wearing masks in class. It's just been a lot.

I'm missing my graduation, I'm missing my prom, I missed my first year of college, like it's just been very intense and I mean for all of us, it's certainly for children and we started working on Ziva Kids two years ago, so this is before anyone have even heard of COVID, but it is a beautiful time to introduce meditation to your kids, especially if they're on the younger side. Like, before eight years old, children are already in almost a hypnotic state. They're in, like, a big, very between like an alpha and a theta state of brain up until

eight years old. And eight years old, that's when the prefrontal cortex really comes online and that is a research to get more into critical thoughts or research to really form memories. But up until that state, we're so malleable. And while we might not be making memories, we are making the blueprint for how our brain works. And so if we can introduce these techniques to children when they're already so connected to source energy, when they're already dealing with such hyper presence and wonder, then it's easier to maintain that connection

through adolescence and adulthood. And it's much better than teaching a 70-year-old to meditate where they've already had seven decades of stress and their nervous system sort of hardening. And then you have so much more stress to peel away. But it's actually really fun. And most people come in like, there's no way my kid could meditate. There's no way my kid would ever get sick still.

And that is why I've been working really for two years, almost nonstop with folks from Harvard and folks from Sesame Street and Dr. Schaffali who is Oprah's parenting expert. And we created what I feel like is the most entertaining meditation training to help kids thrive. And the point of it is really to help kids feel and process their emotions in real time. Because so many of us have been trained not to feel our feelings. You know, since infancy, don't cry, have a bottle, don't cry, have a toy. Don't cry, have an iPad.

Don't cry, don't feel, don't feel. And the next thing you know, you end up with 40% of American women on Zoloft or some sort of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety. And this is not, I am not here to hate on medicine. There's many useful cases for medicine. But I don't believe that 40% of American adult women have a zooloft deficiency. I think that we haven't been trained how to feel our feelings, and that starts really young. My son is only three, and I've already had multiple encounters with people telling him

not to cry, of people telling him to be a man, of people telling him, you know, things that I, like, make my blood boil, if I'm being honest, because I'm like, I've worked so hard to give him permission to feel the entire spectrum of the human range of emotions. And so when other people come in and say things like that, I just find it so, just sort of archaic. And it's like, wait, why on earth would we try and stifle someone from feeling? Because the feeling doesn't go away, right?

Like when we try and repress those things, they get shoved down and they get stronger or they get calcified. But if we can actually just cry it out or rage it out or express the emotion, then it's like better out than in. It's never coming back. And so Ziva kids, yes, it teaches your kids mindfulness, meditation and manifesting, but really what it's teaching them to do is to feel. And with Ziva kids, I have a co-star, his name is Z Bunny. He's a puppet. I built him with folks from Sesame Street, and he's so adorable, and he's training to be a superhero. And so the

kids love him, and they fall in love with him because he's wanting to be the best version of himself, and he's just using meditation to help him unlock his superpowers. Whereas I think a lot of adults, when they come to kids, they're like, oh, is something wrong with you? Are you stressed? Are you sad? Are you depressed? Maybe you should meditate.

And like, no one wants to feel like there's something wrong with them, especially not kids. So instead, it's like, no, you want to be the superhero version of you, and meditation is simply a way for you to unlock your superpowers. Here that sound, young and profitors, you should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify.

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She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing.

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that really we didn't have, and I feel like there's a revolution going on right now in terms of mental health and mental health awareness, and it's just becoming more common to talk about emotional intelligence and all these things that really weren't talked about when for instance everybody here on stage were kids so it's great that we're moving in that direction. I know that you mentioned source energy and spirituality a bit Emily and I know Jackie's question is pretty relevant to that so Jackie I'd love to hear your question for the panel

Thank you so much. Hi Emily. Hi time. Hi everyone So my question is you know, I meditate every day now and my question really is how do I know? Because I get really still right but sometimes the monkey mind will try to trick me and give me answers to my questions So how do I know that it's an intuitive answer versus a logical maybe I'm thinking of an answer on how do I know the difference? That's such a great question. I don't really know whether it matters.

It's whether or not you found the answer that you're looking for. You know, it's interesting when we go into meditation, there's a sort of a relishment that can happen as we're starting to go into these deeper states, because what happens is we've got thinking mind, which is before we start meditating, then we go through this sort of layer of kind of activity

in the mind, but it's kind of creative and playful where we get a lot of insights and cognitions and ideas and it's kind of fun place to be, and then we go deeper into what we call pure consciousness, which is the deep stillness and silence. But quite often myself and I know a lot of my students will, particularly if they're kind of entrepreneurial, will play a little bit in that activity of the mind space in the meditation. And I'll actually purposely stay in that space because I might have some creative intentions or some things that I wanted to work out.

So I'll transcend a little bit in my meditation and then start to play around and a little bit of it is my thinking mind, but it's also playing in that field of creative potential. And meditation isn't really about being still. It's about a getting deep rest in the body at times and also sometimes getting cognitions and insights that are really the solutions and the pathway forward for your life that you're in the process of becoming. So it's a great question. And to be honest with you, I wouldn't really be able to say definitely how to answer that because it's not something that I could actually determine here and now,

but I think if it's a it's an idea that's coming through that is charming and you find that it's a compelling proposition or it solves a particular problem then it doesn't really matter where it's come from. The point is that in that process you've arrived at a particular point that was relevant. Emily, did you have anything to add to that? I just love that idea of like, does it matter? And how would you know? I think those are probably more profound answers. One rule of some that I've found a little comforting is that intuition is usually moving you towards something

and fear is usually moving you away. But I think there are exceptions to that. And so, at the end of the day, you just, like, I think you just got to be willing to make mistakes. And I got to the only way we really learn. We're never going to know if it's the right thing. Yeah, I think that totally makes sense. Dimple, I know you have a question for Emily and Tom.

What is your question for the panel? Thank you, Halla. Great topic. Hi, Tom. Hi, Emily. My question is, more and more employers and corporations, I feel, should be incorporating meditation into their benefits package because stress is one of the things that causes employees to be gone from work for long-term leave. So what are your thoughts

on more and more employers incorporating meditation into their benefits package? It was call me. You got it, I mean. Call me yeah exactly. It's just call me. Yeah, look I'm working with Amazon at the moment and Amazon invited me to train 15,000 of their staff members how to meditate and it's just the beating of what we're at now is that the information is just so clear as, you know, day. It's just so obvious that we've got so much science supporting that. As we decrease stress, we increase our capacity, we increase our health, we increase our productivity,

we increase our brain functionality. So it's undeniable now and a lot of companies are just really starting to work out. And also there's been a number of reports that have come out. There's a great PWC report. And I'm happy to send this to anyone who wants it. PWC and KPMG both put out reports on the impact of stress on the workplace. And KWC report revealed that for every dollar a company spends on improving the mental health of their staff,

they return on average $2.30 back. So as far as just bottom line goes, it's a great result, but taking into consideration the broader impact is that it just improves people's lives. I think it's really important for a lot of companies to integrate that even into their day. And I've worked with a few companies where we schedule meditations morning and evening into the day. And I've worked with a few companies where we schedule meditations morning and evening into the workplace. And a lot of companies think that it's cutting

into productivity, but it's actually increasing productivity. If they just allow their staff, just, you know, 10 to 20 minutes to go off into a room and meditate, it's going to be so much more impacting and beneficial for those companies that do it. Yeah, I've been in things because it's actually one of the highest adoption rates because if you think about it You're of like oh no, I hope I boss doesn't see me sneaking away for the or You know, oh, I'm I gonna get in trouble for quote unquote wasting my time When nothing could be further from the truth

But if the whole company is learning together Then usually they like turn a break room into a meditation room. Oftentimes they'll create a policy, well, there's no company-wide meetings between three and three thirty. You don't have to meditate, but that's available to you if you want to. And so, and then it's actually comes a way to build morale

and for people to increase their relationships, like to deepen their relationships with their pool workers. And then there was even the New York Times did a piece on Medi-Py City and Zeeva. It was a good meditation, be the way to get ahead and work. Where it's like, oh, well, now my CEO is taking this course. And now I have something to talk about with my supervisor.

And there's no question about the productivity and morale and sick days. Like it will make any investment that the company is willing to make in it. We'll have a massive financial ROI, but I just think what I love is the adoption rate, where the people are so much more likely to commit when they're doing it in this group and this group of people that they're seeing every day. Yeah, I personally have noticed a huge trend. I was working at Disney Streaming Services. I'm a full-time entrepreneur now,

but one of the last things we did as a team is we went to a group meditation, and we had this group meditation experience, and that was our outing to bond, and to take a mental health break. So I think it's really trendy right now to have meditation in the workplace. So great question. I do want to kick it over to Melissa, who has a question for the panel.

Thanks so much, Hala. Hey, Emily and Tom, fantastic conversation. I'm really loving this. I have a quick question, you know, as an entrepreneur sometimes, you know, I typically do my meditations first thing in the morning, but in the morning, I'm typically not stressed out, right? And stress starts to accumulate throughout the day. But when I want to go ahead and take that moment for myself to regroup, I do find a sense of like guilt, right? Or being like, I shouldn't take this time to just have so much work to do and I need to kind of power through a court on quote. What are your recommendations or your thoughts for entrepreneurs to, you know, when you need to take a moment to really take the moment and not feel so guilty for doing so? Yeah, look, I think it's a great question because I went from home as well and I'm

with call myself more of an entrepreneur these days than a meditation teacher. And so I even face the same challenge myself because I've got 200 emails sitting in my inbox or I've got, you know, some social media to do or a meeting with my team. It's like, oh yeah, a meeting or a meditation. And I winded all the way back into competing preferences in an ever-n-a-given moment. We have a series of competing preferences for time allocation. And what we have to do is really look deep into what is motivating every single action. And this is what I came across when I learned to meditate. When I did my first course in meditation 25 years ago, I was a broker in finance, as I mentioned.

And the teacher suggested that we do two meditations a day, 20 minutes each. And I nearly fell off the chair, I'm like, you have got to be freaking joking. There is no way I'm a broker man, like seriously, how am I going to get to lots of 20 minutes to do this every day? I just couldn't work out that that was going to be possible. And then I started to contemplate, as the course ended, about my life and where I'm at, and the teacher had laid out a whole ton of science as to how this was going to make my life better. And here I was earning a multiple, multiple six figures salary, living in a very expensive house, had a beautiful car, and all the things that would literally tick boxes to say this is the perfect life. But I was suffering from depression,

suicidal, anxiety, seeing psychologists, psychiatrists on medication. My life was just a mess. So what I started to realize was that every action in the world, no matter whether you're doing crack cocaine in a ghetto or whether you're in a monastery in Tibet, every single action is motivated by the same thing and that's the quest to be fulfilled. And yet I wasn't fulfilled. And so I had to change my set of values. I had to change where I was seeking fulfillment from. I was seeking fulfillment from acquisitions and circumstances and experiences.

Yet I wasn't getting fulfillment from acquisitions and circumstances and experiences. Yet I wasn't getting fulfillment from that. I couldn't extract anymore fulfillment out of that. I'd run down to the bottom of the barrel and was left with nothing, even though I'd acquired everything that you could possibly want. Then I started to realize that fulfillment is a self-referred experience that comes from tapping into an innate sense and an in an experience. And it's part of our innate nature. And so what I decided to do was look

at my day, my day had 24 hours and at the niche hour I had three blocks of 20 minutes. And that meant that I had 72 20 minute segments in my day that was purely allocated to getting fulfilled, sleeping, eating, going to the gym, going to the movies. And all I had to do, according to this teacher and all the science, was take two of those 72, 20 minutes out of my day and park them for meditating. And that became an easy proposition. And I went, well, that means I've still got 70, 20 minutes of pie to allocate to doing

all the other things that I was doing. And all I have to do is take two out of 72 and sit and close my eyes in meditation and my life's going to get better. So I gave that research the time that it deserved. And it was at least three weeks. And it was, it was just like nine days. It was just so obvious that my life was getting better over those three weeks of doing two

out of 72 into meditation and it just became a definitive result. So I just continued on with that process and just really reassessing what are your core values where you're trying to find fulfillment and is that working out for you because I guarantee you if you get all of those emails down there'll be a whole ton more the next day anyway. So tapping into that inner space is I think critical and it's the one thing that's missing in the world and that's what motivates me with the film and the book, the portal because we've got to really inspire people to realize that acquisitions and experiences is not a sustainable source of fulfillment. Yeah and I think that was such a brilliant question, Melissa. Thank you so much for asking it and I think this is a great way to kind of end the session.

And I'm going to bring it back to you, something that I mentioned right at the intro, that according to the American Psychological Association, US adults are reporting the highest stress levels since the early days of the pandemic and more than 80% report emotions associated with prolonged stress. So as we are moving into this, not totally post pandemic, I think we all thought we were going out of the pandemic. And now it seems like everything may be coming back.

How can you, like, can you leave us with some parting words in terms of how we should best navigate through this really stressful time? Why don't we kick it off with Tom and then Emily in terms of how we should best navigate through this really stressful time. Why don't we kick it off with Tom and then Emily in terms of your closing thoughts and how we can manage stress through meditation? Yeah, it is going to intensify more and more. I don't think we've seen the end of the challenges that we're facing on the world. I think it's going to be extremely difficult going forward, even more so. And when we have the requirement to increase adaptive capacity, I think Emily called adaptive energy, I call adaptive capacity, that's the need to be adaptable.

But we don't increase our ability to be adaptable, then we have this gap between our need to be more adaptable and our ability to be adaptable, and that causes the stress response. So what we have to look at is one thing we can't change is that the need to be adaptable is going to be increasing ever, you know, more and more every day. So therefore the only thing that we can do in amongst this turbulent and ever increasingly changing world is to increase our ability to be more adaptable.

And meditation plays an integral role in that. So it just comes down to again, coming back to your core values and what's a great priority to you, what's of importance to you. And fulfillment, bliss, love, joy is an inherent experience. They're not emotional states. They're innate experiences that we have. And so I just really kind of fore of emphasized the importance enough of parking some time aside each day, finding a meditation technique that you can get deep and get a tangible experience from, a noticeable change in your

physiological mental and emotional state, and incorporate that on a regular basis, and get some support with that if you need it. Great advice and thank you Tom so much for your contributions today. Emily, I'd love to hear your last parting thoughts in terms of managing stress with meditation. Well, I just want to say what have the light has been to reunite with Tom? I would agree interviewer you are

and I'm so excited to be connected with all of these new amazing humans. And as far as I think yes, yes, we had a managed stress. My book is called Stress Less, Accomplish More. But let's think about what's next. Like what's after we manage the stress? Like how much joy can we create? How good can we make this life?

How radiant can we be? How vital can we feel? Like I think there's power in moving towards the positive, not just away from the negative. And if we're thinking about like, man is stressed, less stress, stress, stress, stress all day, it's just not as fun. It's like, hey, how'd you see, can we make this?

How much flow, how much magic can there be in my day? And that just after a while that becomes the lens through what you see life. You can't help it because you're not having to like curate or be the bouncer of your brain. And so there's always going to be a party in your brain. And instead of you being the bouncer of trying to kick out all the uninvited guests, you start to be the host of your party in your brain. And the party just gets better and better the more you meditate. So that's how I would leave it. Let the party in your brain be one that you would love to attend and not one that you need

to hire a bouncer for. I love that. I really enjoyed that conversation. I mean, I feel like we just covered so much ground. So everybody here, if you haven't yet, make sure you follow Tom, make sure you follow Emily on Clubhouse on Instagram. Everybody on stage today, thank you so much for your contributions.

Holly, Dimple, Melissa, Jackie, Paulina, Cassandra, really always appreciate you guys coming up on here, supporting me, supporting my events. And with that, incredible session today. Again, thank you everybody for your time. This is Hollyala and friends signing off until next week. Bye guys. Have a great night. Thank you. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative?

I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness

without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever?

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