236: How to Orgasm Your Way to Enlightenment with Sexpert and Meditation Guru, Emily Fletcher

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, Light Watkins sits down with Emily Fletcher, a former Broadway performer turned renowned meditation teacher, founder of Ziva Meditation, and host of the popular podcast Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?. Emily shares her journey from the bright lights of Broadway to becoming a leading voice in the wellness space, where she’s impacted hundreds of thousands of people with her meditation techniques, courses, and insights.

Listeners will be inspired by Emily’s story of transformation and her commitment to living authentically, even when faced with life’s toughest challenges. In this conversation, she reveals her personal rituals and practices that help her stay grounded, balanced, and focused—especially during times of upheaval. Emily talks about the importance of daily routines, the power of manifesting your desires, and how she uses her unique approach to sexual energy to enhance creativity and achieve her goals.

This episode also offers valuable insights for anyone interested in starting a podcast, writing a book, or stepping out of their comfort zone to pursue their passions. Emily’s practical advice on balancing personal growth with professional success, particularly as a parent, will resonate with many. Whether you're a seasoned meditator or just beginning your journey into mindfulness, this episode provides actionable takeaways and a wealth of inspiration.

Tune in to hear Light and Emily dive deep into what it takes to truly follow your path and create a life of purpose, fulfillment, and impact.

Transcript

EF: “There's a Winston Churchill quote, which I love, which is that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. And I really love that because your life is never going to go according to plan. We know that your life is going according to plan, 0% of the time. And yet it does not absolve you of the responsibility of planning. I feel like I'm trusting myself and trusting nature more and more. And so the game and the dance that I'm in at the moment is how can I give myself permission to really feel my feelings, to not bypass, which is my former habit, but just go in and cry and rage and be afraid and feel those feelings. But not allow them to be true and not allow the stories that my brain spins about those feelings to be true.”

Hello friends, and welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins, and I love to interview ordinary folks just like you and me, who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or people who've directly benefited from their work.

And what I found after conducting hundreds of interviews with luminaries who found their purpose is that there was always a moment where they hit upon some sort of internal crossroads where they could either go in the direction of fitting in, or they could go further in the direction of being themselves. And 99.9% of the time, the people who end up finding their calling in life are the ones who choose and sometimes against all of the odds to be themselves. It's really that simple. 

And I think we need to hear these stories over and over to build up the courage and the confidence to do the same thing in our lives, to keep choosing authenticity, because it's not just about making one choice in order to truly find your calling and to see it through to the end, you're going to have to make those choices—hundreds, if not thousands of times. Because as you get older, you start to realize that the world isn't set up for people to be themselves. So it's an extremely scary and uncertain process to choose yourself again and again. And I know from experience how much you're going to constantly question yourself and your path. 

But if you can stick with it, eventually, you become the model for what it's like when someone follows their path and that's when people want to write books about you, and that's when people start inviting you onto their podcast to hear your story. 

And today I am back in conversation with one of my favorite luminaries, Emily Fletcher. Emily is a former broadway dancer turned Vedic meditation teacher, turned founder of Ziva Meditation, turned thought leader in the wellness space, turned master manifester. 

And most recently she has become the host of the Why Isn't Everyone Doing This podcast, which I've had the honor of being featured on. And what I love about Emily is that no matter what she does, she always goes big, and love that! I find that very inspiring. 

Her meditation courses have been used by hundreds of thousands of people. She's launched a massive children's mindfulness course. Her book, Stress Less, Accomplish More sold, I think 30,000 copies in the first week. Her new-ish podcast is already getting tens of thousands of downloads and views on a weekly basis, which are extremely impressive numbers for anyone who knows what it takes to teach meditation, to publish a book, to produce a podcast, especially right out of the gate.

So I wanted to have Emily back on to unpack her process in case you're thinking about starting a podcast or writing a book or doing anything is going to require you to leave your comfort zone and go into your growth zone because. 

On top of being accomplished professionally, Emily is also a mom, so she could easily use it as an excuse for not doing some of the things that she's done. She also is in a relationship and she's working on herself just like the rest of us.

So again, I've had Emily on before. It's an episode 88 and that's where we spend the majority of the conversation discussing her fascinating backstory of how she transitioned from being a Broadway performer to a meditation guru. And I highly recommend going back and checking out that episode just to put this episode into greater context, because we're going to spend more time talking about what she's doing today and what her daily rituals are like for staying grounded and why it's important to take time for yourself as a parent.

And if you are a creative, why it's important to take time for yourself as a parent, we're going to talk about how best to do that. And how Emily uses her sexual energy as a tool for manifestation and why coaching is crucial for growth. We're going to talk about how to balance masculine and feminine energies and why it's important to feel all of your feelings.

So this episode was jam packed with insights and learnings from someone who's been on the front lines and on the bench of the biggest stages in the wellness community. And so without further ado, here's Ms. Emily Fletcher back on the podcast.

[00:05:34] LW: Emily Fletcher, welcome back to my podcast. I think this is number three for you. 

[00:05:39] EF: I believe so. I know we did one around the kids meditation, I think. 

[00:05:44] LW: We did your original story, I think the original backstory. 

[00:05:49] EF: You've been on my show one time, so I feel excited to make it number three. Third time's a charm. I was doing my daydreaming this morning. I like to design my day in the mornings. I write down everything I want, but in past tense. And I said that Light and I had the most amazing conversation. And It really inspired so many people and it helped to grow both of our missions. So that was my prayer for our conversation. 

[00:06:10] LW: How long have you been doing that? 

[00:06:11] EF: Five or six years, not every day, but I'm on a great streak right now. Like it feels like I have a magic wand. It feels like my pen is a magic wand and I just write down things and then they happen and it's really fun.

[00:06:23] LW: It's funny because before we started recording you were saying how your life is sort of going through a phase of— there are a lot of things that are being modified. You use the word destruction. And you and I have a shared understanding of what that means in a sort of spiritual sense. There's always some destruction happening. There's always some maintenance happening. There's always some creation happening, so that's obviously interesting and people can relate to destruction. 

But talk a little bit more about your personal practices, like writing your affirmations and past tense in the morning. What else do you do that kind of keeps you centered especially when you're navigating destruction?

[00:07:04] EF: Yeah, I would say that right now feels like the biggest time of upheaval in my life since my divorce, a move, a business change, a relationship change, my family's sick. And so it's full out right now. And I feel more committed to my practices than I ever have. And it's almost like they can be a nice to have when everything is fine. But right now it's a need to have. It's the thing that's anchoring me. So I'm happy to share. 

I would say sleep is a big one. I'm being pretty draconian about my sleep. So I think about my morning routine in relationship to my night routine, because if your night sucks, then you're not going to do your morning.

So I try to put my phone on red. If I was a little bit more advanced, I would turn my phone off, but I at least put it on the red light at night. And then I have red light in my room. and then I lay on my bio mat. And then when I wake up in the morning, I'll tongue scrape, brush my teeth, wash my face, and then I do gua sha.

I'm going to give you the full rundown. I'm going to give you the full beauty and consciousness rundown. I do gua sha, but I do it while I hang out of my window. So I get sunshine in my eyes because I live on the 29th floor. So I can't really go, I mean, I could go outside, but I choose not to. So I gua sha and then I meditate in front of my red light.

And so I do a full Ziva practice, which for me is mindfulness, meditation and manifesting. And then after that, I go back to my bio mat and I get out my journal. And sometimes if I'm in a bit of a time crunch, I basically just write down my day in past tense. This is something I learned from my coach Lauren Zander, and I call it daydreaming.

And it's basically, you just write down everything that you would love to happen in past tense. I guess you could call it a mastermind, but it was a group of eight women and we would partner up. And every morning we would send our daydreams to our partner, and we had to report back before we went to sleep at night and you'd be like, yes, no, on the way to actually have to report back on the magic.

What did you manifest? And what did you not? Which it can seem like a silly game or it can seem competitive, which we did compete on it. But really what it is, that you're training your recency bias and you're training your confirmation bias of your brain. And so if you have decided to believe that you're a powerful manifester, then your brain is going to look for evidence to prove that to be true.

I'm sure when you write your Daily Dose of Light, it's like your brain is constantly scanning your life for what's the lesson here? What's the learning? How am I evolving? And that changes the filter through which you live your life. And the same is true for me with the daydreaming. I'm constantly looking for evidence of magic. If I have an extended morning, which I did this morning, I will play my bowls. I'll pull a card. I have many different Oracle decks and I've recently started doing something called scribing, which is basically I'll ask a question to the universe to a specific fractal of the universe, if you will, and then I'll just start writing and see what comes through, which is different for me.

Like usually when I journal, it's like gratitude or I'm manifesting, which is me. It's Emily talking to nature. But this feels like it's flipping the script and I'm allowing nature to flow through me. And it's more of a listening-receiving mode, and that's been really fun. I actually got a journal with different sections and I dedicate each section to different fractals of my guides, which According to the Vedas, you know, the language that you and I speak, it's all just you, right? It's all just extended you. There's only one thing and we're all it. 

But let's say I'm, letting Lakshmi flow through me. Like Lakshmi is the piece of me that represents abundance. And so I'm tuning into that frequency of abundance that's already inside of me and allowing that to flow through. And recently I'm looking for a home. So I've been tuning into Tara. It's like the Buddhist goddess of home and family. It's like letting her flow through me. And it's been a fun practice to kind of get out of the way and see what nature wants to say instead of what Emily wants to say. I mean, I know that I am nature, but different parts of the brain.

[00:10:55] LW: Yeah. And what's interesting is people may hear all of this and go, Oh, well, she's obviously got a bunch of extra time on their hands. But you're a single mom. You have a kid. How old is Jasper now? 

[00:11:06] EF: He just turned six. 

[00:11:08] LW: So pretty rambunctious, I imagine, because 6-year olds are just all over the place.

[00:11:12] EF: And he's my son so he's an extraordinary amount of energy. 

[00:11:17] LW: Yeah. But you're making time for these other practices. So can you just quickly talk to the single moms out there or even the single dads out there about what you had to, I guess, reprioritize or do differently in order to carve out this space as a parent to be able to do both. Because obviously you're not neglecting your child when you're doing all this. 

[00:11:43] EF: I mean, God willing, I'm a great mom and I'm very attentive and he's great. So you're right. It's a prioritization. And oftentimes I feel like I'm failing, oftentimes I feel guilty that I'm not with him and I feel guilty for taking time for myself. And occasionally, I have him on the computer. I've been a lot better about that recently. I'm just really trying to minimize the screen time. But sometimes it's your only option. And it's okay, I'm going to have him on a screen for 40 minutes. I'm going to meditate for 20 and work out for 20. And then I'm going to be a better mom on the other side of that. So it's like worst case scenario, you just have a bit of screen time. But right now my mom is in town. So he's out of school at the moment. My mom came in for the month to help. And my mom's 81. So it's intense, sort of have my hands full and they love each other. And so they're able to entertain each other and hang out. So what do I do? I've trained him, just like you have to train your partner and your coworkers and your dog, to be like, this time is sacred, right? And so now he knows, oh, mommy's meditating and he'll try and get my attention a lot and he'll be like, mom, mom, mom.

And I'll just wait and I'll tell him, buddy, if there's bones or blood, please interrupt me. If you're in danger, please come get me. But if it's not that, then you have one million toys. You have infinite amount of things to play with, you are safe. 

And I actually think it's good for kids to be bored. Like they're, we've just constantly giving them scrolling and treats and activities. And they don't ever get a chance to tap into their creativity because they're never bored anymore. And so while it can be a little uncomfortable to move through that boredom portal, I'm excited about what's on the other side of his consciousness.

And same for us with meditation. Like sometimes meditation is boring. I think we talk about it in this way, that's so it's the second coming and you're going to be floating on a cloud of bliss and it's so life changing, which it is, but you got to be willing to sit through a couple minutes of boredom in order to let your brain shift its state of consciousness.

So I'm trying to think of other things. I mean, when he's in school, it's easy, right? Like I just take him to school and then I do my practice. After he goes to school. So he's there at eight. I usually start working at 10. And so I have two hours in the morning where I work out, sauna, exercise, do all my witchy journal stuff. So that's usually my thing. 

But in summer break, we're getting creative. And I love what you mentioned about, well, with me, with a daily dose of inspiration, you train your brain to confirm inspiration, using the confirmation bias that we all have. You may as well sort of reprogram it to look for the things that you want it to look for and that's something that I've written about before, which is just a very simple thought experiment.

[00:14:19] LW: If you had a blog about red cars and you were going to go out every day and see how many red cars you could see. You would absolutely see more red cars than anybody else. You knew probably in the world, because you're just being intentional about looking for it. And the same thing happened to me with inspiration.

I oftentimes ask myself that question, like you said, like what's inspiring about this experience, even though it may not be a very, happy experience or feel good experience, but there's some lesson in this. And that's because I painted myself into a corner where I have to come up with something to say every day. So you're literally scouring every experience you have looking for that inspiration. 

[00:15:02] EF: Do you ever allow it to just be a purge? Is it ever just you know what F it like today was hard. Do you ever just…

[00:15:09] LW: That’s a post right there today. You just got to allow it to be a purge and not try to find inspiration.

Sometimes you just kind of don't have to interpret everything, that's inspiration right there. So a great way to reprogram ourselves in real time. Because I think that's an opportunity that we all have. And when I hear your morning routine, that's what I see that you're actually doing is you're putting yourself in a better position to be a better human, right? However, you personally, and not everybody has to have the same definition or same processes any of us have, but there's something that works well for you, and it's about finding that. 

[00:15:50] EF: Yeah, I love it because I find that it's programming the reticular activating system or the RAS, which is the filtration device in the brain. And so I like programming that in the morning. Like I don't want to leave my house without setting my compass of what would I love to have happen. And I think that the mastery comes into play when you develop this simultaneity of very specific placing of the order. And full and total surrender and detachment from outcome. And I think that's truly the level of mastery where it's like razor sharp specificity of your desires and complete and utter detachment from outcome, because you know that fulfillment of the desire is not going to make you happy and yet it does not absolve you of the responsibility of placing the order.

There's a Winston Churchill quote, which I love, which is that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. And I really love that. Because your life is never going to go according to plan. We know that your life is going according to plan 0% percent of the time. And yet it does not absolve you of the responsibility of planning. And so I think it's like that duality. It's that paradox that is where the richness is. And I think that's also duality that I'm in at the moment, because I'm really in a time of grief right now, like deep mourning, deep loss, lots of death and not physical death, but like lots of death of chapter. And so the thing that I've been playing with right now, and yet I feel very happy. I feel very light. I feel very vibrant. Like I feel like I'm trusting myself and trusting nature more and more. And so the game and the dance that I'm in at the moment is how can I give myself permission to really feel my feelings, to not bypass, which is my former habit, but just go in and cry and rage and be afraid and feel those feelings, but not allow them to be true and not allow the stories that my brain spins about those feelings to be true.

And so the thing is that when we're in an uncomfortable situation, we don't like it. We don't want to feel those feelings. And so then the brain tries to solve the problem. Why is this feeling here? It's uncomfortable. Let's get out of it. What have I done wrong? What have they done wrong? Who's to blame?

And so we start asking these really not helpful questions. And then the brain, because of this recency bias, because we are programming the reticular activating system, really with every thought that we have, your brain will start to answer those questions. What did I do wrong? What did they do wrong? Why is this uncomfortable? How do I avoid this feeling in the future versus just feeling it and then putting your attention back on that which you desire to create? And so that feels like the dance that I'm in at the moment. And I feel really proud of myself for the simultaneity of doing both.

[00:18:31] LW: Yeah. And you're also very studied. You have had wonderful mentors throughout your spiritual life. And you've written a book, Stress Less, Accomplish More, which is an excellent gateway into the practice of meditation. But what I'm wondering about is, obviously, it's great. We're both big advocates for meditation. But in terms of understanding these other practices, the affirmations and the power of positive thinking, and is there a book that has had the biggest impact on you? In that regards, like let's assume someone gets stressed less and they start meditating, they have the meditation part. How do you correct the intellect around and it to make sense of all this other stuff that's happening so that you can start to implement more of the natural optimism that we want to all experience?

[00:19:29] EF: I guess in some degree it is optimism. But to me, it's the manifesting practice for me as of late has been more about being brave enough to go in and feel the intensity, and the darkness of what is, and then through that alchemical process. It makes space for me to even hear the desires and then to start to vibrate at the frequency of the desire. And for me personally, I'll give some thought to some books because I'm sure that I read some back in the day, like I started really studying manifesting probably like 20 years ago. But for me, I like to receive it orally. Like I like to just have like almost a constant feed of lectures or inspiration or people that I look up to kind of like saturating myself all the time. And I'll share some of the things that are turning me on in that regard as well.

Actually, my coach just sent me a book. It's old school. And I've been listening to it. It's a little, dare I say boring, but also works. It's called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. And I can only really do 10 or 15 minutes a day. But that one is great. 

I would also say, Abraham Hicks, Esther Hicks is the OG in this. So Esther Hicks is a woman who's also a channel for this entity called Abraham. And, it's so funny cause that was like, Esther's been channeling for a long time, like 30 years or something back in the day that, I mean, now I feel like everybody's a channel and a shaman. But 30 years ago, she was a trucker like from Texas or something or West Virginia. And the fact that she was brave enough to be like, hey, everybody, I got this entity called Abraham that just wants to say some stuff. I really want to celebrate her audacity and bravery. 

And also her consistency, just still showing up, working the road, doing the conferences. And I got to go to my first Abraham Hicks conference a few months ago. And it was amazing, like just so delightful. And it felt like meeting an old friend, I've been reading her books and listening to her lectures for over 20 years. And certainly that's become a part of me. Like I've just ingested this material for so much that I don't even know what are her thoughts and what are mine anymore?

Because at the end of the day, The truth is the truth is the truth. But it was so funny to watch my body. Like every time Abraham came through my body, it was like, like you could just feel the energetic activation. I really love Regan Hillier. She's a friend of mine. And she's a great teacher on manifestation.

And then, my way in as of late has really been through sacred sexuality. so what I'm working on in this whole new body of work with Ziva is about tapping into what I would consider the most creative and the most magnetic force on the planet, which is our sexual energy and helping to utilize that to become a magnet for your dreams.

And that's been a wild ride because, sexuality is so shamed and conditioned and there's so much cultural programming around it that to even dip your toe into it. It kicks up, all your stories, all your trauma, everyone else's trauma and conditioning. And so even to play with it at all requires I won't say gloves, but certainly preparation, because like you have to be willing to walk through the landmines in order to get to the gold.

[00:22:44] LW: I love that. And I want to go back to something you said earlier about Esther Hicks. You said she was a truck driver?

[00:22:51] EF: Don't quote me on that. I just know she knows a lot about trucking and driving and I’m inferring that. And I think that she and her former husband, he's passed, Jerry. I think they used to be truck drivers, but we should fact check that. 

[00:23:05] LW: But my point was whether she was a truck driver or salesman at Macy's, she did something else and then she eventually found her calling as the channel for Abraham and you also had your own journey, and we've already covered this in great detail in our first episode together, which we'll put in the show notes, but you shifted away from entertainment to spirituality and meditation, and now you're continuing to evolve. But I want to just talk a little bit about in earlier process of making that shift again as a woman, and then you became a mother and continuing to invest in that. Because you've said that, you're looking at me, I'm pretty much a one man show. I've got a virtual team, a couple of people who do things for me, but it seems like you have an entire squad of people. You got director of operations and social media people. But knowing you, I've never met anyone else on your team but I've seen you do amazing things. You've got this incredible online course that's in development but it's out now as people are probably listening to this, in this moment. And you've got another amazing online course, people can learn how to meditate. You do retreats, you've written books, you give talks, you do all the things. And you have this incredible podcast that you just started. And I know there's somebody out there listening to this right now, who is a truck driver who's working at Macy's who's doing something very conventional. Yet , she or he has other experiences that they would like to start to explore and maybe make available for their community. And I just want to talk a little bit about how you think about making the leap now in hindsight, you've been in the game for 20 years now, so what would some of your thoughts be in terms of best practices. Because you know, we live in this age now where more people are becoming entrepreneurs and branding themselves personally and doing all the things. If your best friend wanted to do that, what would be some of your tips for going all in on creating community and creating a personal brand and making some of these teachings available to a broader community of people?

[00:25:33] EF: Yeah, I would say, what you just said is go all in. And that's a very personal decision, right? Is this something that you really want to go all in on? Do you really want to dedicate the entirety of who you are to something? And I would really be honest about that question because oftentimes what people do is that they find something that they love and it changes their life and it becomes even a hobby, even the dare I say, like a spiritual hobby, and they're like, oh my gosh, I love going to meditation retreats. I love going to breathwork and doing breathwork. I love being in women's circles or men's circles. And they love it so much that they think Oh, I need to do this. And so it's like just really being honest with the fact, it's like, do you love participating? Or do you truly feel a calling to lead this?

And if the answer is, I truly feel a calling to lead this, then great. Go for it. But I think it's like the first determining is this like something that I enjoy participating in? And if, that's the case, then great. Then just do what you're doing to take the tools and the enrichment and the consciousness expansion that you're getting from these tools and bring it back to your corporation, bring it back to your family, bring it back to your truck driving friends or your salespeople at Macy's, like we're going to need lights, you in the darkness and all avenues, but if you're like, yes, I'm going all in.

For me personally, I was still acting and teaching acting when I started teaching meditation. But not bifurcated. Is trifurcated a word? So I was acting personally, I was teaching acting, and then I was teaching meditation. And then eventually I stopped acting and I was just teaching acting and teaching meditation.

And then finally, I think in 2015, I was like I'm going all in and I stopped teaching acting and I finally went full time at Ziva. I think I was five years in from teaching and it wasn't until five years in that I fully made Ziva my full time job. And when I did that, the energy that I put in started to return exponentially. 

Because Todd Herman says this, if you have 100% energy and you split your energy and attention between two things, you are not giving those two  things 50% and 50% because it's going to take you at least 20% to gear shift. So now you actually only have 80%. So it's 40 and 40, you do that again, it's taking you another 20% of energy to shift gears.

So now I'm not great at math, but say it's like 20, 20 and 20, right? Oou only have 20% to give to these three things. You start to do that four times and you can get the math does cost us something to context shift. 

And I would say that I am multi-passionate, I really love Marie Forleo because she speaks so well to women because we're not really biologically wired to be hunters, we're gatherers. So our consciousness is like, oh I can hold many things in my awareness. I can be a mom and run the business and have a dance class and run retreats. Like I enjoy that simultaneity. And it does cost you something to context shift. And so now I'm in an area of my life where I'm just really trying to simplify, simplify, simplify. I'm reading a book right now called 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. And I'm really loving it right now because I think we got a little overplayed on the idea of I'm going to scale and I want a 10X.

And it's for what? For who? For why? but what I like about the idea of 10X is really the idea that it is in fact easier because the decisions,, the clarity that you have to 10X your mission, whatever that is, I want to be 10 times healthier. I want to be 10 times a better mother. I want to make 10 times more money. I want to teach 10 times more people to meditate. The decisions that you have to make in the clarity that comes from that matrix is different than I want to be 10% better this year because you can kind of just get away lying to yourself and doing a bit of the same if you just want to make incremental change.

So at the moment, I'm in the process of really streamlining of like how could I do less? How could I do less but better? But in the beginning, I would say that I had to kind of throw spaghetti against the wall. You know, I was teaching meditation and I started teaching acting and I loved that.

I was teaching live and I loved that. You and I were very similar timing, but like we were like first in the game of making some of the world's first online meditation trainings. And I realized that I love that. I love learning about the technology. I actually love being an entrepreneur. Like you said, I have a squad I have 10 employees at Ziva. And I like running a company. And it'd be interesting. I'd actually love for us to do a side by side of our calendars, cause we're probably working the same amount, but you're just executing it yourself and I'm like running a whole team and managing a team and they're executing, but it takes a lot of time and energy to get that transmission through. But that'd be an interesting side by side. 

[00:30:09] LW: What I've observed from you is when I say go all in you go all in. When you start, yeah, I'm going to go into meditation. You take out a freaking commercial lease for God knows how many years. Most meditation teachers don't do that. Most meditation teachers rent a little space. That's what I was doing. $40 an hour. Oh, maybe can we get it to $30 an hour? You take out a whole lease, get a whole space, shoot a whole course, do all these ads. Like you knew somehow how to run this business. And you started hiring employees very early on. And even with your podcast, Emily doesn't just start a podcast. Emily has a million downloads in the first week of her podcast and 500 reviews. That shit is hard to do when you're not going all in. So there's something that you do when you approach this stuff that just shoots you right to The top of, the cream of the crop, and it's very impressive. So what's your secret? 

[00:31:07] EF: Oh, Light, thank you so much for that reflection. I really appreciate it. And I think you're right. Like once I do decide to go in and I'm like, I'm going to put my full energy behind something.  

To me, I don't understand the point of doing something small or mediocre. Like I'd rather honestly not do it than be mediocre. And maybe this is a trauma response. Maybe it's just me still trying to get daddy's love. Who knows? But if I do something, like I want it to be amazing. And I think with the podcast, it felt like I used to be on Broadway for 10 years. I've been singing and dancing and performing and entertaining since I was 8 years old. And so the podcast was like, oh, cool. Now I can take my lifetime of performance training because podcast at the end of the day, hopefully you're entertaining, yes, you want to learn, but you also want to be entertained. And I think that some of the best podcasts, Dak Shepard from Armchair Expert. You've got Mark Manson, they're all comedians. And so it felt like, oh, here's this opportunity for me to entertain, to perform, but also to share not only my knowledge, but the knowledge of this amazing group of people that we've gotten to learn with and from over the past many decades of being in this space. And so I've really enjoyed it. 

And I also find conversation to be an art form, like to me, like a painting, but it's like an improvised painting. And so I've always enjoyed the art and the craft of conversation. And I would say I seek out help. Like I ask people like, who helped you launch your podcast? Who helped you to do this? So ask everybody like, who were your secret weapons? And then I hire them. So I had someone who helped me with the podcast launch. We had a strategy, same with the book launch. 

So I was pregnant when I was writing the book and my son was born five months before the book came out, which I do not recommend. But because of that, like I knew I was basically going to be on maternity leave during my book launch. So we had to plan it like 18 months in advance. And so because of that, we were able to reach out to so many affiliates. We were able to get me on so many podcasts. And so we had the luxury of time, which is not normally my forte. 

I have a deep existential kink around procrastination. And I think it's really a form of arrogance when I'm like, Oh, let's see how much I can accomplish and how little time,I like the adrenaline kick of it, but it's not really great if you're trying to do something big, when you have a whole team of people and you require affiliates you want to motivate the masses that requires some time.

And so I think the fact that my son was born right before the book helped the launch quite a bit. But that's something I'm really proud of. Like with the book, we know we launched at number seven out of all books on Amazon. We were a wall street journal, bestseller. We would have been New York Times number five, but they didn't like, according to book sales, they didn't put us on.

But I don't know if it's like being an actress and not necessarily competitive because I don't feel like I'm competing really with anyone, but myself. But just by the nature of the game, since I was 18 years old, I would show up and there'd be a thousand women in the room competing for one spot. I did that for 10 years and it's like, all right, well, you've got to pull every lever you have. You have to be so conditioned, like your voice, your body, your emotions, your book, your outfit, like everything has to be best you can possibly be if you want to be even considered. And so I think that just became a part of me. And I used to joke that I was like the most competitive meditation teacher in the land.

I think that's softening a little bit now. I think that I do enjoy excellence. And I also feel like I have much more support from non-visible guides. I think we all are very supported by the unseen realms, whatever you want to call that. But I find that now I'm finally have the humility to shut up and listen and to ask for help and to let these unseen guides help me. 

And I'm also, a lot more disciplined about giving thanks. I'm no longer under any illusions that I'm doing this by myself. And I spend a decent amount of my time like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Like truly high five. Good job. Thank you. 

And I think that, I like to anthropomorphize nature because we all see things through the lens of which of that, we are. And so I feel like the more gratitude I give, the more support I get. And then it feels like I have a team. It's not just me doing this alone. So yes, of course, I have an amazing human team, but I also feel like I'm relying more on my non-human team as well. 

[00:35:30] LW: You also mentioned coach. Is that a part of your strategy whenever you're doing something or maybe just in general, you always have personal development coach or a business coach or a team of coaches? What's your relationship like with coaches? 

[00:35:45] EF: Yeah. So I'd say I'm pretty regular with therapy and coaching. So, I mean, I certainly will take breaks here and there, but I will always– almost always have at least one therapist and at least one coach which I get is like a privileged AF thing to say. When you're the CEO like I mentor my employees or they have a manager that mentors them.

And I think we all need that. We all are better in community. We're better when we're held to account. We're better when someone else is being like, Hey, let's set these goals together. So. And when you're the CEO, like who's doing that for you? And so to me, I think of my coach and my therapist, well, my therapist is different, but like my coach, I think of it as my advisory board a bit.

And I've never had a board. I've never had investors. Ziva has always been like a profit— we've just always been profitable, so I invest those resources back into the company. And so the way I think about my coaches is that's my advisory board and they're the ones that are inviting me to step up and then holding me to account and calling me out on my bullshit and helping me to see my blind spots.

And just shout out to Lauren Handel Zander has been a huge huge help to me. And then her right hand Lori Gerber has been my coach now for probably four or five years. And then I have some amazing therapists, Thomas Jones of the Paradox Process was my first therapist when I was 24, and he really first taught me about manifesting introduce me to The Secret back when I was 24, and Esther Hicks probably as well.

And then as of late, I'm working with a guy named David Coates with IFS or Internal Family Systems. And that has really changed the game for me, like learning how to connect to little Emily. Here she is. I don't know if you do video or not, but this is little five year old Emily. 

So I've just been spending a lot of time healing my daddy stuff, healing my relationship with the masculine and doing that through, like connecting with five year old Emily. And I think that this is such a simple practice. It's simple. Like gratitude is simple.

 Everyone thinks oh yeah. Yeah. Gratitude. Everyone thinks they know oh yeah. Yeah. Meditation, sitting quietly in a chair. Oh yeah. Yeah. Gratitude. I get that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Inner child. But these things are so simple that the profundity is exquisite. And I think that the most profound truths are the simplest. And so as I've been able to connect to little Emily more and more, as I'm able to hear her more and more and allow her to feel held and safe by adult Emily, it has been one of the most transformative tectonic healings that I've had in my life, because it's like, if I know I can hold myself.

If little Emily trust that adult Emily can hold her, then I don't get as triggered by other people. If my mom forgets to pick up Jasper, if my boyfriend says something silly, or if my employees drop the ball, it's like, little Emily doesn't feel like she's going to die. Oh, no, like other people are dropping the ball. I'm not safe because there's this relationship that is established between adult Emily and little Emily. And so I think there's a lot of different ways to do this, to connect with that five year old version of you or eight year old or whatever.

But if you're not willing to sit with those wounds, those traumas, if you want to use that word, but at the end of the day, like none of us had it perfect. And even, obviously there's the capital T trauma, you had a 100% of whatever your childhood trauma was.

And then your brain shapes around that. The therapist had like non treatable extreme PTSD and a non treatable bipolar depression. She is since healed. But her husband, had an amazing childhood, virtually no trauma. And she said, the one thing that happened to him is he got his tonsils out when he was 12. And at the moment that he came out of anesthesia, his mother had been there with him the whole time. She went out to pee. He woke up from anesthesia and she was gone. And so he was like, oh no, mommy abandoned me. Now, this poor mom went to the bathroom one time for five minutes and now our kid has abandonment issues.

But her point was that like, even if you don't have capital T trauma, And that moment, that 12 year old boy felt like he was alone, he felt disoriented. He had just had surgery. And so it's whatever cards you got dealt. And if you're black or if you're Jewish, or if you're coming from an ancestral line of deep, deep trauma, then even if your childhood was great, well, guess what? You got your parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents. And all of that is in the cellular memory. And so we have an opportunity to heal that lineage as we take care of those little kids inside of us. 

[00:40:18] LW: Yeah, God, you said so much there and I want to go back. I want to flesh out. I want to flesh out this idea that it's privileged to have a coach because I feel like having a coach is, obviously it's an investment. It's a startup cost in your business and it makes such a big difference and you not having to reinvent the wheel. And so a lot of people would see that as a nice to have to use your language. But when it comes to being efficient and economical, it actually pays for itself pretty quickly. If you have the right type of relationship with your coaches and it's the same with meditation, like we both have had the experience of working personally with thousands of people who just had no clue how to meditate, even though they had read all the books, even though they had listened to all the videos and courses and everything. But when they get into the room with you I love you said, the profound truths are the simplest when you learn how to simplify things. That's why you work with a coach is not to complicate anything. It's actually to simplify a practice more than you would do on your own in your head, trying to piecemeal things together from all these books and YouTube videos you've experienced when you learn how to simplify things and you learn sequence. This is the most important thing for you right now. Okay. Don't worry about all these other 20 things. Once you master this, then you start learning this and you put those two things together. And then you add this third thing. And after you've mastered these first two, and that's how it starts to flow.

And people start having these epiphanies and the light turns on and you're like, yeah, this is great. This is why people learn from in-person, how to meditate with people like us, that's why people get coaches. That's why people join masterminds because you're in the room. 

And I remember I was hanging out with Lewis Howes recently. Lewis obviously has a massive podcast. My podcast is like a little gnat. On the ass of a cow compared to Lewis's podcast being the cow. And we were talking about guests and I was asking him, cause he's very generous with me, when it comes to sharing information, I was like, man, how'd you get Kobe Bryant? How'd you get this person, that person on your podcast? And he would go into these stories around how he just was relentless about tracking some of these people down. And I'm thinking to myself, as I'm listening to this, I'm not putting nearly as much effort into this as, I mean, it's clear why his podcast has this level of downloads. And my podcast has this level, even though I feel like I'm making a good impact in the world and blah, blah, blah. But there's a work ethic that you learn from just being in proximity to people who have done the things that you want to do that you'd never even consider if you're trying to figure this stuff out on your own. So I'm so glad you mentioned your experiences with coaches and with masterminds. 

And so then the question I have for you, you mentioned The Secret, learning The Secret when you're in your early 20s, I think any person who's had any contact in the spiritual community in the last 15 years has at least heard of the movie, The Secret, which is from the, I don't know which came first, the movie or the book, but now that you are teaching manifesting, and obviously you've had all of these experiences and perhaps exposure to different schools of thought, what do people get wrong about the concept of The Secret, meaning the manifest? 

Because here's what I've learned  from writing books, and I'm sure you've experienced this too. You can't get too nuanced when you're writing a book, the publisher will water your ideas down so they're more palatable and more accessible for people who may read the book on a flight from Florida to Seattle and without having to put the book down without doing any kind of practices. So naturally things get watered down. But at the same time, we just talked about the profound truths or the simplest. So what do we get wrong about the practice or maybe even the art of manifesting that we may have been exposed to from The Secret and we have this very sort of casual relationship with this idea of manifesting.

[00:44:43] EF: Yeah, what a great question. I first just want to like give a huge moment of gratitude to The Secret and to everyone who was in it. And like I'm in a mastermind with a lot of those folks that are Jack Canfield and Lisa Nichols and Michael Bernard Beckwith, and so I'm really very grateful to each of those teachers.

[00:45:04] LW: You're in a mastermind with these people?

[00:45:05] EF: Well, I'm in a group, it's called Transformation of Leadership Council. And I'm like the little youngin there. But I feel so grateful to be surrounded by these legends.

And like you said, to learn from them. And, so I want to really like If it weren't for them and the work that they had done and The Secret I think it would have taken a lot more time for these ideas to get into the zeitgeist and into just the idea that thoughts become things was revelation.

And it was like a revelation in the 90s when that came out. And I think similar, we've been doing this for a long time. I think people who are under 40 don't remember a time that meditation was weird. And so I just want to say, props to the secret. Thank you for existing. I'm so glad that it does. And I think that it's like a beautiful entryway because what they had to do was capitalize on the state of consciousness of where people were. So the secret is sort of like, all right thoughts become things and if you put your attention like on this Ferrari or on this million dollars, you can manifest this million dollars or this Ferrari by putting your attention on it.

Which is a little bit of capitalizing on what we would call the I'll be happy when syndrome or the acquisitive approach to fulfillment, which, I did the same thing in my book, Stress Less Accomplish More. I am taking the very powerful medicine that is meditation and I wrapped it in the candy coating of like, Hey, this thing is going to help you make more money and have better sex. And if we were living in the same state of consciousness that we were when the book came out, I would do it again. 

But the planet is changing. Consciousness is changing very quickly. We're no longer in this hyper masculine, hyper acquisitive, hyper accomplishment focused world anymore. I do think God willing, things are coming more into balance. I think that there is more feminine energy that is happening on the planet. And again, this is not about male and female. This is about masculine and feminine, right? So masculine is decisive. It is taking action. It is moving forward and the feminine is discerning. It is magnetic. It is about being in alignment. It's about flow. And masculine is structure and the feminine is flow. And we all have masculine and feminine elements. And if you really want to take this beyond gender, you could look at inside of a cell, every single cell in our body has the masculine structure. It has the cell wall, and then it has the undulating flowing fluid inside that is the feminine.

If you want to take even and go even deeper inside of that cell, there's the atom and the atom has the Rubik's cube, like matrix structure of the masculine form, but then there's the feminine light and energy that penetrates it or that flick flows through it, but it needs that masculine container.

So just really making the point that we all have masculine and feminine on the subatomic, on the cellular level, it truly is much beyond gender. 

So that said, I think that the whole world was much more in a masculine paradigm of achieve, acquire, accomplish, get. And now I think that the pandemic and the intensity of the health of our planet and the sort of precarious nature of how much longer humans have to live on the planet I think that is forcing us to reprioritize who are we accomplishing for? Who are we performing for? And why? And I think that nature is mandating a deeper level of symbiosis and harmony within ourselves and with the planet.

And so as we're moving into this more feminine. It's not even more feminine. It's just more balanced, a more healthy balance between the masculine and feminine. I think that the name of the game with manifesting is very much changing, and I think it is coming into one of magnetism. It is becoming into one of discernment.

And what I'm really passionate about is utilizing your pleasure to pray, because here's the news, the better you feel, the more amazingness you attract. The simplest recipe I have for manifestation is this feel good. Place the order. Place the order. Feel good. Feel good. Place the order. Place the order.

Feel good. Feel good. Place the order. Place the order. Feel good. And that might sound simple because it is like you just said, like you don't hire a coach to make things complicated. And I'm actually very proud of that distillation. It's taking me about 20 years to get my manifestation formula down into those two sentences. And feeling good might sound simple because it is. But it's a full fucking time job. You know what I mean? Like I just told you my nighttime and daytime routine, it's hours a day. And I didn't even get to my supplements or my exercise routine or my therapy or my inner child work, so feel good is a simple idea, but it doesn't mean just putting a happy face sticker on top of an empty tank of gas. It means doing whatever the F it takes to sustainably, reliably, and internally source your own bliss, your own fulfillment, so that you can change your vibration. So you can change your frequency. And become an energetic and vibrational match for that, which you desire. So I guess to answer your original question, what did we get wrong about manifesting or what have we evolved into rather is that The Secret I think was very elementary and it was like, I'll be happy when I can manifest this Ferrari, I can manifest this million dollars and then I will be happy. And I think what we're moving into and certainly what I'm very passionate about teaching is how do we internally source our fulfillment source, our bliss, and even source our pleasure so that we have this level of detachment.

And we have this level of magnetism that actually the better we feel, the more magnetic we become. And we're crystal clear about that, which we desire, which I also think is very much related to our pleasure. If you don't know what you desire physically, it's very hard to know what you desire in your life. And as you get brave enough to know what you desire physically, we start to get brave enough to ask for what you desire in your life. And so I'm very fascinated if you can't tell and passionate about this intersection of using our pleasure to pray. 

[00:51:03] LW: I have a hypothetical for you that maybe you can shed some light on.

I remember, I think it was 2015, I did a new year's eve meditation retreat in Costa Rica and a part of the ritual was we created, we wrote letters to our future selves for 2016 in past tense, you know, all the things right out, place your order, write out what you see for yourself, blah, blah, blah. And then I mailed everyone their letters just before the next new year, so they can kind of go back and open them up and see how things played out and I looked at my own letter and I had all these things on there. And literally 90% of it didn't happen, but I had an incredible 2016, like I wasn't upset. I just thought it was interesting that I had written all these things out and followed all the steps of conventional manifesting. And so my question is we talk about placing order, let's just double click on that a little bit more and break down how do we kind of reconcile things may not happen in the way that we think, what does that mean?

Should we put it on the next time? Do we shift our attention to what is happening? Because the way I interpret it is, well, this is what needed to happen. This is what I want it to happen. But this thing that actually happened is what I needed to happen for my personal growth and evolution. 

[00:52:42] EF: Yeah. I love that. So I would say this, the short answer is that it comes back to plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. So your year didn't go according to plan. Shocking. Oh, wait, that's never going to happen. And it didn't absolve you of the responsibility of planning. You took that time. You got quiet. What would I love? You wrote that letter. You started to plant seeds in your mind, but I would argue that your desires are divinely inspired. So all those things that you prayed for, all those things that you wrote down in that letter, that was you planting those seeds. That was you listening. How would nature like to use me to deliver my fulfillment to the world? And because of your lifetime of meditation, it's given you the lens of oh, this is what I needed to have happen. 

But I would argue that even beyond that, your desires are divinely inspired, not because the acquisition of the desire will bring you fulfillment. It's not about the acquiring of the thing. It's about whatever happens on the way to the thing. Who did you meet? How and where did you deliver your fulfillment as you were taking action towards the dream. For example, when I first started doing this work, when I first started doing the embodied manifesting work, the first download that I got, the first desire was a stadium.

It was like, Emily, you need to lead 80,000 people, like full 80000 people going into simultaneous climax, holding a shared dream for the species. That is the directive. It was very clear. And the audacity and the bigness of that dream had magnetism in it. And from that, I got an Aubrey Marcus's podcast from that. I got a bunch of private clients from that. I got invited to Egypt and to India to meet the Dalai Lama. All of these big things started happening because of the bigness of my dream. And then about a year later, I got a very clear message that was like, Emily, you have to let go of the container. Does it sound about the stadium? Stadium's actually too small and also nobody wants to pleasure themselves in an aluminum, stadium seat. So it's bigger than that. 

And so now the dream has evolved into activations at these sacred sites. So at the pyramids and in Cairo, the pyramids in Teotihuacan. So going to chakra points of the planet, if you will, and doing these activations there and the dream might evolve again, but I don't think that my happiness lies on the other side of 80,000 people being in Dallas Cowboys stadium at the same time. 

And when that desire came in, I trust it so implicitly. I start taking action on it and then I just let nature flow. Like God is not a short order cook. And I would argue that disappointment is the price of admission. It's not always going to happen according to plan.

And here's analogy that I really like. This is what I teach in one of my manifesting courses. I always use my son when he was 2. We were in the park together and he saw the playground and he wanted to go into the playground and he ran, he beelined to the playground and he had his hands on it was like a metal gate. He's playground, playground. And I was like, okay, buddy, let's go. And I took his hand and I was walking him around the perimeter of the playground to take him to the entrance because it was a gate around the playground. 

And from his POV, I was taking him away from the thing that he wanted. And in this case, I'm going to anthropomorphize myself as God, right?

Because I'm like the deity in this for my 2-year-old son, I'm goddess, right? So like I have the power to pick his body up. And I could have lifted his body up and took him over the fence and I could have plopped him into the playground. He might have broken a leg. He might have had a black eye. But I could have given him exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted it. 

And I think that is true of our desires. Nature can give us anything that we want. But it's safer and more enjoyable and ultimately more pleasurable for everyone if I'm just being myself, patient enough of Jasper's just patient enough to walk around the perimeter of the playground. Let's go to the entrance and then let's walk in. And then you're actually going to get what you want. 

[00:56:33] LW: And you also show him how to access it on his own without needing some sort of miracle of someone picking them up and putting them over the fence. 

[00:56:42] EF: Exactly. It's just walk yourself to the gate. Learn where the gate is. Learn how to open up the gate, go into the playground. You're absolutely right. 

[00:56:49] LW: Other gates to other things, other experiences… 

[00:56:53] EF: That's a great add-on to that teaching. I love that. But it's like when we mess ourselves up is when it's like, oh, I placed this order in 2015 on New Year's Eve. It didn't happen. Manifesting doesn't work. God doesn't love me. I'm not special. My prayers aren't answered. I'm not lucky. Because again, I think Tony Robbins says the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions. 

And so if you're asking the question, why didn't this happen? Why am I so unlucky? Why didn't these dreams come true? Those are shitty questions. You're going to get shitty answers. If you start to ask better questions, like I wonder what nature has in store for me. I wonder what nature is preparing me for. I wonder what divine timing is even more elegant than I knew to pray for the nature will start to answer those questions as well.

And so this is what I was saying earlier with the dance that I'm in, like I'm in a deep time of grief right now. And so it's uncomfortable and it's easy to want to ask the questions of like, why is this happening? What did I do wrong? What did they do wrong? And instead, what is being healed and annealed inside of me? What are you preparing me for? What would you have me know? I think that even in times of discomfort, even when we don't get the things that we want when we're manifesting, the quality of the questions really matter. And I would add to that when you said, what are we getting wrong with manifesting?

I think that a lot of people think that manifesting is just love and light and just putting things on a vision board the whole modality that I've been birthing for the past four years. The thing I've really put my steam engine against that I'm launching in October, which I can't reveal the name of just yet, but like you said, there's going to be a course coming soon.

Yeah. It's sort of three parts, the three part formula, and I can share the formula. The formula is visualize, alchemize, magnetize. So we first have to visualize. We have to be brave enough to ask for what we want. We have to be still enough to listen, to hear what we want. 

And then step two is alchemize. Alchemize anything standing in the way of you believing that you deserve that thing. You have to alchemize, and really what I'm doing there is just teaching people how to feel their feelings because we've been taught since infancy, not to feel. And then if you have decades of repressed emotion, decades of unfelt feelings, that is naturally going to decrease your vibration. You see the people who smile on top of acid eyes, they have hate in their eyes, but they put a smile on top of it. You're not fooling anyone. So you have to go to like, what is the source of that hatred? What is it in my life that I'm hating so much? And we have to feel it. We have to release it. We have to name it. We have to move it. And without that, without cleaning up your lies, without feeling your feelings, then you're not going to be a vibrational match for that, which you desire. 

And I think that's where a lot of people run, get their head up against the wall and they're like, I'm praying for it. I'm putting it on my vision board, but they haven't cleaned up their daddy stuff. They haven't felt their sadness of their mommy's alcoholism. They didn't grieve the last breakup. That stuff is in their cells. That's why we go through the whole alchemical process. It's like we're clearing the channel.

And from there, from that clear channel, then we start to magnetize. Then we start to fill the body with pleasure. Then we start to turn on with, again, the most creative and magnetic force that nature has given us, which is our, what I call creation energy or sexual energy. 

[01:00:11] LW: I love it. Visualize, Alchemize, Magnetize. This framework that you developed for this particular course, which is obviously it's an online and I looked at the trailer from, I guess what you have up now and it looks like it was a live experience that you've sort of done before and honed it and converted it into this online experience so that it can reach more people. Now, both of us have done plenty of online experiences before, and I'd love to just hear a little bit more about the back end of this thing. How is it that you are creating it because I think one of the biggest pain points of online experiences in general is people just don't finish them.

And we obviously want people to get to the other side of it, because we know how valuable this stuff is. What have you done? What have you baked into the framework to help encourage completion and just to help people get the most out of the experience? 

[01:01:12] EF: I'm truly so grateful for you asking this question because this is the thing I am most excited about in my life right now.

The average online course has a 3% completion rate which is abysmal. Ziva Online has a 70% completion rate, and we have a 70% open rate on our graduation sequence, emails even after people graduate, which is something I feel very, very proud of. And I think that is due to a lot of trial and error.

And also, again, like utilizing my lifetime of performance training. I try to make it as entertaining as possible and also give people the minimum viable product. Like what? The videos are only 15 minutes long for Ziva Online and it's just get to the chase, take your 10 years of teaching and put it into 15 minutes, best of the best.

And so I think with this new course that's coming out that, so the Visualize, Alchemize, Magnetize, the Embodied Manifesting course that's coming out in October. I mean, I feel like we're going to change the game. I think that what we just created, we just shot it a few weeks ago. And I think it's so much bigger than an online course, because we had 15 people fly in from all around the world on their own dime, because they just wanted to be a part of the birthing of this thing, because this work had impacted them so dramatically in the past.

And we ended up basically running a retreat because like you said, I have run this in-person. So I spent the past four years researching, developing, honing, fine tuning because I teach, I have to create on bodies in public. Like I don't just sit down and write a curriculum. I have to do it with people. And so I've been doing that for the past four years and I've really sculpted it into this beautiful, very accessible formula, right? It's a formula. And to help people live the life of their wildest imagination. 

So anyway, we had people come in. We shot it like a retreat and we shot it like a documentary of a retreat. So even though we were doing 10, 12 hour shoot days was a film set, essentially, even still, the people said they were having ayahuasca level healings. They were doing deep, deep work even though there was a whole camera crew around them. I had an artist who volunteered to come, an amazing artist, Alex Ruiz. And he was painting and drawing while the ceremonies were happening. He said he made the most profound art of his entire career. I hired this amazing director of photography named Everett Satoro, and he said he made the most amazing art of his life, and so it's, going to be both documentary and music video and online course, so I think it's, going to be beautiful to watch, I think that the actual transmission and the technique is extraordinarily powerful medicine. And you're following, not just me teaching to camera, but you actually get to meet the people who are with me. And you get to learn from their different archetypes. 

Because there's some people there who are terrified of this work. I had a woman named Jennifer come and she came on my very first retreat and she wouldn't even let us take a still photo of her. Like we took before and after photos of people and she wouldn't let us take a photograph of her because she didn't want to be a stranger associated with the work she didn't want. And so she lied to her husband and told her husband that she was just going on a meditation retreat, even though this was very much like a Sacred Sexuality retreat, and it was a big issue. They almost got divorced. And then two years later, her and her husband came back together and now she's in this video course with me. And she said, now I couldn't imagine not coming to be a part of this because this work has affected me so profoundly that I want everyone to know about it. And so you get to see their different journeys and transformations. Because sexuality is so triggering, there's so much shame, there's so much repression and trauma around it that I think it's really important that you have a lot of safety built in. So I have two trauma informed therapists who teach with me inside of the course.

So we're giving people a lot of tools to resource themselves. And by the way, this is not a tantric course. There's no self pleasuring. It's very beginner. But it's also very potent and powerful. So what we've done to help people complete it is make it F-ing beautiful, also entertaining, and also the technique works. It just works. And it's sort of like three courses in one. It's going to teach you how to manifest. It's going to teach you how to not only feel your feelings, but also to embody them, to express them physically. And it's going to teach you how to magnetize. And through that magnetism, it's like you also get a reclamation of your own body and a reclamation of your own pleasure, which sadly has been taken away from a lot of us.

[01:05:27] LW: You mentioned the Tony Robbins quote, the quality of your questions determine the quality of your life. And so with this work you're describing what are some more powerful questions that we can ask when it comes to just manifesting in general, or if you want to be more specific, manifesting the life of our dreams or following our heart or to make it less feminine and more masculine, just being of use, what are some better questions that we can ask?

[01:05:54] EF: I would say that when I do the visualize module, what I have people do, and this is even in Ziva Online, is that, step one, we want to drop into deep coherence with ourselves. And if we're in a group like deep coherence in the group, like that matters to manifest from a place of stress or hyperactivity or non coherence is kind of a waste of time. You really do need to be in a coherent state. 

But then from that place, and I usually do it post meditation, I will simply ask the question, what would I do? What would I love right now? And so when you go into love, it puts you into spirit. It puts you into possibility. What would I love right now? It puts you into the present moment and it's not, what do I want? What do I need? It's not coming from a place of lack. It's not about the future. It's not about what I promised myself I would manifest when I was 12 years old. It's what would I love? So that's a really simple one. And I'd say that's my home based question.

And this is also a really good pattern interrupt when you're with your family at Thanksgiving, or when you're out drinking with your friends and they're all complaining about how there's no men left in the town, or there's no jobs anymore, or the election sucks, or, you know, just with a bunch of people who are complaining, a great system interrupt, a great pattern interrupt, it's Hey, What would you love right now?

And people are like, what? Because they just, we forgot to ask the question. We forgot to ask, what would I love? Even in a breakup, like how, what would I love? What would I love for this breakup to feel like? You're looking for a house? What would I love in this house? Instead of Oh God, there's so many listings and it's going so fast in the rate and the property taxes and the, and it's okay, all of that.

Those are just information. What would I love? And so that's one question. 

Another question is a little bit more advanced is, Hey nature, and this comes from our teacher. Hey nature, how would you love to use me? How would you love to use me? And I love asking that question post climax, right? When people are in this post orgasmic, deeply blissful state. Their brain and bodies have been flooded with dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, norepinephrine. Like you've actually just tapped into the source you want for nothing. You need for nothing. You are communing with God. You remember that you are God. And from that place. Hey, nature, how would you love to use me and then just listen. And when I say your prayers are divinely inspired, if you're listening for the inspiration from that place, you're going to get different answers. Then if you're just like running down the block late for your errands, late for your meeting what do I want?

You're like, I need more money so I can have a private driver and get to this place on time. And so it's what state of consciousness we are in when we are praying really matters. 

[01:08:33] LW: Yeah, I saw Dan Harris who wrote 10% Happier, he posted something a couple of days ago saying how he was on a flight. It was a small plane. He started having a panic attack. That's one part of his story is that he had this panic attack infamously while he was hosting ABC nightly news or something like that. And he had to be pulled off the plane. And he said it was so embarrassing because people stop him in the airport and go, you're, my inspiration. You're my guru. started meditating because of you. And yet he's having to deal with these very sort of human experiences of trauma that he's been very open about working through and I think that you mentioned some of this in your last share of how you can be navigating some very tricky situations. 

But I feel like as someone who's seen as a spiritual leader, there's this kind of pressure that can be placed upon you to be elegant in the way that you move through these things, and sometimes you're just not. And so I was just curious, have you had any experiences where you kind of fell flat when you were navigating these things that you would like to share?

[01:09:41] EF: Yeah, I think it's so important to share because you're right. I think we put pressure on ourselves and then because we're all trying to think that everyone else has the answers. And so if someone's going to put themselves in the position of being a meditation teacher, oh, they must have it figured out. And the reality, like we're all fucked up. Like we're all traumatized. We're all human. We're all doing the best that we can with the tools that we have. And so the thing I actually feel most proud of in my spiritual journey is learning how to feel my feelings. Learning how to give myself the grace to be sad and to be angry and to be jealous and to be afraid and not try and bypass that. my best friend, Laila Martin is she's like a world class Olympian at feeling her feelings. And I also live with Regina Tomaschauer who's world class Olympian at feeling there's feelings. I think these women bring so much light and so much joy and so much pleasure because they are willing to like, just. Go to the bottom of the depths of their rage and their heartbreak. I've learned so much from them. Not so, I mean, in all directions, but mostly about feeling their feelings.

But I'll say that something that I've learned is that for me personally, I need someone who is like bigger than me, stronger than me, has more capacity than me in order for me to fully surrender into the feelings. And that happens with Layla. Layla has the capacity to hold my darkness and not judge me for it. And when I'm in her presence, I can just fully let it rip. And it's my, darkness is celebrated. My sadness is celebrated. And then she'll just remind me that my love is even bigger than my pain. And so her having, giving me that model has allowed me to hold that for myself. And now it's something that I very much love giving to others.

And I feel like it's what I do on my retreats, right? Because I am, it's that we serve up in this visualized, alchemized, magnetized. I'm inviting newbies who've never done breath work, never done sacred sexuality, never done medicine work, never done pleasure work to just go full tilt on all four.

And so the amount of space that I have to hold is pretty extraordinary. And I feel like I'm able to do that now for these people, because I know how to do it for myself. And so to anyone that's Oh, I shouldn't be angry, or I shouldn't be sad, or am now a meditator, or I am now a coach. So I shouldn't be feeling these feelings.

I would say, can you flip that? And actually see those as your superpowers that the more have the capacity to be honest with yourself and to not get stuck there, but to really become masterful at surfing. That they're like, life is not about just being on a high. That's boring. After a while. Life is about for me, the simultaneity can I see the sacred inside of the profane and the profane inside of the sacred? Can I find the light inside of the dark and the dark inside of the light? And stop waiting for it to be either or, because it never is. 

[01:12:38] LW: Yeah. I was looking at visualize, alchemize, magnetize, vom, sounds like a mantra. 

[01:12:46] EF: I wouldn't, trust me, I, like I said, I, we had, did not have a name for this course until three days before we shot it. And I was trying to figure it out. I was like, maybe it's the bam technique. I was like, I don't know. But vom, I love that. maybe we'll play around and see what that is, is the mantra.

[01:13:01] LW: Well, you've got your book, Stress Less, Accomplish More. We've got this online course, this yet unnamed online course that will have a name by October of 2024. We've got the podcast, Why Isn't Everyone Doing This, which is seasonal, right? So you have seasons. You're in season 2 right now. 

[01:13:18] EF: Yeah, we're in season two right now, which you are a part of, which I love our interviews so much.

[01:13:22] LW: Yeah, you got a YouTube channel, very popular. You have your Ziva Online course. We have your Instagram is crazy. Emily Stella Fletcher and Ziva Meditation. And so for someone listening to this, which is going to come out before your online course, what's a good sort of gateway into the Emily Fletcher ecosystem funnel?

[01:13:48] EF: I guess the question is, do you want to learn to meditate or do you want to learn to the manifestation? Because I would say that both are great ways. And my guess is that we're listening to your podcast. Hopefully they've already learned to meditate with you. And so Okay, great. And so at least have that foundation.

And if they're like wanting to get in on the embodied manifesting practice, then I would say it's Ziva meditation.com/magic. And then we have a free masterclass that people, they want to just understand the neuroscience behind the style of meditation that we both love so much. It would be ZivaMeditation.com/podcast. And that will take you to a free masterclass. It's just like, Hey, how is this different? How is it the same? And also you get a style of my teaching, which I would say kind of straddles science and spirit. And certainly I've been a bit more on the witchy spiritual side the past few years, but I did start on the more scientific side.

Now I think I have a homework assignment of bringing more of the science into the sexuality, because especially when you go into uncharted, it's not uncharted, a lot of landmines you're swimming in. So I think the science helps to calm people down. Anyway, zivameditation.com/magic for embodied manifesting /podcast. If they want to do a free masterclass to kind of give them a window into how Ziva is different. 

[01:15:03] LW: Beautiful. Awesome. Well, Thank you again for coming back onto the podcast. And as always, you're such a beautiful spirit and I get so uplifted when we connect and I wish we connected more in person. 

[01:15:17] EF: I didn't go to Mexico City more because we've got to figure it out. You've got to figure it out, but I really appreciate you having me on. I'm so inspired by you. I'm so inspired by your creativity. The fact that you do what you do without a giant team is a miracle to me. And thank you for your generosity and your preparation for today. I really feel honored to be here.

[01:15:37] LW: Thank you.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode with Emily Fletcher. You can follow Emily on the socials @EmilyStellaFletcher and also @ZivaMeditation. And you can find links to our discussion in the show notes, which is at lightwatkins.com/podcast.  And if you connect it with this episode, again, you want to check out my first episode with Emily Fletcher, which was Episode 88. 

And if you're thinking of someone else that I should talk to, I'd love to hear your guest suggestions. Just email them to me at light@lightwatkins.com. And a simple way that you can help make those interviews happen is to leave a rating and a review for this podcast. It really does make a massive difference. Reviews help potential guests see the reach and the impact of the show and how engaged the audience is. And that just may be the thing that makes them go, okay, I'll come on to this podcast.

All you do is you go to your Apple podcast app, you click the name of the show, you scroll down past the first few episodes. You'll see a space with five blank stars. If you want to leave us a five star rating, just click the star all the way on the right. And if you're feeling generous. Just leave a one line review saying what you enjoy about the show and that can help go a long way.

Also don't forget that you can watch these interviews on my YouTube channel. If you ever prefer a visual element to the story and don't forget to subscribe there as well. And for those of you who crave even more, I post the raw unedited version of each podcast in my Happiness Insiders Online community.

You can join us at thehappinessinsiders.com to access not only the full uncut interviews, but also my 108 day meditation challenge as well as various masterclasses for helping you become the best version of yourself.And finally, I'm releasing plot twist episodes each Friday.

A plot twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of that pivotal moment in their life trajectory, which is usually the moment when the plot of their life shifted away from the conventional thing that they were doing and it helped them learn something profound about their life or to start living with a greater sense of purpose. So look out for those each Friday and I hope to see you back here next week for another inspiring story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart. Keep taking those leaps of faith and remember if no one's told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a fantastic day and see you for the next plot twist this Friday.