[APPLAUSE] EMILY FLETCHER: Hi, friends. Thank you so much
for being here. I am really excited
about the turnout. We weren't really sure how
many people we would have. I like that we're
standing room only. And hello to our friends
who are watching online. So this talk is
titled "Why Meditation is the New Caffeine." And I love that these
two words are even being used in the
same conversation because why would any
of us drink caffeine? Because we want to get
more done in less time. So it leads me to believe
that meditation is really starting to be thought of, now,
as a productivity tool, which is exciting to me because this
has been my mission with Ziva Meditation is to re-brand
meditation as a productivity tool. So before we start,
I want us to get on the same page on
a few vocab words. Remember, like, we're in
third grade, just vocab. So Ziva is a Sanskrit
word that means bliss. It's one of the many Sanskrit
words that mean bliss. It's also a Hebrew
name that means one who is radiant or kind. And since bliss,
radiance, and kindness are very common side
effects of meditation, it felt like a good fit. Plus, I thought
it would look good on a t-shirt, which it does. And PS, when I say the word
bliss, I don't mean happiness. When I say bliss, I mean a
calm, quiet inner contentedness. It's the piece of you that
knows that everything's going to be OK. And it's possible to experience
bliss even when you're sad, even when you're angry. Bliss is sort of like this
background piece of you that knows that it's all
going to work out just fine. So the word meditation, though,
is a little bit trickier to define because we all
have our idea of what we think meditation is. The word meditation is
sort of like the word food. You know, so we're all
enjoying our lunch today, and so just like
different types of food will do different
things to the body, different types of meditation
will do different things to your brain and
nervous system. So one of the things we're
going to cover in today's talk is the differences between
the two most popular styles of meditation and how they
affect the brain differently. But I'm really just
thrilled that we're even talking about meditation and
caffeine in the same sentence. So today, we'll cover
that-- why meditation's the new caffeine, the two most
popular styles of meditation and how they affect
the brain differently, when stress is
actually good for you. Stress is getting sort
of a bad rap these days. We're going to talk about
when it's good for you. And then, also, how
to not let your goals get in the way of your success. I'm going to take
a shot in the dark and guess that most of you
guys are overachievers, in this room, and
very ambitious, and goals and results-oriented. So yes. So before we talk about why
meditation is the new caffeine, I think that we have to
look a little bit deeper into what caffeine does
to our nervous system and what meditation does
to our nervous system because interestingly, there
are quite a few similarities. Both will make you
feel more energetic. Both can make you
more productive. You have to do both
of them every day. You have to stop the inertia
of your day, to do both. So you know, Jerry Seinfeld
has been practicing the same style of meditation
that I teach for 40 years. And he likens it to a cellphone
charger for your mind and body. He's like, you meditate,
and on the other side, you come out more
refreshed, more recharged. So this is what it can feel
like, after we drink caffeine. So as I was preparing
for this talk, I did quite a bit of
research on exactly what caffeine is doing to the body. And some of the
things surprised me. I thought that caffeine
was just simply a stimulant, that it
just sort of stimulated your nervous system and
that's the reason that you got more productive. But it's not as simple as that. Molecularly, caffeine is very
similar to a chemical called adenosine. Now, adenosine is the thing
that your brain produces throughout the day-- which
is what makes you sleepy-- and is the thing
that cues you to go to bed at the end of the night. So when you ingest caffeine,
these caffeine molecules are very similar to
adenosine, so they block your brain's
adenosine receptors. So it disallows your brain
from knowing that you're tired, which is why you're
able to do more. You know, mid-afternoon,
you're like, oof, I've got to take a nap. But you're like, I don't
have time to take a nap, so let me drink some
coffee, instead. And then you're
able to power out. Sounds good so far, right? But now we've got to talk
about the differences between meditation and caffeine. Caffeine is essentially
artificially hijacking your nervous system. It's disallowing you from
feeling how tired you are because that caffeine
is mimicking that adenosine and blocking those receptors
in your brain, which is not that bad for you,
in and of itself. It's not hurting you
while it's happening. But the other thing
that caffeine does is that it stimulates more
neural activity in the brain. And when your pituitary
gland notices this increase in neural activity,
it thinks that there's some sort of an
emergency happening. And so it triggers
your adrenal glands to start releasing adrenalin. And as you guys probably
know, adrenaline is the number one
stress chemical that gets released in your body
when you launch into a fight or flight stress reaction. So basically, caffeine will
make you more productive. It will make you
feel more energized. But there's quite a cost
that you have to pay. There's quite a price that
you have to pay for that. And really, that's
the come down. So you drink too
much coffee, and you start to get the
nervous shakes, right? Or afterwards, you
feel even more tired than you were
before you started? This is really the
price that we pay. I liken the human
body to a casino-- you can cheat it
for a little while. You can come out ahead
for a little while, but ultimately,
the house is always going to win because
your body is, in fact, a perfect accountant. So now let's talk
about what meditation is doing to the body. Excuse me. I think I have a little
adrenalin going right now. I talk really fast
about meditation, and you get a little dry mouth. So meditation will also
make you more productive. And it will also energize you. But it does it very
differently than caffeine does. What meditation does is
that it gives your body rest that is arguably
somewhere between two to five times deeper than sleep. So this is not an
insignificant point. When you meditate,
you're giving your body rest that is somewhere
between two to five times deeper than sleep. And when you give your
body that deep rest, you're essentially de-exciting
your nervous system. And when you de-excite
something, you create order. When you create order
in your nervous system, then all of those stresses
that we've been picking up, through our decades
of overachieving, can start to leave the building. So imagine that you have a
pot of water on the stove. If you turn up the heat
on that pot of water, and you excite the
molecules, they're going to start to
move very quickly. And if you're trying to
extract something out of that pot of boiling water, so
you have like a grain of rice-- PS, the grain of rice
represents stress in this analogy-- you're
trying to pull that stress out of the pot of water. When it's excited and the
molecules are moving quickly, it's very hard to do that. When you meditate, you
de-excite the body. So it's like cooling
down that water. It's de-exciting the
molecules in that water. So imagine it was almost frozen. It would be sort of slushy,
and you could easily go in and detect that rice
and pull it out of the water. Same thing with
stress in our body-- we meditate, we give
our body that deep rest, de-excite our nervous system,
and it's easier for stress to leave the body,
which is one of the ways that meditation makes
us more productive. Contrary to popular
belief, your stress is not helping you in the
productivity or performance department. I'll talk more about
that in a moment. But what I'm
interested in right now is really talking
about the rest. If you're resting two to
five times deeper than sleep when you meditate,
then when you come out of that meditation, then you
are, in fact, more awake. A 20 minute meditation
is basically the equivalent of doing an
hour or an hour and a half nap, but you don't have
the sleep hangover. So you go into meditation,
give your body that rest, and when you come out,
you're more awake. You are, in fact,
more conscious. And a few of the attributes
of having more consciousness are the ability to
hold many things in one awareness,
the ability to detect subtlety-- subtle differences
in things-- and the ability to detect themes, all
of which are going to make you more productive,
but in a sustainable way versus the way caffeine does it,
which is just costing your body a little bit more. Now, PS, I should
say that I'm not here to, like, give anybody
any rules or be like, put away that coffee. You're like, damnit, why did
I bring coffee to this talk? My personal philosophy
on drugs are that if the pros outweigh
the cons, then enjoy. Right? But I just think we
have to understand what the pros and
what the cons are and what they're costing us. Oh, and PS, there
are some monks that have been experimenting
with coffee and meditation for hundreds if not
thousands of years. Some people report that I'll
drink coffee before I meditate, and it proves to be a really
fascinating experience. Now, this is dependent
almost entirely on what kind of meditation
that you practice, which leads me to
our second point that we're going to
cover today, which is the differences
between the two most popular styles of meditation. I noticed we've got
some new people in. So just by a show of
hands, how many of you guys have tried meditation before? Great. Amazing. And how many of you guys have
a daily meditation practice? Great. I love it. Who here has tried
meditation and hated it? I know I did. OK. Awesome. I'm still down that you're here. Way to give it another shot. And then we talked about who's
drinking coffee every day. Almost everyone. Right? Yeah. OK. There's two styles of meditation
that are the most popular and the most common,
right now, in the West. One of them is mindfulness. Has anyone here heard of
mindfulness meditation? Yeah. So, and that's a lot of what's
happening here at Google. You know, Chade-Meng Tan,
or Meng, as he's known, you guys probably
know who he is-- he started an initiative here
called Search Inside Yourself, which I think is-- oh,
hello, that wasn't me-- which is actually a great title. And it's a
mindfulness-based training. I had the great, good fortune
of meeting with Meng last year, when he was just starting
the Search Inside Yourself training. There's mindfulness, which is
basically a directed attentions type of meditation. And then there's a non-directed
attentions type of meditation. And this is what I teach. It's basically a self-induced
transcendence style. So we've got mindfulness. And then we've got a
self-induced transcendence style of meditation. Now, mindfulness is more
of a waking state practice. It's generally taught over
the course of eight weeks. You meet once a week
for eight weeks. And it can be quite gentle. And the results are a bit more
gradual because it's something that you're integrating
into your waking state. It's basically the practice
of bringing yourself back into the now. So if you're
walking, you're like, here I am, walking, I'm walking,
I am walking, I'm sitting, I am sitting, I am-- here I
am, sit-- I'm washing dishes, here I am washing
dishes, I'm really feeling the water
flowing over my hands. And this sounds very simple. But if you think about how
much we're multitasking and how much information
our brains are ingesting all of the time,
largely due to you guys, this idea of doing
one thing at a time actually becomes quite novel. We actually have to start
to retrain ourselves to single-task,
which, I would argue, gives you more computing
power for the task at hand. Now mindfulness is derivative
of a monastic practice. It was originally
developed for monks. And this was news to
me because I always thought that whatever
monks were practicing must be much more powerful
than what people like us would practice because
they're monks, right? So they must be, like,
levitating or floating or, like, gaining enlightenment
on their first day. But it's actually the opposite. If you're a monk, then your
contribution to society is meditating. You have the time to
meditate, basically, all day. If you're walking, it's
a walking meditation. If you're gardening, it's
a gardening meditation. And this is their
contribution to society, whereas something that we
might practice is different. Now, in India, you're either a
monk or you're a householder. And it doesn't do you
any good to pretend to be a monk if
you're a householder. And when I say householder,
I basically mean, so we have a job and a
family and stuff to do. So if you are a householder,
you have less time in your day with
which to meditate, which actually
means that you need to practice something that
is a bit more powerful. You have less time in the
day with which to meditate, so you need to really
go in and clean house so that you can deliver that
fulfillment to your day. So you're like, y'all, I've got
stuff to do-- all I can do is, like, come in, I've got
to answer some emails, and eat my lunch while I listen
to this meditation caffeine talk, and hopefully, it'll
make me get more done. And ultimately, it will. Point of the story is that all
meditation is good for you. But there are two main
branches, and they come from different
styles of meditation. Now, obviously I'm
biased, OK, because I teach this self-induced
transcendence style of meditation, and
it's totally changed my life. So I'd love to say that this
was a non-biased account of the differences between
the two, but spoiler alert, it's 100% biased. But this self-induced
transcendence style-- you're basically accessing a fourth
state of consciousness, different than waking, different
than sleeping, and different than dreaming, where the right
and left parts of your brain start to function in unison. Now, the good news
is that regardless of what style of meditation
you're practicing, they are both going to
have a lot of benefits. One is the ability to be more
present in the right now. Two is that it actually--
both styles of meditation are going to
increase the strength and, really, the
thickness of something called the corpus callosum. Now, the corpus callosum is
this thin strip of white matter that connects the gray matter. It is the bridge between the
right and left hemispheres of your brain. So we've known for a long time
that meditators have thicker corpus callosums
than non-meditators, but we weren't able to prove
if it was causal or correlated. Now, because we have
advances in neuroscience, we now know that the
longer you meditate, the thicker this
corpus callosum gets. Cool party trick, but who cares? Why would anyone want
a fat corpus callosum? Well, everyone should. And here's why. Here's a Cliff's Notes
version of the difference between the right
and left brains. Your left brain is in charge
of the past and the future. It's in charge of
language, critical thought, analytical thought, math,
balancing your checkbooks-- all really important activities,
but for most of us, we've been taking our left
brain to the gym, especially you guys. Just think, take action,
achieve, make money, so you can be happy
in the future-- really working out this
past, future muscle. Meanwhile, our poor little
right brains are atrophy. Now, your right brain
is the piece of you that's in charge
of the right now. It's the piece of you that
is in charge of intuition, inspiration, creativity,
music, connectedness. And it is the place that you
get your creative problem solving ideas. It is the place where
you get those downloads. So I think that any conversation
about productivity, especially in a field where innovation
is currency, then meditation has to be a part of
that conversation because while we have been
valuing this left brain analytical part of our
mind for far too long, it's gotten out of balance. You know, if you look at
a human brain, it's 50/50. And I don't think that
nature makes mistakes. I don't think that
nature gave us 50/50 of a brain if it
wanted us to use 90/10. So all we're doing when
we're meditating is that we're taking
our brain to the gym. You're strengthening
this corpus callosum, which is going to
allow you to come up with these creative
problem solving ideas, even when you're in a
high stress situation. So your boss is yelling
at you, and you've got a really short
deadline-- instead of going into panic mode
and fight or flight, you're going to be
able to still access this whole other realm of
creativity and inspiration. Sounds pretty good, huh? Call me crazy, but I
don't think that stress makes you more productive. A lot of people
say that it does. I teach a lot of CEOs, and
I teach a lot of actors, and they have two
different stories. My CEO clients will say,
Emily, I need my stress, I need my angst, that
is the thing that gives me my competitive edge. No, it is not. That is just false. And I'm going to explain
why, in just a moment. And with my actor clients, they
say, Emily, I need my stress, I need my angst because this
is where I get my creativity, this is where I
draw from my work. Nope. No, it is not. You get your creativity from
this right part of your brain. We think our ideas are our own. Our ego gets involved, and
it's like, it's my idea. Nope. You're just
downloading that thing from this beautiful,
creative cloud in the sky. Getting a little
altruistic for Google. I'm going to move on. Let's move on to our
third point which is when can stress
actually serve you? When can stress actually
be good for you? Stress is getting sort
of a bad rap, these days. It's being called the Black
Plague of our century. And I don't think that that
is an over-exaggeration. I would agree with
that statement. However, there are times
that stress is good for you, and I'm going to get into those. But first, we've got to
understand how and why stress affects our body in
the way that it does. And in order to
understand that, we have to go back in time
a few thousand years and say we're, like, hunting
and gathering in the woods. I don't know why this is the
move for hunting and gathering, but just go with it. So say we're hunting
and gathering, and out of nowhere,
this saber-toothed tiger jumps out at you and
with the intent to kill. So your body is going to launch
into a series of chemical reactions. First, your digestion is going
to flood with acid to shut down digestion because it takes a lot
of energy to digest your food and you need all hands
on deck to fight or flee this predatory attack. That same acid will
then seep into your skin so that you don't taste
very good if you get bitten into by that tiger. Your blood will start
to thicken and coagulate so that if you get bitten
into, you don't bleed to death. Your vision will go
from here to here so that you're not distracted
from your opponent. Your bladder and
bowels will evacuate so that you're
light on your feet so you could fight or flee. So the nervous poos you
get before an audition or like a-- or you guys
don't have auditions, but like a presentation,
that's your body trying to protect you. Your heart rate will increase. See? People are laughing
because they identify. Your heart rate will increase. Your cortisol levels
will increase. And your immune system
will go to the back burner because who cares if
you're going to get cancer if you're about to
be killed by a tiger? Again, we need all hands
on deck to fight or flee this predatory attack. So this series of chemical
reactions is very good for you. It is very useful if your
demands are predatory attacks. Now, I don't know when
the last time any of you guys got attacked
by a tiger was. But my guess is it
wasn't very recently. Now, obviously, there are
some high demand situations where it's good for your
body to get stressed. If you get into a car
accident, or if you get jumped in the back
alleyway, or if you need to lift a
car off of a baby, these are all great times for
your body to get stressed. And this series of
chemical reactions is really going to serve you. It's actually not bad
for your body to get stressed-- it is toxic for
your body to stay stressed. This fight or flight
thing-- yes, great. It's good for it to happen. But then, if it's a
few thousand years ago, and you're actually
engaging in fighting a tiger or outrunning a
tiger, then you get to burn off those
stress chemicals. And this is why a lot
of people say to me, well, Emily, exercise
is my meditation. No, it's not. Exercise is exercise. Meditation is meditation. They do very different things
to your nervous system. When you exercise, you
excite your nervous system. You increase your
metabolic rate. When you meditate, you
de-excite your nervous system, and you decrease
your metabolic rate. Now, exercise is great for you. When you get in the treadmill
and you start running, you can outrun that
tiger, you can burn off the stress chemicals from today. You get in a boxing ring,
you can fight that tiger, and you can burn off the
stress chemicals from today. But if you want to handle the
dog that barked in your face when you were seven or the fight
that your parents got in when you were 10, then
you actually have to de-excite your
nervous system. So basically, what
I'm saying here is that exercise can handle the
stress happening that you're picking up on each
new day, provided that you're
exercising every day. If you want to handle
the backlog of stresses that you've been accumulating
so that you can really start to perform at
100%, in this case, we need to de-excite
the nervous system and create order so we
can get that right side of the boiling pot. So everyone clear on that, about
when stress is good for you? When you're actually in a
life threatening situation. And it's good for
it to have them, but if it stays in your body
over a long period of time, it can do any number of
terrible things to you. It's basically the equivalent
of pouring acid in your body. Every time you get
stressed, every stressy thought that you
have, it creates adrenaline and cortisol, which
are acidic stress chemicals. So it's like putting a penny
into a thing of Coca Cola or a thing of hydrochloric acid. It's going to break
down prematurely. Same thing with our body. If you're stressed, your body
is going to age much faster than if you are alkaline,
which is what? When you meditate,
your brain produces dopamine and serotonin, which
are bliss chemicals, which are more alkaline in nature,
which can actually slow down the aging process. Any questions, so far? I've talked really fast. And I've already covered
the first three points. Any questions or
comments or disagreements about any of that, so far? Yeah. FEMALE SPEAKER: So you
talked about how meditation strengthens the [INAUDIBLE]. EMILY FLETCHER: Mhm. AUDIENCE: Does
meditation do anything to beef up the actual
[INAUDIBLE] right brain? EMILY FLETCHER: Yes. Yes, it does. So I went to this neuroscience
conference, last year. And I was so
excited because I've been studying these,
like, beautiful, flowery Vedic analogies for
about eight years. But I finally got to go to
this neuroscience conference, and I got to see, on the
gross manifest level, what meditation is
doing to the brain. So if you look at a scan of
a waking state non-meditator, imagine that there's four
quadrants in the brain. In your waking state, these
two quadrants light up. And then, when you
meditate, these go dark. And these two light up. So basically, when
you're meditating, you have a different brain than
you do in your waking state. Well, cool party trick. But how is that going
to help me do more? Well what happens is that
over time of waking state, meditation, waking
state, meditation, waking state, meditation,
what starts to happen is that all four quadrants
start to light up at the same time, regardless
of whether you're in meditation or in your waking state. So you know, it's basically
like these neurons are firing in the different
parts of the brain. And after enough times
of going back and forth between the states
of consciousness, the brain starts firing
on all cylinders. My meditation teacher
says that, you know, we're saying that we use
somewhere between 3% and 10% of our brain capacity. My teacher says that the very
fact that we're arguing over whether it's 3% or 10% suggests
that it's more like 3%. I'm fascinated to see
this new movie, "Lucy." It's probably going to be
pretty-- well, I don't know. Maybe it's great. I don't know, but I'm
fascinated to see it. Does that answer your question? FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah. EMILY FLETCHER: Great. What other questions
do you have? Yes? AUDIENCE: So sometimes when I'll
introduce people to meditation, one of their big objections is
sort of like with your clients, when they say, I
don't want to let go of my anxiety or my stress
because that's the edge that keeps me motivated
and productive. EMILY FLETCHER: Mhm. AUDIENCE: So like
how we usually want to address that, when people
are worried about letting go of the thing that's
pushing them forward? EMILY FLETCHER: Yeah. It's a great question. And I think it's a
really valid concern because if you spent your
whole life only being motivated by adrenaline and only
being driven by anxiety or competition, then
it's terrifying to lose that because you don't know
what's going to motivate you. Now, the beautiful
thing that I have found is that as you start
meditating, you start actually wanting to move
towards the positive. You start being inspired by
and motivated by creativity and creation for the
sake of innovation. But that's hard to
communicate to someone who hasn't had that
visceral experience yet. So here's my analogy, and
please forgive me, y'all. I'm a really good tap dancer. I am not a technician. But here goes. Let's imagine that the
brain is a computer. OK? And let's say that
you have 10 million-- I don't even know if
this is possible-- let's say you have 10 million open
windows on this computer, which is, PS, by the time
you're 20 years old, you have something
like 10 million precognitive commitments
in your brain, which basically means that
any time that you've gotten stressed, it's left a little
open window in your brain. So let's say that Hulu and
GChat and YouTube and Facebook and Vimeo, and Vine-- you've
got all of these things open, and you're like, whew, maybe
I should get back to work, maybe I should write an email. And you go to write an
email, and the cursor is like 20 spaces behind. You're like, bleaugh,
stupid computer, can't even type an email. Well, the computer is more than
capable of typing an email, but you're spending so much of
that computing power running those 10 million open
windows from the past that you're robbing yourself
of your full potential for the right now. And every problem gets
solved in the right now. Also, all of your
bliss and fulfillment is experienced in the right now. Eckhart Tolle wrote a whole book
about it, "The Power of Now." So I liken it, really, to
an overworked computer-- too many windows open
on the computer, and you're robbing yourself
of your full performance capabilities. It's basically like
your body's so busy preparing for this
imaginary tiger attack that you don't have
all of your resources available for whatever
your task at hand is. Does that make sense? Great. Yes? AUDIENCE: I don't know
what [INAUDIBLE]-- EMILY FLETCHER: Let's see. Maybe it'll be a segue. AUDIENCE: But I'm curious
about the specific topics that you have. [INAUDIBLE]
examples [INAUDIBLE] these would be the mindfulness
because I think [INAUDIBLE]. EMILY FLETCHER: Yes, I am. Thank you for asking that. And I didn't mention
that, but yes. I have one more topic
to cover, and then I want to actually walk you
through a mindfulness guided visualization, which will
be-- it'll be a directed focus attention. We'll all be guiding
you through the things that you can bring
your attention on. And then we'll practice--
don't be scared-- and we'll practice a five
minute silent meditation. Then I'm going to give
you some tools to try out. And I like to call it the M
word technique because it's not quite meditation. This self-induced transcendence
style of meditation-- again, I'm biased,
but I liken it to the Porsche of meditations. It is fast, it is powerful, and
I think it makes you sexier. Call me crazy, but I don't think
that stress makes you sexy. And so, if you
really want to learn, it's recommended that you,
like, kind of do the whole kit and caboodle-- that you
get the key to the car and get the driving
instructions, at the same time. I do have a course
happening this week, which we'll talk
about, but I want to give you guys a taste of it. And during it, don't try
to be an expert meditator. Don't try to get it right. Just notice what the
experience is like for you and whether you want to fight
or flee during the meditation, itself. I'm also going to teach you
guys a breathing technique. And it's super simple,
but it actually helps to integrate the right
and left parts of the brain. It's an alternate
nostril breathing, so we'll all look
really silly together. But it helps to oxygenate the
blood and oxygenate the organs. And it'll help to balance
the right and left part of the brain. And even, you know, you could,
like, put a little folder up at your cubicle, or in
your office, and do it. And that would be
like a little shot, a little meditation shot
for your mid-afternoon. Good. So this will be our final
point, before we actually try some meditation. And it is how to not
let your goals get in the way of your
success because again, I imagine that you guys are
all very ambitious, very results-oriented, very
career and goal-oriented, which is great. However, the trick here is
that we can have a tendency to delay our happiness or
delay our self care until we've accomplished that
one final thing, just until we get that one
more zero in our bank account, and we just finish
this one project, or I just hire this
one more employee, then I'll start
going to the gym. I'm going to start meditating
as soon as I finish this giant project that
my boss needs from me, I am going to take a
vacation as soon as I make this amount of money, and that
the main themes that we delay our happiness for
are money, education, and romantic relationships. We think, well, as soon
as I have enough zeros, then I'll be happy-- as soon
as I have the perfect job, then I will be happy-- as soon
as I have the perfect partner, then I will be happy. But as Carrie
Bradshaw so eloquently said in "Sex and
the City," you're only going to have two out of
the three in New York City. You're either going to
have the perfect boyfriend, or the perfect job,
and no apartment, or the perfect apartment,
perfect job, but no boyfriend, but you're never going to
have three out of the three. So if you're waiting to
have all three to be happy, it's going to be a
really long wait. My analogy, here,
is like, imagine that you're sitting at
the bottom of a mountain, and you're looking
at this mountain that you want to climb. You're like, OK, I'm going
to do it because once I get the top of
this mountain, then I will have achieved success. Then I can be proud of myself. Then I will have validated
myself to my parents, and they can justify that
expensive college tuition that they paid for. So we start climbing
the mountain. And then we get to
the top of a mountain, and we're still not happy. We still don't have the ability
to access this present moment awareness. And now we've proven to ourself
that we can climb the mountain. And now we see all of
the other mountains that we have yet to climb. So then we think, oh,
well, my happiness must be at the top of
this next mountain. So we start climbing again. Get to the top of this
mountain, you're like, oh, crap, I'm still not happy. More and more mountains
that we can climb. And so this can sort
of go on indefinitely. So I would suggest that instead
of waiting until you finish your To Do list to
be happy, instead of waiting until you've
accomplished all of your goals to give yourself permission
to take care of yourself, what if you start taking
care of yourself now? What if you give yourself access
to your bliss and fulfillment inside of you, start
your day with that, and then use your To Do
list, use your desires as an indicator of how
and where to deliver your gifts to the world? Sounds a little hippy dippy. Sounds a little esoteric. But just try it out,
and see what happens. My personal experience,
and what I've seen from my over 700 clients
that I've taught to meditate, is that when you start to
approach life and this attitude of what can I give,
then life starts giving you a lot more back. Instead of going into life
with like a what can I get and being needly attached
to, well, this person has to show up, or else--
or I have to get this job, or else-- or you have
to ask me to marry you, or else-- or I have
to get this job, or I'm not good enough,
this-- it's very hard for life to show up when you've got a
death grip on your desires. And if you insert a meditation
practice or some really solid self care and stress
relieving techniques into your day,
every day, then you are quite innocently and
quite spontaneously going to start approaching your life
from a place of fulfillment-- what can I give to this
versus what can I get. And what happens is this
beautiful, reciprocal upward spiral. Should we try some meditation? Yeah. Any questions before
we try some meditation? Great. Yes? AUDIENCE: Before, you contrasted
[INAUDIBLE] meditations. So where does yoga fit in? EMILY FLETCHER: Ah. Thanks for asking. So I think I teach Vedic
meditation, V-E-D-I-C. It comes from the Sanskrit word,
Veda, which means knowledge. Knowledge of what? Knowledge of nature. So it's basically
like using natural law to help us get to
where we want to go. You know, you
de-excite your body, you start to access the place
from which we get our desires. Yoga-- so Vedic meditation
comes from the Vedas. The Vedas is an ancient
body of knowledge, like 5 or 6,000 years old. And the Vedas are the
same body of knowledge that give us yoga,
acupuncture, feng shui, and Ayurvedic medicine,
Ayurvedic cooking. They all come from the same
ancient body of knowledge. So yoga is basically,
you know, those series of poses that you move through. It's called an asana practice. And asana is a Sanskrit
word that means seat. So if you take a yoga class,
I mean, there's chair pose, but then there's all
those other asanas. And they're all called seat. So why is that? Ardha candraasana, Trikonasana. So all of them, each asana,
somewhere in the word, has the word seat. Why is that? Because each of those
poses is preparing the body to become a seat
for consciousness to come and sit in. And actually, yoga was
designed for teenage boys who couldn't sit still and meditate. So they would move them
through this asana practice so that they could meditate. So yoga was actually
designed to prepare the body for meditation, which I think
is so beautiful because yoga, obviously, has gotten
so popular in the West, and I think it's really paved
the way for this new meditation awakening that is happening. But I think that the combination
of yoga and meditation, specifically this style,
is really beautiful. Thanks for asking. Yes? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] coffee. Now, how about food? EMILY FLETCHER: OK. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] relation
between the [INAUDIBLE] meditation? EMILY FLETCHER: Yes. There is. Basically, we're just a giant-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]? EMILY FLETCHER: What's that? AUDIENCE: I was wondering if
you could repeat the question. EMILY FLETCHER: Yes. So the question was, we
talked about the relationship between caffeine and
meditation, but he was asking about
the relationship between food and meditation. Does the type of food
and when you food, will that impact your
meditation and impact the quality of the meditation? And the answer is absolutely. It's very similar-- the
impact of food and caffeine-- because when you eat food, your
metabolic rate has to increase, and then the food gets
turned into energy. So if you eat a big meal and
then sit down to meditate, you're not going to digest
your food very effectively, and you're not going to have
a very fascinating meditation. So it's really ideal
to meditate first thing in the morning, before
breakfast, and then again, somewhere mid-afternoon,
before your evening meal. Now, and the type of
food matters quite a lot. You know, again, we're
just chemistry sets, so any chemical that you
put into your chemistry set is going to affect
your chemistry. And there's a whole
beautiful science around this, called Ayurveda. And Ayurveda is basically
using your food and meditation and exercises as a way
of balancing your body or balancing your-- I call it
a Dosha, which is a body type. And if you're interested,
I can definitely give you some more
information on that. Mhm. Great. Yes? AUDIENCE: So I really
like your distinction between happiness and goal
achieving and all of that, because we [INAUDIBLE]. EMILY FLETCHER: Mhm. AUDIENCE: So and you
also say that goals-- you can become a goal
achiever, but does that-- it's just a
never-ending hill. We just keep on climbing it. So it almost seems
like happiness is completely separate
from achieving goals. You don't even need
the goals to be happy. That's the feeling I get. And then you tie
it to, like, you think it's the more important
need than achieving goals? But do we even get to be happy? Like, what if I'm
completely selfish? All I care about is myself. But can I not be happy? Or am I being
completely selfish? EMILY FLETCHER: I think
that's such a great question. And I think, at the end of the
day, all of us are selfish. And most people
come to meditation for very selfish reasons. We come to meditation because
we want to get more done. We want to look better. You know? We want to not
get sick as often. We want to be more creative. So great-- I don't really
care what selfish reason people come to meditation for. But what starts to
happen over time is that you're
filling yourself up from this inexhaustible source. The cellphone charger analogy
that Jerry Seinfeld uses is very apt because if
you're plugging-- you know, we just think that
this electricity just comes from-- like, there's
just endless and limitless because for us, in our
lifetime, it has been. So, but basically, this is
what meditation is doing. It's allowing you to plug in
to this inexhaustible source. And if you fill
your reservoir up with bliss and
fulfilment and happiness and adaptation energy
every day, twice a day, then it's going to
start to overflow. Like your vessel's actually
going to start to get bigger. But you're going
to actually need places to give that fulfillment. And so it's going
to be quite innocent and quite spontaneous
is that you're going to look for
places to help people. But it won't feel
like martyrdom. It won't. It'll actually feel
selfish because it's going to make you feel better. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. EMILY FLETCHER: Yeah. AUDIENCE: I think, when
you enter into meditation, how do you kind
of track progress? I know it sounds-- EMILY FLETCHER: Oh. AUDIENCE: How do you know
whether you're doing it right or when you're
ready [INAUDIBLE]? EMILY FLETCHER: It's
a great question. The question was, how do
you track your progress as a meditator? How do you know if you're
ready for the next step? And different styles of
meditation are different. And also, different
people are different. So you know, if you haven't
had a very high demand, high stress life, and you're
learning at 70 years old, your unstressing
process is probably going to be quite intense. I teach kids to
meditate sometimes. And actually, the youngest
I've ever taught is four. And he was nailing it. He just did this
meditation thing, and afterwards, he was like, I
really enjoyed my meditation. Did you enjoy yours? And he was so into it
because kids already have access to this creativity. Their right brains are--
they're still alive. So different people will
have different experiences. [LAUGHTER] EMILY FLETCHER: We
just die a slow death. The older we get, the
more stressed we get. But, so everyone is different. However, you know, there's
these awesome companies, now, that have these body data
monitoring bracelets. So I actually recommend
that, you know, if people have enough time
between coming to my intro talk and taking my four-day
course, I recommend that they get one of those
fit bits or the Up Jawbone bracelets. And basically, these things can
track how deep your sleep is and how much activity
you have during the day, and checking your heart
rate, your body temperature, and how much movement you
have throughout the night. So it can actually tell
you how deep your sleep is. And I have a kind of cool
story from a client in LA. He had one of those bracelets. And his sleeping pattern,
before he took my course, it used to go light, medium,
deep, wake up for 18 minutes, light, medium, deep, wake up
for 18 minutes, medium, wake up. And that took him about
eight or nine hours. And then the bracelet broke. And he took the
meditation class. And then he got it back. And then, after about
10 days of meditating, he tracked his sleep again. And his sleep pattern
went light, medium, deep, for six hours, medium,
light, wake up. So he actually shaved three
hours off of his sleeping time. But he would wake up
rested because his sleep became more efficient. So this is one of
the main arguments I make to people who say, I
don't have time to meditate. The practice that I teach
is 20 minutes, twice a day, so it's a 40 minute investment. Well, if you're shaving
even one hour off of your sleep at night, because
your sleep is more efficient, then you're already
in the black. Right? The return investment is already
higher than what you're making. And that's not even to speak
of the increase in productivity or the happiness or any
of that kind of things. And so it's different
for everyone, but there actually
are physical things that you can plug
into your phone and track your own progress. But ultimately, it's do I have
a little bit more patience? Do I have a little bit more joy? Are my listening skills
a little bit better? Am I enjoying my life
a little bit more? Do I feel like I have a
little bit more to give? We want to judge
the meditation based on how we're performing
in our waking state, not how many or few
thoughts we have when we meditate, which
leads me to the number one misconception of
meditation, which I think is important
to talk about because without solid
meditation training, and because there's so many
misconceptions about it, most of us go into a
meditation practice, thinking, well, I have to give my
mind a command to stop. So then it looks like this. OK, brain, stop thinking. I'm hungry. Well, that was a thought. Now I'm thinking about
how I'm thinking. Oh, crap. Now I'm thinking
about how I'm thinking about how I'm thinking. And I quit. And I can never meditate
because my brain is too crazy. And I hear this all the time. You're like, Emily, I get it,
meditation is so good for you, everybody talks about
it, but I can't do it because my mind is crazy. We all think that we're the most
stressed person in the land. We all think that we're the
busiest person in the land. But the truth is that giving
your mind a command to stop is impossible. No one can give their
mind a command to stop. The mind thinks
involuntarily, just like the heart
beats involuntarily. So if you judge
yourself at how good you are at giving your
body a command to stop an involuntary
action, then you're always going to
feel like a failure, and you're going to quit
in like one weekend. And this is a big
part of what I teach in my course is that
I give you permission and let you know that
thoughts are not the enemy. Thoughts during
meditation are actually an indicator that stress
is leaving the body. So yes. Did that answer your question? Great. All right. Let's go ahead and
dive in because I don't want to keep
you guys late. I want to give you
at least five minutes to go to your next
1 o'clock meeting. So let's try a
little meditation. So we'll start with this
alternate nostril breathing technique. And then I'll give you
a guided visualization, and we'll try just a few
minutes of a silent practice. So if you have
phones or computers, you want to put those
things on silent. That would be swell. And we'll all take
our right hand. And don't worry-- we'll
all look silly together. And just close
your right nostril. And exhale through
your left nostril. And then inhale
through your left. And then switch. Close your left nostril
with your ring finger. And exhale through your right. Good. Inhale through the right. And then switch, closing
the right nostril, exhaling through your left. And inhale through the left. And then switching,
closing the left nostril, exhaling through the right. So this will be our pattern--
out, in on one side, and out, in on the other. And you can go ahead
and close your eyes and start to do this
in your own time. What I'm interested in
is that when you inhale, you fill your lungs all the
way to their full capacity, and that when you
exhale, you completely empty your lungs to the
very bottom of your exhale. And you'll start to notice is
that at the top of your inhale, there's a little, tiny space
before you begin the exhale. And you don't have to force
that or push it, but just allow yourself to float
there for even instance. And then the same thing. At the bottom of
the exhale, you'll notice that there's
a tiny little space. Allow yourself to notice that,
and float there at the bottom before you begin the inhale. Let's try this for
a few more cycles. But now I want you to
imagine that on the inhale, that you're bringing this
breath and this energy up through the base of your
spine, letting it travel up through your spine, and
then exhaling, and sending that breath and that energy
out through the middle of your forehead. This is creating a beautiful
cycle of breath and energy, really enjoying
the full expansion of your lungs and
the full exhale. As you're inhaling, imagining
that breath and energy coming up through the base and
traveling up through your spine and then sending that energy
and that creative energy out through the middle
of your forehead. And the next time you come to
an exhale on the left side, you can keep your eyes
closed, but gently drop your hands into your lap. And I'll walk you through
a guided visualization, or a mindfulness exercise. So as you inhale, it
could be a gentle inhale, but I want you to notice
the most predominant sound you can detect right now. So I just want you to
hear what you're hearing. It might be my voice. It might be the air conditioner. It might be your
neighbors breath. But just notice the
most predominant sound. And on your next breath, see
if you can shift your awareness to the most subtle sound. It could be the sound
of your own breath, or maybe your hair rustling
against your neck, or maybe a sound far away in the city. Now, keeping the eyes
closed, on your next breath, I want you to shift your
attention to your sight. So even with your
eyes closed, I want you to see what you're seeing. Perhaps you can notice the cells
floating in front of your eyes, or perhaps you can see where
the light is streaming in through your eyelids. But just allow yourself
to see what you're seeing. This technique is called
come to your senses. We're going to work through
all five of our senses, noticing the most predominant
and the most subtle. And on your next inhale,
allow your awareness to gently rest on the most
predominant tactile sensation. For most of us,
since we're sitting, it'll probably be
your bum in the chair. Or perhaps you have
a pain in your knee, or you have a tickle
in your throat. Just notice whatever that most
predominant tactile sensation is. And on your next inhale, see if
you can notice the most subtle. This might be as subtle
as the breath coming in and out of your nostrils. It might be as subtle as the
hair on the back of your neck. Really tuning your
attention to the more subtle physical sensations. And now, on your
next breath, I want you to taste what
you're tasting. Even though you're not
eating anything currently, perhaps you can
taste your mouth wash from this morning or the coffee
that you drink beforehand or the lunch that you had. Maybe your mouth
tastes acidic or dry, but just noticing that most
predominant taste sensation. And on your next
inhale, see if you can shift your awareness
to the most subtle. And if you're not tasting
anything, that's fine. Just notice that. There's no right or wrong here. Now, on your next
inhale, I want you to smell what you're smelling. I want you to smell the most
predominant smell in the room. It might be your own hairspray
or your neighbor's lunch or who knows. But just allow yourself to smell
the most predominant smell. And now, shift it
to the most subtle. So maybe it's the fact that
you don't smell anything, or how does this room smell
different than your home? Really good. And on your next
breath, I want you to see if you can
allow your awareness to rest on all five
senses at the same time. So enjoying your sense of
hearing, your sense of touch, your sense of sight,
your sense of taste, and your sense of smell,
all simultaneously. Awakening all five
senses in the body, jettisoning yourself
into your right brain and therefore,
into the right now. And the truth is, if you can
bring yourself into the right now, the truth is you are fine. Every single one of us
are drowning in abundance. You have a place to sleep,
you have food to eat, you have people who love you. We just need to bring our
awareness into the right now. So now, take a nice, deep
inhale, and just exhaling any extraneous stress. I want you to try
a silent meditation for just a few minutes. And very easily, very gently,
I want you to silently repeat the word one, in your mind. So you're going to use this
word, one, almost as a mantra. And you're absolutely allowed
to have other thoughts. You don't even have to focus
on it or concentrate on it. You're just going to allow
it to be there as an anchor. Just very easily, lightly
allowing this word to happen, almost like an echo of an idea
in the background of your mind. We'll be here for
about three minutes. And then I'll ease
you out of it. So don't try and be
a perfect meditator. Don't try to stop your
mind from thinking. Just easily, lightly
thinking the word one. And keeping the eyes closed, but
letting go of the word inside, keep the eyes closed
for just a few seconds. Allowing ourselves
to easily, lightly, gently start to float back
up to the waking state. Bringing our awareness into
the room and into our bodies. It's always important
to take a few seconds at the end of your meditation,
with your eyes closed. This is so you don't
shock your optic nerve or shock your brain. And you just give yourself
a little transition time so that you can go back
to work totally refreshed. Sometimes I like to use this
time as a time for gratitude. Sounds like a silly practice,
but if you train your brain to look for what's
going right, then you're putting your
attention on the thing that you want to grow,
instead of training your brain to look for problems to solve,
which only makes more problems. And taking a nice, deep
inhale, and exhaling any extra, whenever you're ready,
in your own time, we can start to very easily,
gently open the eyes. Thank you guys so much
for being here today. I really appreciate it. You guys were an
amazing, amazing crowd, so receptive and attentive. I'm going to stick around if
you guys have any questions. I'm going to give you
at least a minute or two to get to your next meeting. I do have cards up here. This is my amazing
assistant, Sarah. So if you guys have questions
or are interested in joining, I have a course starting
here in New York. I have a meditation
center on 38th and 8th. And I have a meditation class
starting this Wednesday. It's two hours a
day for four days, and then you're an
expert meditator and you have the practice
to take with you for life. So if you're interested in
learning more about that, you can meet Sarah. And there is also
business cards. And there's a place, if you
want, to put your email. If you want to get some
more video goodness from me or be kept in the loop, I
would love to stay in touch. So I'll stick around over
here, if have any questions. But thank you, thank
you, thank you. Have a beautiful day. FEMALE SPEAKER: And thank you,
Nina, for organizing this. Yay. Thanks, Matt.
