Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Emily Fletcher on How to Create an Audaciously Abundant Life - The Trifecta of Mindfulness, Meditation & Manifestation

• Anthea Bell

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Gorgeous Listeners, welcome to this week’s episode of Finding Your Way Home

This week's episode marks a landmark on the podcast: showcasing the wisdom, beauty and experience of the Number 1 speaker from our 2023 Top 100 dream guest list... And she's come along, not only to share her profound insights from over a decade of meditation & manifestation teaching - impacting more than 60,000 students to date, from top-ranking CEOs and navy seals to housewives and children of divided homes. She's also here to share with us her deepest personal learnings: on befriending herself with intimacy and fierce self-compassion; on integrating "the shadow", the parts so painfully cast aside; and on how to step audaciously into the fullness of who you are and what you're here to transmit into the world. 

Emily Fletcher, the one and only. 

Emily is the Founder of Ziva Meditation - one of the world's leading mediation schools, supporting thousands of people across the globe to release accumulated stress, trauma and the mind/body-based limitations that keep them from inhabiting their bliss. Not only a school but a potent system, the Ziva Technique blends ancient wisdom with modern science; centred on the life-changing trifecta of Mindfulness, Meditation and Manifestation. Its impacts are extensive - physiologically, neurologically and in the dream lives her students have been able to create. As you'll hear, Emily's passion for meditation is deeply personal - it became a critical tool in the aftermath of an incredibly destabilising childhood, and a 10-year Broadway career that wrought havoc on her wider well-being. After years of study in India and the USA, "Ziva" was born - and has continued to evolve at the cutting edge of mindfulness-based healing. Her most recent programme, Ziva Magic, takes manifestation one step further - bringing deep embodiment and creation energy into the toolkit for building your abundant life, now.  

This is arguably one of the juiciest, most personally-insightful episodes we've ever aired - I cannot wait for you to listen.... 

And dear ones - a special note. Emily will be holding an incredible live training for her global community on July 22nd. "Magic Maker" is an opportunity to dive into the Ziva Technique, your own manifesting power and Emily's 3 secrets to magnetising love, health, and abundance. If you'd like to join her, head to your unique Affiliate Link, which gives our listeners special access to this incredible event. You may walk out with an entirely new capacity for expansion - if my experience of Emily is anything to go by, I'd bet on it... 

To find out more about Emily and Ziva's work: 

Find her on Instagram: @emilystellafletcher

Listen to her Podcast "Why isn't everyone doing this?"

Attend the Magic Maker event on 22nd July

Secure a copy of her book, Stress Less, Accomplish More: https://suzyashworth.thrivecart.com/get-your-book-for-free-a/

For more information and upcoming news on the podcast, follow us on  @ab_embodiment and our website. 

Sending love, wherever this finds you,

Ax

in my head I was like, okay, so like, how do I connect with these parts? Like how do I connect with little Emily?'cause I can do it in therapy, I can do it in a ceremony, but like to have a daily practice has still been challenging for me. And my therapist said something really simple. He is like, when your son, my son is six and a half now, and he's like, when your son. And he's hurt or he is sad, like what do you do? And I was like, oh, I just like get on his eye level and I just make eye contact with him and I just witness him. I just let him know that I'm with him and I just witness him. I don't fix anything or try and tell him anything. I just let him be seen. He is like, that's all little Emily wants, like that's all our inner children want. That's all these feelings want. And he is like, it's so simple that we miss it. When we're having fear and we try to go into control and we go into the mind and we try and solve the problem and. All of these mechanisms, like intricate cathedrals of logic built on top of just avoiding the simple feeling of like sitting with that inner child who's scared, sitting with that inner child who's angry, sitting with that inner child who's sad, and it could take 30 seconds. You know, it doesn't have to be a big, long ceremony, but really that's all. That's all that is being asked,

Anthea:

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

Gorgeous, gorgeous listeners. Welcome to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home. Uh, team, we have a treat for you, a veritable treat. I, can't quite believe my bones right now. I'm sitting in front of Emily Fletcher, who as those of you that have been listening to this for a little wee while, will know, had a very particular role in my life, we were just talking before we started recording. So I don't know if she knows how I came across her, but I was sitting on a plane listening to a pre downloaded episode of Cathy Heller's podcast and on pops this. Incredible human who is talking about passion, who is talking about vision, who is talking about deep belly faith and moving through struggle. And I knew of Cathy and I was on my way to la and uh, that was the beginning of this incredible movement of me from a very staid life in England to a whole new career. Um, whole new purpose. I joined. Emily's program in the middle of that, Moving Into Mastery and learnt, Ziva Meditation through her and meditation since has been a deep passion practice. So, uh, I am, from a personal perspective, unbelievably grateful that you are here because you are kind of a part of fostering this whole thing. Uh, I love hearing your story and you know, I think I'm like 16 years into teaching now and tens of thousands of people and it never, like, it always feels like drinking water in the desert when you hear, I. That the medicine has not only been received, but that it's been utilized and that it's helped to like bring you into your dharma and bring you into the fullest expression of yourself. Just like why? Why any of us do what we do, right? We all wanna make a difference, and I'm the type of person when I find something that works, I really wanna shout it from the rooftops. Like I really genuinely am like, why isn't everyone doing this? Why isn't everyone meditating? Why isn't everyone using their pleasure to pray? It's not. Just the name of my podcast, it is in my transmission, and so thank you for sharing that and thank you for having me on. I suppose, I'm curious, just on that theme, has it always been possible for you to kind of liberate your wants, your wishes? Has that always been an aspect of your temperament or is that something that you learned over the course of the years that you've been navigating this life of creativity? What do you mean liberate my desires? What does that mean for you? I mean, uh, most of us, especially those of us that are based in England, which is a society, which on the one hand really validates the importance of having desire. And on the other hand, places this quite Presbyterian. Clash on that from an ethical standpoint. One of the things that I encounter a lot, especially with the sorts of women that I end up working with, who have gone through often codependency or navigating family members with addiction or there's, there's all of these reasons that they've given themselves to not. Validate their uniqueness, their dharma, their authenticity, their transmission, as you say. And I guess it's led me oftentimes to wonder is that innate and ingrained in someone that they just, they know that they have a voice and they are comfortable sharing it into the world. Hmm. Is that's something that we cultivate specifically by virtue of not having been able to do it for the first 1, 2, 3 decades of our lives. I was curious what experiences. Yeah, I mean there's so many different ways to look at this, but if you look at most children, you know, pre seven or eight years old, like before that prefrontal cortex is fully formed and they're in that state of awe, they're actually in like almost what you would call like a mild hypnosis or a mildly meditative state up until that left brain really fully forms. And so there's more connection to source. There's more connection to creativity, and I think there's less. Self-judgment, less self-criticism, and also just less time to have been conditioned and shamed and should it into some sort of a societal conformity. And so most children, you know, are quite wild. They do want their desires, especially toddlers. You know, they're like, I, I want it now. Like, I want the tree. I want that. Like I want it. They know exactly what they want, they demand it, even if they don't get it. They feel their feelings and they express their rage and they express their sorrow. And rather than us learning from the children on how to feel our feelings fully and to move through to the new now, we instead are training them how to be more like us, more repressed, more polite, more confined and, and obviously like, you know, we live in a society where you can't just be like throwing yourself on the ground and punching and you know, ranting and raging all the time. But there is really something to the audacity. Of the simple truth that feelings are meant for feeling. And it's a huge part of the Ziva magic work that it's like if you wanna experience the full capacity of your pleasure, you must first be willing and able to feel the full capacity of your pain. And I take toddlers and children as my mentors and teachers in that because they're so good at it. Um, but as far as like my desire and claiming that, I would say no, that is. Earned. Like certainly I had it when I was little, and then it very much went away. You know, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. I, you know, my dad was brilliant and amazing and charismatic and also an alcoholic and had rage issues, and so there wasn't a lot of space for anyone else's. Feelings and so many of us that grew up with addicts of any sort, we develop superpowers of how to attune to someone else's needs, how to create peace in the household, how to, you know, figure out what they need before they even know what they need. And so it's when you're constantly attuning to someone else's desires. It's very hard to attune to your own. And I do think that, especially with women, especially just because oftentimes, you know, addiction can also lead to abuse. So like your physical safety is in danger and, and not guaranteed. And so like the, your survival depends on your ability to attune to someone else's moods. And so it's very, very hard to tune into your own desires, your own preferences. If, if. Pleasing someone else has been your means. Not only of survival, but also the way you get accolade and the way that your ego gets celebrated. And I had all of that, you know, my safety was dependent on it. I got celebrated for it., I got into achieving, you know, straight A's and being the leads in the show. And so that's how I got attention. And so instead of feeling my feelings, I just achieved more. And what's hilarious is that I built a whole business on it. You know, I built a very successful, like, global movement of meditation and, and like I am so grateful for it and I, I would not change a thing about it. It's changed hundreds of thousands of Lives. But if I look back, it's like, oh, I was trying to get the whole world to meditate. I was trying to get the whole world to regulate their nervous systems so that I didn't have to regulate my own. like, if everyone else can just be happy, then I can be happy. And, and then similarly, it's like. I didn't, I didn't even know what my desires were because, and so that's been also an earned practice of tuning into what do I want? What is my desire? What do I wanna manifest? What is my vision? And so I think because that is earned and earned later in life, it's given me my own superpower on how to help people find their own vision, irrespective of how divorced they are of it now. Oh, it's amazing to listen to you and I I can actually so reflect that from being in one of your programs. One of the dangers and the beauties of being a practitioner when you go into other people's spaces is you're like, you're there and you're also always kind of back here just watching kind of how they do it and how it flows. Yeah. And, um, we talk a lot in our industry about this thing of like holding space. What is that? To hold space. And I think ultimately one of the deepest skills, and this this takes a capacity to know your innate worth as a practitioner, is the ability really to sit with someone and almost without using words, I. To validate, to, to honor, to, to somehow make it safe. Whatever their experience is in that moment, however irrational the mind considers it to be. However much compare and despair they're doing with the rest of the cohort around them, whatever the story is, is the capacity of the person to truly receive them When I first joined, moving into mastery. I, I think it would be fair to say I was, I was terrified by my desire. I had this, I had this inkling, this bubbling sense inside of me that it would be vast. And that your desires would be, yeah, my desires would be, but also probably that my rage would be that my, um, turn on would be like all of these aspects that I had closed off for exactly the reasons that you describe.. The, the level of youngness that I found myself operating from when I was in those calls, even, although I wasn't often speaking, Like you would descend an age like your little girl would come out? Yeah. Like what age would come out? Uh, so usually on those calls, I, I would feel somewhere around seven or eight. I have been about 40 since I was about five, so yeah, same. Same. Yeah. But that's exactly why that seven or 8-year-old needs to be witnessed because she didn't get witnessed the first time around Exactly that. Your capacity to, to, to be with people in those moments was, was really notable for me. Which of course requires you not to be in a space of ego, even though you are leading a 500 person group. I'd love to explore that. A touch, whether now, whether later how does one maintain one's. True size, Also, when you reach a level of visibility and, um, success and accolade that could very easily inflate, anyone's, ego or, self-image. Yeah. I, I find that for me it's a constant dance and I think I've just really learned to love. Like the little Emily that is desperately seeking approval and that is desperately seeking people to love her and desperately wants to please and perform. And, and so rather than like shun her or judge her. I'm just, I'm learning to love her and, and, and like that's also a part of me. And, and I think the more that I'm just like, I, I am a performer like that is, I am, I've been on stage since my mom says since I was born, like I was born in a teaching hospital. There was nurses at my birth and I started, I got on stage when I was eight and. And so there is, there's a symbol to native, like it is part of my true essence that is a performer. And then of course there's the shadow side of that where it's like there's the false, you know, the like performative, like lying or pleasing or, or doing something that is inauthentic.'cause you think someone else, it's what they want So I think that's why our pleasure and our turn on and our true desires are such superpowers, because if you have the ability to tune into that, I personally believe that our desires are divinely inspired, including the desire for accolades, including the desire for notoriety, including the desire for impact. Then the question is always like, where is that desire coming from? Like do I think that if I have a million followers on Instagram, then I will be happy? Do I think that if I sell X amount of numbers of this program, then I will be happy then that is an addiction, right? Because it's like they all be happy when syndrome, I'm seeking something externally to fill an internal hole, which is different than. I've already used meditation. I've already tapped into the source of all that is. I've already flooded my own brain and body with dopamine and serotonin. I already know that I am God pretending to be human. I am the ocean pretending to be the wave. I am fulfillment, looking for need if I have that visceral imprint in my body and then the desire is still there. Then I can trust that that desire is divinely inspired, then I can trust that that is actually an indicator where nature wants to use me to deliver my unique gifts to the world. And so that has really become my compass. Um, and I'm not perfect at it. I certainly make lots of fear-based decision. I certainly make lots of ego-based decisions. I certainly live in scarcity a lot of the time, and. At my best, in my highest moments, my, my decision making matrix comes from if I already am enough, if I already have enough, like is this desire still here? And then it's like, oh, this is nature's GPS, this is nature guiding me on where she wants to use me to deliver my fulfillment to the world. And as far as like the ego goes, like. I really think of it more as like masculine and feminine and there's like container and flow and, and I think that ego or in like self-aggrandizement really comes from insecurity. And so if there is truly a sense of self and if the ultimate impetus is from a place of dharma and service, then the ego can be as big as it wants. You know, like play as big a game as you want to be, as aggrandized as you want. And actually like, people want it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't wanna go see a Taylor Swift show where she's like, is this, are you guys like me? Is it okay? Is this song good enough? Like, I don't wanna go see Beyonce where she's like, I. Kind of into the moves, you know what I mean? Like I wanna go see Beyonce in her fucking power. I wanna see Taylor Swift being like, I was born to inhabit the stadium. And so the question is like, how do we find our lane where that level of confidence, where that level of quote unquote ego is coming from? Like, yeah, I am doing the thing that I was born to do. And for me that is teaching. And then for me, the bigger the audience, the bigger the channel. Right? It's just like the, the, the downloads get bigger and the transmission gets more pot. It's why I'm such a horror for a crowd because it's like I can feel my bandwidth increasing Yeah. And you, you talk a lot about embodiment, right? In the work that you do now there's, there's a big focus on the somatic, on the experiential, and that makes sense to me that when we're in physical proximity to people that are occupying that much space, I mean, it is, it's fucking palpable. It's huge. Yeah. And so fun, and, and you're right, like the embodiment piece is that like if you're just holding your dreams in your mind, in your thoughts. Then there's just less space and there's also less capacity and there's less magnetism than if you are holding your dreams and your manifestations in your head, your heart, and what I like to say. Your hoo-ha. Right? So it's like, you know,'cause, and actually, interestingly, the heart, I. The electromagnetic field of the heart is 5,000 times more powerful than that of the head. And then if you think of your hoo-ha, which is like your sexual center, your root, your pleasure, your sacrum, your power, your safety, all of that lives in your root. And, and a lot of us have just divorced ourselves from that entirely. Right? We've just cut ourselves off at the leg with that s. Center of power and safety and turn on and pleasure and magnetism. And so if you think about like you have the vision in your head, the clarity of what you want, it's being amplified by the heart. It's being run through the filter of like is this of service through the heart? And then you turn on the generator and the magnet of your hoo-ha of your root. Then it's gonna be infinitely more powerful. Your, your manifestation ability, but also your ability to just embody your full power capacity. Humanness gets bigger, um, because we were never meant to live neck up, but we just live in a society that really values left brain logic, intellect, rationale, forward thinking, reviewing the past, like all of those things are really celebrated and validated. In our current societies. So we've sort of cut off, we shame the emotions. Don't cry, you're fine. Tears are weak. You know, if I cry, I'm gonna lose it. I'm gonna break down. Don't be a pussy, don't be weak. Like all of these like cultural daggers that we throw at our feelings and in our heart, and then forget about the pleasure piece. It's like, well that's such, that's a sin. You're gonna go to hell. You're a slut tho. Those are, that's bad. It's wrong. Like it's not even. It's not even judged. It's actually like shamed. And the point of shame is to freeze, right? Like shame freezes you. And so it's not accidental or unintentional, the fact that we've been divorced from this particular flavor of our divinity because we really forget how creative and how powerful we are when we are divorced from our pleasure in that way. And that's been happening in a really deliberate way for. At least hundreds if not thousands of years. Yeah. Which is why seeing particularly women unbridled in their confidence to explore those areas is potentially quite so threatening because the, the focus on knowledge and academia and power, I mean, all of that is a control mechanism, which is ultimately the solution to fear. In a society where there is fear weaving underneath the waters of everything, then the, the solution to that becomes, okay, well I'm gonna dominate the fear by seizing control. Mm. And my sense is that, I mean, this is certainly the case for, for. The, the vast numbers of people that I know that really struggle to welcome their feelings, even that, or welcome, uh, even a physical sensation in their body, that they are deeply, deeply afraid of not being in control, not being in agency. And that derails us back up to the head when actually all that's needed is the moment, the time to process whatever it is that is actually here. Not what we want to be here from the mind, what is actually here. Uh, uh, I was just had a therapy session last night. I, I do, um, IFS like internal family systems at the moment and I was really, in my head I was like, okay, so like, how do I connect with these parts? Like how do I connect with little Emily?'cause I can do it in therapy, I can do it in a ceremony, but like to have a daily practice has still been challenging for me. And my therapist said something really simple. He is like, when your son, my son is six and a half now, and he's like, when your son. And he's hurt or he is sad, like what do you do? And I was like, oh, I just like get on his eye level and I just make eye contact with him and I just witness him. I just let him know that I'm with him and I just witness him. I don't fix anything or try and tell him anything. I just let him be seen. He is like, that's all little Emily wants, like that's all our inner children want. That's all these feelings want. And he is like, it's so simple that we miss it. And so that thing of what you're saying of like when we're having fear and we try to go into control and we go into the mind and we try and solve the problem and. All of these mechanisms, like intricate cathedrals of logic built on top of just avoiding the simple feeling of like sitting with that inner child who's scared, sitting with that inner child who's angry, sit, sitting with that inner child who's sad, and it could take 30 seconds. You know, it doesn't have to be a big, long ceremony, but really that's all. That's all that is being asked, and I, I fully believe there's a Lakota elder saying, I, I learned this from a man named Doug Good Feather, who spoke at the Gaia conference. And he said that Like the magnitude of the suffering on a planet is, is a direct result of the thousands of years of UNC cried tears. And it just felt so true to me that we've, we're going to have to pay the piper. Eventually, we're going to have to feel these feelings. They don't go away. They just get louder. The lessons get stronger, and so that's part of why Ziva Magic was born. It is part of why I'm so adamant about this embodied manifesting technology because it's not just about the manifesting, it's not just about using your pleasure to pray. It's not just about amplifying the dreams by using your internal pharmacy of feelgood chemicals. It's also about developing the safety and. The muscles to be able to feel the pain and the discomfort.'cause it's like good luck feeling the full capacity of your pleasure if you don't have the capacity to feel your pain. And, and that we really, like you said, especially in an English society, especially in like a western, um, you know, civilization that so many of us have grown up in, like. It's not only been, not, not available or not modeled, but it's been not safe and it's been judged, and so, so just to model that, like, hey, feelings are meant for feeling that hey, nothing breaks inside of you when you cry, you don't lose anything except for some toxins outta your eyeballs when you cry. And guess what's right on the other side of that bliss chemistry? And so, uh, it's been such a gift for me personally to be able to, when I'm angry rage and when I'm sad cry and when I'm scared, like sit with little scared little Emily. And it's been really, really liberating. And, and now I've been seeing it in the lives of people who've moving through this training. And it's, um, I, I mean, not to be self-aggrandizing, but I, and there's lots of people doing this, but I think it is the medicine that the world needs right now. And I think that that last point is really critical because you are, you are such an advocate for taking a much more conscious lens of how we are stewarding, not just this generation and this planet right now, but also what happens in the, what is it, epigenetically, seven generations beyond us. Mm-hmm. And, and what you're describing, especially when people are creating this change in, in community connection, in physical proximity with each other, that cannot not have an enormous ripple on. Lives lives in the future to continue. Yeah. I remember I did a retreat, this was a long time ago. It was just a Ziva meditation retreat. It was long before I was doing Ziva Magic. But even with the meditation, right, like you're deci the nervous system and healing on a cellular level that absolutely can heal epigenetic. Trauma that you've inherited and absolutely can change what you pass down to other generations, um, but I remember I was on this retreat and it was only, it was small, it was like 20 people, and we had a second generation. Hol German Holocaust survivor, and we had a first generation Japanese Holocaust survivor. And I remember sitting there in that moment and being like, whoa, like this is a big deal Like that. If, if that's all that happened on this retreat was that, that, that trauma. Was stopped in those lineages and those two bloodlines, like if that was all that happened, it would've been worth it. It would've been a huge win that those two people got to be chain breakers so that their children didn't inherit what they did so that their grandchildren didn't inherit what they did. And. You know, I think that so many of us are very interested in that. How do we become chain breakers? And that's been a big part of my personal work. And I'll just say that the new theme that's coming up for me in the past few days is the idea that we have an opportunity to transcend and include, not just to transcend. So I think I've had a story that like the women in my family are like the breadwinners and the caretakers, and there's this sort of like wounded feminine of overcompensated, overgiving taking care of. You know, the, the story is like, well, the men are drinking or the men are sick, and so the women are taking care of the men and making the money and taking care of the kids. And that is like all the way back. As far as I know in my lineage. I have nine aunts. I have an entirely female company. My father has passed. I don't have a partner. Like, there's basically like no men in my life. I'm just surrounded by a lot of really strong women. My coach is a woman. My, well, thankfully, I have a therapist who's a man. Now I'm starting to call in more male support, but I was like. And so I've been seeing that as a problem, right? Like, oh, look at all these strong women. Look at, um, this imbalance, and it shows up in my body, like my left side is really strong and my right side is really weak. And the life side, left side is the feminine side. And in the past two days, I've been reframing this of like, there's nothing broken here. There's nothing to fix here. Like, what a fucking honor. Like what a gift that I come from, a lineage of women that are this smart, this strong, this capable. What a fucking privilege that I live in a time where I can have a credit card and a credit score and get a mortgage and own a company and make millions of dollars changing people's lives. Like what a privilege. Thank you, mom. Thank you, grandma. Thank you. Great. Grandma, thank you for your resilience because I 100% have birthed this through the bloodline of their strength and capacity. So rather than trying to fix it, I am now transcending and including transcending and including, and, and also recognizing that like my sovereignty and my ability to receive support from the masculine is what they want. It's not in spite of them, it is because of them. And that's like, to feel them celebrating me, to feel them championing me, to feel them holding me as I transcend and include is a very different frequency than like, fuck, my lineage is so broken. And so, and I think like if you wanna heal anything in your body, like I can't. I can't cut out the pain in my back, right? Like I have to feel it. I have to love it. I have to transcend, but also include the strength that is there on the left side of my body. And then strengthen. Strengthen the masculine. I, one of the forms of coaching that I, uh, explored a couple of years ago, we talk about having an evolved way of being And it's that same idea of, of can I, can I transcend? But can the transcending really bring me along, bring all of the jewels, all of the, the crystals that were part of that former structure and can there therefore be a celebration in what is now an expanded vessel? So as I listened to you, the thing that I'm really reminded of. And, and especially because I've seen you in person and I know what your resonance is like, is, it's almost this idea that there doesn't need to be any compromise. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of tolerating here in the uk especially even in communities where we're self-developing. It's this really subtle way that sort of, the mind comes in and it says, okay, well you can have up to that but no more. Mm-hmm. And I remember you saying, uh, pretty recently actually, that you'd had a thought, which was, how richly could I allow myself to love? Like, how brazen could I be in the expression of these things that are just intuitive and intrinsic to me? When I hear you talking about this kind of, this real, uh, pilgrim sequence of women who have been so forbearing and so of valor in everything that they've produced for their families and all of the generations that they've stewarded, even although they've been in such circumstances of challenge, I'm also really reminded that you get to be all of that strength and if you desire, you get to have a fucking wonderful partner. And, and it doesn't have to be either or. And I feel like in, in how you are, who you be, what you embody, you do embody that. Mm. Oh, thank you so much for that reflection. And thank you for speaking to the, what you felt in that room.'cause we got to meet at Kate Northrop's event, and, and it's just the magic in that room. And, and I, I've never heard that reflected back of the uncompromising, um, frequency. Uh, because that feels like if we're going to dream. Right, because that's, I, I mean that's what Ziva magic is, right? It's teaching people how to dream. It's teaching people how to remember their desires to visualize Alchemize and magnetize what their version of heaven on Earth looks like. So if we really want to birth a new earth that our hearts know is possible, if we really wanna inhabit the frequency of heaven in our bodies,'cause I do believe that heaven is a vibration, not a destination. And if we want to vibrate at the frequency of heaven, it's not almost heaven. It's not. It's not tolerable relationship. It's not enough money. It's, it's like what is the dream? And paradoxically, just to speak that word enough, because enough is my word for 2025. I have found for me that the more I can lean into and celebrate the enoughness, that I really am enough. I really do have enough that that safety. Provides a really buoyant trampoline to dream all the way, and it was, I was on the lake, I remember it was about a week or so ago, I was on the lake and I was like, what if I gave myself permission to love? As much as I want. Like I have a huge capacity to love. I have a, I have a lot of energy, I have a lot of capacity, I have a lot of power, and, and I find I'm dating these days, and so I'm, I'm in this fascinating, you know, give and take where you have all this societal, like, let the man lead and don't come on too strong and you know, don't be the aggressor. And I'm a double Aries, right? So I'm like a. F you know, like I'm, I'm just a lot of, a lot. And so it's tricky to find that balance of like, what is my authentic passion, my authentic power. I am a leader. That is who I am. And my partner will not only like receive that, but love that and value that. So it's like, how do I. Lead without authenticity, love as big and as fully as I'm capable of, but also not go into a space of vigilance or wounding or need. Because if that, if my level of passion and enthusiasm is encapsulated with fear or lack or vigilance, that's when I think it becomes unpalatable. So it's been like a real dance of finding like, what is my like authentic passion versus what is like old. Fear or control or trying to manipulate a situation. And so that's been a real, a real masterclass as of late. I really love the fact that you are constantly in learning. There's no end to it. It's been my experience so far that the more that you grow, oh God, then the more that you have to grow again, and then grow again, and then grow again, and you just, you just shed the, the layers of skin again and again, and again and again. Yeah. I suppose that, that kind of oddly brings me onto meditation itself I don't think there are gonna be many people listening that do not know your story, but just indulge us. For those that haven't come across you and don't know about this transition from Broadway performer, you know, really this quite visible, uh, this quite visible and very driven life from the way that you describe it. Mm-hmm. What was it that transitioned you? Into meditation, into going into quiet, going into darkness. What was that experience even like for you as someone that had lived so much in the outsides? Hmm, such a good question. Like, I, I didn't consider a transition into the darkness or into the inside. Like even from the beginning, it was very much, I'm meditating to get good at life, not to get good at meditation. I'm meditating to be a better performer. I'm meditating to be, you know, a better singer, a better dancer, a better all of it. And, and that really was the case. Like it, this particular style of meditation really did cure my insomnia. On the first day, I stopped going gray. I didn't get sick for eight and a half years. I started enjoying my job again. And I, I really did say like out loud, like, why isn't everyone doing this? Like, wait, this is a thing. Like, you mean we could just like eradicate our stress. Every day viscerally, we, we could experience heaven in our bodies every day, twice a day. What the, what? Why is everyone not doing this? It's been around for 6,000 years. Like, wait, you know how long we've been testing Zoloft? Like 16 years? This thing has been around for 6,000 years. And it works and the benefits are cumulative and you have this huge return on your time investment. Like what? And so I think I just started shouting it from the rooftops, but I, I never meant to transition into darkness. I never meant to transition into stillness, and I don't think that I really have. Um, I think what I originally was just meditating for myself and then about six months in by a beautiful series of events I ended up in, in India and. And I was going to celebrate my 30th birthday and. It was in India that I was like, oh, you need to teach this. Like, it just, it was like a very clear sign, like, oh, you need to teach this. And, and I thought it would just be later, like, oh, when I'm in my forties or fifties, when I'm done acting, when I'm done singing, when I'm done dancing, like then I. Then I'll teach. But I, it became like, I started voting with my time and attention really quickly. Like my agents, I was still performing. My agents were like, Hey, Emily, will you bring us some headshot and resumes? And I, I would not do it. Like I wouldn't, it was back when they were printed, you know, and I wouldn't take any headshot to their office, but I would've taught 400 people to meditate in those two months. And so I just started looking at my calendar and I was like, Emily, like you've already decided, you know? Um, but there was this one week, maybe this'll be interesting, maybe not, but there was this one week where I was in. Final callbacks to play Velma in Chicago, the musical on Broadway. And I was opening up the East coast division of the number one acting school in Los Angeles. And I was birthing the world's first online meditation training ever. And this was in 2013, and I was doing all three. At the same week and I was like, oh, nobody wins here. Like, I can't do, I cannot perform at this level of like world class excellence in all three arenas simultaneously. And that's the week that I called, uh, my agents and I was like, Hey, I love you guys, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop performing. So I was just focusing on teaching acting and teaching meditation. And I think that's why Ziva became what it did because I, I started teaching meditation for performance, like my book is Stress Less, accomplish More Meditation for Extraordinary Performance. So I was always speaking to high performers, athletes, CEOs, you know, Google, apple, Viacom, Harvard, and I think that I had or have even like this beautiful. Juxtaposition of, of really being able to straddle science and spirit. And I think one of my superpowers is the ability to communicate esoteric ideas in a way that is attractive and accessible to a mainstream audience. And, and I did that for a long time. I'm doing it for 16 years with meditation. And now it feels like the, the message from nature is like, Hey. That thing that you've done for meditation, now it's time to do it For these even more potent and even more taboo modalities, like now it is time for us to reach deeper into this internal pharmacy because the stakes are higher on the planet. Like the stress is higher. You know, the real nature of like, is humanity going to proliferate or not is like a, a real question right now. And so I think that the more I can contribute. The tools that I've been given towards getting people really deeply rooted in their humanity. Then I would say part of the, the Dharmic imperative for me right now is also rebalancing the masculine and feminine inside of myself, but also on the planet. Like really giving people,'cause that's how I believe we access heaven on Earth, is that we, we first balance the masculine and feminine inside of ourselves, and then we do that on the planet. And we just don't have many models of what that looks like. And so, you know, back in the day we had priestesses, we had oracles, we had, like, the kings were consulting the oracles. We had, you know, world leaders were going to ceremonies with priestesses and they were like accessing their own divinity, but through the feminine, through the unique lens of the womb, of the oracle of medicine space. And, and that has been not only forgotten, but. But violently removed from our history books like, you know, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. She was arguably like the most important disciple of Jesus ua. And teaching him, she's an ordained priestess in the ISIS lineage and ISIS being the Egyptian goddess of. Magic and sex and in fertility and motherhood. And so it's just interesting that here are these, these female and feminine archetypes that have played such massive roles in history. You know, counseling, urs, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, like these people that have been so instrumental in birthing civilization as we know it, and their stories are not only gone. Not only like white from the memory, but the pages ripped out of the books. The tablets etched bare, and so a half truth is a lie. And so until we start to see more of the whole truth of our history, until we start to see the divine can also be represented through the feminine, I think it's gonna be very hard for us to find that masculine and feminine balance that I believe is the pathway to. The frequency of heaven on Earth. I have no idea what your original question was. I think it was probably about meditation, but here we are. I think that was, that was just the most divine stream. There was no way I was gonna stop you with any of that. Um, I have no idea what you asked me. I feel like I've got about a million follow on questions, but actually the, the one that I was, that I was most. You've been, you've been talking about some of these, particularly in like the last year. You've been talking about some of these really key figures and making much more explicit linking between the work that you do and really bringing these lineages, which were at one stage, as you say, considered, um, with such repute that they were almost quasi scientific, like these, these ancient forms of practice And it's been really magical to see that appearing.'cause I come from a, a lineage of. Women who are, um, both hilariously formal and unbelievably witchy. So it's always been a big part. Ah. What a beautiful gift that you have. Both. Yeah, right. Like the ability to dance in the formal lens and to be, you know, perceived as serious and taken seriously. But also that you have this beautiful, and which just means wise woman for those who still feel a little afraid of that word, which makes sense, but it just means wise woman. It's like someone who knows how to work with the laws of nature and the elements of nature externally and internally. So I'm so glad that's both are in your lineage. Well, they're, they're kind of magic. And, and what I've found in that whole theme of, um, really including is, is it's offered me a model of female strength but also this, this deep, deep trust of intuition. It's like the, the, the sense of something being. Latent inside of you, and that being a signal that you have to listen to. Uh, and if not, then you better know that that's gonna come out in some way, shape, or, or form. Um, that's been a real gift. And I suppose one of my curiosities for you is having reached a level of visibility where you really do have a platform to begin to talk about the things that are literally coming through you. Mm-hmm. Is there ever trepidation in you about becoming declarative about an area of your work that could potentially be polarizing for, um, aspects of your audience or even, um, aspects of the communities that you walk in? Was that at all a consideration for you when you started to move more into this? Yeah. Thanks for asking that. I mean, by and large, the answer is no. Like a shocking no. It doesn't mean that it's not there at all. Like for example, I have a call tonight with a man who I really trust and respect and he said that like, Hey, when I looked at your Instagram and I looked at some of the like emotional alchemy. I mean this man is 60 and in finance and in New York. So like, you know, it's a very specific frequency. But he is like, when I looked at your Instagram, the first thing I thought was like cult. Like this is a cult leader. This is culty. I don't, and so I'm having a call with him tonight just to find out more. What does that mean to you? What does cult mean to you? Does it just mean it feels scary? Does it mean that it feels triggering? Does it mean you really think I'm like trying to make a commune of people who worship me, who do not aspire beyond my state of conscious? Like just what, what exactly is your experience? Um. And so I am, I'm curious about it, but I'm, I'm 2, 3, 4, maybe four years into this work now, and, and he just mentioned it offhand, but when we first started talking about Ziva Magic and embodied manifesting and helping people to use their pleasure to pray, I. I was, you know, my team honestly was very scared. They were like, Emily, like, what if we lose everything? Like, what if our audience goes away? Like our audience is pretty conservative, like middle aged, middle American women. Like what if it's all of it goes under? And I was like, it's just not like I, it's just not going to, and I was like, either. Either my instincts are 100% off, in which case the company should go down because this company has been built on my intuition and instincts. But I, I've really, I've had this thought twice in my life, like, why isn't everyone doing this? And the first time it was around meditation, and right now it is around pleasure. It is around sacred sexuality. And, and I just have this deep nosis, this deep body, knowing that. If we are going to adapt to and dance with the forces of formidable as they are, if we are going to adapt to the ever increasing rate of change that is happening, and my friends that are saying they're working with ai, it's not like a parabolic curve, it's vertical. AI is vertical. The rate of change. And if we are going to adapt to that, and I believe that ai, I'm calling ai, not artificial intelligence, but amplified intelligence, that it is going to amplify whatever is. And so if we are in touch with our feelings, if we are embodied in our humanity, then then AI will amplify what is there. If we are in scarcity and fear and lack in colonialism and slavery, and unlike then AI will amplify what is there. And so I feel even more committed to. Upleveling consciousness with the tools that I have to do that because it, whatever is, is about to be amplified and very, I mean, it already is and very quickly so. Long story short, like when I first started, I think I had like one man post on Facebook. He was like, this email you sent this week, Emily, it felt like I was reading your journal. You know, I take me off your list. I want my money back. And we were like, cool. And we unsubscribed him. We refunded him from, and he wasn't even in even magic. He was just in even meditation. But other than that, like literally that one post and that one refund, like we've had almost no pushback. I, I did an interview once for a podcast and they didn't air it because they thought it was like a little bit too far for their audience. I. But you know, like that's, that's their prerogative. Like that's, you know, I never wanna take people further than they're ready to go. Um, but I've had almost no pushback, at least that I'm aware of. Now, that said, I do think that I'm a relatively new witch. Um, I think I'm an old priestess, but a new witch. Um, meaning I think I've been serving medicine in like, leading ceremony spaces and being at birth and death and counseling leaders for like many, many, many, many, many moons. Um. But the witch part where, you know, like burned at the stake, the persecution, I don't feel that in my. Bloodline. I don't feel it in my karmic memory, whereas a lot of my friends do, and I witness it in their bodies. Like I, I feel it's very real and um, and I thankfully don't have that there. Like, for better or worse, there's like a naivete almost to my transmission where it's like, why isn't everyone doing this? Hey you guys, let's get 13,000 people climaxing at the pyramids at the same time. Which is, by the way, what I'm working on. I'm taking a group to Egypt in October to go plant the prayers for a large scale activation. At the pyramids to really like merge ancient future, like to use these ancient technologies to help birth the modern future. And so, um, yeah, it comes up here and there, but largely I find it like activating and um, inspiring. There's a, there's something I'd really love to insert for the benefit of the audience, partly because the guys that listen to us here. Hi everyone. Um, there's a real fascination in this audience around nervous system. I almost wanna say resiliency, right? Yeah. So you were referencing at the beginning this, this thing of like, I tried to make the entire world emotionally regulated in order that I could fundamentally feel safe. They're okay. So I'm okay. And I think one of the things that people can certainly, um, disbelieve when they start thinking about flagrant pleasure or, um, uh, medicine or, or anything where we're moving outside of the, the quote unquote day-to-day domain is there's this image that it's going to be, um, unbridled and dysregulating and exposing, and that the space is not going to be held. Mm. And I remember being on one of the first calls that she, fur Ziva Magic and mm-hmm It led this massive online group. I think it was actually even maybe at the end of COVID. It was definitely a time where we were having to do things remotely, but the group was enormous. And um, and I remember you leading us through this kind of sequence of music to emotion. Really, really powerful. And one of the things that I noted at the time, and this is very much in tune with the way that, um, that I work in the sort of embodiment coaching space. It, it was titrating. You were giving people the opportunity to feel at a dosage for a song and to do that very deliberately. They were doing it with agency. They weren't in a reactive state, something traumatic having just happened and landed. They were consciously every day offering themselves this little vent. Mm-hmm. And I, I really wanted to reinforce it, especially for anyone that's listening to this and they're thinking, I mean, I don't even know what sacred sexuality is. And I'm kind of terrified of talking about anything sex related. Like the, the point of making something sacred is that you set it up in this secure, sacred held context and you get to practice around people that are deeply experienced and. My sense of you so far is that that is so much in line with the ethic and integrity that is a core part of your service mission. Mm-hmm. I just really wanted to reinforce it. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up and. And yeah, just to rewind it all the way, like, like Ziva. At Ziva I teach meditation and magic and I'm using air quotes on magic and, and meditation is nervous system regulation. It is, you know, allowing the body to flood with dopamine and serotonin and get deep healing rest so that it can heal at a cellular level. The Ziva technique is mindfulness meditation and manifesting, right? So mindfulness to help with your stress in the now meditation to get rid of your stress from the past. That stress in your cellular memory and the manifesting to plant the seeds for the future, and that that's what I've been teaching for 16 years that has been like the foundation of this work. Ziva Magic was born out of that, where the formula there is simply visualize alchemize. Magnetize. So step one is create safety coherence in yourself and in the field. And then from that place, ask the question, what would I love and so basically Ziva magic is embodied manifesting, but the trick but embodied manifesting is that you cannot manifest anything that does not feel safe in your body. It just doesn't work. Like if you grew up in scarcity in your home, that feels familiar. So for you to have money, while it might seem like, oh, I'll be happy when I have more money, the money feels unfamiliar, so it doesn't feel safe. If your parents grew up fighting, then that feels familiar. So for you to receive love does not. It does not feel normal, and so it feels unsafe, which is why we accidentally block it. So the key to manifesting anything. Always starts with safety and regulation in the nervous system. And so that, you're right, it's such a bedrock of the work that I do that I sometimes forget to mention it. But of course, even talking about pleasure because it has been so shamed, can feel very triggering. So we start, we get really clear what would I love? And then we imagine that and you know, we really feel it, see it, smell it, touch it. Then we go into the alchemy piece. So emotional alchemy is really giving people the tools to feel and express and to transmute anything that is not an energetic match for the dream. Because again, with manifestation, the key is feel good, place the order, and the better you feel, the higher quality things you believe that you. An emotional alchemy, which is the process you were talking about on that live call. I'm just giving people the tools to go into the anger that the thing has not shown up the sadness, that it may never show up the feelings of unworthiness that maybe I don't deserve it. And to not just feel them, but to actually embody them, to actually move them out of the body. And what I've found is that if we give ourselves the safety to express the fullness of whatever it is.'cause I very much believe that bliss is any feeling fully felt. I. This is a key cornerstone inside of Ziva Magic. That bliss is any feeling fully felt, including rage. Including sorrow, including heartbreak. If you feel it all the way. On the other side of that is bliss. And then what we do in Ziva Magic is that we sprinkle into that cocktail the most creative, powerful force on the planet, which I call creation energy, right? It's the energy that can create a baby, a company, an idea. It is the masculine and feminine combined. It is polarity, it is magnetism, and it is you turning on the generator and the magnet of your body through your turnon. Through your pleasure. And yes, sometimes we do that with sexual energy, but sometimes it could be through dance or breath or play or gardening or like whatever it is that makes you feel good and safe in your body. It does not have to be through sexual energy because again, if you were to go into any sort of a sexual or pleasure space where you don't have safety yet, then that would be retraumatizing, right? And so, but what I found is if you move people through these steps, they know what they want. They know that their pleasure is linked to what they want. They have now the muscle built to feel the intensity of anything, keeping them from being an energetic match. By the time you get there, people are like, oh my gosh, please, like, please let me go into these pleasure practices because they feel so safe, so ready. That channel is so open that they're ready to flood the brain and body with again, that neurochemistry, that nature has installed inside of us. It's like the same God that we've been told. Thinks that pleasure is a sin, or bad or wrong, is the same God that installed these chemicals inside of us. So it just really doesn't make any sense. And the most divine thing that we could do as a human is to make another human, right? So it's like that same creativity, that same divinity. Every time we access it does not create another human, thank goodness. And yet it has that level of potential inside of it, right? So it's like, what do you want to birth with your pleasure? How do you want to use your pleasure to amplify your prayers? And that's really what, what the Ziva Magic process is. It's just phenomenal. It's making me so excited for all of the events that you've got coming up in the next couple of years. They're gonna be wild, wild. On that note, tell us what, um, what is there to look forward to in your, your offerings this year? So I would say, you know, step one, if people just want to learn to meditate, I have a free masterclass and you can just go to zivameditation.com/podcast. And that's a, it's like a 35 minute masterclass, and it really goes into the neuroscience of why Ziva is different than apps, why it's different than YouTube videos. And there's a really special offer at the end of that masterclass for anyone that wants to enroll in the training, which I imagine was your first training was. Ziva meditation, uh, it's really like the foundation in the bedrock. Um, and then if they wanna learn about the Embodied manifesting, you can go to zivameditation.com/magic. And we have a beautiful free live event happening on July 22nd. It's called Magic Maker. And we're gonna have thousands of people from all around the world coming together to. Really get into coherence and pray not only for themselves, but also for the planet. Like I'm Yes, presenting this medicine as like, Hey, this is gonna help you manifest whatever you want for yourself. But what really excites me is the idea of doing these large scale activations. You know, 20,000 people online, 13,000 people at the pyramids, 80,000 people at the stadiums, like truly creating these massive antennas. And, and using this pleasure to pray for the whole planet. Um, so I have, I'm taking a group to Egypt in October. You can find all of this at zivameditation.com. And, and we're also on Instagram just@zivameditation. We post a lot. Um, we're really active on that platform. Um. I dunno how many parents you have on this, but we have a, a training for four to 14 year olds and that's, um, all on the website, which I'm really proud of that one too.'cause it's like, you know, if you're a parent, it's just so much better if your kid is meditating with you, then doing it on your own. It's a kind of profound avenue, and it's one that should be much, much more common, and yet it's amazingly missing from the repertoire. Why isn't everyone doing that? I made this course, it was like my COVID project, and I thought it was gonna go like gangbusters. I was just like, this thing is gonna sell like hotcakes. Like people need this so much and then just nothing. And I was, I was still so fascinated by that. But the course is amazing. Like we worked with Sesame Street and Harvard Child Psychologist, so I have a, a CoStar, his name is Z Bunny. He's a puppet. He's training in mindfulness and meditation and manifesting. So it's really like entertaining and it's, it's like screen time you can feel really good about as a parent. And then at the end of it, your kid has mindfulness meditation and manifesting to take with them for life. I am just, I'm so deeply touched and impressed by the work that you do. I think it is phenomenal. Long may it continue. And I'm really attentive to your time'cause you have a hell of a schedule each day. But, um, I'm curious if there's any, any last note, any last, um, sentiment that is coming through you that you feel like you need to leave the audience with or you'd like to? Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think I'll just share that, that my, I mean, in addition to my, you know, twice a day meditation and, and not daily, but like pretty regular pleasure practices. The thing that I'm really tuning in on right now is, is. Deepening my relationship with my inner child. And so I would just encourage people to explore that in whatever way feels true and authentic to them. Of like really asking like that inner child, like, you know, how old are you right now? Is it that, like you said, when you were on the calls with Ziva, you were like seven or eight and sometimes it's our 3-year-old. Sometimes it's our baby, sometimes it's our inner teenager. But I'm just finding ways to really connect with that inner child. You know, I do IFS therapy and retreats, but a fun one that I've just learned is that I, I saved my number as, um, like little Emily. So I'm like texting little Emily throughout the day, which I really love. So that's been a fun way to use modern technology to just like deepen the relationship with her. We talk a lot on here about two-way prayer, whether you believe in God or whether you believe in some higher power, but the, just the simple practice of writing out a question or writing out a sentence and then seeing what comes through as the response, it, it accesses more liminal parts of the brain that really do clear through the fog of the beliefs that you think that you need hold onto. But I like that idea, like,'cause I would call that scribing, you know, where you like tune into a particular consciousness and let them write through you, which is powerful and potent. This one is more like instead of me like texting a boy or like waiting to see if some man has texted me back. I'm just like, all that energy I'm putting into little Emily and it's really coming from me. But I also like the idea of like, oh, what does little Emily want to say back? That could be fun to make the two-way conversation. That's cool. Team on the base of this episode, you know, all of the things that you are, being gently nudged towards in your own healing journey. Emily, it's been stunning to have you. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for the refinement that you've done of your consciousness, your, uh, linguistic gifts, uh, the beautiful shiny mirror through which you see me. And thank you for investing in yourself and like really like doing the work of getting your buns to the chair and doing, Moving Into Mastery and Magic. It's all like. I feel grateful, but I also feel grateful for everyone in your event Horizon, all of your clients, your family, like the generations forward and back. So thanks for doing the work. I'm gonna receive that in a way that I wouldn't normally. Um, team, we're gonna love you and, and leave you, but please, uh, reach out if you've got any questions. We'll make sure the show notes are replete with all of Emily's gloriousness and, um, yeah, we think of you often, you're the whole reason why this thing exists. So please, please don't be shy. Let us know what you need and we will deliver it. And I will see you for another gorgeous episode soon. Team, take care.

Anthea:

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.