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Talks at GoogleWhy Meditation is the New Caffeine | Emily Fletcher | Talks at Google
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Transcript
50 min read · 9,887 words- 0:00 – 0:05
Intro
- EFEmily Fletcher
[audience applauding]
- 0:05 – 3:08
Meditation as a productivity tool: defining “Ziva” and “bliss”
- EFEmily Fletcher
Hi, friends. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited about the turnout. We, we weren't really sure, you know, how many people we would have, but look it, we're standing room only. And hello to our friends who are watching online. Um, 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, why would anyone string caffeine? Because we wanna 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 rebrand meditation as a productivity tool. So before we start, I want us to get on the same page on a few vocab words. [laughs] Remember, like, we're in third grade, just vocab. [laughs] 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 looked good on a T-shirt, which it does. [laughs] Um, and PS, when I say the word bliss, I don't mean happiness. Uh, 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 okay, 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 gonna 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 gonna cover in today's talk is the differences between the two most popular styles of meditation and how they affect the brain differently. Um, but I'm really, 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 is the new caffeine, uh, the two most popular styles of meditation, how they affect the brain differently, uh, when stress is actually good for you. Stress is getting sort of a bad rap these days, but we're gonna 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 gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that most of you guys are, uh, overachievers in this room, and, uh, very, uh, uh, mm, ambitious and goals and results oriented. So yes. So before we can 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 'cause interestingly, there are quite a few similarities. Both will make you feel more energetic. Mot- 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 forty 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
- 3:08 – 5:09
What caffeine does in the brain—and the hidden cost
- EFEmily Fletcher
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. Uh, 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 gotta take a nap." 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 gotta 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, um, adrenaline. 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 comedown. So you drink too much coffee, you start to get the nervous shakes, right? Or afterwards you feel even more tired than you were before you started. This is really, um, the price that we pay. I liken the human body to a casino. You can cheat it for
- 5:09 – 7:40
How meditation boosts energy differently: deeper rest and stress release
- EFEmily Fletcher
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 adrenaline going right now. [laughs] One of the... I talk really fast about meditation, and you get a little dry mouth. Um, 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, 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 those stresses that we've been picking up through our decades of overachieving can start to leave the building. [laughs] So imagine that you have a pot of water on a stove. If you turn up the heat on that pot of water and you excite the molecules, they're gonna 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. Um, but what I'm interested in right, right now is really talking about the rest. If you, 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
- 7:40 – 8:54
Coffee + meditation and why technique matters
- EFEmily Fletcher
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, "Damn it, why did I bring coffee to this talk?" [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- EFEmily Fletcher
Um, my personal philosophy on drugs are that if the pros outweigh the cons, then enjoy, right? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- EFEmily Fletcher
Uh, but I just think we have to understand what the pros and what the cons are and what they're, 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 d- is dependent almost entirely on what kind of meditation that you practice, uh, which leads me to our second point that we're gonna cover today, which is the differences between the two most popular styles of meditation. Um, I notice 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. Um, who here has tried meditation and hated it? I know I did. Okay, awesome. I'm so glad that you're here. Way to give it another shot.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- 8:54 – 12:28
Mindfulness vs. self-induced transcendence: two popular Western approaches
- EFEmily Fletcher
Um, and we talked about who's drinking coffee every day. Almost everyone, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, [clears throat] 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. Um, 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, um, which I think is-- Oh, hello. Um, that wasn't me. Um, [laughs] uh, which is actually a great title, and it's, it's a mindfulness-based training. Uh, 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 attention stype- type of meditation, and then there's a non-directed attention stype- type of meditation, and this is what I teach. Um, 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. Um, 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 the time, largely due to you guys, um, it's, th- this, uh, 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, 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. Um, 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, um, 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 you have a job and a family and stuff to do. Um, so if you are a householder, you have less time in your day with which to meditate, which, 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 got stuff to do. All, all I can do is, like, come in. I gotta answer some emails and eat my lunch while I listen to this meditation caffeine talk, [laughs] and hopefully it'll make me get more done." Um, 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, there is sort of a pri- I like in ... Now, obviously I'm biased, okay, 'cause I teach this, uh, self-induced transcendent style of meditation, and it's totally changed my life. Um, so I'd love to say that this
- 12:28 – 14:59
Training the brain for innovation: right/left brain balance and the corpus callosum
- EFEmily Fletcher
was a non-biased, um, account of the differences between the two, but spoiler alert, it's 100% biased. [laughs] Um, but this self-induced transcendent 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're 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 gonna increase, um, 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 te- science, 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, [laughs] and here's why. Here's a CliffsNotes 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, um, 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. [laughs] 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 atrophying. Now, your right brain is the, 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
- 14:59 – 18:33
Stress, performance myths, and when stress is actually useful
- EFEmily Fletcher
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 gonna be able to still access this whole other realm of creativity and inspiration. Sounds pretty good, huh? [laughs] Call me crazy, but, uh, 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. Uh, 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 gonna explain why in just a moment. And with my, and with my, um, 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 esoteric for Google. I'm gonna move on. [laughs] Um, let's move on to our third point, which is, uh, when can stress actually serve you? When can stress actually be good for you? Stress is getting sort of a bad rap these days. The, 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 gonna get into those, but first, we gotta 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. [laughs] Uh, so as they were hunting and gathering and out of nowhere, this saber-toothed tiger jumps out at you, and with the intent to kill. Uh, so your body is going to launch into a series of chemical reactions. First, your digestion is gonna flood with acid to shut down digestion 'cause 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 can fight or flee. So the nervous poos you get before an audition or, like, a ... You guys don't have auditions, but, like, a presentation, uh, that's your body trying to protect you. Um, your, uh, heart rate will increase. See? People are laughing 'cause they identify. Um, [laughs] uh, 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 gonna 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, [laughs] 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 a 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 re- 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. Where this fight
- 18:33 – 20:45
Exercise isn’t meditation: exciting vs. de-exciting the nervous system
- EFEmily Fletcher
or flight thing, yes, great, it's good for it to happen, but then if you ... 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. You get on the treadmill, and you start running, you can outrun that tiger. You can burn off the stress chemicals from today. You get in the boxing ring, you can fight that tiger, and you can burn off the stress chemicals from today. But if you wanna 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 e- on each new day, provided that you're exercising every day. If you wanna handle the backlog of stresses that you've been accumulating so 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, that rice out 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 happen, 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, the equivalent of pouring acid in your body. Every time you get stressed, every stress-y 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 gonna 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, um, 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. I've already covered the first three points. Any questions or, or comments or disagreements about any of that so far? Yeah.
- 20:45 – 26:40
Q&A: how meditation affects the “right brain” and stress-driven motivation
- SPSpeaker
Um, so you talked about how s- or meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Does meditation do anything to beef up the atrophied right brain?
- EFEmily 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. Um, 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. Um, 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 gonna 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 f- the brain starts firing on all cylinders. Um, my meditation teacher says that, you know, we, you know, we're saying that we use somewhere between three and 10% of our brain capacity. My teacher says that the very fact that we're arguing over whether it's three or 10 suggests that it's more like three. [laughs] Um, I'm fascinated to see this new movie Lucy. Um, it's probably gonna be pretty ... well, I don't know. It'll ... maybe it's great. I don't know. But I'm fascinated to see it. [laughs] Um, does that answer your question?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Great. What other questions do you have? Yes.
- SPSpeaker
Um, so sometimes when I'll introduce people to meditation, like, one of their big objections is sort of like with your clients where they say, uh, "I don't wanna let go of my anxiety or my stress because that's the edge that keeps me motivated and productive."
- EFEmily Fletcher
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So, like, how do you usually kind of address that when people are worried about letting go of the thing that's pushing them forward?
- EFEmily Fletcher
Yeah. It's a great question, and I think it's a really valid concern because if you've 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've 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, um, here's my analogy, and please forgive me, y'all. I'm a, I'm a really good tap dancer. I am not a technician, but here goes. [laughs] Let's imagine that the brain is a computer, okay? 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 y- let's say you've got, like, you know, Hulu and G Chat and YouTube and Facebook and Vimeo and Vi, you got all these things open. You're like, "Oof, maybe I should get back to work. Maybe I should write an email." [laughs] And you go to write an email, and the cursor is, like, 20 spaces behind, and you're like, "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. Um, 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 is 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?
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Great. Yes.
- SPSpeaker
I don't know if we have time for this in the second half, so sorry if I'm worrying.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Let's see. Maybe it'll be a segue.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] But I'm curious about the specific tactic that you have in your examples of this, this meditation. Are you going to compose these with the mindfulness? I think a lot of folks probably will prefer meditation over the other business kind of techniques.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Yes, I am. Thank you for asking that. And, and I didn't mention that, but yes. I have one more topic to cover and then I wanna actually walk you through a mindfulness guided visualization which will be, it'll be, um, a directed focus attention, where I'll be guiding you through things that you can bring your attention on, and then we'll practice, don't be scared, we'll practice a five-minute silent meditation, then I'm gonna give you some tools to try out. And I like to call it the M word technique 'cause it's not quite meditation. This self-induced transcendent style of meditation, uh, 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. [laughs] Um, and so if you really want to learn, um, it's, it's recommended that you, like, kinda 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 I'll talk about, but I wanna give you guys a taste of it. Um, and during it, don't, don't try to be an expert meditator, don't try to get it right. Just notice what, what the experience is like for you and whether you wanna fight or flee during the meditation itself. [laughs] I'm also gonna teach you guys a, um, a breathing technique, and it's, 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, um, 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 your office and do it and [laughs] that'll be like a little, little shot, a little meditation shot for your mid-afternoon. Good. So, so this will be our, our final point before we actually try some meditation, and it
- 26:40 – 30:07
Self-care before goals: not delaying happiness and loosening the ‘death grip’ on desires
- EFEmily Fletcher
is, um, how to not let your goals get in the way of your success. 'Cause again, I imagine that you guys are all very ambitious, very results oriented, very career and goal d- oriented, which is great. Um, 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, or we just finish this one project, or I just hire this one more employee, then I'll start going to the gym. I'm gonna 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 the, the main themes that we delay our happiness for are, uh, money, uh, 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 gonna have two out of the three in New York City. You're either gonna have the perfect boyfriend, the perfect job, and no apartment, or the perfect apartment, perfect job, but no boyfriend, but you're never gonna have three out of the three. [laughs] So if you're waiting to have all three to be happy, it's gonna be a really long wait. [laughs] Uh, my analogy here is, like, imagine that you're sitting at the top of... you know, the bottom of a mountain, and you're looking at this mountain that you wanna climb. You're like, "Okay, I'm gonna do it, 'cause once I get to 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." [laughs] So we start climbing the mountain, and then we get to the top of the 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 a mountain, and now we see all 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 mou- 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 from this attitude of what can I give, then life starts giving you a lot more back. Instead of going into life with like, "Well, what can I get?" And being needily 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, if you in, if you insert a meditation practice or some, 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. Sh- shall we try some meditation? Yeah. Any questions before we try some meditation? Great. Yes.
- 30:07 – 35:05
Q&A: yoga and food—how lifestyle inputs affect meditation
- SPSpeaker
Uh, before you contrasted societal
- SPSpeaker
So where does yoga fit in?
- EFEmily Fletcher
Ah, thanks for asking. So I, I think, I teach Vedic meditation, um, 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, 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 five or 6,000 years old, and the Vedas are the same body of knowledge that give us yoga, acupuncture, feng shui, um, and Ayurvedic medicine, Ayurvedic cooking. They all come from the same ancient body of knowledge. So yoga is, um, basically, you know, those series of poses that you move through. Um, 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? Um, you know, Ardha Chandrasana, Trikonasana. So all of them, each asana in some, 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, um, 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. Um, but it, I think the, the combination of yoga and meditation, specifically this style, is really beautiful. Thanks for asking. Yes.
- SPSpeaker
You talk about coffee. And how about food?
- EFEmily Fletcher
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Is there some relation between the type of food that you eat with the quality of the meditation?
- EFEmily Fletcher
Yes, there is. Basically, we're just a giant-
- SPSpeaker
Can you repeat the question again?
- EFEmily Fletcher
What's that?
- SPSpeaker
How do you eat before?
- EFEmily Fletcher
Yeah, so the question was, um, 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 your, um, and then the food gets turned into energy. So if you eat a big meal and then sit down to meditate, you're not gonna digest your food very effectively and you're not gonna 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. Um, you know, again, we're just chemistry sets, so anything that, 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, um, they call it a dosha, which is a body type. Um, and if you're interested, I can definitely give you some more information on that. Mm-hmm. Great. Yes.
- SPSpeaker
So I really, uh, like your distinction between happiness and goal achieving and all that, because we try to reverse the equation and now it's like happiness before success, not the other way around.
- EFEmily Fletcher
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So, and you also say that goals, you can become a goal achiever, but does that, it's just a, uh, ever, never ending hill. You just keep on climbing it. So it almost seems like happiness is completely separate from achieving goals. You don't need even, you don't even need the goals to be happy.
- EFEmily Fletcher
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
That's the feeling I get. And then you tie it to like giving is the more important need than achieving goals. But do we even need to give to be happy? Like, what if I'm completely selfish? [laughs]
- EFEmily Fletcher
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I'm just selfish. All I care about is myself. But can I not be happy, or I have to completely separate?
- EFEmily 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 wanna 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, uh, the cell phone 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, that's just endless and limitless because for us, in our lifetime, it has been. So b- basically, this is what meditation is doing. It's allowing you to plug into this inexhaustible source, and if you fill your reservoir up with bliss and fulfillment and happiness and adaptation energy every day, twice a day, then it's gonna start to overflow. Like, your vessel's actually gonna start to get bigger, but you're gonna actually need places to give that fulfillment. And so it's gonna be quite innocent and qui- quite spontaneous, is that you're gonna look for places to help people, but it won't feel like martyrdom. It won't, it'll actually feel selfish because it's gonna make you feel better.
- SPSpeaker
Interesting.
- EFEmily Fletcher
[laughs] Yeah.
- 35:05 – 39:38
Tracking progress and the biggest misconception: thoughts aren’t failure
- SPSpeaker
Um, as a beginner into meditation, how do you kind of track progress? I know it sounds-
- EFEmily Fletcher
No
- SPSpeaker
... um, how do you know whether you're doing it right or, like, when you're ready to progress to the next level? Yeah.
- EFEmily 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 have had a very high demand, high stress life and you're learning at 70 years old, your unstressing process is probably gonna 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 he would like, afterwards, he was like, "I really enjoyed my meditation. Did you enjoy yours?" [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- EFEmily Fletcher
And he was so into it because kids already have access to this creativity. Their right brains are, are, they're still alive. So different people will have different experiences. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- EFEmily Fletcher
We just die a slow death the older we get and the more stressed we get. [laughs] Um, 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 Fitbits or the, the Up- Jawbone bracelets. And basically these things can track how deep your sleep is and how much activity you have during the day. It's 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 kinda 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, [laughs] 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? You're already, like, the return on investment is already higher than what you're making. Um, and that's not even to speak of the increase in productivity or the happiness or any of that kind of things. So it's har- it's different for everyone, but there actually are physical things that you can, [laughs] you know, plug into your phone and track your own progress. But ultimately it's h- do I have a little bit more patience? Do I have a little bit more joy? Am I, do I have, um, are, 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? Like, this is how we want ... 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." And so then, and so then it looks like this. "Okay, brain, stop thinking. I'm hungry. Oh, 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." [laughs] "And I can never meditate 'cause my brain is too crazy." [laughs] And I hear this all the time. You'll be like, "Emily, I get it. Meditation's so good for you. Everybody talks about it, but I can't do it because my mind is crazy." [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- EFEmily Fletcher
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. Um, 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 how good you are at giving your body a command to stop an involuntary action, then you're always gonna feel like a failure, and you're gonna quit, like, one week in. 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. Um, so yes. Did that answer your question? [laughs] Great. All right. Let's, um, let's go ahead and dive in and, 'cause I don't wanna keep you guys late. I wanna give you at least five minutes to go to your next 1:00 meeting. Um, 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 then we'll try just a few minutes
- 39:38 – 50:07
Guided practice: alternate nostril breathing, “Come To Your Senses,” and a simple mantra
- EFEmily Fletcher
of a silent, uh, practice. So if, if you have phones or computers, if you wanna put those things on silent, that'll 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'll 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 what you'll start to notice is that the, 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 an instant. And then the same thing, at the bottom of the exhale, you'll notice that there's a tiny little space. Allowing yourself to notice that and float there at the bottom before you begin the inhale. And we'll 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 can 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 neighbor's breath, but just notice the most predominant sound. And on your next breath, see if you can shift your awareness to the, the most subtle sound. 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. And 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 gonna, we're gonna 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. [laughs] Or perhaps, you know, 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 mouthwash from this morning or the coffee that you drank 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 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're 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 gonna 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 gonna 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. And we'll be here for about three minutes, and then I'll ease you out of it. So don't try to 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 atten- 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 gonna stick around if you guys have any questions. I just don't wanna-- I'm gonna give you at least a minute or two to get to your next meeting. Um, I do have cards up here. This is my amazing assistant, Sarah. So if you guys have questions, if you're interested in joining, I have a course starting here in New York. I have a meditation center on Thirty-Eighth and Eighth, and I have a meditation class starting, uh, 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. Um, so if you're interested in learning more about that, you can meet Sarah. And there's also the business cards. There's a place if you wanna put your email. If you wanna get, uh, some more, like, 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 you have any questions. But thank you, thank you, thank you. Have a beautiful day. [clapping] And thank you, Mila, for organizing this. Yay. Thanks, Matt. [clapping]
Episode duration: 50:07
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Transcript of episode zC7a_gQB9YQ
