Emily Fletcher - It’s Time To Reset & Examine What Matters

Emily Fletcher is back on Untangle! Emily is the founder of Ziva Meditation, author of Stress Less, Accomplish More, Meditation for Extraordinary Performance and a meditation teacher on Muse and Meditation Studio. She’s an amazing fountain of wisdom and inspiration. Today she talks about why the pandemic is giving us an opportunity to reset and to awaken, why it’s important that we grieve the losses we’ve experienced over the last several months, and how we can quite literally be our own light.

Transcript

Welcome to Untangle!

Today's guest is Emily Fletcher.

We love having Emily back on Untangle.

She's an amazing fountain of wisdom and inspiration.

Today she talks about her life in New York,

Why the pandemic is giving us an opportunity to reset and to awaken,

Why it's important that we grieve the losses we've experienced over the last several months,

And how we can quite literally be our own light.

She talks about what she calls the one-minute rant,

Which she recommends doing daily to just let it all out and to tap into your inner frat.

This of course is in addition to meditating daily.

Now,

Here's Emily.

Emily Fletcher,

It's so great to have you back on Untangle.

Oh,

Feels like home.

Feels like old home.

Yeah,

It is old home.

You're one of the original co-hosts and original teachers on our app,

And we just have such a strong history.

So I love that so much.

I have two funny stories about the app before we dive in.

Oh,

Okay.

One is my doorman in my building was like,

Emily,

I've been listening to you on my app,

On my meditation app,

And I don't have an app for Ziva.

And I was like,

What are you talking about?

And he's like,

Yeah,

I have this app.

And then you came up and I was like,

What?

And so he showed me the app and it was meditation studio.

And I was so thrilled.

Now we have this special connection.

And then the other admission that I have to make is that I was shooting a kid's course last week.

And after being quarantined alone,

Home for five months with just me and my husband,

I was like,

Oh,

Humans and a set and a camera and improv.

So I was a little amped.

And so I listened to my own pep talk from the app.

And I love it.

Anytime I have a big talk,

I listen to it.

And I don't know if it's great or narcissistic,

But it is what it is.

It doesn't matter,

Right?

If it works,

It works.

I love those pep talks.

And in fact,

Those fueled a new format for us because we now have on Muse,

Which meditation studio and music combined now,

Muse is the brain sensing headband,

We have a collection of talks that are called Muse Mindset.

And they're all inspirational and motivational talks.

And I think they were inspired by the original Emily Fletcher pep talk.

So there you go.

Right on.

I'm so anxious to hear how you're doing personally with all of this.

You're in New York City.

How old is your son now?

He's two.

He's two.

You're quarantining with your son and your husband in downtown New York City.

Tell me what has it been like for you for the last couple of months?

We are in Brooklyn.

So we did live in a tiny little apartment downtown for many years,

Nine,

10 years.

And we are just everyday thanking our lucky stars that we decided to move before the quarantine because it was tight.

We only had one door and we both work from home.

And then with the toddler napping,

We would have gotten divorced or killed each other or moved had we still been in that tiny place.

So thankfully we moved.

We both have more space now.

And so that's been a big blessing.

And also my son,

Because he's two,

He wasn't in school and he doesn't really have friends.

He doesn't care about socializing with other people very much.

He just wants to be with us and we just want to be with him.

And so in so many ways,

The cards have been dealt in our favor.

Like I have so much to be grateful for.

We have a nanny.

Her name is Bisa.

She's amazing.

She lives alone.

She drives.

So she's been able to work through this whole thing.

I know a lot of people didn't feel comfortable if they did have childcare,

But if their childcare lived with a whole family or if people in their family were working,

Then they didn't feel comfortable having them in.

And so they were dealing without childcare,

But we've been able to have childcare.

He wasn't in school.

So anyway,

Point of the story is that as intense as this is,

I feel like every day I'm just going through and counting my many,

Many blessings and recognizing my privilege.

Now that said,

What has been challenging for me personally is I'd say 80% of my friends have left New York city and that's been devastating because I'm very extroverted.

My friends are a huge part of my life and I feel like especially in New York city,

I don't know if this feels like this everywhere,

But in such an urban place in such a densely populated town that thrives on the subway and Broadway and museums and intense concentrations of people,

It's really fundamentally changed the fabric of the city.

And I think anytime something changes outside of your control,

If something dies prematurely,

It's hard.

Anytime something dies,

It's painful.

There's going to be a mourning process,

But especially when it happens,

When it feels like it was quote unquote outside of your control,

Or if it feels like it happens prematurely,

I feel like that's extra devastating.

When someone dies at 90,

It's sad.

When someone dies at five,

It's heartbreaking,

It's gut wrenching.

And so I feel like that's what I'm mourning right now with the loss of my friend group,

The loss of New York city as we knew it.

We're likely closing our Soho studio.

So it just feels like a bit of a breakup that wasn't of your choosing and a death.

Simultaneously.

And then on top of that,

There's certainly amount of fight or flight happening because there is a virus going around.

And so even the happiest people,

Even the people who are choosing the positive,

Still,

There is some percentage of your consciousness that is spent on protection.

I don't want to get this virus.

I don't want to spread this virus.

It's been challenging in a lot of ways.

And also I'm counting my blessings at the same time.

I hear you.

It is the way it is.

And there are some positive things about it,

But for sure it is really difficult.

And what I feel happened was that in the beginning,

People were very motivated to create funny videos and to do the best they can.

There was this early momentum around we are going to beat this and that the longer it goes on,

What I'm starting to see in people.

And as the numbers don't really change that much with the virus,

I'm starting to see a lot of fatigue,

Agitation.

People are on edge and people are feeling somewhat stuck.

It's just this heaviness that people are dealing with.

What are you seeing and what are your clients seeing and how are you helping them?

We actually held a vigil.

It was a public vigil a few weeks ago,

I think inspired you to reach out about this.

And just for a few weeks,

I have been thinking about this.

It's neither good nor bad.

It just is what it is.

But this reality that people are dying in hospital rooms alone without their families,

People are not able to go and be with people who are passing.

And so yes of COVID,

But just if they were to pass of any reason,

Likely your family or friends couldn't travel to be there.

Likely there's not going to be a big public funeral.

And so I'm just thinking about why do we have funerals?

Why do we grieve together?

Why do we mourn in public?

What's the real healing value of that?

And I think that,

Like you said in the beginning,

We were all in a bit of denial,

But also assuming this is like two weeks,

Three weeks.

Oh,

Okay.

Maybe six weeks.

Oh wow.

A month.

Then it's just been,

Oh,

Now we're looking at years.

And I think it's just been the slow burn and it's burning up our adaptation energy,

Which is something we can talk about in a second.

But I think that there is real value in mourning and grieving out loud and naming the grief and saying it and giving yourself time and space and community to purge these feelings.

Because if we don't acknowledge them,

If we try to pretend like everything is fine,

Then that trauma goes on healed and we just subvert it.

And then I think it comes out in other ways like psychosis or extreme stress or blame or political anxiety or racism or misogyny or any other otherness where we blame and attack others because we haven't healed our own pain and trauma.

And I've been saying this all along that this global pandemic is the opportunity for a reset.

It is the opportunity for truly getting still,

For going inside and creating a mass awakening,

Which is what I was really campaigning for and hoping for at the beginning.

But the other side of that is that if we don't really get still,

If we don't listen,

If we don't lean on the tools that we have to create joy and bliss and service,

Then this collective trauma,

It's going to add layers to the callus,

Right?

So it's either like peeling away the old trauma calluses by getting still and listening and tuning words or it becomes another layer of trauma that we have to heal.

And obviously everyone's going to deal with this in their own ways,

But as meditators,

I do think that we have a responsibility to quite literally be the light to turn on our own light,

To take such good care of ourselves,

To love ourselves so fiercely,

To heal ourselves so impeccably that we have resilience,

We have adaptation energy to spare to give to those people that may not have these tools that we've been practicing for however long you've been practicing,

Days,

Weeks,

Months,

Years,

Decades.

Will you talk a little bit about what does it mean to purge these feelings?

What does that look like?

I think that's a really scary thought for some people because purging feelings,

They never really go away.

I mean,

I think what you were saying before was you see all these bright spots in your life and it sucks too because of all of the losses and taking away of certain freedoms that were really special to you.

And so I've been thinking of it in terms of the and to remember what's on the other side of the and like,

This is horrible and,

And still I get stuck sometimes for sure.

I'm wondering what it looks like to really purge feelings.

As far as the purging goes,

I think that if we just look at this as stages of grief,

That's been well documented,

Well researched.

Some people say there's five stages.

Some people say there's seven.

But if you look at where the zeitgeist has been,

First it was like you said,

The funny videos,

We're going to get through this.

Oh,

It's not even real.

It's a hoax.

We were in like collective denial and then we got into negotiating,

Right?

Of like,

Well,

It's just three weeks.

I can do just a few more weeks.

Okay,

Well this state isn't closing and we tried to like negotiate with a virus.

Then we go into depression and I feel like that's sort of where it feels like we are collectively right now where it's just this weight,

This heaviness,

This sadness.

And that's why I decided to do the vigil and the funeral of last week or whenever it was is to name it,

To say it out loud,

To write it down,

To share those feelings with someone.

Because the oldest trick in the book is that in order to heal it,

We have to feel it.

If we keep shoving it down and pretending that it's not there and pretending that nothing's impacting us,

Then it just gets louder.

What we resist persists.

And so I think it requires a level of gentleness with oneself.

I think it does for some people require community or at the very least journaling.

You can't think your way out of grief.

The more physical we can be with this,

Which might be pen to paper,

It might be baths.

It might be if you're quarantined with someone doing massages for each other.

Every morning I'm burning,

Literally burning paper.

So I'm writing down whatever I want to purge and I burn it up.

I have an exercise that I do,

That I learned from my therapist.

It's called the rant.

And I have a version of it with him and I do a version with my coach,

Which is one minute a day.

I just rant.

And you could set a timer,

You could do voice to text,

You could record it,

You could send it to a buddy,

But you just let yourself be a brat.

And you just say like,

This sucks and I miss this and I miss travel and my business all changed and it's not fair that my salary got cut and I can't believe that I'm expected to homeschool and have a job and like,

I can't leave leadership.

And you just rage.

They're all the things that you're mad about and you say it out loud,

But you get it up and out.

I have a saying in Ziva online and I do this nerdy little like theme song where I say like better out than in,

Better out than in,

Better out than in,

Because truly there is more room on the outside.

My high school boyfriend wrote me a song and that was the title of it.

There is more room on the outside.

But if we try to hold all this stuff in or be brave for our kids or be brave for our partner,

Be brave for our coworkers,

Then we're actually,

The pain doesn't go anywhere.

Like that's the big joke,

Right?

That if we don't name it,

If we don't purge it,

If we don't rant it out,

If we don't heal it,

Then it's not going anywhere.

It just comes out in other ways.

I'll tell you what's real.

I'm laughing because these are such great tools and I'm imagining that someone's going to start a rant podcast where it's everyone's one minute rant because I've been more focused every day on journaling and writing like the five best things that happened the day before and then gratitude.

And I'm like,

So I'm for just this moment,

I'm kind of over that.

I want to rant a little bit.

It's like,

And look,

I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

I think that if you take one minute and dump out all the garbage from your brain,

You're going to have so much more space to even see the things that you have to be grateful for.

You have so much more space for grace and serendipity and for blessings.

But those open loops,

That takes up a lot of adaptation energy,

Which I think the other thing that's happening,

So the depression phase is what feels like collectively is happening from my POV.

But then after that is acceptance.

So the five stages of grief are denial,

Anger,

Bargaining,

Depression,

And acceptance.

So actually,

If I'm being honest,

I feel like we have the trifecta happening.

People are either like in anger,

Bargaining,

Or depression phase right now where we're just really blaming politicians,

Blaming a lot of people,

Blaming people that don't vote like we do.

The bargaining,

Okay,

Well I could just do a few weeks more and then some people are starting to move into the depression of like,

When is this going to end?

I feel like I'm at the end of my rope,

Just really truly allowing themselves to be sad.

Then once we move through to that,

Then we come to acceptance.

I think people are scared of acceptance the same way they're scared of surrender because they think,

Oh,

Well if I accept this as the reality,

It somehow means I'm condoning it or it somehow means that I like it or it somehow means that I don't want it to change.

But interestingly,

Acceptance is the precursor to transformation.

If you want to change things,

You must first accept them exactly as they are.

This is true for relationships,

For your career.

It's like if you want to get out of a ditch,

You have to first accept the fact that you're in a ditch.

So this is where the meditation is such a powerful tool.

I mean it is one of the giant tenants of Buddhism,

Right?

It's acceptance,

Accept what is.

So I think that any practices that will help move us towards acceptance with grace,

With kindness towards each other,

I'm a big fan of.

What are you seeing in terms of the impact of loneliness on people?

Because I do feel like over this four months,

There are so many of us that haven't been able to be near the people we love.

We've not been able to get hugs,

Which have been so endemic to most of our lives.

I've just been feeling like this idea of loneliness is very much at the core of that depression that you're talking about or that feeling stuck or empty or just off.

What's your thought on that?

Yeah,

I think that loneliness is something to be aware of.

It's a legitimate concern.

We humans,

We need each other.

And Zoom is a sore facsimile for human touch and 3D faces.

I think we're all pretty sick of Zoom,

But also thank goodness for it because it is at least giving us a heart to heart or voice to voice or 2D face connection.

But I have a coach and she says to me,

Her name is Lori Gerber,

She's from Pandal Group.

She says to me constantly,

She's like,

You're not mad at the pandemic,

You're mad at your own creativity.

And she says it like a theme song.

You're not mad at the pandemic,

You're mad at your own creativity.

And so if you just keep that as like on a post-it note and think about,

Okay,

Well,

What creative ways could I cure my loneliness right now?

And some people are doing the double bubbles,

Meaning that they have two families that get tested,

Two families that they feel comfortable with their precautions and they join together and they have dinners together and they let their kids play or they meet up in each other's backyards or they just treat it as a bigger unit that they're quarantining together.

And then they share meals,

They share responsibilities,

They hug each other,

They can socialize.

And I think that that is a really great idea.

Even a triple bubble,

Having outdoor,

Going on camping trips with other people.

Like there are things you can do right now,

Especially outdoors with relatively small groups of people that will cure that loneliness,

That do give you an intimate connection.

So maybe you can't go to the thousand person rave,

Maybe you can't sing in the choir with hundreds of people right now,

But there are things,

Maybe we can't get a professional massage,

But could you do 10 minute back massage in your family?

And people who live alone,

Alone,

I would say my mom got a dog at the very beginning of this,

Which I'm so thrilled that she did.

It's been a real lifesaver for her.

She's very extroverted like I am and she's heartbroken that she can't be with my son.

This is the longest they've ever been apart.

Oh wow.

This is her first and only grandchild and she's 78 and so it's devastating.

And it is what it is.

So we FaceTime every day and she is meeting her friends outside and it's just whatever is available to you.

I think we've got to get creative on how to solve the loneliness and also gauge the risk.

What's the risk of five months of not seeing another human versus the risk of having a picnic outside with five people?

There's always some trade off.

I agree with the folks that are like you sitting alone in your house and not having any human contact for five months is potentially equally as damaging as having the virus should you recover from it,

Which is not a guarantee.

But anyway,

It's always trade offs and I think we got to be creative.

And even being in nature,

Like my friend,

I was just talking to him and he said he just spent nine days in nature by himself.

That's extreme loneliness,

But he probably didn't feel lonely at all.

So it's one thing when it's a chosen,

I'm communing with nature and feeling my feet on the earth and looking at the trees and looking at the sun and the clouds,

Looking at the water versus I'm in my apartment alone.

I'm in an unnatural environment and I'm unnaturally separated from humans.

So again,

There's always a creative way to solve a lot of these issues.

Yeah.

And I love that you're doing Zoom with your two year old son and your mother because those moments are really important.

And that is a nice second choice if they can't get together in person.

Yeah.

What do you think is happening in our brains right now?

You talk a lot about meditation,

Neuroscience,

Strengthening our corpus callosum,

Which is the center of the brain between the left and the right brains and helping us to have that all work more holistically.

Do you feel like something's changing for us now?

I think that it depends very much on what tools you have and what tools you're using and also what your situation in life is.

I keep thinking about that quote.

It's like we're all weathering the same storm,

But some people are in a yacht and some people are in a canoe.

And that's why I wanted to acknowledge at the very beginning of this conversation,

The fact that I have space,

The fact that I have a nanny,

The fact that I already was set up to work from home.

There's a ridiculous list of privileges and luck that I have that is very real that someone who's trying to homeschool kids with no help and have a career,

But it's a different deal and it's a different level of demand and a different level of strain and things to adapt to.

It depends largely on what your situation is and what tools you have and if you're employing them.

I did a bit of a tough love call yesterday with the Ziva folks where I was like,

Y'all,

I know that some of you have stopped meditating.

I know that some of you are using this pandemic as an excuse to just eat Oreos and drink wine and binge watch the news and sit and blame all of it on,

Well,

There's a pandemic,

So let me just be mean to myself basically.

And so it was just a reminder that look,

In these times of intensity,

This is not the time.

Yes,

You can be gentle with yourself,

But the tricky line there is that many of the things we do to comfort ourselves actually make us feel worse.

The eating of the sugar,

The drinking of the alcohol,

The binge watching the news,

The ranting about politics on social media that isn't doing anything for anyone.

The things that make us feel better in the short term often make us feel worse in the long term.

And so it's being very disciplined about knowing which of these things are really truly going to elevate me and which are going to depress me,

Which are going to make me vibrate higher and which are going to make me vibrate lower.

And again,

It just comes back to basics like,

Am I sleeping?

Am I moving my body?

Am I getting sunshine?

Am I eating real food?

Am I meditating?

Am I being of service?

So because so many people's employment has changed,

They've either been furloughed or they're working less or they're making less money.

It's really easy to sit in anxiety and spin and fear about that.

And one easy quick way out is to be of service,

To volunteer,

To donate your time.

It doesn't have to be face to face.

You could be phone banking for getting voter registration.

You could be emailing for a charity that you love.

You could be gardening in your local park.

There's a lot of creative ways to be of service right now.

So I think that that's an element that I haven't heard too many people talking about outside of protesting and political activism,

Which I'm really happy to see is on the rise,

Human to human,

Right?

Like human to human service.

Like I'm using my gifts to directly up level and improve someone else's life because that just makes us feel better.

A lot of what you're talking about is this balance between self-care and service.

And what you were saying before that your coach was telling you,

It's you're only limited by your own creativity.

And I think sometimes because of what you were talking about before with the five stages of grief,

People just feel stuck.

And when you're stuck,

You're not motivated.

And it goes back to you saying your team's not motivating and they're eating a lot of sugar.

And it's just like you use the excuse of the moment in time as a reason not to do things.

And it's a real shift in thinking to say,

You know what,

I don't have to do that.

I don't have to be perfect,

But I don't have to go down a rabbit hole of not taking care of myself and others.

Yeah.

And I think that if we almost gamify it,

And yesterday I was saying,

Think about it as team bliss and team stress,

Right?

So there are huge entities that are capitalizing,

Actually capitalizing off of team stress,

Politicians,

News,

All types of organizations.

And so a lot of people have a vested interest in spreading stress and keeping people stressed.

And so if we acknowledge that sort of global reality and think,

Okay,

Well,

How do I activate an army of meditators?

How do I wake up team bliss inside myself?

How do I see all of this as a call to arms to feel the best I've ever felt to radiate as much goodness into my own family,

Into my own town as possible?

And that doesn't mean necessarily spiritual bypassing,

Right?

Because in order to truly get there in a sustainable way,

We have to move through the darkness.

We have to acknowledge the things that are painful in order to make team bliss sustainable.

And like you said,

It's always going to be and because things are changing so quickly.

But if we see this pandemic instead of seeing it as an excuse to just let every vice we've ever had go to town and instead see it as a call to arms to shine brighter than we've ever shown before,

That these times are the reason why we practice.

And if we choose to believe,

Like Michael Bernhard Beckwith says,

That our souls have chosen this time to be alive and that we're here for a reason.

And if we start to spend time with that question,

Why did my soul choose this body,

This lifetime,

This moment in history?

It's not an accident that you're here right now.

And if we start to think of things from a higher,

Wider lens,

Then it activates different parts of us.

How can I be of service?

Why am I here?

Whose life can I improve?

What if I use my life as an act of protest to be as joyous as possible,

To be as liberated as possible,

To live my highest service,

To inspire others to do the same?

And that requires mastery and it requires honesty.

It can be a call to arms to feel better than you've ever felt.

Yeah.

And I think that is the energy that people are looking for.

So let's go back for a second,

Because is that the,

When you say burning up adaptation energy?

Let's talk about that.

Let's define adaptation energy.

So let's say back in January,

Remember January,

2020?

Yeah.

He would be an example of adaptation energy.

It was just like a normal life example.

Let's say you wake up and you overslept your alarm,

But just by 10 minutes.

So it was a little bit of an adaptation.

It was a tiny change of expectation,

Which burned up a little bit of adaptation energy,

But you get ready quickly.

You leave your house on time,

No big deal.

You get in your car,

Get on the highway heading to work.

Your GPS is going to take 20 minutes.

You get on the highway,

It's a parking lot.

It takes you 45 minutes to get there.

You're late.

You finally get off the highway,

Pop into the Starbucks because you're late.

You want to get a coffee,

Amp it up a little bit.

And the barista says,

I'm so sorry.

We're out of coffee here.

Take this chamomile tea on the house.

So burns up some more adaptation energy.

You get to work,

You're late,

No coffee.

And your boss says,

Hey,

Can I talk to you for a second?

We're going to have to let you go.

Huge change of expectation,

Burns up more adaptation energy.

You call your partner and you're like,

Babe,

Can you get dinner tonight?

I'm going to need some support.

I just got let go from my job.

They text you back and they're like,

Hey,

Thanks for everything.

I'm going to have to let you go.

Another huge change of expectation,

Burning up more adaptation energy.

And you get home after this terrible day,

Pour yourself a glass of water or something stronger slips out of your hand and shatters on the kitchen floor.

And now guess what your body's going to do?

Your body is going to launch involuntarily into a fight or flight stress reaction,

Whether you've read Eat,

Pray,

Love or Not,

Whether you've read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Not.

If you are out of adaptation energy and you have another demand,

Your body will launch into fight or flight.

And that's what stress is.

Stress is a reaction to the stuff.

It's not the stuff.

And this is a really important point for folks because it really can put them back into the driver's seat of their own lives.

If we define stress as everything external that is happening to us,

Then we are powerless.

We are victims in our own lives.

If we define stress as our reaction to the external circumstances and we recognize that we are in charge of filling up our reservoirs of adaptation energy,

Then we empower ourselves to dance with the demands,

To dance with the changes of expectations,

To adapt to them as they are coming in.

And this to me is one of the most beautiful gifts of meditation is that every day,

Twice a day,

You're filling up your reservoirs with adaptation energy.

Now does it mean that the challenges go away?

No.

But it means that you start to become like Neo.

Neo in the Matrix where the bullets coming at him and he sees it coming and he moves his body almost in slow motion.

And so the things are still coming at you.

They're flying at high speed,

But you are able to adapt,

To move,

To not be the sitting target,

To not be blaming everything external,

To not wait for the pandemic to end and for your partner to go to therapy and for you to be able to have a birthday party with your grandchild and for your job to come back and for a certain number of zeros in your bank account before you allow yourself to be happy.

It's like we remind ourselves that our fulfillment is always found inside of us right here,

Right now.

And the more we meditate,

The more we're able to dance with these demands.

We're able to adapt to them.

Emily,

What's the difference between this idea of adaptation energy and equanimity,

Learning equanimity?

Hmm,

Interesting.

For me,

Equanimity is the idea that everything is changing,

Right?

That it's all for now,

That everything is transient and that we're neither chasing pleasure nor avoiding pain.

What's your definition of equanimity?

Well,

Yeah,

That and that we're not thrown by the highs and the lows,

That we find a place in between.

And so that's what I was thinking when we have this adaptation energy because we have this ability to see things from a very grounded place.

I think that at the end of the day,

They're both moving us towards the same goal,

Which is resilience,

But it is coming back to your center and adjusting to life in real time.

For me,

The subtle difference between adaptation energy and equanimity,

If that is the definition,

Is that with adaptation energy,

You might get really excited by the highs or really sad about the lows,

But that you would fill up your reservoirs with adaptation energy either before or after,

And then come back to that place of equanimity.

Sometimes the best course of action is battle.

Sometimes the best course of action is to be passive.

Sometimes the best course of action is exhilaration and excitement.

Sometimes it's rest.

But when you're adapting,

It's like,

Oh,

It's just like heart rate variability.

Like if we want to look at it from more scientific terms,

We want to have high heart rate variability meaning that we can amp up and run away from the tiger if we're in a life-threatening situation,

And we can de-excite and calm down when everything is safe.

So we as humans,

We are drawn to people with high heart rate variability because we know that they're the most likely to survive and to be good leaders.

So it's the same to me.

That's like the scientific or body version of adaptation energy,

That if I need to go to war,

I'll go to war.

And if it's time to meditate and rest,

I'll rest.

And if it's time to play with my kid,

I'll play with my kid.

If it's time to grind it out at work,

I can grind it out.

But then I'm always adapting,

Adapting,

Adapting.

And that it doesn't cost me too much because I have access to an unlimited source of energy with my meditation practice.

I think of it also in terms of what resource do you need in this moment.

And so whatever happens,

You're accessing the resource that you need.

And most of us have resources inside that we sometimes forget about.

And so that fuels our ability to be more adaptive in these kinds of situations.

Yeah.

And that leads me to the earlier question where what do I see happening to people's brains right now?

So the people who aren't necessarily utilizing these tools,

The people who are perhaps forgetting the amazing internal pharmacy that we have access to of dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin and all those things that our brain is producing every day inside of us.

Because there are so many open loops,

Because so many of us have been forced into uncertainty,

I don't know when this pandemic is going to be over.

I don't know if my job is coming back.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to put my kids in school.

I don't know if I can take that vacation.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to go home to see my family.

There's just so much I don't know.

And we humans do not like uncertainty.

It is expensive for us mentally.

It costs us a lot.

And so I would say that just this like huge global uncertainty is burning up adaptation energy.

So we're all running on empty because of that.

And that's why I really see this as a call to arms to meditate where it's like,

Okay,

Well,

If I know that I'm running my car at 90 miles an hour,

12 hours a day,

I better be filling up the tank more often.

And the people who don't have these tools yet or aren't utilizing these tools,

I see them running on empty.

I see them running thin.

And what I always say is that stress makes us stupid,

Sick,

And slow.

And right now we cannot afford to be stupid.

We cannot afford to be sick and we cannot afford to be slow.

And unfortunately I think it is that wearing thin and the lack of trust that people have in government and in the media,

Which is allowing these conspiracy theories and this like QAnon things to really like infiltrate people's minds because they're worn down.

I see people not making good decisions,

Not trusting their own intuition,

Not listening to doctors or scientists.

And I think that those are bad decisions coming out of stress.

You mentioned this idea of uncertainty.

We've talked about that a lot on Untangle over the last several months and what it means and how really life is always uncertain.

It's just so highly amplified right now.

But I think it makes this concept that you also talked about in one of your emails of the new normal really difficult because one day you adapt to a new normal and then something else happens and you have another new normal and then something else happens and it's another new normal.

And so what do you think about how we can keep adapting to the changes that are happening in our lives right now?

I think what you said earlier is a really beautiful reminder is that it was always an illusion of control.

It was always an illusion of safety.

It was always an illusion of security.

And albeit for most of our life,

And I'm 41,

And so for most of my life,

We've had,

At least in the US,

The relatively stable economy,

Relatively stable social fabric,

Relatively stable work presence,

Media presence.

We've never been like marching towards dictatorship in my lifetime before.

And it's been very easy to buy into the illusion of security or control or safety.

When that rug gets ripped out from under you at 40,

50,

60,

70 years old,

When it's been there for most of your life,

It can be abrupt.

But I think your point that we remember that it was like control is always an illusion.

We've never been in charge.

Things can always change at a moment's notice.

That's one thing is just to recognize that the longer you've been in that illusion,

The harder it's going to sting when the illusion falls away.

But the other thing that I think is more comforting than that is that the capital T truth,

Like the only thing that makes something capital T truth is something that is unchanging,

Right?

Things like love,

Things like compassion,

Things like pure energy.

These things are the capital T truth and those things don't change.

They've been around forever.

They will be around forever.

And that is one of the gifts of meditation is that every day you're tapping into that unchanging part of you.

You're tapping into that eternal piece of you,

The piece of you that lives beyond the death of this body or the aging of this body or the sickness of this body.

You're tapping into the piece of you that even is beyond this personal identity.

And when you remind yourself that you are more than just this body,

You are more than just this intellect,

You are more than just your house,

Your job,

Your family,

This moment in time,

Then I think it helps us to pull the lens back and see this with a greater perspective.

Otherwise,

This can feel very overwhelming and very catastrophic and oh no.

Even to mention,

Even myself when I say like,

Oh,

We're looking at likely,

I mean,

I'm not a scientist or a virologist,

So don't listen to me.

But if we're looking at a year or two years,

That can feel really scary to me and really overwhelming.

But if we pull the lens way out and think about time in 10,

000 year chunks or if you think about things through lifetimes and we're like,

Oh,

This is a tiny little blip.

It's a tiny little blip.

And if you remind yourself of that,

Then you're like,

Oh yeah,

Why would I not be as happy as I can?

Why would I not enjoy this pause,

This moment of stillness and really savor anything that I can,

Whatever there is in your life to be grateful for,

Whatever there is right now to savor,

Lean into that.

So a couple of months ago,

I remember asking people,

This was maybe like three months into the pandemic and I said,

If it were to end tomorrow,

Right?

Tomorrow morning we wake up,

Someone snaps their fingers magically and life is just back.

What would you miss about this time?

What about this time is actually enjoyable for you?

Is it the cooking?

Is it the stillness?

Is it the routine?

Did you actually secretly hate traveling for work?

Did you not like your hour commute drive for work?

Whatever there is to savor,

Whatever you'd be sad to miss,

It's like,

Let's lean into that and celebrate it because it will at some point change.

That's what we know for sure the only constant is change.

Exactly.

And I'm sort of laughing as you say that because I'm an introvert and I have a lot of friends who are introverts and there are people who really do like feeling like they're in on retreat or their home is their refuge and they're doing well.

So it's just funny that you say,

What would you miss?

Because I do feel like in our world,

Pre-COVID all of the conversations were about being on autopilot,

Being busy all the time,

Not being able to spend enough time with the people that you love.

All of that has been shaken up now.

So it is a really interesting exercise to do for yourself.

What would you miss about this?

And that really makes me feel like something bigger was really changing for all of us.

And to the point that we started this conversation with there is a lot of grief in that,

But something new,

Again,

Not to be overly optimistic,

But something new blossoms out of these experiences.

And it's also like a nice just reality check to remember that humans were amazing and resilient and genius and all of that.

And we're brats.

Like we will always find something to complain about.

It's like when we're busy,

Busy,

Busy,

We're like,

Oh,

I'm so busy and I never have time to cook and I never see my family and suddenly you have time to cook and see your family.

You're like,

Oh,

I'm stuck at home and I hate it.

And so it's just like having a sense of humor about your brattiness and just let yourself be a brat,

Get it out and then choose the discipline of gratitude,

Choose the discipline of meditation,

Choose the discipline of feeling good because you owe it to yourself and you owe it to everyone around you.

Before we close,

Because this is such a big topic for everyone and it's going to be an easy one for you because you've done a lot of work on this idea of manifesting sleep.

I think you have a whole course.

Is it called manifesting sleep?

That's it.

Can you give us like top five ways to manifest sleep?

Can we have a little like spoiler alert for our audience?

Yes,

I would say the one that everyone hates is don't look at your phone for at least an hour before bed.

And if you are going to look at your phone,

Make sure you have some blue blocking glasses because that light in our eyes after the sun goes down,

Tricks our brains into thinking that the sun is up.

It changes our circadian rhythm.

So even if you are sleeping,

You're not getting as deep or rejuvenating sleep.

If we have our phone or our computers shining into our eyes after dark.

And another one that's really been helping me is magnesium to take a magnesium supplement.

Magnesium glycinate or magnesium threonate is what I've been recommended.

Again,

I'm not a doctor,

So you should check with your doctor.

But magnesium is a pretty safe one because it's something that most humans are deficient in because it's been depleted from our soil from over farming and it's also a mild muscle relaxer.

So if you take magnesium about an hour,

30 minutes before bed,

It really just,

I feel like I'm just out.

Like I don't wake up.

It's not a sleeping pill.

It's just a supplement.

But if you tend towards insomnia,

Which I used to,

That's a good one.

Baths are always a good one.

Magnesium baths,

Epsom salt baths are a great one.

I would say if you're going to have a light on in your room,

It'd be better to read an actual physical book and to have a reading light,

But pointed at the book,

Not at your eyes.

So just be very sensitive of the color temperature and the brightness of light once the sun goes down.

And obviously caffeine,

But the number one trick for insomnia,

At least for me and for about 90% of my students is meditation.

Like it cured my insomnia on the first day.

And that's meditating right before you go to sleep?

So not with Ziva.

So with Ziva we do first thing in the morning and then the second one would happen like mid afternoon because it gives you actually the surge of energy and adaptation energy and productivity.

But if you were to do Ziva right before bed,

It could likely give you insomnia because it's like a supercharged power nap.

However,

In that manifesting sleep course that you mentioned,

I do have a guided visualization to induce sleep.

So it's different from our regular Ziva practice,

Which is energizing.

This is like a wind down where I use tips from yoga,

Nidra and stuff from the Navy seals and just visualization and imagery to kind of just ease you into sleep.

And I also hilariously have a bedtime story.

So it's just me reading you a bedtime story.

Emily,

This is awesome stuff.

Thank you so much for being on Untangled today.

I always love having you and I missed you,

So I'm so glad you're back.

Well,

Thank you for the invitation and thank you for the work that you're doing.

I know so many people who love this podcast,

Who love you,

And it's nice to be back.

So thanks for asking me.

Thanks so much to Emily for being with us today and we will see you next week.

Have a great week.