 So, welcome to this week's episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. You've probably heard all about the health benefits of meditation, how it can lower your stress levels, calm your mind, and help you heal. In fact, in my new book, The Longevity Paradox, I even explained how meditation can help improve your gut bacteria of all things. Well, today's guest is going to provide practical tips for getting started, explain how meditation can improve the quality of your sleep, who knew, and teach you how to become your best self by meditating. Her name is Emily Fletcher. She's a former Broadway star, and we may start with that bit of history, and now founder of Ziva Meditation. She's a leading expert on using meditation to improve performance in the author of a brand new book called Stress Less Accomplish More. So, Emily, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. I am so pleased to be here. Thank you for having me. So let's start with your story. How do you go from performing on Broadway to explaining the benefits of meditation to CEOs and Fortune 500 companies? That's interesting. Yeah, it's quite a journey from wearing headdresses and sparkly tights to talking about neuroscience to high performers. But as a performer, my body was my instrument. My voice was my instrument, and so I was always looking for ways to be in peak performance. But unfortunately, what my dream had been since I was a child, actually, the reality of it became a nightmare. My last job, I was understudying three of the leading roles in a chorus line, which means you show up to the theater with no idea which character you're going to play. And that level of uncertainty led to some anxiety. I started having insomnia. I couldn't sleep through the night for 18 months. I started growing gray at the tender age of 27. I started getting sick and injured. And it was very confusing to me why I was living my dream, but I was miserable. So thankfully, the girl sitting next to me in the dressing room, who had a harder job than I did, she was nailing her job. I mean, every song, every dance, every bite of food that she ate was a celebration. And I said, what do you know that I don't know? And she said, I meditate. And I promptly rolled my eyes, and I said, oh, God, one of you. Because, you know, there was not the science then that there is now. And so I just didn't believe her. I just kept having insomnia, just kept going gray. And to be honest, not doing a very great job. And then finally, I thought I have to try something. So I went along to this meditation course. First day of my first class, I was meditating. To be honest, I had no idea what that even meant. But I was in a different state of mind, a different state of consciousness that I had ever been in before, and I liked it. And that night, I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months. And I have every night since, and that was 11 years ago. I'm going to be 40 next week, and I have one gray hair. I was legitimately going gray in my late 20s. I did not get sick for eight and a half years after I learned. I stopped getting injured. But most importantly, I started enjoying my job again. And I thought, why does everyone not do this? So I left Broadway. I went to India. And I started what became a three-year training process to teach. And since then, I've taught over 15,000 people. We created the world's first online meditation training. And now I have this book. And so it's just been an exciting, fascinating ride. Wow. Tell me, obviously, you were intimidated by meditation. Certainly, when my wife introduced me to yoga practice and the fact that yoga could maybe get me meditating, because I have the classic monkey brain. And so tell me, how do you do all this? How do you convince somebody that you can actually quiet the mind? Let's start there. Yes. So interestingly, this is the number one, what I would consider a misconception around meditation. Everyone thinks that they have to clear their mind. And at this point, we know we should be meditating. We know it's good for us. The science is in. But we sit down and we try. And we're like, OK, brain, stop thinking. I'm not sure we'd like a snack. Maybe I should have some tomatoes. But Dr. Montgomery says, don't eat tomatoes. Oh, no, now I'm thinking about snacks. I suck at meditation. And I quit. And that's the beginning and the end of most people's meditation careers. And it makes me sad because people have potentially robbed themselves of a lifetime of better performance because they're judging themselves based on misinformation. So the really good news here is that the mind thinks involuntarily, just like the heart beats involuntarily. So trying to give your brain a command to shut up is as impactful as trying to give your heart a command to stop beating. Doesn't work. I command hearts to stop beating all the time in my business. Now, of course, I get a little help with potassium and magnesium. But no, we don't want our heart to stop being under most cases. Under most cases, yeah. So you call this the meditation shame spiral. OK, so in other words, the harder we try, the more we fail. If you're judging yourself based on misinformation and you think that the point is to clear the mind, then every single time you sit down to meditate, you're going to feel like you're failing. And none of us will do anything for very long that we feel like we're failing at. We want to feel like we're progressing and succeeding. And so with Ziva, what we do is that we give people a tool that actually helps them to de-excite the nervous system. We give them a tool that helps to induce very deep healing rest. And when you give your body that deep healing rest, it knows how to heal itself. And one of the things that it heals itself from is stress. And interestingly, not only stress from today, which is what mindfulness does, but this type of meditation is actually helping to get rid of that stress from our past, that stuff that gets stored in our cellular memory. And now we know, even in our epigenetic memory, the stuff that we're passing down from generation to generation. And the cool thing is that I call Ziva the lazy man's meditation because you don't have to have any fancy fingers. You don't have to have an erect spine. You don't have to sit in uncomfortable positions. It just looks like a nap sitting up. You just do it in a chair and then your whole life gets better. So you talk about the three M's in the book. And so I think that's where we should go next. What's different about the three M's about each of them? Yeah, so the three M's are mindfulness, meditation and manifesting. And where this gets a little confusing for folks is that a lot of people are using the terms mindfulness and meditation as synonyms, but they're not actually the same thing. I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. And we could take a mindful breath right now. This is why people say, well, cooking is my meditation or exercise is my meditation. What they're saying is that it makes me more present. I am more mindful when I do those activities, which is fine, but that's quite different than this type of meditation. So mindfulness is very good at dealing with your stress in the now, like a state change versus this type of meditation is very good at getting rid of your stress from the past. And to do that, we're giving our body that deep healing rest that I was talking about. So it really does kind of look and feel like a nap sitting up. And then the third M, the manifesting, which I sometimes get some eye rolls. Some people are like, oh gosh, you want me to secret my dreams? But to me manifesting simply means consciously creating a life you love. It's you getting intentional about what you want your life to look like and using that very powerful time at the end of your meditation where the right and left hemispheres of the brain are functioning in unison to set your intentions. And what we found from teaching a bunch of people is that the combination of meditation and manifesting is so much more powerful than either one alone. So, okay, so when people are rolling their eyes saying, well, we got to get the right brain and left brain coordinated, why is that so important? Most of us say, oh, I'm a right brain person or I'm a left brain person and I really don't want my two hemispheres to talk to each other. Well, I would say, if nature gave you two legs to run a race, why would you want to run a one-legged race? And that's what many of us are doing. We've been taking our left brain. And when I say left brain, I really mean the prefrontal cortex, the executive function of the brain. And most of us have been taking that to the gym for a very long time. We think, we take action, we achieve, we make money so we can be happy in the future. Left brain is in charge of critical mind, language, past and future versus what I'm calling the right brain is basically in charge of creativity, intuition, creative problem solving, present moment awareness, music, connectedness. These are all right brain activities. And if you look at a human brain, it splits right down the middle, 50-50. And I don't think that nature makes mistakes. I don't think that nature would have given us 50-50 that wanted us to use 90-10. And so what we're doing in this meditation practice is that we're taking the right brain to the gym so that we can access those creative problem-solving ideas even when the heat is on, even in the middle of the high-demand situation. Because no one cares how good your presentation was the night before. No one cares how funny you are the day before you're giving the talk. It matters how you perform when it's go time. And in order to really be performing at the top of your game, you want that critical mind and creative mind happening simultaneously. Now a lot of our listeners and viewers are gonna say, okay, now I've heard that men in general are left brain and women are right brain. Is that not true? Or what's your experience now in doing this for 13 odd years? Well, I think that probably what they're saying there is that women tend to be more intuitive where men tend to be a bit more critical minded. And I think that certainly there are some gender stereotypes that hold true. But I think that again, why would we want to run a one-legged race? Like why would we want to rob ourselves of this latent potential that we've all been given? And I think real true mastery means having dexterity and resilience and the ability to call on whatever tools we need for the task at hand. And I know plenty of men who need their intuition and plenty of women who need their critical mind. So, you know, why choose either or when we could really be firing with and. So give us a teaser. How do we get these two parts to connect in your process? Yeah, so sort of what the techniques look like is that we start the mindfulness that I use is something called come to your senses. Very simple, but powerful tool where we're utilizing our five senses to access that right brain, that present moment awareness. And it's so simple, but it's quite powerful. And I start by walking people through hearing what they're hearing, feeling what they're feeling, seeing what they're seeing, tasting and smelling, which basically what we're doing is we're almost tricking the mind into coming into the body, into the right now, because our stress hangs out in the past and the future. And we cannot move away from our stress. We cannot move away from the past and the future. We must move towards the present moment. So we're utilizing our five senses as a tool to access that present moment, which is where our joy hangs out, always here, always now. And then from there, we transition into what I call the main course of the Ziva technique, which is the meditation. And then we introduce something called a mantra. And that word mantra has been a little hijacked by the wellness industry. We think that it means affirmation, like, I deserve abundance or something like that. And affirmations are great, but they're not gonna induce this deep healing rest that I keep talking about. So mantra is actually a Sanskrit word. Man means mind and truck means vehicle. So we're utilizing these mind vehicles that are going in and de-exciting the nervous system, kind of calming everything down. And it's what makes this process so sort of lazy and effortless. It's like the mantra's doing the work for you, so you don't have to concentrate or control the mind or try and tame the monkey mind. And the cool thing at Ziva is that thoughts are not the enemy. And then at the end of that, sort of basically like naps sitting up, it feels like you've taken a little vacation for your brain. And then at the end of it, we wanna keep our eyes closed so that we don't shock the optic nerve or the brain. And so then we keep the eyes closed for a little while and that's where I recommend we use the manifesting, which is basically just imagining a dream as if it's happening now. And this is the real trick to manifesting is imagining your dream as if it is your current reality. Where a lot of people make the mistake is that they imagine the dream, but it's far away or they're pouring their attention on the space between where they are and where they think they should be. And that is the definition of stress, the space between where you are and where you think you should be. So we do not wanna water those weeds. We want to water the flowers of imagining your dream as if it's your current reality. Now, is that similar to throwing it out there, asking something to manifest or is this different than what you're describing? Well, to me, when you throw it out there, it sort of suggests that nature is in charge. And I think there is some power in detaching. Have you ever heard that quote of prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening. And I love this quote so much because it connotes that this isn't in conflict with anyone's religion or philosophy of life. It's really just tuning into your own intuition to your own higher power. And the thing I like about the manifesting is that it allows it to be a two-way conversation. That yes, you're getting clear on what your intentions are, but you're also taking the time to listen. How does nature want to use me to deliver my gifts to the world? Instead of just, please, sir, can I have some more? Please, can I have some more money? Please, can I have some more girlfriends? Please, can I have some more shoes? Oh, one of our people here, she wants more shoes. She's in blue suede shoes today. Look, I mean, you can manifest new shoes if you want to. And where this gets a little tricky is that it's never about the manifesting of the thing. You could manifest blue suede shoes, but those shoes are not going to make you happy. It's the meditation that's making you happy. It's actually the meditation that's flooding your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin. And where this becomes a little paradoxical is that once you realize that you have access to your own fulfillment internally, you become more detached about everything you want to manifest externally because you realize that they cannot make you. If they can't make you, then they cannot break you. So it just makes the whole game of life a little bit more fun, a little bit more free. So you said mantra. Now, whenever anyone hears that or I hear that, now we're going back to, oh, okay, I've got to hold my fingers like this and say om all the time. Is that what you're saying or? No, I mean, om is probably the most famous mantra. And we think it's om, but it's actually, it's A-U-M-R-O-M. It's the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It's the sound that contains all other sounds. But interestingly, om is a mantra that was originally designed for monks. And so if you are not a monk, meaning you like living in society, you like having sex with people, you like, you know, creating companies and things, then chances are om is not a great mantra for you because if you were to be chanting it all day or meditating with it day in and day out, you might start waking up some more monastic qualities inside of you. You might find yourself like giving your car keys and a deed to your house away. The monk who sold his Ferrari, right? Exactly, exactly. But whereas the meditation portion of Ziva, even though it's 6,000 years old or based on something that's 6,000 years old, it was designed for people with busy minds and busy lives. So you don't have to chant. You don't have to do any fancy fingers. You don't have to use a monastic mantra. And the mantras that we use, when I teach face to face, they're actually meaningless primordial sounds. In our online course, we have a little bit gentler mantras. And then I give, in the book, I give people a universal mantra. So, and that is by design, because when I teach people face to face, this practice can create a bit of emotional and physical detox. Many of us have been pretty stressed for many decades. And so the sadness, the trauma, the rage, the anxiety, like all that stuff that we have inside, when we start a purging practice, which is really what meditation is, that stuff can start to come up and out. And that's my job is to help people through that. And I can do that when I'm with people face to face, but I wanted to create a bit of a gentler protocol for online and then even gentler for the book. Because the idea with the book is that I wanna make these tools as mainstream as possible, because it turns out people are suffering right now. People are very stressed. Harvard Medical School is suggesting that stress is responsible for 90% of all doctors' visits. And to me, it's like this is a solvable problem. And I wanna give people the tools to help them solve it. You bring up a good point. I went to a medical school in the Dark Ages and we had a psychiatry rotation. And the head of psychiatry at my medical school was actually an internist who realized, again, this was back in the Dark Ages in the 70s, that most of the things he was seeing in his practice, in his internal medicine practice, was from the mind, from stress. And I thought that was so enlightening that this guy said, yeah, I basically quit my day job and started listening to people's stress and teaching them. Good. So how does this detoxing from stress manifest it? That sounds like a big deal. Well, it can be. And it can be pretty intense for folks. And certainly when I teach face-to-face, I like to screen for if anyone's dealing with recent trauma or PTSD or severe depression, because oftentimes it will have them start with a gentler program first, just to make sure that it is safe. But it can manifest in a lot of different ways. Sometimes people will have a few tears in the first few sessions. Sometimes they'll go to the bathroom a lot. Sometimes they'll have nightmares. Their skin sometimes gets itchy. They can get nauseous. So if you want to sign up, just head to ZebaMeditation.com, just a great sales pitch. All right. I know it sounds not so fun, but the good news is that once you kind of ring the body out, there is a finite amount of stress in our nervous systems. And once we purge, then we have so much more energy, so much better sleep, so much better digestion. It can improve our immune system, because when we have that backlog of stresses in our body, that's ultimately why stress is making us stupid, sick and slow as a species. And I think that we can't afford to be sick, stupid and slow anymore. You know, we're being called upon to solve some pretty intense challenges in our generation. So I think it's time for us to, you know, be firing on all cylinders mentally, so we have all hands on deck to solve these challenges. So speaking of firing on all eight cylinders, you say that meditation is the new caffeine. Wait a minute. Doesn't caffeine, you know, stress you out? And what does that mean? Well, I gave a talk at the Google headquarters called Why Meditation is the New Caffeine? And I like putting caffeine and meditation in the same sentence just because it's helping with my mission of reframing meditation as a productivity tool, right? Because if you're reaching the coffee, why are you doing that? It's because you wanna be more productive at work. You wanna get through your to-do list faster. And what I'm hypothesizing is that if you meditate instead, or even in addition to, it's like, okay, with meditation, it's a sustainable form of rest. And interestingly, and I'm sure you know this, caffeine is molecularly very similar to a chemical called adenosine, right? Which is what your brain produces to tell you that you're tired. So the caffeine isn't necessarily giving you energy. It's blocking your brain's ability to feel tired. And then when the caffeine leaves the brain's receptors, you've got all that adenosine floating around that floods back in, which is what the crash is. And because you're sort of putting your adrenals into hyper alert, over time it's not sustainable. Versus the meditation is not blowing out your adrenals. It's actually calming down your adrenals. And it's increasing neuroplasticity. And over time and in combination with diet and sleep and exercise, it can help with neurogenesis. And so I just think that if there was a tool that would help you be more productive and help heal your brain instead of, you know, perhaps costing you a little more than you would like, I say, why not choose that thing? And it takes about the same amount of time. To leave your office, go to the coffee shop, get your coffee, drink your coffee. You could have done a meditation in that time. So I mean, should we, so when you're at Google or advising CEOs or big corporations, are you saying, hey, you should have employees have a five minute meditation break instead of a coffee break? Well, I would say 15 minute meditation break, but absolutely yes. This whole book, my whole mission, is basically helping people to see that if you're not meditating, that stress is slowing you down. You are not performing as well as you could be if you're not actively managing your stress. Because even if you've had a great childhood and even if you don't consider yourself to be stressed, just being a human being on the planet Earth right now, you know, we've got EMF, we've got planes, our food is not food anymore, you know, we're dealing with lights and computers and cell phones and that is costing our brains and bodies something. And so the thing is, if you're not managing your stress, it is managing you. And a lot of us don't even realize how stressed we are. So I do recommend that companies give their employees an opportunity to learn a sustainable meditation practice. And I suggest that they, you know, have a conference room or a coffee room and they just say, look, from 330 to 430, you don't have to meditate, but it's available to you. You know, and you can, you can come in here, we won't schedule any calls during this time. And if you think about it for smokers, if they're taking four, five minute smoke breaks in a day, that's 20 minutes to go and kill themselves. So are you gonna give your employees 15 minutes to be a better employee, to cost your company less, to be more productive? You know, Etna did a study recently, they taught, I think a third of their 50,000 employees and they noticed that it saved them $3,000 per employee per year. And they gained three hours of productivity per employee per week. So it's like, if you do the numbers on that, it's a savings, like for the company and the employee starts to feel taken care of. They feel like you're treating them as a human and not just as a machine. This almost sounds like nap time in kindergarten where we all put out our little rugs. And, you know, I was never good at that in kindergarten. I don't know, so maybe I need more nap time. Or maybe you need a mantra, maybe that would help. You know, I have a nine month old son and I see him now, like he gets so cranky and he goes and he takes a nap and he wakes up smiling and happy. And it's like, maybe this is the answer, just adult nap times. So, okay, so we're being bombarded by blue light. You know, we're always on our screens. We've got EMF, Dr. McCullin, I talked about a couple of weeks ago. How does meditation fit into getting a better night's sleep? How is that gonna protect us against all of this incoming stuff? Yeah, great question. So, you know, this is what happened for me is that meditation cured my insomnia on the first day. So it's something I'm really passionate about because life is hard when you're tired and our sleep quality is declining, it seems, collectively. And so for most of us, the deepest form of rest that we have is sleep. And so if the deepest form of rest you have is sleep, then your body has to use that time as a time for stress release because that's one of the things that it needs to heal itself from. And if you've ever looked at a, like a body data monitoring device, if someone's tracking their sleep, yep, you've got the perfect, Harpreet, who's the CEO, is a Ziva graduate. So, you know, most people's sleep, before meditation, it looks like hills and valleys. It's light, medium, deep wake up, light, medium, deep wake up. This takes us eight or nine hours. We wake up, we're exhausted. Then what most people have shown after inserting meditation, and Ziva is twice a day, so they do the twice a day meditation. And in that time, they're using the meditation as a time for stress release, which allows them to use their sleep as a time for sleep. So instead of their sleep signature look like hills and valleys, it starts to look like a basin where it's light, medium, deep for six hours, medium, light, wake up. And so a lot of people, because they're falling into a deeper sleep faster, the body is not using that time for stress release so it can stay in that deeper rest longer. Sometimes they'll even shave hours off of the sleep that they need at night because it becomes more efficient. Now, the caveat to that is that that is usually a few weeks in. In the first few weeks, sometimes people need much more sleep because most of us are tired and we're working off a bit of a sleep deficit. But once you get out of the red and into the black, then a lot of people report needing a few hours less sleep and yet waking up more refreshed. And it's simply because you're using your meditation as a time for stress release so you can use your sleep as a time for sleep. Yeah, in my new book, The Longevity Paradox, I talk a lot about the importance of deep sleep. And deep sleep usually occurs very early in the sleep cycle for most people. And it's during that period that the brain actually goes through a wash cycle through the glymphatic system. And I think certainly watching people with an aura ring, they really do not have an adequate deep sleep cycle, most of them. And so if we could use your technique to have people have a longer deep sleep cycle, they're gonna clean their brains of debris so much better. I actually am far more interested in that deep sleep period than REM or light sleep. And that's what I track in myself mostly. Now I also talk about that there is a good connection between meditation and gut health that meditators have a far more diverse microbiome. And quite frankly, the more diverse microbiome, the younger you are for the longer period of time so that you can die young at a ripe old age. Tell me your experience with meditation and gut health. Combination between meditation and gut health seems like an unlikely one, but it's actually, it makes a lot of sense when you understand what happens to the body when we get stressed. So we wanna understand why the human body reacts to stress in the way that it does. We have to cut back in time a few thousand years. Say we're hunting and gathering in the woods, saber tooth tiger jumps out with the intent to kill. Body's gonna launch into a series of chemical reactions. And one of the first thing that happens is that digestion floods with acid to shut down digestion because you need that energy that you would have spent digesting your food. You need that to fight or flee the tiger. Now that same acid will seep onto your skin so you don't taste very good. If you get bitten into by the tiger, blood starts to thicken and coagulate. Immune system goes to the back burner. So all these things are really relevant if your demands are saber tooth tigers, but if your demands are in-laws or kids or red-eye flights, then this fight or flight thing has now become maladaptive. And it's the thing that's making us stupid, sick and slow. And if we're living our lives in this low-grade fight or flight thing, then we've got this constant acid drip happening in our digestion. And I'm no gut health expert, but it seems to me that if you're dumping acid into your digestion, that might kill some of the good bacteria that we really want to be thriving. And what I've seen, and interestingly, I've never suffered from IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, but so I don't talk about it. It's not in any of my messaging. And yet it's the number three benefit that people report from Ziva, that their IBS has gone away. And the only thing I know to attribute that to, and this is totally anecdotal, but it seems that they're changing the pH of their body. They're getting out of that acidic fight or flight. They're starting to flood their brains and bodies with dopamine and serotonin, so they're becoming more alkaline. And so it seems that that's a more hospitable environment for the good bacteria to diversify. Well, it's very interesting that there's a new paper out last week, a week before, looking at people who have a stroke, and their gut microbiome changes within the day of having a stroke. So, as I talk about, there's actually nine more fibers, nerve fibers coming from the gut to the brain via the vagus nerve and one from the brain down. But it's clear that that two-way street, the brain, a damage to the brain suddenly damages the microbiome. So, it's fascinating new research that there's a lot more connection here than we knew. And so from that, would you hypothesize that healing the brain and increasing your plasticity may help the microbiome? Yeah, and I think it actually goes stronger the other way. The more I can get the microbiome diversified, the more the brain is going to improve. But, okay, so people have asked me, being a heart surgeon, that's a rather stressful thing. Although it's interesting, some of my best meditation is during heart surgery because I'm one of these individuals who does not think during heart surgery. And audience, yes, I think during heart surgery and not the way you think, I think, but it flows. Like an athlete doesn't think when they're doing their athletic performance. But when a stressful part of the operation comes along, and hopefully it's not very often, the thing I get through my stress is to change my breathing pattern. And I know that's incredibly important in your program. Can you talk us through how controlling the breath, changing the breath, can help our viewers and listeners de-stress? Yes, absolutely. So there are a lot of techniques that use the breath as the tool. And I love what you were saying, like I get into a high demand situation, probably the heart rate accelerates, your breath might get a little shallow, it might speed up. And then that's signaling more things to the brain of like high alert, let's be alert, let's get that fight or flight thing going. And then when we get into fight or flight, a lot of our brain and mental energy goes to the amygdala. And so when it goes to the amygdala, we're not as creative. We're not as available for the intuitive downloads to be in that flow state. And so definitely a quick hack, if you will, if you find yourself in a high demand situation or even with an anxiety attack or a panic attack about to come on, a really simple thing that you can do is manipulate your breathing. And what we do is we use the breath almost as the precursor to Ziva because it's just a great way to change your state really quickly. It's one of the things I teach in the book is something called the 2X breath. And it's super simple, you're basically just doubling the length of the exhale from the inhale. And this is designed to help calm that vagus nerve, right? Like you said, that two-way highway that's connecting our brain and bodies. And so all we do, and we can do it together if you want, you just inhale through the nose for two, and then you exhale through your mouth for four, inhaling through the nose for two, and exhaling through the mouth for four. And it even helps sometimes if people count the breath. So just inhaling one, two, and then exhaling through the mouth for four. And it's super simple by design because if you're about to have a panic attack, you can't do some complicated thing. It's like you just need the simplest thing. And when we double the length of the exhale, it just starts to slow down the metabolic rate. It starts to calm that vagus nerve. And sometimes a lot of people will report that it will help stave off a panic attack. And like you said, it might help you get back into flow state. Yeah, and that's a great trick, and that's exactly. And some of us even use the box trick where we hold both on the exhale and the inhale, yeah. Yeah, and that's just for people who don't know, it's just in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. And that's great too, very simple. And again, it's almost like you're using that tool. It's like we want to move towards the breath, towards the present moment, instead of, oh no, what if I mess up in heart surgery? Oh no, what if he doesn't call back? What if I can't make rent this month? One of my favorite quotes is that speculation leads always and only to suffering. And that's really what stresses it's speculating about what may or may not happen in the future, what should or should not have happened in the past. And so instead of speculating, we just come into the now. And the breath is a great and easy way to do that. It's funny, on the plane, I watched a documentary about Bill Murray. Most people will remember him from Groundhog Day, Bill shows up apparently around the country, just run random moments. And the takeaway of Bill Murray, and he's really one of my favorite gurus, I guess. And if they were summarizing, what is the message that Bill Murray brings? And the message is, it doesn't matter. And I think, it's interesting. I think a lot of this of what you're saying is, Tony Robbins says you gotta stop playing old movies. But I think all of what you're saying is, particularly when you're breathing like that, you can't really think of anything else. And really nothing really matters. Yeah, I love Bill Murray because he seems to be like really having so much fun, like gamifying life. I'm really treating it like a game. And the thing I love about that is that, to me, I would, and I haven't watched the documentary, but to me, it's like everything matters and nothing matters. That's exactly right. It all matters and it's a game. And I think when we start meditating, we start accessing these different states of consciousness. You're actually accessing something different than waking, sleeping, or dreaming. And it's like that super consciousness, if you will, or that pure being. And when that thing starts to permeate your waking, sleeping, and dreaming, it's much easier to see life as the beautiful game that it is, and you can fully play it. The thing I love about this practice is that it's not either or. It doesn't take you away from life or just make you monastic or where you're only looking at the divine. It's like, no, it's divinity and humanity happening simultaneously so that we can be present, play the game, play it full out, and see that we're all hurtling towards the grave. From the moment this firm hits the egg, we're all hurtling towards the grave. So we might as well have some fun while we're here. That's what I actually say in the longevity paradox. None of us is getting out alive and get over it. Yeah, I know you're absolutely right. None of us, nobody's been back to tell us otherwise, quite frankly. One concept that I think might be really in line with the longevity paradox that you might enjoy, it's probably the most woo-woo hippie-dippy thing I put in the book. But I just talk about some monks in India where they will actually call their death date. This idea of getting sick and dying that we've assumed to be normal in the West does not necessarily have to be the case. And I'm so glad that you're out here with this message of what if we keep up-leveling and improving and getting stronger and healthier until the body becomes irrelevant? And they have this analogy of what if you take off your body like you would a beautiful suit? You're not gonna just put it and crumple it on the ground, you take it off with respect and care and gratitude. And I love the work that you're doing and I just think that meditation can really be a very complementary tool to help people to up-level until they don't need the body anymore. Beautifully said, beautifully said. There's a wonderful book, it's a difficult read, it's called I Decided to Live to 120 Years. And the point of the book is, okay, I have decided to live to 120 now and the gentleman was in his 60s, he said, okay, how am I going to accomplish it? Now that I have decided that that's when I'm going to die, just like these Indian monks, how do I construct my life to get there? And what am I gonna do with my life on the way there? And I talk about actually a lot about that in the book that being an elder and giving back is something that we've really lost in our society and luckily a lot of the very long-lived people, the value of elders is a huge part of what elders do in giving back. All right, so you're our elder even though you're wonderfully young in teaching us meditation. All right, so this has been great fun. How do people find you? What's your website, social media? Where do you get the book? Yeah, so the book is just stress less, accomplish more, it's available basically anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I'm looking forward to your maybe one day having the number one and number two book on Amazon like you have, so impressive. And then you can find me just at Ziva, so Z-I-V-A meditation.com and then we're all over social media just at Ziva Meditation. All right, thanks so much Emily for being on and good luck with this meditation folks. I talk about it in the book, it's so important if for no other reason to keep your gut buddies happy. And why do I want you have gut buddies? Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you and for meditation. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.