Happy January, Ninjas! After teaching Mark Fisher and so many of the amazing MFF trainers over the last few years, I am thrilled to return to the magical land that is MFF to teach meditation.

My course will help kick your workout and your life up a notch (or 10). Since you don’t need any help in the “getting to the gym” department and are clearly great at prioritizing your health and happiness, I thought I would share with you my secret weapon for mental fitness.

Join me for an in-depth Intro to Ziva Meditation talk on Sunday, January 28 at Noon to learn how meditation can give you:

• Supercharged workouts
• Deeper, more refreshing sleep
• Increased creativity
• Increased compassion
• More energy
• Enhanced intuition
• Better sex (yup!)
• Less anxiety
• Less depression
• Less stage fright (would you take Laura Benanti & Ninja Susan Blackwell’s word for it?)

I founded a company where the mission is to make meditation attractive and accessible so you can perform at the top of your personal and professional game.

That is what it has done for Mr. Fisher himself:

“After trying different meditation practices over many years, I’ve found Emily and Ziva’s approach to be uniquely effective. Highly recommended for anyone that wants to be more effective in their career, health and fitness, and interpersonal relationships. Yes, it is THAT big of a deal.”

And here is what Harold Gibbons had to say about his Ziva experience:

“Meditation made me more like Bradley Cooper. Ha! But really, it is definitely making me a better trainer. I am a better communicator, teacher, and am able to give more fully to my clients.”

Since you’re hard-core MFF Ninjas, I will assume you already know that exercise and meditation are both good for you but most of us are so “busy” that we feel like we have to choose either or.

The two practices have different effects on the mind and body, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Meditation and exercise together can increase neuroplasticity which is the brain’s ability to generate new brain cells!

People often say to me, “Exercise is my meditation.” What they are really trying to communicate is that exercise relaxes them or relieves stress, which is great, but it’s not the same thing as meditation.

Exercise works by exciting the nervous system, which speeds up your metabolic rate and releases endorphins. Meditation similarly has many benefits, but the mechanism is totally different.

In the style I teach, you access a verifiable fourth state of consciousness which is different than waking, sleeping or dreaming. In this state of mind you are de-exciting the nervous system, which gives you deep rest and releases the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin (aka bliss chemicals).

Meditation gives you rest that is 5x deeper than sleep so you have more energy to work out.

You know when you wake up in the morning intending to go to the gym and you just can’t seem to pry yourself out of bed? Well, once you start meditating you can kiss that feeling goodbye.

One of my favorite parts of being a meditation teacher is when students send me screenshots of sleep tracking apps. Where their sleep used to be turbulent up and downs, now there is only a long, low, deep line – a visual representation of the deep rest they now have access to each time their head hits the pillow.

At Ziva we recommend 2x a day meditation, once in the morning and your second session in your mid-afternoon slump. Imagine leaving work in the evening, taking an hour and a half nap (aka a 20-minute meditation), and then jumping into your favorite class at MFF. #enfuego  I know it sounds like a ridiculous amount of time to commit, but what I know for sure is that your productivity and efficiency will actually increase.

And if there’s anyone who can vouch for the benefits of meditation, it’s me.

10 years ago I was on Broadway understudying three of the leads in A Chorus Line. On paper I was living my dream, but in reality I was suffering from anxiety, had been struggling with insomnia for 18 months, and was going gray at the tender age of 26.

I was desperate for a solution. So when a fellow cast member told me she swore by meditation I thought, what do I have to lose?

After the first day of the course, I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months.

Then I stopped getting sick, I stopped going gray, I started enjoying my life and realized that this practice was something special. It has since up-leveled my performance and my life so dramatically that I felt inspired to share it with others.

I left Broadway in 2009 and went to India, where I began a three-year training process to become a meditation teacher. I spent years studying ancient practices and teaching thousands of high performers. And it led me to develop the Ziva Technique, a powerful trifecta of Meditation, Mindfulness and Manifesting.

The truth, though, is that I can spend hours telling you all about how meditation will make you better in bed, will improve your immune system, and will give you more energy at work… but you won’t truly know until you actually experience it yourself.

So I invite you to join me my Best Life Sunday workshop, “Live Your Best Life with Ziva Meditation.” This talk is exclusively for the MFF family on Sunday, January 28 at Noon at MFF Bowery.

RSVP HERE

Let’s take advantage of this new year energy and create some habits that will change the rest of your life!

P.S. Because I love the MFF community so much, Ninjas get a special rate to learn with me. What do you have to lose, besides stress?

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Emily Fletcher is the founder of Ziva Meditation, which has taught over 7,000 people in live and online trainings. Ziva’s mission is to make meditation attractive and accessible to modern people who are ready to up-level their performance and their lives. To learn more about Emily, click here.

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Second photo courtesy of the lovely @mrsagustini!