Meditation as a Stress-Reduction Tool and a Happiness Technique

“Quite simply, I define meditation as a stress-relieving tool. It’s something to help you get back to the most amazing version of you.” – Emily Fletcher, founder of zivaMIND.

I recently interviewed Emily Fletcher, founder and meditation teacher of zivaMIND, and I wanted to share a really powerful concept I learned from her. As Emily says…

“I don’t think that nature intended us to be sick, tired, and stressed all the time.”

It so simple, but it’s true. Stress is just a survival mechanism designed to keep us either from being eaten by a predator or to survive starving in a famine. But the problem is, we’re stressed out all the time.

Certainly, nature never intended us to be worried about mortgage payments, our boss, deadlines, and traffic jams. But we are, and it confuses our brain and nervous system and causes our bodies to go into fat storage mode. It also causes ravenous junk food cravings.

It’s a vicious cycle of more worry, more stress, more weight gain, decreased health, decreased creativity and decreased ability to focus – all leading to more stress and worry.

So what do you do to break this vicious cycle? One of the best ways is with meditation. I know in my own life meditation is a lifesaver when it comes to managing stress. I consider it to be one of my most important practices. And one of the best teachers of meditation I know is Emily Fletcher.

In my interview with Emily, she really gets to the heart of how meditation can be used not only as a stress reducing tool but also as skill and practice that can create happiness. The more we meditate the more we can start to bring that happiness into our lives now.

Watch the interview with Emily to discover:

• How you don’t need to quiet your mind to meditate – “I’ve tried meditating, I can’t stop my mind from thinking.” (3:15)
  Emily discusses the common misconception that we need to quiet the mind in order to be better meditators, but in fact you can still have a powerful meditation practice without “mastering” your mind.
• The difference between mindfulness meditation and Vedic meditation (4:36)
  Here Emily talks about how she uses Vedic meditation vs. mindfulness meditation in her teachings. And how mindfulness practices induces a more ‘wakeful restfulness’ state of being to help reduce stress and help you get in touch with your own bliss.
• Meditation and the adaptation energy (11:40)
  Emily discusses how meditation can give us this ability to plug into a limitless source of what she calls ‘adaptation energy’ to help us handle the demands and expectations of our day to day lives.
• A guided visualization called ‘Come to Your Senses’ by Emily Fletcher (19:11)
  Here Emily leads you through a gentle guided visualization that will bring awareness to all five of your senses to get your mind and your body into a peaceful, relaxed state.

Emily is offering a special opportunity to the Gabriel Method community through her website “zivaMIND”. For those interested in learning from Emily an extremely simple and practical way to meditate, click here to learn more >>.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how you use meditation in your day to day life to help reduce stress and increase happiness. Please join the conversation by commenting below.

About Emily Fletcher:

Emily Fletcher is an amazing meditation teacher known for her work at Google, Summit Series, Barclays Bank and Viacom. She’s a regular on Huffington Post Live and recently, taught at The Gabriel Method retreat at the Omega Institute and the GATE, the Global Alliance of Transformation Entertainment with Eckhart Tolle.

Emily began her extensive training in Rishikesh, India under world-renowned meditation instructors. Emily was inspired to become a meditation teacher after experiencing the profound physical and mental benefits it provided her during her ten-year career on Broadway. As you’re listening today, you can learn more about Emily and her online meditation program at zivaMIND.com