In this episode, I am speaking with Emily Fletcher – the founder of Ziva meditation – about why you should tab into your sexuality to manifest your goal and dreams.
Emily is the founder of Ziva and the host of the spine-tingling new podcast, Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?
She is an international speaker whose superpower is making esoteric tools accessible to a mainstream audience, teaching over 50,000 people meditation and manifesting. Her best-selling book, Stress Less, Accomplish More, debuted at #7 out of all books on Amazon and has been translated into 12 languages. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Good Morning America and Vogue. She’s taught at Apple, Google and Harvard Business School.
A formerly stressed Broadway performer going gray at 27, Emily was desperate for a solution when she found meditation — which immediately cured her insomnia and anxiety. Her transformation was so dramatic that she quit acting, went to India, and studied the ancient tools Ziva students swear by today.
Over the past three years she has dedicated herself to developing innovative embodiment practices that empower individuals to transmute stress into boundless joy.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Emily and I discuss:
- The secrets of sacred sexuality
- The link between sex and the divine
- How to use orgasms to level up your potential
- The power of GOYA (Get Off Your Ass)
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Transcript
Ari: Welcome back to the show, my friend.
Emily: Is this my second time? My third time?
Ari: I think it might be your third time.
Emily: I feel like I want an SNL jacket or something, or at least a trophy.
Ari: I will give you some gold medal for–
Emily: At tiara, perhaps.
Ari: Yes. I will have a special energy blueprint tiara made for you.
Emily: Maybe for my fourth time on. [laughs]
How lockdown changed Emily’s life
Ari: Fourth. For sure. [laughs] It’s been a while since we talked, a long while, actually. I know from a few text exchanges here and there and watching what’s going on on social media that a lot has happened in your life since we last spoke.
Emily: A lot.
Ari: Give us all the rundown and where has our magical meditation guru gone in her life and her personal journey since we last spoke.
Emily: Deep in 2020, living in New York City, full lockdown, full protests, haven’t been on a plane. I decide that that would be a great time to get a divorce. [laughs] I went ahead and just put myself through some initiation. I’m not sure what, but it was full out. Then three weeks later, I met my now best friend, Layla Martin, who’s this world-famous tantra teacher. I met this amazing man named Adam who became this cosmic lover, which we can define what that is later. Then I moved in with this amazing woman named Regena Thomashauer, aka Mama Gena, who is known for running the School of Womanly Arts for the past 30 years, also for her New York Times bestselling book called Pussy: A Reclamation. All of a sudden, my whole life turns upside down.
I go from being married in New York City in lockdown to a [unintelligible 00:10:46] Burning Man festival with these world-class tantricas, having full Kundalini awakenings and getting my world rocked. It felt like nature was fire-hosing me in this PhD in sacred sexuality, which is fun for my own personal edification, but it felt bigger than that. It felt like, oh, hey, pay attention, pay attention.
It feels like what nature is asking me to do is to do for sacred sexuality what I did for meditation, which is basically to take it from this amorphous, esoteric, hard-to-understand, behind a lot of veils and secrecy and the incense and pomp and circumstance and make it attractive and accessible and relatable to a more mainstream audience. It feels like a big job, but an exciting job, because when you start to even mention, first of all, what is sacred sexuality, when you even mention the word sex, people get triggered in 800 different ways.
I recognize the intensity of what I’m walking into, but I also feel the profundity. It feels like if we are going to solve these pretty enormous challenges that are being faced with as a species, we’re going to need our most creative energy source available to us. It’s been a fun ride, it’s been a wild ride, and I’m learning a lot. [chuckles]
Ari: I feel like when you don’t talk to somebody for a while and then you ask them, “So what’s new?” Then typically the response is something like, “Oh, not a whole lot. Pretty much same old stuff.” I feel like you’re on the opposite end of the spectrum from that. Since I last spoke to you, you’ve become a new person, and your whole world has turned upside down and inside out, and this whole new world has opened up to you. That’s pretty cool.
Emly: Yes, and that’s the feedback that I’m-
Ari: Seems like we have a lot to talk about.
Emly: -getting is that people are like, “Oh, you seem like a new person.” Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I feel more myself, but I feel like I’m coming home more and more to myself. I think that the energy signature to anyone externally would feel like a new person.
What is sacred sexuality?
Ari: Let’s define sacred sexuality. What’s the difference between sex and intimacy as normal mortals do it, versus this sacred sexuality? By the way, I should say I live in Nosara in Costa Rica, where there’s a sacred sexuality tantra breathwork something happening every three days. I’m pretty familiar with this territory, but for our listeners who maybe don’t live in the land of new age spirituality and tantra breathwork seminars happening every other day, you tell us, what’s the deal with this?
Emly: Yes, what I’d be curious to know is, if 5 years ago or 10 years ago, were there tantra breathwork ceremonies happening every other day, even in Nosara? Even in Tulum? I’m legitimately curious about that because my assumption is that we’re in the precipice of a new sexual awakening, and I could just be in an echo chamber, so I’m willing to be proven wrong about that. Certainly, there’s been pockets of this happening. There’s been very active communities and pockets of society for time immemorial since these practices have gone underground.
I would define sacred sexuality is basically anytime you are unioning with your own soul, with your higher self, and utilizing the most creative energy source available to us, which is our sexual energy. That could be in a solo practice, that could be in partnered practice, that could be in group practice. If there is an intention there to connect with the divine, then I really think that that’s all that would define it as sacred. That could happen in a BDSM dungeon, that could happen in a married couple monogamous for 20 years. That could happen with you and yourself.
I think that the difference would be that, again, the intention is to connect with the divine, which is different than, like, “Oh, I just want to orgasm to fall asleep,” or, “I’m trying to conquer this person to make myself feel powerful,” or, “I’m going to just watch porn and use a vibrator to get to some end state as quickly as possible.” Again, no judgement in any of those, and I would say that God is everywhere. God is literally in everywhere and everything, including all of that, but the intention really matters just like what’s the difference between meditation and sitting quietly on your couch with your eyes closed, it’s very much intention.
What I have found though is that, and I’m sure you can back this up more scientifically than I can, but when you simply change why you’re engaging in things, it can change the entire experience. I’m curious to know what’s been your experience in this? How are things shaking down for you?
Ari: Well, there’s too much to tell there, and I don’t want to distract too much from the focus on you by telling my own personal anecdotes.
Emily: All right. You have to tune in later for the bonus episode.
Ari: Yes, yes. Part two, Ari’s shamanic breathwork, tantric retreats, personal experiences.
Emily: Where Emily finally gets her tiara.
Why sex is a connection to the divine
Ari: Yes. Exactly, [chuckles] so why sex? Why should one use sex, specifically, as this bridge towards the divine? Why not some other area of life? What is sacred about sex, or what is present in that act that is useful in this context of connecting with the divine?
Emily: Well, the thing that I’m really interested in is basically helping people to remember that they can use this energy to create what they really want in their lives. Then I’d say, maybe even more importantly, to create what we really want on the planet. The thing that I’ve really latched– because there’s so many different modalities, so many different areas, partner practice, breathwork, Kundalini awakening, moving energy, there’s a million different areas to go in. I do not consider myself an expert in tantra. I do not consider myself an expert in any of those modalities. What I am an expert in is consciousness, stress, manifestation.
Now, after the past two-and-half/three years, it’s just been initiation, after initiation, after initiation, to unlock what I would consider jet fuel, rocket fuel, for your dreams. If you think about it, it is possible for humans to procreate, it’s one of the most divine, God-like things we could do as human beings, is to create another human being, and sex is part of that creation process. Every time we orgasm, we do not make a baby. Thank goodness, it’d be very crowded on planet earth if every time people are in orgasmic states, they were procreating.
Ari: I’d have a lot of financial demands on me if that were the case.
Emily: [laughs] Yes, something like eight zillion children. Every time we’re in that orgasmic state, we have the exact neurochemical cocktail that we need to manifest. There’s certain brain states and internal chemistry that need to be present when you’re manifesting. It’s the opposite of fight or flight, you want to be in stay and play, so opposite of sympathetic, you want to be in parasympathetic.
You want that dopamine, you want that serotonin, but then when you start to add sexual energy into things, you start to up the oxytocin, the love hormone. You also start to add in a bit of adrenaline to really amp things up. I also think there’s more norepinephrine post orgasm than there is in post meditation. Just like when I teach Ziva meditation, at the end of the meditation, I invite people to simply think about, for two minutes, what would you love right now?
Doing that in a post-meditative state is really powerful because the right and left hemispheres of the brain are talking to each other. It’s like the soil is more fertile. It’s more fertile ground for you to plant the seeds of your dreams. Now, there’s a practice that’s been practiced for thousands of years which I call pleasure prayer, where you’re basically just using your pleasure to pray. I get that both of those words can be a little prickly, especially for people who were raised in any sort of dogma, or doctrine, but I like the audacity of combining them. I like putting those two things together because it feels reverent to what I want to be reverent to, and irreverent to what I don’t want to be reverent to.
Ari: Due to the kind of religious traditions that have made sex associated with sin.
Emily: Exactly, yes. It’s been many tens of thousands of years’ campaign to divorce us from our own divinity. To try to make us forget that we actually have the ability to plug directly into God and we don’t need to go through an organization or a person or tithing or a pope or anything, really. That energy, I’m calling it creation energy, our source energy is truly inside of everyone and everything all the time. To allow ourselves to remain under this illusion that sex is dirty or wrong or shameful or something to be embarrassed about or, if you’re not doing it in a certain way, at a certain time with a certain type of person that you’re going to go to hell.
All of these things, I think have really done an extraordinary number on human beings. It’s created a lot of unnecessary suffering and it’s literally divorced us from our own divinity. Part of what I’m so passionate about with this is not only reminding people because we know it, we know it in ourselves already. It’s just remembering that we actually can harness and utilize this energy and then direct it towards the things that we really want in life. Then the good news is that when you start doing that, when you reclaim that pleasure, when you reclaim that energy, there’s an extraordinary amount of liberation that happens as a byproduct simply because of all the cultural conditioning that most of us are swimming in.
Ari: There’s three pieces to this and it’s all connected by this immaterial mysterious magical energy sort of thing. One piece is our own personal sex libido, the physical act of sex combined with the connection to the divine, connected to, I should say, this idea of manifestation. Sort these things out for me. How and why are these things connected? Why does my act of sex or my orgasm have anything to do with manifesting my dreams in life?
Emily: Yes. If people are consciously manifesting, because I would argue that we’re manifesting all the time. If you want to know what you’re manifesting, just look around. Every thought we think is in fact creating our reality. That’s sometimes a hard pill to swallow, especially if we don’t like our current reality. It’s good news, you haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve all inherited an extraordinary amount of epigenetics. We have environmental factors, it’s not blaming or shaming anyone for the current state of affairs.
It’s simply reminding people that they can, in fact, get their hands on the gears and that they can start to point, again, the most creative force that we have towards the thing that they would really love. It’s not just hippie-dippie woo-woo. We’re going to make a vision board and then we’re going to have sex disparately, and then we’re going to just hope that it shows up.
Ari: It should we like lay the vision board on the bed and have sex on the vision board, would that be helpful?
Emily: That’s it. That’s exactly it. Just make sure you get a cushy vision board. [unintelligible 00:23:33]
Ari: It’s not a bad idea that got you thinking? “Hey, if you end up writing a book using my idea, I want some royalties. I want my cut.”
Emily: Okay. Well, you already mentioned in my last book. Most of us, I would argue that your dreams, you’re manifestations are actually already on the way that when you’re manifesting it’s like feeling the breeze in the subway tunnel before the train comes. I believe that our desires are divinely inspired, That nature has actually given you the desire. When we manifest it, it’s already on the way. All we’re doing is that we’re clearing the blocks, limiting beliefs, anything keeping us from accepting the opportunity when it arises or sabotaging it when we get the chance.
That’s part of what manifestation is. It’s helping you to remember that you deserve your desires. What we do when we add our sexual energy into that is that we take it out of just the mind, right of it just being a mental practice and we start to move it down into the body. Now this does a few things. One, most of our fear and our limiting beliefs are happening in the mind. If we can start to get into the body, there’s a different level of deserving power. There’s a different level of ownership that starts to happen. Also, you could think about it as if you are making love to your dream. Like you are making love to the thing that arguably you want more than anything else in the world. What a lot of people mistakenly do when they think about their dreams is that they’re like, “Oh gosh, I would love a million dollars but there’s no way I could make that on my current salary and the tax rate is so bad. Inflation is so bad.” It’s like they say the thing that they want and they immediately start listing all the reasons that they can’t have it. Like, I would love to meet my person, but I’m 44 years old and I’m divorced and I have a son and I live in New York City and I never go out and [unintelligible 00:25:30]. It’s like we accidentally insult our dreams subconsciously.
What we’re doing in this practice where you start to harness the sexual energy and let it dance with the desire is that it’s like you’re reminding your body that it’s safe when the dream shows up, it’s actually you’re programming all of yourselves to be in love with your dream. Just like if you’ve been married for 15 years, sometimes you have to consciously make a habit of making love to your person to remind yourselves to tune to each other. What we’re doing when we do pleasure prayer is that we’re tuning ourselves to the frequency of the dream so that you start to long for it like you would a lover, so that you start to be excited about it when you see it like you would a lover. Instead of just like, well, I don’t deserve it and it’s never showing up, and all of the subconscious stories.
Ways to manifest your dream life
Ari: When I asked you that, I thought it was going to be a hard question to answer and I would say you knocked it out of the park with that answer. That was really well done. I’m impressed. I feel like I need to go take a break from this podcast to go do some pleasure prayer right now. That’s how convinced I am.
Emily: Well, what are you manifesting? What are you praying for?
Ari: I have a top-secret new business project that’s a new brand I’m building. I can’t divulge any details yet. It’s a big thing. It’s so big that it’s not just exciting for me. It’s like 50% exciting, 50% super scary because I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if all the things are going to come together. I don’t know if I have enough money to do all the things that I need to do to make it work. That would be the main top of mind thing. That’s pretty big.
Emily: Well, first of all, congratulations on dreaming is so big that it feels scary. Like dreaming so big that you’re not sure that you could do it because I would argue if you knew that you could do it, if you knew you had enough money, if you knew it was going to work, then it’s not really a dream. It’s a to-do list. Great job you’re dreaming. I would offer that, if you did want to do this practice, the how and the when is not your job. Do I have enough money? All the ways that the mind keeps it stuck in the how. You can throw those out the window and then put all of this energy on like what would it feel like when it’s actually happening which is truly our why.
The cool thing about all manifestation practice, but especially with pleasure prayer, is that you’re giving yourself the gift of the thing twice because ostensibly, you’re going to feel elated when the thing happens. Now you’re going to get to feel elated right now as you get into the feeling space as if that dream is happening. Here’s a fun piece about pleasure prayer is that it’s not just the practice itself afterwards in that post-climactic state, this is where we insert listening. Oftentimes your next right action, the person you’re supposed to call, the idea that’s going to get you the funding. In that state where again, right in the left hemisphere, the brain is functioning in unison.
When you ask most people how they feel post-climax, it’s like pure, empty, blissful, connected to God, divine, holy. You are in that liminal space similar to post-meditation, but more amped and more in your body. If you insert, just like you would Shavasana at the end of a yoga class where you’re letting the profundity of all of those practices substantiate into the brain and body. Now we want to do the same thing post-climax. You’ve held the vision of the dream, you’ve started to build that charge and energy and moved it through the energy centers from root to crown. It’s like you’re devoting that love that you’ve made in your body.
You’re devoting that to the thing that you want to magnetize also not for nothing. The electromagnetic field in the body gets bigger when you’re in a state of love than you’re when in a state of fear. Everything shrinks energetically when we’re in fear. We know that when we’re in our heart, when we’re in our bodies, when in a state of love, our electromagnetic field gets bigger. If manifesting is magnetizing, then cool, magnet is stronger. Then post-climax, you want to make sure that you leave spaciousness to listen. No agenda, just two or three minutes, just play your favorite song and see what drops in. That’s a fun space to receive guidance on steps from your boss.
Ari: Got it. I have some practical questions for you. Should I be having sex with my partner and in the act of sex, be thinking about my goals and vision that I want to manifest, or, to some extent that is taking me out of the present moment, the connection of that experience? Now I can see how what you’re talking about might work better in the context of masturbation than, or whatever a nicer word is for that, self-pleasuring.
Emily: Masturbation is actually a term that was invented by the church which means to defile.
Ari: Let’s get rid of that term. Let’s throw it out the window.
Emily: It’s like there’s a reason why it doesn’t feel good, that word because it was meant to make you not feel good about the act. I do think in your [unintelligible 00:31:03] hippie circles, the term is self-pleasuring. I’m playing with the term master fate. Masturfation, because you’re mastering fate. Anyway, we can play with it. Okay, should I be thinking–
Ari: What about manifestation?
Emily: Great. Are you in branding, Ari?
Ari: Again, I can see how it would work better in the context of self-pleasuring. I don’t want to be with my partner having sex and trying to remind myself to do specific breathwork practices like we’re in the moment, we’re in missionary position, and then I’m like, “Okay, think of my dreams. Think of my dreams. Bring the energy up, manifest the dreams.” All right, so give me the rundown. How do I actually do what you’re describing and also remain present to the experience?
Emily: Great, great question. You can do pleasure prayer partnered solo in a group setting. My dream is honestly like one of them. It was to have 80,000 people in a stadium climaxing at the same time, holding a collective dream for the species. I was planning an event at a bank with a thousand people, this abandoned bank that looked like a temple, like Hogwarts. I was going to have a thousand people in there.
I’m interested in like, let’s make a big antenna. Let’s do this on mass. We’re not there yet. Just culturally, I don’t think that the– I think the rubber band will snap back too hard and too far at the moment. I’m interested in making more sustainable expansion and growth. To your question, I think like anything with sex, we want to have consent. If you’re with another person, we want to be honoring of their experience. We want to be honoring of the third thing that we are creating together. If you have one agenda or goal, and your partner has another agenda or goal or isn’t aware of your goal, then that’s going to create discord. It’s going to create distance, so I wouldn’t–
Ari: Like I’m using a girl to have sex with in order to manifest my financial aspirations.
Emily: Look, if they are consensual to that, then, again, all of it comes down to, is the person on board and are they a yes or a no? In the case of your partner, I think that if the intention is to create more unity, then you want to be on the same page. I would say it would be fun to experiment, to really do it, to be like, “Hey, I just did this podcast. I was learning about this thing. It sounds really cool. Does this, would you like to try it?” If so, when would be good? And you set aside time to do it. Then I would make a ceremony out of it.
It doesn’t have to be huge but maybe light a candle, maybe write down, spend one song, and write down what would you love and why? Then maybe share it with each other so that you can hold the vision for each other as well. Then you can make love however you like to make love. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular, per se. Then if you both orgasm, then great, at the moment of orgasm, or if not, then just at the peak pleasure moment. Let’s take the pressure off of orgasm or climax and whatever is the most peak pleasurable state, then you would send that energy, send that love that you have created to the thing that you are wanting to manifest.
Now, dream case, if you’re climaxing at the same time, then easy. Then you just sort of can be in your own private Shavasana in your own experiences. Then afterwards I would definitely debrief. Share what it was like for you here, what it was like for them. I would recommend that for all intimate settings anyway, because it just creates more closeness, and then you learn more about each other on the other side.
Now, if you are not climaxing at the same time, it’s totally fine. You can just take a moment. Whoever climaxes first, it’s like we take a pause and we just hold space and just remind them. What my partner and I do is he just says anything you want, everything you want. Even if it’s not like a specific ceremony that anytime either of us is climaxing, like in that moment afterwards, we just take the time to remember to pray, to just take advantage of this space where the veil is thin.
I know you hate that hippie terminology, but let’s say we’re like the right and left brains are dancing together where you are like more unioned with the thing that lives beyond the body than you are just doing your taxes. It is a different state of consciousness, for sure. It’s like taking advantage of that beautiful euphoric feeling in the body to get into the feeling spaces if your dream has already happened, it doesn’t have to take a long time. Short answer, I would be intentional about it. Get consent for the first time, like actually do it.
Be deliberate about the dream. Maybe even as you’re making love, if you wanted to imagine the energy moving from root, I would call it hoo-ha up into heart and then up into your head. It also might be easier to practice to start on your own. When you’re in a solo self-pleasure practice, then you’re going to be able to be in your own time. You’re going to be able to take as much time as you want with the dream. You can take as much time afterwards. I would say just like learning to juggle, you don’t want to start with 10 balls, just start with two. Just you and your dream. You and your dream, and then you could add in your partner. You, your dream, and your partner, and then you build up.
Ari: Are there any sexual positions that are uniquely advantageous for manifestation?
Emily: Great question. I don’t know the answer to that. I have a great book. There’s a great book called Modern Sex Magic. It’s very intense. It’s not a joke. There’s all different constellation and configurations of solo partnered group. It gets pretty wild in there. From my experience, it’s really just like where do you feel comfortable? Where do you feel safe? Where could you be the most relaxed afterwards, after that peak pleasure moment?
Ejaculations and orgasms
Ari: What are your thoughts, and this pertains more to men, but on ejaculation. There’s many eastern practices, Qigong traditions where there’s specific training that one does in order to learn how to injaculate, as some people say, learn how to have non-ejaculatory orgasms and become multi-orgasmic. I have a personal friend down here, one of my closest friends who is a super interesting guy and he’s always just– I love hanging out with him because he’s always just thinking in new ways. He’s such an original thinker and he’s always thinking very deeply on some random topics.
Every week when I talk to him, he’s got some new thing that’s on his mind that he wants to have like a three-hour conversation about. Super interesting guy. One of the things that he told me that I found fascinating is he has sex like five times a day with his wife. He only ejaculates one time per month. Something along those lines. One time maybe every two weeks per month, something like that. He has noticed, and there are many people who report similar stories of massive increases in their energy level, in their brain function, and their motivation and drive, in their just mood, feeling very good libido. Like his libido is extremely high because he has those–
Emily: Clearly.
Ari: Yes, clearly. I was like, “Five times a day, dude.”
Emily: Does he have a job or like, when?
Ari: He has a job. It’s a very loose job, but whatever minimal amount of hours he’s working or clearly getting in the way of the sex.
Emily: Impressive.
Ari: That was my attitude. I was like, “I don’t even know if I could do that at age 17, dude.” What you said is what I said to him. I was like, “Don’t you have stuff to do? Do you just sit around the house all day?” Anyway. We have this history and historical accounting in certain traditions and many, many modern anecdotes of people, men reporting things like this. On the other side of it, you have people with porn addiction, men with porn addiction who are self-pleasuring multiple times a day, having ejaculatory orgasms multiple times a day. There are certain neurological consequences of that which are the opposite of what I just described. Low energy, social anxiety, depressed mood, all these negative effects. How do you feel about that whole aspect of it and how does it connect if it connects to the manifestation piece that you’ve described?
Emily: I would argue that what we’re dealing with here is life force itself. It’s creation energy itself. If that is high for you, then it’s just like your bank account is more full. It’s like you have more energetic currency with which to direct to the dream. Because the hypothesis that I’m making is that you can direct this creation energy to your dreams. If that is low, if you’re dealing with low libido, depression, social anxiety, porn addiction, that you can only orgasm for one specific way or one specific type of stimulation, then it’s just you have less currency in your bank account with which to direct. However, nothing is impossible. Love is not– what’s that when you have a resource that you can’t replenish?
Ari: Is inexhaustible.
Emily: Yes, love is an inexhaustible resource. All of that is very mutable and changeable and very quickly. I would argue that these energies have very potent healing capabilities as well. I don’t want to speak out of turn, I do think that multi-orgasmic man is probably the place to start if people are interested in knowing the math and semen retention. I’ve certainly heard that as well, that if you think about it specifically as life force, right, then if you are holding it, or injaculating, then you can modulate it as you see fit.
Now, I think that it very much depends on the person. Again, if someone is 17, their life force is very high, their drive is very high, and that is actually keeping them from being able to be present or to enjoy a sports game or enjoy a date with someone, then maybe the opposite is true that you want to think about ways to expend and you want to think about ways to let that energy flow through you, which is perhaps different than at 72, where you really want to do everything you can to build that life first.
You always want to look at the state of being of the person. Then what is the optimal end goal? From what I’ve heard with people who identify as female, that it’s basically just as many orgasms as much as possible, and there’s no math on like, oh, you should retain, or you should conserve, or you should keep it at a certain place. It’s just like really, like the more orgasms the better as far as brain health, skin elasticity, immune function, mood regulation. I think again, to your point, the type of love that we are making matters, and again, this is not to shame or blame anybody, I think that porn has a place, you can kill yourself with water, water can become poison at a certain dose.
If you are addicted to pornography or if you feel like it’s shrinking your ability to be present or to make love to another human being, then that might be something that you want to address. Even with my partner, he mentioned yesterday, he was not ejaculating, and after a day, I was just checking. I was like, “How are you feeling?” He was like, “Edgy.” It was like, there was a building and a retaining and a building and a retaining to the point where he has quite a lot of life force. He has quite a lot of drive. For him to retain was putting him in a direction that didn’t feel enjoyable, but it’s also possible that there’s more mastery to gain.
Ari: Very interesting. I have to say it seems a bit unfair that women can have unlimited orgasms with no consequences, but men are in this predicament where we ejaculate too much and we’ve got to pay the price for it.
Emily: Well, I think again, we’re talking about ejaculation, not orgasm. Because ostensibly, it’s like orgasm and without–
Ari: For 99% of men, those two things are one and the same.
Emily: Right, but I actually think if you’re going to play the game, if we’re truly looking for optimal, then we’re talking about orgasm without ejaculation. It’s not about not orgasming, it’s about injaculation.
Ari: If you want to have sex 17 times a day like my buddy does, then it’s all about non-ejaculatory orgasm.
Emily: Which I don’t. I don’t, but I will say this, once I started doing this work, and this is embarrassing to admit, but once I was able to couple my pleasure with my ability to manifest, it shot it way up the priority list for me. I was like, “Isn’t that interesting?” That before when it was just pleasure, when it was just about being good for you in connection and connection to the divine and connection to your partner, then I put that way down the priority list of like, “Well, I don’t have time for that, or money is more important, or being a mom is more important, or going to the gym is more important, or taking care of my team.” Everything else would take priority to pleasure.
Now that I have coupled these things in my mind, it’s like I can justify, if you will, making it more of a priority. Now that speaks very much to the capitalism and patriarchy that we’re all swimming in, but I think just naming that and saying that hopefully will inspire someone else to reprioritize their own pleasure because then like good news. When you are happy, when you are balanced, when you are radiant, when you are plugged into your own creative source of power, everything else gets easier. People want to hire you, they want to date you, they want to collaborate with you. There’s a million ways that you become more attractive and more valuable when you are plugged into the source.
John Assaraf and GOYA
Ari: Digging into manifestation specifically a bit more, how do you think about what is actually happening with manifestation? Many years ago there was the movie, The Secret that came out, and the idea that that seemed to be promoting was one of kind of like, if you focus on your vision of what your dream is, what your goals are, that it will manifest, it will come into your reality. As you know one of my closest friends and mentors is John Assaraf, who was one of the gurus in the movie, The Secret. He got so annoyed with so many people thinking of manifestation in that way that he came up with, that was the secret, the law of attraction was that, that idea of envision it, and think about it, then it will come into reality.
He created the law of Goya, G-O-Y-A, which is the law of, get off your ass. That was the law of, hey, sitting around and thinking about it and visualizing it won’t make it magically appear. This isn’t magic. You got to get off your ass and you got to come up with a plan and a strategy and a set of tactics and what you are actually going to do every day to make your vision happen. Then he’s also, obviously, his company is Neuro Jim. He talks about it very much from a neuroscience perspective. What is your paradigm about manifestation? We’ve got this sexual energy piece, and then it’s programming your whole body to fall in love with your dreams, and then how does that connect to the achievement of the dream?
Emily: It’s so funny that you say this because all morning I’ve been having this, I guess, I don’t know if it’s a slogan or what rolling around in my head and I was like, “Why is this here all morning?” It’s just pray and move your feet, pray and move your feet, pray and move your feet, pray and move your feet. I’m hearing it on repeat because I’ve been teaching manifesting now for like six or seven years like tens of thousands of people. I have literal whole masterclass on this because it’s more nuanced than making a vision board. It’s certainly not, just picture it and then don’t do anything. One of the key ingredients to manifestation is take inspired action.
Really, what we’re doing when, when we’re manifesting, it does not absolve you of your to-do list, that’s still your job. That’s still your responsibility. The 3D plane, the stuff that you can accomplish in a day, the calls you’ve got to make, the website you’ve got to build. That’s still all in your preview. The reason why we manifest is to make sure that the orders are being placed for the things that are outside of our control. It’s basically like you getting clear on nature’s to-do list. God bless the secret, like I’m actually in a group called Transformational Leadership Council with most of those people that shot that film, and God bless them because they brought a pretty hippie-dippy esoteric concept into the mainstream. It’s now a verb. I’m going secret it and google it, they really took something that was, in fact, a secret and made it pretty mainstream.
Now it’s just our opportunity to refine it. It’s our opportunity because it was a little bit kindergarten of like if I think about a Ferrari, I can manifest a Ferrari and then I will be happy. They are not kindergarten, those teachers, they are very masterful, but they had to start at kindergarten level because that’s what people were ready for in the ’80s and ’90s. Now because it has become a part of the zeitgeist, we can refine this conversation. The old paradigm is like, let me think about a Ferrari, and then I’ll get a Ferrari, and then I will be happy. Just like I did with meditation, when I started teaching it 12 years ago, I was like, “Hey, do this thing. It’s going to help you have better sex and make more money.” I didn’t care why people started meditating, I just cared that they did. Because I knew that regardless, their state of consciousness would increase.
With manifestation, where people get tripped up is that they think, well, once I manifest the thing, then I will be happy. That’s an addiction. Like anything else, that’s the, I’ll be happy when syndrome. The way that I teach manifesting, meditation has to come first. You actually have to be able to plug into the unmanifest. You have to drop into those deeper states of consciousness.
You have to be able to flood your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin on a regular repeatable and self-sufficient way, so that you are no longer under the illusion that any external person, place, or thing will make you happy or can make you fulfilled. It is only from that place of true detachment that you have the luxury of manifestation because then you no longer think that the thing will bring you the joy, which paradoxically allows you to open up your hand and actually receive the thing that nature already wants you to have.
Emily’s new podcast - Why Isn't Everyone Doing This
Ari: That was very beautifully explained. Thank you. I almost want to finish the podcast on that. That was so good.
Emily: Sometimes I just like to go to church. I felt like a good one.
Ari: You’re launching a new podcast?
Emily: Yes.
Ari: Tell me about it. I saw an image on social media on Facebook that was like a picture of you with the name of the podcast, but it was blacked out.
Emily: Job team.
Ari: You were keeping the name a secret.
Emily: When is this podcast and when is this dropping? Do we know?
Ari: I don’t know. When do you want it to drop?
Emily: Around May would be great because I’ll just say the name. I’ll say the name. Then if you guys are the first to hear it, then exciting times. The show is called, Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This? Because two times in my life I have had that, like, that like, ding ding, ding, ding, ding, like why isn’t everyone doing this? The first time was around meditation. I could feel the profanity of what was happening in my body and I could feel how the zeitgeist was about to change culturally around it.
I am having that feeling right now around sacred sexuality. I can feel the profundity of what it is doing in my life. I can feel how it is about to change the zeitgeist once we really start to reclaim this power for ourselves. These are the things that I’m really excited about talking about, but I’m bringing on all kinds of amazing guests so that they can share this, why isn’t everyone doing this? Why isn’t everyone voting? Why isn’t everyone composting? Why isn’t everyone biohacking? Why isn’t everyone managing their energy? There’s a million different ways but then also talk about the why.
Ari: That’s a really good idea. I like it.
Emily: Thanks. I’m so excited about it.
Ari: Are you going to keep it in– you were just describing a lot of different subjects. Just the name of your podcast, the branding, it could be taken in a variety of different ways.
Emily: What ways do you hear, what do you hear?
Ari: If you’re going to talk about, let’s say, composting, now you’re talking about opening this up to an infinite variety of topics that fit into this category of like like, “Hey, why isn’t everybody doing this?” Or are you going to go more the direction of specifically keeping it in the realm of meditation and sacred sexuality and emphasizing why isn’t everybody doing these two specific things?
Emily: Great question. We just shot 12 episodes because we batch them because it’s in Los Angeles. My studio’s in LA and I live in New York. I think because of the nature of the batching, I think there’s going to be a natural theme or seasons that will emerge. I’m very much leaning into this first season, if you will, being around meditation, manifestation, sacred sexuality. I don’t want to be limited exclusively to that. I think this will be more a game of batching so that as a listener and as a viewer, you get to go on a ride that you really get to from week to week. Immerse yourself in perhaps new and taboo modalities.
I’m also talking a lot about psychedelics and different mind-expanding experiences because there’s a similar level of profundity and taboo nature around both. Sacred sexuality is really just like internal psychedelics, if you will, where it’s like accessing these really potent life-changing states, but it’s happening endogenously versus with psychedelics, we can do that in a ceremonial way. The first season is certainly around meditation, sacred sexuality, and psychedelics and then open to where the show evolves.
Sex and psychedelics
Ari: Out of curiosity, in your own personal experience, if you want to divulge, have you ever mixed the exogenous and endogenous supply in the sense of the sacred sexuality whilst on MDMA, for example?
Emily: I’ve done it on a lot of different medicines. The first time I ever did what I’m calling pleasure prayer what I think historically has been called sex magic. It was post a ceremony that my partner and I had created. It was a whole journey. Then Layla, my best friend, an amazing tantra teacher, led a co-ed pleasure prayer practice for her friends for the first time, so like an initiation for both of us. I have mixed them.
Look, I don’t think you need to and I’m not campaigning for anything. People always have to check in with themselves to feel what they’re ready for and what are they resourced for, do they have the proper integration? Have they done the proper trauma clearing? All that stuff really matters going into it. For myself, I’ve been doing so much like purging work. I’m meditating now twice a day for 16 years. There’s just a level of clearing of the channel that has been happening for a long time.
I feel quite resilient in going into these practices, and I have a really robust network to help me integrate, and that’s not the case for everyone. If you’ve never meditated before, if you’ve never done breath work, if you’ve never done a silent meditation retreat and suddenly you start having really potent sex practices combined with really potent medicines, I think it can blast you a little too far open too fast. I just want to state that disclaimer but, yes, I’ve definitely played with both and there’s infinite capabilities.
Ari: Very nice. What’s a cosmic lover?
Emily: Way to bring it back.
Ari: You said you were going to tell us later on and we never got to it. As we’re wrapping up, I’m giving you one minute to answer what a cosmic lover is.
Emily: It’s bigger than boyfriend or girlfriend.
Ari: How much bigger, like 10 times bigger?
Emily: Like cosmically bigger.
Ari: 20% bigger, universe size bigger?
Emily: Cosmically, like energetically. It also feels like in our particular case we were long distance. I was in New York and he was in Austin, so we had to learn how to grow our energy bodies so that we could actually connect in a way that didn’t feel like it was a long distance. It felt like big profound love that was not necessarily confined by our 3D bodies. Then good news, if you can make love on the energetic plane then when you do get to have your 3D bodies together, then it’s like a really fun bonus round.
Ari: Cool. Is there anything else you want to tell people before we go?
Emily: Just that I really hope that they check out why isn’t everyone doing this? It’s going to be on YouTube and all the platforms. Then also if they’re just interested in just plain old life-changing Ziva meditation, there’s a cool masterclass that’s free, that they can get at zivameditation.com/podcast.
Ari: Sweet. Thank you so much, my friend. It was a pleasure and Tiara will be ready for you on round number four.
Emily: Great. I’ll get my waves ready.
Ari: There you go. I thought it was this one. The hand side to side.
Emily: Wait, this is Miss America. This is the queen because she doesn’t want to get–
Ari: [crosstalk] have it dialed in.
Emily: Yes.
Ari: Perfect. All right. Talk to you soon, my friend.
Emily: Thank you for having me.
Ari: Thank you so much for having for coming on the show again. It was always a pleasure.
Emily: What a joy.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:44 – Guest Intro
02:15 – How lockdown changed Emily’s life
06:10 – What is sacred sexuality?
09:30 – Why sex is a connection to the divine
19:20 – Ways to manifest your dream life
30:30 – Ejaculations and orgasms
39:00 – John Assaraf and GOYA
44:00 – Emily’s new podcast Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This
47:55 – Sex and psychedelics
Links
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