At last—this is it! This is the whole reason you picked up this book in the first place: You’re on board, you’ve been warned about the potential mental and physical detox, and you’re ready to learn the Z Technique! Let’s do this.
We’ll start by breaking down the 3 M’s of the Z Technique.
As a system, the Z Technique consists of three M words: Mindfulness, Meditation, and Manifesting. Each aspect contributes something important to the overall practice. And the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. To recap: Mindfulness helps you deal with stress in the present moment; meditation gets rid of stress from the past; and manifesting helps you create your dreams for the future. I like to think of the three parts of the Z Technique as the appetizer, main course, and dessert.
It’s best to do your morning sitting just after waking so you start your day fully rested and at peak creativity and productivity. Get up (a bit earlier than usual), go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, and splash a little water on your face if you like. But best to do this before breakfast, coffee, or computer time. Since coffee is a stimulant, it can counteract the de-exciting effects of the meditation portion and make you feel as if you’re having a panic attack. Just trust me on this one, and enjoy your coffee after you finish your morning sitting.
The one notable exception to the first-thing-upon-waking-after-going-to-the-bathroom rule is if you’re a parent of a young child (or children). Y’all have different priorities, and your morning is definitely not your own in this stage of your life. I get that things are a little catch-as-catch-can for you, so simply adapt this morning routine as best you can for your schedule. If your child has a predictable sleep pattern, I would recommend setting an alarm half an hour before he or she usually wakes up so you’ll have that time for yourself. It’s worth it. I promise. Similarly, you may need to feed your pets before you do your sitting—all good. Simply know that the goal is to do this as close to waking as possible, because once the momentum of your day starts, it’s much harder to get to the chair.
Your second sitting will occur sometime in midafternoon or early evening—not immediately after lunch, since the tryptophan in your turkey sandwich might make you sleepy—but anytime after you’re done digesting lunch and before your evening meal. For most people with typical work schedules, their second meditation falls somewhere between noon and eight p.m., ideally before the afternoon slump sets in. The goal is to proactively give your brain the rest and recharging it needs to stay in top form for the entire day, rather than going cross-eyed staring at your computer at five p.m. or reaching for a third or fourth cup of coffee to power through your latest project. You don’t have to be rigidly attached to the same schedule every day; if you normally meditate around three thirty p.m. but you have a call scheduled that day, simply bump your meditation earlier so you’ll be finished before your attention is needed elsewhere. (This will also help you feel as if you have superhuman negotiating powers during the call.)
Remember that it’s important not to put off your meditation until too late in the evening. Just as you wouldn’t be well served by a nap at nine p.m. if you plan on going to bed at eleven, meditating too late can make sleep difficult, since your body will have just had such deep and restorative rest during meditation. If you meditate too close to bedtime, you may find yourself lying awake with tons of energy and loads of great ideas—but no one to tell them to but your cat.
When you’re ready to begin the Z Technique, consider where you’ll physically place yourself. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessary to have one designated space in your home decked out with candles, incense, white string lights draped artfully from the ceiling, and Enya playing on a loop. Is that lovely? Sure. Is it relaxing? Probably. Is it necessary? Nope. One of the drums I like to beat over and over is this: Meditation is the ultimate portable device. Do it on the train, in a park, at your desk, in the dark—it sounds like a children’s book, but the truth is that you really can meditate in any setting. Anywhere you have the ability to think a thought and a place to sit, you will now have the ability (read superpower) to meditate.
If you have the choice between bright or dim lights, a loud setting or a quiet one, go with the low-light, low-noise option if you can, simply because it will be more enjoyable. If you want to create a special space that’s decorated in a calming or meaningful way, that’s totally fine—it’s just not necessary for this to be effective. Meditation is about internal change that extends to your external life. Any space can become a meditative space because you bring that significance to it simply through your intention to meditate and having solid training in a technique designed for you, not for a monk.
The only necessary thing is a place to sit with your back supported and your head free. Your legs can be crossed, stretched out, pulled up toward your chest—comfort is key. Make sure you’re able to lean against something while allowing your neck to flop forward or backward as it will. (Remember all those lectures on posture your mom gave you growing up? Now’s the time to toss those out the window.)
This may be confusing if you’re used to seeing beautiful pictures of Himalayan yogis or lululemon-clad women sitting cross-legged on a cliff with nothing supporting their very erect spines, doing something fancy with their fingers. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it certainly does make for a great photo, but that style of meditation is more monk-like. Take a moment to ask yourself, Am I a monk? If the answer is no, then don’t stress about perfect posture or an elaborate sitting ritual. Remember, the Z Technique is all about meditating to get good at life. This is meditation for busy people with busy minds and it is designed to be integrated into your life on the go.
Now find a comfortable seat, and we’ll begin with the mindfulness portion of our practice—the first of the 3 M’s. Remember that mindfulness is the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment: Don’t fret about what your meditation is going to be like in a few minutes or try to get your desires ready for the manifestation exercise. At Ziva, we like to use mindfulness as a runway into the meditation. It is more of a left-brain, waking-state practice, so it gives you something to do on your way into the restful surrender that is meditation.
Begin with your eyes closed, your back supported, and your head free.
Take a moment to enjoy the easy flow of your breath in and out of your lungs, then gradually shift your attention to all the sounds happening around you. Hear what you’re hearing. Listen for the most prominent sound in the room—maybe it’s your coworker on the phone or the air-conditioning clicking on. Then, after a few breaths, gently shift your awareness to the subtlest sound you can detect—the sound of your own breathing or ambient noise from the hallway. Your “goal” is to attune yourself to the subtle sonic differences that surround you, gently bringing your awareness to every sound happening in the space right now.
Enjoy this for a few more breaths and then, on your next inhale, gently bring your awareness to the most prominent tactile sensation in your body right now—perhaps it’s the feeling of your bum in the chair or a sore knee. Recognize it and then shift your attention to the subtlest tactile sensation, whether it’s your hair lightly brushing your neck or the feeling of the air entering and exiting your lungs. Take care that you’re not judging the sensations as “good” or “bad”—simply notice what is the most prevalent and most subtle.
After a few moments, shift your awareness to your sense of sight. Yes, your eyes will be closed, but what can you see? Blackness? A sliver of light coming through the space where your eyelids meet? Perhaps you even see colors in your mind’s eye.
Gradually shift your attention to your sense of taste. Even though you aren’t currently eating something (right?), your mouth will always have some kind of taste to it, whether it’s toothpaste or coffee or peanut butter. After a few breaths, start to notice the subtlest taste—maybe you can taste the salad dressing from your lunch or the minty flavor of the gum you enjoyed afterward, or maybe it’s nothing more than a sense of your mouth being acidic or dry.
Finally, let yourself smell what you’re smelling. As you continue to breathe easily, notice the most prominent smell you can detect. Is it your own hairspray or cologne, or the candle you’re burning? What is the subtlest smell in the room—flowers, or simply the smell of dust heating in the radiator? Perhaps you notice the absence of smell entirely.
Now I invite you to pull the lens of your awareness back and simultaneously bring all five senses into your awareness at once: Notice the loudest and softest sounds, the most prominent and gentlest touches, the light and the darkness, the taste and the hint of a taste, the strongest smell and the weakest. As you bring these all together concurrently, you are awakening your simultaneity of consciousness—your complete awareness of surroundings and self.
Let your breath be easy and natural as you start to allow yourself to include everything happening around you into this mindfulness experience. Giving yourself permission to be in the moment, the right now. Letting go of the old idea that noise is a “distraction” and simply including everything that is happening inside this experience. Flow through all five senses a few times until you feel like you can start to hold all five in your awareness at the same time. Give yourself permission to be so deliciously human and present. Your stress hangs out in the past and the future; your bliss is always found in the now. This simple but powerful exercise will help you use your five senses as a tool to get yourself into the body and into the now. Use it to move toward your bliss, not away from your stress. This is a subtle but important distinction.
You may want to spend a few days practicing Come to Your Senses on its own. This will help you handle stress in the present moment. Then, when you’re ready, you can add the meditation portion. If you’re interested in having an audio of me guiding you through the mindfulness portion of the technique, you can access a video of Come to Your Senses at www.zivameditation.com/bookbonus.
After you complete the mindfulness, move on to the meditation portion, the second M of the Z Technique, in which you’ll use the mantra to de-excite your nervous system to help you access that deep, healing rest.
As you transition from the mindfulness portion to the meditation portion, you can take the sense of expanded awareness and inclusiveness with you into the surrender that is meditation. (Surrender, by the way, sometimes carries the negative connotation of “giving up,” but I invite you to think of it as trusting your body, trusting this practice, and ultimately trusting that your intuition will rise to the surface so you can trust yourself even more.)
Surrender: Trusting that Nature has more information than you do; the act of releasing yourself to something bigger, wiser, and more powerful than you. It does not mean giving up or quitting—it means trusting that a higher power (God, Nature, the universe, whatever term you use) has your back!
The key to making the transition as seamless as possible is to let your mantra come to you. You don’t say, Okay, brain! Mantra time! and then start chanting the mantra over and over to yourself; instead, let it bubble up from the back of your brain effortlessly and innocently. Imagine that your mantra is that super-hot person at the bar who you know is watching you; you definitely want to engage, but you don’t want to just run up and start aggressively talking a mile a minute. Be a little coy and let your mantra come to you.
Don’t actually say the mantra out loud; that would be chanting, which is a different practice altogether. In fact, you don’t even have to be precise about the tempo. Just let it bubble up and then echo through your thoughts, more like a sound or an instrument than a word. I specifically and deliberately chose the mantra or “mind anchor” we are using, but this is not about the word itself.
Just what is this mysterious mantra I keep teasing you with? If you were bracing for some magical sound that will transport you into a cosmic abyss of black hole nothingness, I’m sorry to disappoint you—this word is very simple. Take comfort in the fact that it’s the combination of the mantra and the effortless technique that makes this meditation so effective. When people learn with us in person at Ziva, they are given their own personalized mantra. In the online training, you are taught how to choose your own mantra from a curated list. I wish I could deliver the same level of guidance via a book, but I have no way of making sure you have face-to-face support or finish reading this book to fully understand the capabilities and impact of this new tool. Since the personalized mantras are so powerful, we have purposefully chosen a gentler, universal word for you to use as your mental anchor.
The word you’ll use is simple and effective. You’ll gently hear the word one in the background of your mind, helping to usher you into the subtler states of consciousness.
Remember what we discussed about mantras back in chapter 1—how they’re sounds designed to function as “mind vehicles” to de-excite your nervous system? And remember how you promised you wouldn’t make the mistake of regarding Mindfulness, Meditation, and Manifestation as “magical thinking”? Well, I’m holding you to that. One as your mantra is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The word could potentially mean a dozen different things: unity; becoming number one in your field; the one thing you are prioritizing. It could absolutely signify any of those things to you. But it doesn’t have to. You can simply enjoy the sound of the word, happening faintly in the background of your mind. The whole point is to allow the mind vehicle to induce this deep, healing rest while you enjoy a brief surrender—just a few minutes out of your day—and the benefits it brings. The point is not for you to ruminate on the word in an effort to uncover some deeper significance or profound insight. To do so would be attempting to steer the direction of your meditation, which either shifts you into “contemplation” or launches you out of the nishkam karma style of meditation entirely and into focusing. You will start to find that the word takes on a life of its own. It will get fainter and finer over time.
I can hear you now: That seems a bit too simple. I say that word a dozen times a day and it hasn’t done any of the stress-releasing or brain-boosting things you’ve been talking about for the past seven chapters. Sometimes the most profound truths are the simplest. And we never want to confuse simplicity with weakness. The power in this practice comes from the simplicity.
You’re absolutely correct: The word won’t induce any mental change if you’re using it in your left-brain, waking state with the intention to communicate an idea. In this instance, you’re using the word as an anchor and setting your body and mind up for deep rest and surrender. A car key doesn’t do too much sitting on your kitchen counter, either. You have to know which car to put it in and how to turn it on.
The single most important piece of meditation advice you can hold with you as you dive in is this: Thoughts are not the enemy. Remember that the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily, so please don’t try to give your mind a command to be silent. That will never work and will only lead to frustration. Instead, know that thoughts are okay—they’re actually a useful part of this process and now you have your trusty anchor, one, to come back to when you notice you’ve taken a mental field trip.
Your meditation period—the part of the Z Technique that you will soon see can feel a bit like a nap sitting up—should last about fourteen minutes. Eventually you will need only about one minute of the mindfulness appetizer. So one minute of mindfulness leading into fourteen minutes of meditation equals fifteen. Set your internal alarm for fifteen minutes—you may be surprised how accurate your natural clock is if you give it a chance to be trained. It’s no problem if you want to check your watch. I encourage it. Keep it located nearby and check as often as you like! You may even find that you tend toward a certain pattern. Personally, I find myself checking halfway through and then feel myself come out of the meditation right at my end time. I advise students who are beginning their practices to set a backup alarm for a few minutes after the allotted sitting time. That will help ease paranoia about going long and missing a whole day of meetings if you accidentally fall asleep. (In eleven years of twice-daily meditations, I’ve only fallen asleep twice, so it’s actually far less of a concern than most people think.) This is one of the reasons it’s so important to sit with your back supported but your head free; if your head is supported, you’re much more likely to click over into sleep.
Ideally, however, I want you to train your own internal clock so that you can move away from relying on any kind of an alarm at all. But why can’t I set an alarm, Emily? Simply put, they’re too alarming. Instead, simply check a conveniently located timepiece. It’s best to use a watch or a clock or the cable box and throw your phone in the nearest river, but if you don’t own any other timepiece and have to use your phone, there’s a free app called The Clocks that turns your phone into a giant digital clock, so you don’t have to touch or swipe or enter any codes to see the time. If you’re curious about how much time has passed, just check. If your fifteen minutes aren’t up yet, simply close your eyes and float back to the mantra. I would rather you check your clock a hundred times than get yanked out of the meditation by your alarm going off (yes, even that gentle om from your meditation timer app). And the reason for that is something I call “the meditation bends.”
The Meditation Bends: Headaches, eye strain, and irritability caused by coming up and out of your meditation too quickly.
In scuba diving, if you surface too quickly, the gas bubbles trapped in your body’s tissues will expand, causing the bends, a painful and even dangerous physical sensation in which your joints cramp closed. In meditation, if you pull yourself out too quickly, you’ll likely deal with headaches, eye strain, and irritability. The brain and optic nerves don’t have pain receptors, so they can’t tell you they are hurting the instant you jolt out of meditation, but a sudden transition from resting to waking state can be too shocking. Instead, we want to allow the brain and optic nerve to gently readjust to a waking state. No alarms except for your backup, don’t-sleep-through-the-day-while-you’re-learning-to-meditate insurance policy. If you come out of your meditation too quickly and it causes irritability and headaches about thirty minutes later, then you’ve just wasted your time; you can have headaches and irritability without meditating twice a day.
The way to avoid the meditation bends is to add a two-minute “safety stop” at the end of your meditation, in which you cut the cord to the anchor of your mantra and allow yourself to float back upward to a waking state while keeping your eyes closed. This allows your eyes and brain to gradually readjust. And it’s during this two-minute period that you incorporate your practice of manifesting.
We start the manifesting portion from a place of gratitude. This doesn’t have to take a long time. Simply ask yourself the question What am I grateful for right now? Practice gratitude for the relationships in your life, for your home and health, for your family and for opportunities, for the beautiful sunset last night, or for making your bus by the skin of your teeth this morning. Whatever is on your heart that makes you feel thankful, acknowledge it. Nature/God/higher power—whatever you call it—likes to be paid attention to, just like the rest of us. You know how we all have that one friend who never seems grateful for anything—they just ask and ask and ask, and you eventually stop doing favors for that person because they don’t seem to care enough to give you a shout-out or offer help in return? Don’t be that person. Recognize the beautiful gifts in your life, no matter how insignificant or clichéd or esoteric or shallow they might seem. There is no wrong way to show thankfulness for your blessings except not to acknowledge them at all. This may seem simple (are you noticing a pattern of simple-but-powerful tools here?), but there is some fascinating neuroscience research coming out about gratitude. Scientists are finding that even on the days when you don’t feel like you have anything to be thankful for, just asking the question “What am I grateful for?” is enough to change the chemistry of your brain.1 This simple practice trains you to look for everything that is going right in your life so you can start to more effectively water the flowers and not the weeds.
The more you stimulate these neural pathways through practicing gratitude, the stronger and more automatic they become. On a scientific level, this is an example of Hebb’s Law, which states, “neurons that fire together wire together.” But it’s also something you can see plainly in everyday life: If you’re forging a new path through the woods, the first trip is the most challenging, and you have to be deliberate. But the more times the path is traveled, the more defined it becomes and the easier it is to follow. Your brain works the same way: The more times a certain neural pathway is activated (neurons firing together), the less effort it takes to stimulate the pathway the next time (neurons wiring together).
The gratitude is setting you up for the third M of the Z Technique: manifesting. Every gold-medal athlete, every Oscar or Tony winner, every successful CEO has first created a mental blueprint of how they will go about pursuing their goals and what it will feel like when they accomplish them. After you finish your fifteen minutes of mindfulness and meditation, you will check your timepiece, let go of the mantra anchor, and move into the safety stop. The safety stop only takes two minutes. You begin with a moment of gratitude, then I invite you to think of one dream, one goal, or one desire and imagine it as if it were your current reality. This is really the trick to manifesting: Imagine the dream as if it is happening now. Don’t picture it as something that will happen down the road; give yourself permission to see, feel, hear, taste, and smell every aspect of that desire as if it were happening to you right now in your current, immediate reality. Explore it in your mind like you’re a little kid playing pretend. Claim it as yours. As you take the time to marinate in this dream, allowing your imagination to color in the details all around you, pay particular attention to how this feels. We all think we are chasing a goal, but the reality is, we’re chasing how we assume the goal will make us feel. This exercise gives us the gift of experiencing the joy, the accomplishment, the generosity in the now.
Once you can feel and see this dream happening all around you, ask yourself who would be the first person you call to share the news with. Imagine that conversation. What would you say? Are you crying? Laughing? Now imagine their response. Are they laughing? Crying? Squealing with delight? Take a moment to receive their enthusiasm and let that fuel your dream.
And then, when you’re ready, slowly open your eyes and come back to your surroundings. Congratulations! You, my friend, have just completed your very first Z Technique!
This version of meditation may be different from every version you’ve ever heard of before. I am suggesting you don’t have to clear your mind, that it’s okay to notice and even include all the sounds and sensory experiences happening around you; there is no focusing. And on top of all that, you don’t need to set an alarm or use a meditation app to time your sitting. If this all seems too far from the disciplined, focused attempts at clearing your mind you’ve used before, ask the question How’s that going for me? Am I noticing a significant return on my time invested? Have I been committing to a daily practice? If you’re ready to try something different, here’s the recap of what we have learned so far:
Please review this chapter as often as you need to, until the process of transitioning from one phase of the Z Technique to the next becomes second nature; I would hate for you to pull yourself out of a delicious meditation just to rifle through these pages trying to remind yourself of what the next step is. Even if you do, however, be gentle with yourself and remember that even a “bad” meditation is better than no meditation at all. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and don’t let good be the enemy of done. If you forget what to do next or find yourself swinging your mantra around your brain like a baseball bat or forget to put your phone on silent and your grandma calls to say hello smack-dab in the middle of your session—no sweat. You didn’t just derail the entire course of your meditation career. You are making progress, and you will continue to do so each time you get in the chair. If you want extra support, you can always listen to me guiding you through certain portions of this practice at www.zivameditation.com/bookbonus. Remember that a meditation practice is just that—a practice. There is no perfection.
Before we move on, it’s important that I address something that is asked in every class I teach: “Can I use this style of meditation to calm myself if I am in a ‘stressful’ situation, like being stuck in traffic?” The answer is a resounding no—at least for the meditation portion. You can safely use the Come to Your Senses portion with your eyes open. There are several calming mindfulness exercises on the Ziva website (zivameditation.com) that can be great to employ in those types of situations. However, given that you will want to stay fully awake, alert, and wholly cognizant of your surroundings when you’re operating a motor vehicle, supervising small children, or standing in front of a roomful of people, you definitely do not want to send yourself into that fourth state of consciousness.
The point of the Z Technique is to help you prime your brain and nervous system in such a way that you’re better prepared to respond to these types of situations in a healthy and productive way, not to bring you immediate calm in the moment. What the Z Technique does is actually help get to the root of the problem, treating the cause rather than the symptom.
It would be ludicrous to try to give your heart a command to stop beating or your nails a command to stop growing. Your body simply doesn’t work that way, and yet people have this notion that an “ideal” meditation is one in which they are able to turn their minds off. I’ve been meditating for more than eleven years, and I’ve never once had a thought-free meditation. Not one time. So either I have no business teaching this, or else a completely quiet mind is not the point. You can decide for yourself after you finish this book and have a few weeks of practice under your belt; in the meantime, please be gentle with yourself, but even beyond being gentle, allow yourself to be curious. I challenge you to let go of all your preconceived notions of what meditation should be and simply use this tool and see how you feel. This is actually why I titled this book Stress Less, Accomplish More—it’s ultimately about the end result. If you’re allergic to the word meditation, great. Just try the Z Technique and see how you feel. I cannot say this enough—if you’ve tried meditation and felt like you were failing because you couldn’t “clear your mind,” that is not a problem with this kind of practice. Give yourself the gift of a beginner’s mind. Beginners learn more than experts eight days a week.
Thinking during meditation is actually an indicator that some stress is leaving the body. This is where the healing happens. Better out than in, right? When you feel those thoughts coming up and out, know that it is stress exiting your nervous system.
If you remember just one thing from this whole book, let it be this: A deep meditation is no better for you than a shallow meditation. I’m going to say that again for dramatic effect. A deep meditation is no better for you than a shallow meditation. I am defining a deep meditation as one in which the time passes quickly, you have few thoughts, and you generally enjoy the sitting. In a shallow meditation, the time may pass more slowly, you may feel like you are just sitting there having thoughts the whole time, and you may not enjoy the sitting itself. Both are beneficial for you. A deep meditation means the body is getting deep rest; a shallow meditation means the body is releasing stresses in the form of thoughts. One is not better for you than the other. Write it on your mirror, make a T-shirt, tattoo it on your forehead. I know it sounds crazy and counter to everything you have likely heard about meditation so far, but it’s true.
Because everyone is unique, it’s impossible to say exactly what your meditation will look like in precise terms. However, meditations generally fall into one of five categories—three of which are effective, two of which are not.
Please note that these examples are not either/or scenarios. You’re probably going to experience all five of them during any one meditation. Also, the example that follows is not a real mantra, so don’t try this at home.
When you sit down to meditate, your back is supported, your head is free, you check the time before you begin, and you do the math for your ending time—15 minutes for the mindfulness and meditation, then approximately 2 minutes of manifesting as you come out of your state of deep rest. Then, close your eyes and let that mantra come to you like a hot person in a bar.
You settle down for your meditation, taking a few seconds to simply chill with your eyes closed. Once you pick up your mantra and think it a few times, you then allow it to get fainter and finer like a whisper in the background of your mind, noticing how it may get longer or shorter, louder or softer, faster or slower, all on its own, after you’ve let it echo a few times. Eventually, it might separate from all meaning and simply become a sound. You start to think your mantra:
(Ziva.)[Yes, I am using the word Ziva as the prototype mantra in these examples.] (Ziva. Ziva. Ziiiva.) That’s a weird word, Ziva. Weird. Word. Weird word. I wonder why W makes a “wuh” sound. Wuh. Hawaii. How do you pronounce Hawaii? “Hawai-uh”? Wait, no, I think it’s actually “Hawai’i” with that glottal stop toward the end. Huh. Wuh. Woah, I wonder how much time has passed? Let me just check. Five minutes. Okay. That wasn’t so bad. I bet I can do another five.
(Ziva. Ziva.) Diva. Ziva. Diva. Viva. Ziva diva viva. Ziva Las Vegas! That’s not it, it’s “Viva Las Vegas.” Viva. (Ziva.) Huh. Oh, crap, I left money in my pants pocket. Do not forget that, money in my pants, money in my pants, money in my pants. Wait, how am I going to remember that? I know—that Ellen DeGeneres bit where she talks about “M in the P, M in the P, M in the P.” Oh no, now I have to pee. Wait—Ellen is a meditator, isn’t she? I wonder if I’m as good a meditator as she is. Um, am I judging my meditation against a celebrity? This doesn’t feel very enlightened. That must’ve been five minutes. Let me just check. One minute. Well, okay, then. Back to the mantra.
Even if you’re having thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts, provided that you sat down with the intention to meditate and let your mantra come to you like a faint, faint idea—and if you take the safety stop at the end—this is correct meditation. You are allowed to take mental field trips and go off on thought trains. You simply gently float back to that mantra when you realize you’re off. Remember, thoughts are not the enemy of meditation; effort is. Thoughts are an indicator that stress is leaving the body.
Also, keep in mind that anytime you’re curious how much time has passed, you can simply open your eyes and check your watch or your clock or your phone (if it has to be your phone, make sure it’s on airplane mode and that you’ve downloaded the app The Clocks; see here). If it’s not your ending time (15 minutes for mindfulness and meditation, then an additional 2 for manifesting), just close your eyes and pick the mantra back up. Don’t let your curiosity about the passage of time consume you. After a few days, you’ll start to be amazed how accurate your internal clock is if you take the time to train it.
You sit down, your back is supported, your head is free, you check the time before you begin, you do the math, you close your eyes. You let the mantra come to you . . .
(Ziva. Ziva. Ziiiiivaaaa . . .) Oh, wow. You know what I need to get done this week? My taxes! Ugh, I do not want to wade through all my receipts. Although that will be a good way to do the homework from the book and tally up how much money stress is costing me. I need to make sure I get that on the schedule and—what was I doing again? Oh, right. Meditating. Excuse me, taxes, I need to go talk to my mantra . . . (Ziva . . . Ziva . . .) Should I get bangs? I really liked the bangs I saw on that woman at the store the other day. But would that style work with my face shape? I think it might, but am I ready for that much of a hair commitment? Wait—what was I supposed to be doing? Meditating! Excuse me, bangs, I need to go visit my mantra . . . (Ziva . . . Ziva . . .) I wonder what my dog is thinking about right now. Probably treats. Man, he loves treats. I wish I loved anything as much as my dog loves treats. If he had a mantra, I bet his mantra would be “Treats. Treats. Trrreats. Treats.” That’s not my mantra. What was my mantra? Oh, right. (Ziva.) Treats. (Ziva.) Treats. (Ziva . . .)
In this example, your mantra’s gotten a little bit fainter and finer, but you have thoughts going on at the same time. You will find this happens much of the time. Here’s how you want to handle thoughts and mantra happening simultaneously: Treat it like a party.
At this party, your mantra is the guest of honor and your thoughts are the guests. The invited guests are the thoughts you like having; the uninvited guests are the thoughts you don’t like having. The invited guests are “I just got a raise at work,” “I'm dating this amazing new person,” “I think I’m the best meditator in the land,” and so forth. The uninvited guests are “I don’t know if I’m doing this right,” “I don’t like this mantra,” “I feel like I’m wasting my time,” “I have a thousand e-mails to answer,” “I don’t know how to make rent this month,” and so on. These are your stupid, stressy, uninvited guests. But here’s the thing: At this party, you’re the host of the party, not the bouncer. I’ll bet you’re infinitely capable of going to a party and holding hands with your date—in this case, the guest of honor, the mantra—and having a conversation with plenty of other people at the same time.
Now, this party analogy is a good one. You’re going to use it a lot. Some of the parties you’re going to love—a collection of a few of your closest friends at an exquisite dinner party. Other meditations are going to be more like overcrowded frat parties with loud music, strobe lights, and a hundred drunk guys barfing on the lawn. Whatever kind of party your meditation ends up being, remember, you are the host, not the bouncer.
I want you to take this analogy pretty literally. Let’s say you’re at a party and you’re talking to someone, and after a few moments you realize they’re pretty annoying, with nothing interesting to say and some kickin’ bad breath.
Rather than simply cutting them off and walking away rudely, you’re going to let them finish their thought, then you will find a polite way to exit: “Oh, pardon me, I’m going to chat with an old friend,” and then gracefully exit in that direction.
You turn and you go toward the positive, not away from the negative. The same thing is true in meditation. When you realize your thoughts have taken you off the mantra, turn your mind gently toward the mantra rather than steering your mind away from the thoughts.
The third thing that can happen during meditation is what I like to call the “bliss field.” It looks a little something like this: You begin to meditate, pick up your mantra, and . . .
(Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. . . . . .) ( . . . . . . ) ( . . . . . . ) Woah! What just happened, I think I was supposed to be meditating. Okay, right. (Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva . . .) ( . . . . . . ) ( . . . . . . )
You have a momentary thought of, Oh, wait, I’m off the mantra, but the last thought you had was the mantra. There’s this little space of time there that you can’t really account for. Maybe you were drifting or maybe you were dozing or maybe it felt like sleeping. One minute felt like one hundred, or fifteen minutes felt like two. It’s easy to confuse this with sleep. The thing is, it isn’t sleep. This is the lazy man’s meditation; you’re actually falling into the bliss field—that fourth state of consciousness I’ve been telling you so much about.
Now, here’s the trick about the bliss field: You’re never going to know you’re there when you’re there. By definition, you’ve moved beyond the realm of thinking and into the realm of being, so you’re never going to have a thought like, Oh, yes, I’m currently in the bliss field and it’s currently amazing.
Normally, you know it right afterward when you’re like, Oh, wait, I think I was just doing it! I was just in the bliss field! Wait, now I want it back! Wait, Ziva, Ziva, Zivaaaaaaaaaaa! Then you start chasing the dragon a little bit, which is all normal in the first few days. What’s going to get easier is just letting it come when it wants to and letting it last for as long as it needs to.
These first three examples are all perfectly splendid things to have happen during the meditation portion of the Z Technique, and you’ll most likely experience all three during any given sitting.
Now let’s move on to two things that commonly happen during meditation where you’re going to want to course correct.
The fourth thing that can happen during meditation is contemplation. It looks a little something like this:
(Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Ziva.) I wonder if I should go to the gym after work? Duh, yes, you should always go to the gym after work. You always feel better when you go. (Ziva. Ziva.) Oh, but I have a big work project due tomorrow. Oh, I should definitely finish that project. (Ziva.) But I really want to go to the gym, but I hate it when I’m there! Oh, if I go to the gym, I’m going to feel guilty about not doing this project. (Ziva. Ziva. Ziva.) Hang on, mantra. I need to figure this out. If I do this project, I’m going to feel guilty about not going to the gym. Argh! Should I finish my work or go to the gym? Work or work out? Work or work out? Oh, wait. I think I was supposed to be meditating. What was my mantra again? (Ziva.) I SAID TO WAIT A MINUTE, MANTRA! Work or work out? Work or work out?
In this example, you realize you’re off the mantra, but you choose to stay off the mantra because you have to finish solving the great mystery of whether to work or work out. This is one of the few things we can do “wrong” in meditation. When you realize you’re off the mantra and choose to stay off, this moves you from meditation into contemplation, and you have the other 231/2 hours of your day to contemplate. You don’t need to read this book in order to learn how to contemplate.
For these 15 minutes, twice a day, you’re going to meditate, and all that means is that when you realize you’re off the mantra, you easily, gently float back to it. Now, the trick about contemplation is that all these thoughts that are bubbling up are going to feel super relevant, super important, and super special; but 99.9 percent of the time, they’re not. Most of the time, your brain is simply taking out the mental trash.
No need to have a journal next to you to write down every single thought that comes up. Just let it go and trust that amazing ideas are going to be flowing more freely in your waking state. Anything worth knowing will still be there for you after the meditation is over.
The only real difference between contemplation and the thought train is that in contemplation, you realize you’re off the mantra and actively choose to remain off. In the thought train, once you realize you’ve wandered off the mantra, you simply allow yourself to drift back to it. It is 100 percent fine to have a thousand thoughts swirling around in your brain, but when your mantra starts tapping you on the shoulder, that means it’s time to go back to the task at hand: namely, destressing. Do not ignore that or put it off.
You settle down, close your eyes, pick up your mantra:
(Ziva . . . Ziva . . .) I wonder what my dog is thinking about right now. Probably treats. Man, he loves treats— NO! Shut up, brain! Not the treats again. ZIVA! ZIVA! ZIVA! I wish I loved anything as much as my dog loves— ZIVA! ZIIIIIVAAAAA!
The fifth thing that can happen during meditation is that we use the mantra like a baseball bat to whack the thoughts away. You start thinking, Even though Emily said she’s been meditating for more than eleven years and she’s never had a thought-free meditation, I bet secretly she’s over there swimming around in the bliss field the whole time, so anytime I have a thought, I’m just going to swat it away like I’m playing an intense game of Whac-A-Mole. I'm just going to be like, mantra, mantra, mantra, mantra! and knock out every single thought that comes near me.
This experience stands in direct opposition to the concept of union attained by action hardly taken. Your mantra is not a baseball bat with which to beat back thoughts. Just as guests at a cocktail party would be (rightly) disturbed if you ran around bludgeoning them with a Louisville Slugger, you should treat both your mantra and your thoughts as guests. When you realize you’ve taken a mental field trip (which is allowed), gently float back to your mantra.
It’s really tempting to use the baseball bat if you’re in a noisy environment and you’re judging those noises as bad or as a “distraction.” It’s understandable to want to use the mantra to bat away all the noise. Please don’t do that. Just let the noise be part of the experience. Keep in mind that noise is no barrier to meditation. Anywhere you can think a thought, you can think the mantra. If you can think the mantra, you can meditate!
What you’re going to find is that the less effort you use with the mantra, the more powerful it is. You’re probably already noticing that if you start focusing or concentrating or furrowing your brow, you’re going to start getting headaches right up in the prefrontal cortex, which is your brain training you more effectively than I ever could. But if you let the mantra be a whisper of an echo in the background of your mind, then it starts to act as an anchor and begins to de-excite the nervous system.
Basically, when you focus or concentrate on the mantra, your brain’s going to punish you with headaches. If you use it like a feather, like a whisper of an echo to de-excite your nervous system, your brain is going to treat you with dopamine and serotonin. Isn’t your brain so, so smart?
Here’s the trick about the baseball bat. We usually use it when we are trying to get to the bliss field. The more you try to get there, the farther away you’ll move from it. Know that accessing the bliss field is not the point or the goal. And it would be a terrible goal to have, because you would never know if you had accomplished it until you were already out of it again. The good news is that it doesn’t matter how long you’re in the bliss field because you’re moving beyond the realm of thinking into the realm of being, which means you’re moving beyond the realm of time. This is not the place to be competitive. You don’t get any gold stars for staying in the bliss field for two extra minutes. That is not up to you. The bliss field is just one of the things that can happen during the cycle that is meditation. It is not the point, the goal, or the only time you are getting benefit. And paradoxically, the harder you try to access it, the further away you will get from it. So easy does it, friends. Give yourself permission to be sloppy, even lazy, with your practice. It will make you so much less lazy in the rest of your life.
Just as you can’t command your heart to stop beating or your mind to stop thinking, you can’t will your brain into one type of sitting or another. Your body and mind will work together with your mantra to steer the unstressing process in whatever direction your body needs to go. The harder you try to control the experience, the less effective it’s going to be; even if it runs counter to every high-achieving instinct you possess, the faster you accept that, the less “effort” you put into the actual act of meditating, the better it will be for you. Remember when we talked about surrender? This is where it becomes key: Your job is not to do anything at all, beyond keeping to the schedule of twice-a-day sittings within the framework I’ve laid out. Simply get your buns in the chair twice a day every day—and trust me, that is plenty challenging. Once you get to the chair, let the mantra take over. Trust that your body knows how to heal itself, and that you know how to give it the rest it needs. This is nishkam karma yoga, baby. Union attained by action hardly taken. This is your new program—twice a day every day.
The Z Technique Daily Program
Homework: Take out your phone or calendar and schedule your next twenty-one days of meditation. For real. It will only take you five minutes, but it will make or break your meditation career. If it isn’t scheduled, it won’t get done. Schedule your morning alarm for twenty minutes earlier than you usually wake up so you have time to do your morning practice before breakfast. Then look at each day and decide where on your oh-so-full calendar you will prioritize yourself, your brain, and your performance.
You can’t pour from an empty cup, so get in the habit of making yourself a priority. Trust me, everyone else will thank you.