Book Review: Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance

Abstract

This book review summarises the Ziva meditation technique. In meditation research, the issues of universality and secularity of a technique are not thoroughly addressed. Such streamlined meditation practice could be easily adapted by anyone who has struggled with commencement, commitment, and consistency. The current need is to give equal emphasis to study such techniques of “meditation for the ordinary.

Full text

BOOK REVIEW
published: 07 August 2020
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01830
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1August 2020 | Volume 11 | Article 1830
Edited and reviewed by:
Adam B. Barrett,
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
*Correspondence:
Rashmi Gupta
rash_cogsci@yahoo.com
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Consciousness Research,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 22 June 2020
Accepted: 02 July 2020
Published: 07 August 2020
Citation:
Lodha S and Gupta R (2020) Book
Review: Stress Less, Accomplish
More: Meditation for Extraordinary
Performance.
Front. Psychol. 11:1830.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01830
Book Review: Stress Less,
Accomplish More: Meditation for
Extraordinary Performance
Surabhi Lodha and Rashmi Gupta*
Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
Keywords: meditation, stress, manifesting, mindfulness, Ziva meditation
A Book Review on
Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance
Emily Fletcher (New York, NY: William Morrow & Company), 2019, 272 pages,
ISBN:9780062747501
While browsing through the Internet, the authors tried to find a brief meditation technique to
practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. They came across the videos of Emily Fletcher teaching
Ziva meditation online. It drove them to her book titled “Stress less, accomplish more.”
Emily Fletcher is the founder of Ziva Meditation and the creator of zivaONLINE, the world’s first
online meditation training program. A powerful meditation practice transitioned her from being
a young but anxious and insomniac Broadway actress to a dedicated practitioner and a flourishing
meditation professional. In this book, she introduces a new technique called “Z-technique,” adapted
from her live, in-person Ziva meditation. This technique is specially designed for high-performing,
outcome-driven individuals, teaching them to be less stressed while increasing productivity and
achieving success.
The first chapter points out that people often cannot meditate because of super-busy schedules,
fear of failure (the meditation shame spiral), or vagueness about the practice. It educates on how
and how not to approach meditation. While introducing the Z-technique, the author argues that
investing only 25 min twice a day to this technique could significantly improve the remaining
hours qualitatively.
Chapters two and three explain that meditation gives us the control to regulate our response
to perceived stress. The long-term effect of stress from work, family, relationships, etc., is toxic
and debilitating, manifested in decreased work performance, reduced attention span, irritability,
mood swings, etc. The concept of adaptation energy is reintroduced here (Gorban et al., 2016) as
a psychological measure of one’s stress-coping capacity. This reservoir could be detoxified from
accumulated stress and abundantly replenished with energy by de-exciting the nervous system
through meditation.
The fourth chapter further argues that this Internet era, which equates rest or relaxation with
laziness and stagnancy, has seen a spike in sleep-related problems like insomnia and restlessness.
The author asserts that both sleep and meditation are equally crucial for a healthy life. While sleep
cleans our brain by cleaning out toxic by-products (Xie et al., 2013), meditation rests our entire
body, including the brain.
Adding to the further benefits of mediation, in the fifth and the sixth chapters, it is suggested
that meditation revamps the body by eliminating the built-up stress in the form of disturbed sleep,
organ inflammation, chronic acidity, dullness, and pain. Moreover, regular meditation practice
improves immune functions and treats disorders like burnout and chronic fatigue, depression,
anxiety, infertility, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, migraines, Parkinson’s disease, pain, etc. It improves

Lodha and Gupta Stress and Meditation
longevity and quality of life combined with Ayurveda—proper
diet, exercise and yoga practices, and environmental harmony.
The above claims are supported by providing neurological
evidence like changes in the right and left-brain, amygdala,
insula, corpus callosum, and telomere.
The seventh chapter posits that, unfortunately, contemporary
culture is built on the “I’ll be happy when syndrome,”
which is an abstract idea that one’s happiness is based on
future achievements. This far-fetched pursuit is exhausting and
bewildering. But luckily, meditation helps us pull out of the
future, settles into the present, and instills the fact that bliss and
contentment are within us, independent of external situations.
The explanation of the harmful effects of stress and how
meditation eradicates them is followed by the description of
Ziva or the Z-technique in chapter eight. Ziva is born out
of Nishkam Karma Yoga of Indian spiritual traditions, which
requires no focused or effortful concentration or a forcible
mind clearing (Diwan and Kamra, 2018). The Z-technique is a
sequenced combination of three “Ms”: Mindfulness, Meditation,
and Manifesting. This simple 25-min technique begins with
mindfulness of 2–3 min (aware and completely present), similar
to the “open awareness meditation” style (Lutz et al., 2008). It
is followed by 14–16 min of meditation (healing from the past),
which includes the sub-vocalization of an impersonal word like
“one.” The author calls this “whisper of an echo,” which lets our
body and mind drift into a deeply relaxed state spontaneously.
The technique ends with 2–3 min of manifesting (consciously
creating and planning our future). One offers gratitude to
everything, accompanied by seeing dreams as unfolding in the
present, and not merely magical thinking.
The ninth and tenth chapters further explain that the Z-
technique enables us to detect the subtleties and patterns in our
daily lives as it expands consciousness, making us more attuned
to the sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Hence, we become more
intuitive and insightful and able to enter the “flow state.” This
unveiling of full potential is termed as “up-leveling,” marked by
extraordinary performance and fulfillment.
The subsequent chapters explore the prospect of meditation
as a tool for the development of collective consciousness. If
one individual consciously learns to break the old habits by
finding a gap between the trigger and impulsive reactions,
this transformation in consciousness permeates other beings.
Keeping these in mind, we must make the Z-technique a non-
negotiable daily practice. The author claims that, ultimately, this
helps us become good in every sphere of life.
For the contemporary fast-paced and stress-ridden society,
the book serves as a foundational and practical guide for people
who want to improve their physical and mental well-being but
don’t know where to begin. It is an amalgamation of ancient
meditation practices, modern neuroscience, and pop psychology
sans metaphysics or spirituality. It makes meditation accessible
and understandable to all, not just high-achievers. The repetitive
explanation of stress and lack of empirically investigated data to
validate the technique is a bit unsettling. However, the book is
simple, refreshing, and rewarding.
In conclusion, the book addresses how meditation could
remarkably improve productivity and efficiency in an overly
stressed modern world. It emphasizes that meditation is
much more than the austerity of a Himalayan Yogi. In
meditation research, the issues of universality and secularity
of a technique are not thoroughly addressed. Such streamlined
meditation practice could be easily adapted by anyone who has
struggled with commencement, commitment, and consistency.
The current need is to give equal emphasis to study such
techniques of “meditation for the ordinary.”
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual
contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
REFERENCES
Diwan, S., and Kamra, M. (2018). The philosophy of “Nishkam Karma” in Arun
Joshi’s the foreigner. Galaxy 7, 28–33.
Gorban, A. N., Tyukina, T. A., Smirnova, E. V., and Pokidysheva, L. I. (2016).
Evolution of adaptation mechanisms: adaptation energy, stress, and oscillating
death. J. Theor. Biol. 405, 127–139. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.12.017
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., and Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention
regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends Cogn. Sci. 12, 163–169.
doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.005
Xie, L., Kang, H., Xu, Q., Chen, M. J., Liao, Y., Thiyagarajan, M., et al. (2013).
Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain. Science 342, 373–377.
doi: 10.1126/science.1241224
Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a
potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2020 Lodha and Gupta. This is an open-access article distributed
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original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original
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No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these
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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2August 2020 | Volume 11 | Article 1830