Why Isn't Everyone Doing This? with Emily Fletcher

What if sustainability only sustains the status quo, and the real goal is to leave everything more alive?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with her dear friend Tony Cho, regenerative placemaker, founder of Future of Cities, and author of Generation Regeneration. Tony grows up in an ashram his grandmother founded, becomes a Miami nightclub promoter, helps transform the Wynwood Arts District, and now leads the Regenaissance, a movement to build places and communities that give back more than they take.

Together they define regeneration in plain language, trace where the lie of scarcity begins, and look at why a cold plunge in your building means little when the street outside is unsafe. Tony shares what Chief Nixiwaka of the Yawanawá teaches about community and dying, and what the Phoenix Arts & Innovation District in Jacksonville is proving. Emily connects it to Ziva: a regenerative future starts with regenerative minds, and a nervous system that feels safe has more capacity to build solutions.

Tony also opens up about grieving his late wife, Ximena, in public, the grandmother who threatens to cut him off when he moves to Argentina, and what a lifetime of ups and downs teaches him about manifestation, readiness, and self-love.

In this episode, Tony explores:

What regeneration means in plain language: giving more than you take, and drinking while you pour

Why sustainability only sustains the status quo

Where the lie of scarcity begins, and why Tony calls it a misallocation, not a shortage

Why one green building, or one cold plunge, can’t make a place regenerative

What Chief Nixiwaka of the Yawanawá says about aging, dying, and village life

The 15-minute city, Copenhagen’s swimmable harbor, and Milan’s Bosco Verticale as proof points

How an ashram kid becomes a nightclub promoter and a Wynwood developer, and why he says he stewards this work, he doesn’t own it

What grieving his late wife in community gives him and the people around him

His take on manifestation: purpose behind the call, no skipped steps, and what happens when he skips meditation

Nature, community, and culture: the three pillars, and why the inner work comes first

Key Moments:

00:00 – Welcome, and who Tony Cho is
02:49 – “Squeezing every last drop out of the bottle”
04:44 – Honoring Ximena, and thank you for grieving out loud
08:55 – Compost: how grief becomes fertile soil
10:18 – Giving more than you take: what regeneration means
12:52 – Why sustainability only sustains the status quo
14:43 – Where the lie of scarcity begins
16:20 – Why a cold plunge means little if the street outside is unsafe
17:19 – Chief Nixiwaka on dying alone and what a village does differently
23:54 – Tenzin Seldon, and gross domestic regeneration versus GDP
25:46 – Emily on why a regenerative future starts with regenerative minds
28:25 – The 15-minute city
36:29 – “I’m dropping out, and oh, by the way, I’m eating meat”
41:09 – Stewardship over ownership
44:13 – “What is the purpose of your manifestation?”
47:38 – What happens when a visionary skips meditation
54:22 – The three pillars: nature, community, and culture
1:00:02 – Buckminster Fuller and the “Reese Witherspoon plan”
1:06:06 – The Phoenix Arts & Innovation District
1:10:30 – “A misallocation of resources, not a scarcity of resources”

About Tony Cho

Tony Cho is a regenerative placemaker, impact entrepreneur, and founder of Future of Cities, a platform for regenerative development, advisory, and education. He grows up in his grandmother’s ashram, helps transform Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, and now leads projects including the Phoenix Arts & Innovation District in Jacksonville, the Climate & Innovation Hub in Miami, and ChoZen, a bioregional hub for regenerative living in Sebastian, Florida. His work has been featured in outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and his mission is to positively impact the lives of a billion people. His debut book, Generation Regeneration: Codesigning the Future of Cities Through Regenerative Placemaking, is out now.

Get the book: Generation Regeneration →
Website: tony-cho.com
Future of Cities: focities.com
Instagram: @tonycho

This episode is sponsored by Timeline. Support your mitochondrial health and get 20% off Mitopure at timeline.com/ziva.

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What if your attachment style isn’t a label you’re stuck with, but a pattern you can rewrite?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Sabrina Zohar, a certified dating and relationship coach, entrepreneur, and host of The Sabrina Zohar Show. Her debut book, Why Am I Like This?, is out Oct 13. Sabrina is known for direct, practical advice on attachment, triggers, and self-worth, rooted in psychology and nervous system science.

She explains why we keep choosing the same pattern, why you can earn your secure, and how to build the capacity to receive the love you say you want. She also gives two questions to ask in any trigger: how old do I feel, and who taught me this? Then Emily brings a real dating story from her own life, and Sabrina coaches her live on why little Emily took the wheel and what big Emily needs instead.

Emily also connects the dots to Ziva: raise your threshold of tolerance, the space between a trigger and your response, and you get to choose who you want to be.

In this episode, Sabrina explores:

Why we think we know what we want but not what we need

The salience network, and why your brain keeps finding the same pattern

Wanting a healthy relationship versus having the capacity to hold one

A one-word pattern interrupt for people-pleasers

How to tell an old wound from a real red flag by the intensity of your body sensations

Why attachment styles are not fixed, and why “people are not bumper stickers”

Two questions for any trigger: “How old do I feel?” and “Who taught me this?”

Why rejection closes the loop and ghosting keeps it open

The difference between intellectualizing your patterns and embodying change

What to do when a partner starts using you as their therapist

Key Moments:

00:00 – Welcome, and who Sabrina Zohar is
03:14 – Why isn’t everyone finding the love they desire?
04:26 – The salience network: why your brain keeps finding the same pattern
05:31 – Wanting love versus having the capacity to hold it
07:47 – The one-word pattern interrupt for people-pleasers
12:11 – It is okay to want someone: needs versus wants
16:11 – Wound or red flag? How to tell an old trigger from a real signal
19:05 – The unanswered text, and what your body sensations reveal
20:16 – Attachment styles are not fixed
26:26 – “How old do I feel?” and “Who taught me this?”
27:04 – Emily connects the dots: the space between trigger and response
29:44 – Live coaching begins: Emily’s Burning Man story
34:59 – Rejection closes the loop, ghosting keeps it open
38:01 – “Little Emily was driving the car”
45:56 – The egg frequency: discernment and choosing
50:17 – Main character energy, without the entitlement
56:16 – From knowing to embodying
58:04 – “Your triggers are not my responsibility”
1:04:35 – When one partner grows spiritually and the other does not
1:08:08 – Get comfortable being uncomfortable

About Sabrina Zohar

Sabrina Zohar is a certified dating and relationship coach, entrepreneur, and the voice behind The Sabrina Zohar Show, a weekly podcast on dating, attachment, and self-worth that ranks in the top 0.05% of podcasts globally. She has coached more than 2,000 clients, and her work has been featured in Vogue, Glamour UK, the Los Angeles Times, and People, and on The Drew Barrymore Show. Her debut book, Why Am I Like This?, is out Oct 13.

Get the book: Why Am I Like This? → sabrinazohar.com/book
Website: sabrinazohar.com
Instagram: @sabrina.zohar

This episode is sponsored by Timeline. Support your mitochondrial health and get 20% off Mitopure at timeline.com/ziva.

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What if vision is one of the missing pieces in the anxiety, brain fog, and overwhelm you have been blaming on yourself?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Dr. Meenal Agarwal, a board-certified optometrist, spatial awareness expert, and author of Stuck in a Flat World. Dr. Agarwal is a leading authority on the eye-brain connection and the person who coined the term spatial awareness processing disorder. Her work shows how a screen-heavy life disrupts the brain's ability to judge distance, track motion, and move through real-world space.

Dr. Agarwal explains why the parietal lobe works like your brain's GPS, why a phone becomes a shield in crowded places, and why spatial awareness and empathy are more connected than most of us realize. She also shares her own story, from a confident cross-border driver to someone who feared parking lots, and what brought her back. Emily connects it all to Ziva: the way you use your eyes changes your brain, just as meditation changes its architecture.

You leave with simple practices for before, during, and after screen time, including the 20-20-20 rule, a way to map a room before you enter it, and games that build spatial awareness in kids.

In this episode, Dr. Agarwal explores:

– Why "cut your screen time" misses the point, and what screens are stealing instead
– The difference between near work and peripheral vision, and why the parietal lobe is your brain's GPS
– Why you feel off balance after hours at a screen, and why so many kids get labeled instead of supported
– The shift she recommends: prime your peripheral awareness before the screen, not after
– The 20-20-20 rule, and Emily's eyes-open version of Come to Your Senses
– Spatial empathy versus emotional empathy, and the Costco effect
– Your brain's nightly recalibration, and how Emily uses promises and consequences with her own phone
– What her year and a half of research taught her, and the baby steps that brought her back
– Practices for kids: walk and talk, a daily audio phone call, the finger game, and the color walk
– Why vision is about far more than 20/20, and what an eye exam can reveal about the brain and nervous system

Key Moments:

00:00 – Welcome, and who Dr. Meenal Agarwal is
02:50 – What screens are stealing, and why "cut your screen time" misses the point
05:58 – The milestones we are missing: driving, biking, going out on our own
07:34 – Ventral and dorsal streams: what near work does to the brain's fear and balance centers
09:10 – Why you wobble after hours at a screen, and why we label clumsy kids
10:07 – The phone as a shield: a yoga studio story
15:21 – Prime before you scroll: the shift that works for adults and kids
18:27 – Come to Your Senses: Emily's eyes-open version of a Ziva practice
19:03 – Why your eyes are brain tissue, plus iridology and Drishti
23:10 – The 20-20-20 rule, and why looking away wakes up both streams
28:05 – The empathy study, and spatial empathy versus emotional empathy
32:04 – Map the room before you walk in: the Costco effect
33:46 – Emily connects the dots: the eyes, the nervous system, and the architecture of the brain
43:26 – Your brain's GPS needs a nightly recalibration, plus Emily's midnight promise
51:24 – The moment on the stairs that sent her searching for answers
55:56 – Library Saturdays, grocery aisles at night, and one friend at a time
58:44 – The finger game and the color walk: spatial awareness as play
1:06:30 – "If you don't know where you are in space, you won't know where you are in your own story"

About Dr. Meenal Agarwal

Dr. Meenal Agarwal is a board-certified optometrist (Doctor of Optometry, University of Waterloo), a spatial awareness expert, and a leading voice on the eye-brain connection. She owns three eye care practices in Ontario and hosts the podcast Uncover Your Eyes: The Truth About Health and Wellness. Her book, Stuck in a Flat World: How Screens Rewire Our Brains, Spatial Awareness, and Sense of Safety, is out Nov 2.

Get the book: Stuck in a Flat World →
drmeenal.com/stuck-in-a-flat-world
Website: drmeenal.com
Instagram: @drmeenalagarwal

This episode is sponsored by Timeline. Support your mitochondrial health and get 20% off Mitopure at timeline.com/ziva.

🔗 MORE FROM EMILY & ZIVA:

Learn Ziva Meditation: preview.zivameditation.com
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What if ninety seconds on a dance floor could do what ten years of therapy couldn't?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Sah D'Simone, a spiritual teacher, humanitarian, and bestselling author whose approach to healing was forged through over 300 days of silent meditation, clinical spiritual care training at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and years of direct service in the margins. Sah is the creator of the Somatic Activated Healing (SAH) Method and founder of the Somatic Dance Institute, and his work has drawn collaborations with Harvard, Columbia, and the UN.

They trace Sah's path from meditation teacher to dance mystic: the night in Bali when a trance on the dance floor cracked him open into a full-body recognition of strangers dancing beside him, the year his mother died and everything he'd built around joy fell apart, and why he believes talking about trauma can trap you in a cycle of blame while dancing it moves the charge all the way through. They also get into how Christian missionaries turned the god of dance into the devil, the nuanced difference between chasing pleasure and finding it inside whatever is true, and why no feeling, however big, is the one that finally breaks you.

In this episode, Sah explores:

Why talking about your trauma can trap you in a cycle of blame, while dancing it moves the charge all the way through

The night in Bali when a trance on the dance floor cracked him open into a full-body recognition of strangers he'd apparently known before

How Christian missionaries turned Pan, the god of dance and revelry, into the image of the devil

The difference between chasing pleasure as an escape and finding the ecstasy inside whatever is true, even rage or grief

What his mother's death taught him about prayer, pain, and the limits of visualization

A Vipassana retreat gone sideways, and the wave of full-body release that followed once he stopped resisting

Opening for a DJ with five minutes' notice, and the closest he has come to a physical experience of the divine on a stage

Why no feeling is too big to survive, and what actually makes people exhausted

Key Moments:

00:00 – Emily's introduction: from meditation teacher to dance mystic, and why Harvard and Columbia came calling
03:02 – Why the most prestigious universities on the planet are studying his work
05:10 – His mother's death, and the six months of "sanctioned insanity" that followed
07:48 – The Osho line: why a woman dancing is closer to God than a man meditating
08:40 – Why talking about your trauma can trap you in a cycle of blame and victimhood
14:11 – How Christian missionaries turned Pan, the god of dance, into the devil
19:40 – The night in Bali when dance cracked him open into a past-life recognition on the floor
27:06 – 2020, and the moment "the goddess" rewired his entire career overnight
28:00 – "Part rave, part ritual": why the fastest, most industrial beats create the safest place to disappear
30:47 – His pushback on spiritual bypassing in ceremony culture, and Emily's response
40:34 – What his mother's death taught him about pain, prayer, and the edges of joy
42:27 – A Vipassana retreat, "princess and the pea," and the full-body release that followed
44:23 – The Iceland eclipse festival, and opening for a DJ with five minutes' notice
49:31 – The first-ever multi-day festival at the pyramids, and the Egypt eclipse he's building toward in 2027
51:16 – What he'd say to the exhausted parent of three who says they don't have time to dance
54:05 – His one request: dance to a single song, eyes closed
58:04 – A Lakota elder's line: all the suffering on the planet traces back to uncried tears

About Sah D'Simone

Sah D'Simone is a spiritual teacher, humanitarian, and bestselling author of Spiritually Sassy and Spiritually, We. He is the creator of the Somatic Activated Healing (SAH) Method and founder of the Somatic Dance Institute, where he has trained teachers and guided communities worldwide in trauma-informed, body-based practice. A chaplain intern in spiritual care at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and guest teacher at Columbia University, his work has been recognized with the City of Los Angeles CARE Award. He hosts the podcast Solving the Riddle of Being Human.

Website: sahdsimone.com
Instagram: @sahdsimone

This episode is sponsored by Timeline.

Support your mitochondrial health and get 20% off Mitopure at timeline.com/ziva.

🔗 MORE FROM EMILY & ZIVA:

Learn Ziva Meditation: preview.zivameditation.com
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Follow us on Instagram: @zivameditation

What if the word apocalypse was never about the end of the world, but about what gets revealed once the veils come down?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Elayne Kalila, a psychotherapist turned priestess and the founder of the Priestess Presence Mystery School, for a conversation that travels 30,000 years back to trace the deliberate erasure of feminine spiritual authority. Elayne walks through the Venus of Willendorf, the moment agriculture and land ownership gave rise to patriarchy, and why the women burned as witches were so often the post-menopausal landowners, healers, and midwives, not young women at all.

They also get into Freud's diagnosis of hysteria and its roots in the idea of a wandering womb, why 43 million American women between 45 and 65 are entering their power rather than their decline, and Elayne's own confronting practice for holding the men causing harm on an altar of healing instead of hatred. This is a conversation about rage as initiation, aging as beauty, and what it means to priestess yourself and everyone around you through change.

In this episode, Elayne explores:

Why the witch burnings targeted post-menopausal landowners, healers, and midwives, not young women

How agriculture and land ownership seeded patriarchy 10,000 years ago

Why "apocalypse" actually means the lifting of the veils

Her altar practice: naming powerful men who've caused harm and calling them into their hearts

Freud's diagnosis of hysteria and its roots in the idea of a wandering womb

Why 43 million American women between 45 and 65 are entering their power, not their decline

Isis and her twin sister Nephthys, and Inanna's seven gates as the oldest map for this transition

Why rage in perimenopause is information, not dysfunction

Key Moments:

00:00 – Emily's tribute to Elayne, and welcome to Why Isn't Everyone Priestessing Themselves
01:20 – Introducing Elayne Kalila: psychotherapist turned priestess
04:50 – Going back 30,000 years: the Venus of Willendorf and the first evidence of goddess worship
05:42 – How agriculture and land ownership seeded patriarchy 10,000 years ago
06:56 – The witch burnings: who was really targeted, and why
09:59 – The apocalypse, meaning the lifting of the veils
13:34 – The case for the feminine, made directly to the man who thinks this isn't for him
21:48 – Elayne's altar practice: naming powerful men who've caused harm and calling them home
35:42 – What it means to priestess yourself: navigating the unknown without a map
47:54 – Isis and her twin sister Nephthys, and the echo of Inanna and Ereshkigal
50:53 – Hysteria: how a wandering womb became a medical diagnosis for a woman's power
53:04 – 43 million American women are entering perimenopause, and why that's power, not decline
58:05 – Premenstrual rage as information, not dysfunction
1:00:45 – Inanna's seven gates as the oldest map we have for this transition
1:01:54 – Aging as beauty: the story of her partner and her white hair

About Elayne Kalila

Elayne Kalila Doughty, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist turned priestess and the founder of the Priestess Presence Mystery School, where she has spent over a decade ordaining women into the Divine Feminine mysteries. She is the author of The Sacred Call of the Ancient Priestess and The Magdalene Rose Oracle, and hosts The Red Podcast.

Website: elaynekalila.com
Instagram: @elayne.kalila

This episode is sponsored by Timeline.
Support your mitochondrial health and get 20% off Mitopure at timeline.com/ziva

🔗 MORE FROM EMILY & ZIVA:

Join Ziva Insiders: whythis.zivameditation.com
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