zivaMIND Meditation Course Review

zivaMIND Meditation

Back in October, I received a scholarship into the zivaMIND meditation course. I wrote about how this came to be in a previous post. Since then, I’ve had the time to check out all the course materials. More importantly, I’ve taken the time to make zivaMIND meditation a daily morning ritual. As they suggest, I do it first thing before ANYTHING. I can count on maybe two fingers the number of times I’ve not done it first thing. As Gary Keller (The One Thing) suggests, I’ve done it for more than 66 days so it is now a firmly established habit. There’s no thinking about it any more. I wake up, I go to meditate. Period!

First, I would like to tell you my impressions of the course. After that, I’ll list a few things I’ve learned from the course.

zivaMind Course Breakdown

The zivaMIND course site is very easy to navigate and user friendly. Once you log in with your credentials, you’re taken to the course dashboard which lists the different lessons starting with the welcome through day eight. Once you select the first video lesson, you’re taken to another page that has that lesson ready to play and lists the other available lessons. Each separate lesson will allow you to go backwards or forwards to review anything you need more help with. Of course, it is recommended that you do the training sequentially, not skipping anything.

The course is broken down into nine lessons.

1. Welcome to zivaMIND
2. Day One – Beginner’s Mind
3. Day Two – Thoughts Are Not The Enemy
4. Day Three – WHY Thoughts Are Not The Enemy
5. Day Four – “We meditate to get good at life”
6. Day Five –  Thoughts Indicate That a Stress Has Just Left the Body
7. Day Six –  Upgrading Your Computer
8. Day Seven – Balancing Breath
9. Day Eight – How to Stay Committed

Each day has a video lesson and links to bonus resources that help reinforce the material learned or give you additional learning opportunities. I found the daily links helpful with all of the lessons! Plus, the last day has a link to ALL of the resources in ONE place! Very nice touch!

Here are some of the bonus resources.

Four zivaMIND audios including: zivaPERFORMANCE, zivaTRAVELS, zivaRELEASE and zivaSLEEPS. The subject of each of these is pretty self-explanatory. Each one is a guided meditation to prepare you for the activity mentioned.

10 and 15 minute meditation videos to help guide you when you need a little help getting motivated to meditate or if you just need help with the time. It is not recommended that you use this one more than occasionally. The big part of this course if for you to learn how to do the daily meditation by yourself and to get your internal clock used to this duration.

A contract for you to print out and sign and a calendar for you to schedule your meditation on.

Two zivaMIND webinar recordings from day four and day eight to help with questions you may have during the course.

Links to TED Talks by Jill Bolte-Taylor and Dr. Brene Brown.

Links to questions to answer on days 1, 2, 5 and 8.

Access to a Private zivaMIND Facebook group and a support email address for any additional questions you can’t find the answers to.

Access to the zivaVAULT which is a massive collection of videos, audios and blog articles!

If you’re ready to try zivaMIND now, click here.

How the zivaMIND Course Works

After you sign up, you start receiving daily emails which guide you through each day’s lesson with any additional resources you’ll be encountering. You progress at YOUR rate! Just save the emails so you can pick up wherever you need to.

Each day’s lesson is video helping to guide you through each step of the zivaMIND course. You’ll also find the links to any additional resources you may need to review. Some of these are important to do that day and others will be there when you’re ready for them. The main point here again is that the course is created for you to be able to access it whenever you need to.

Jeff’s Tip: I highly recommend that you go through the course doing the lessons DAILY! You can review anything you need help with at any time. However, it is normal human tendency to think “out of sight, out of mind” and just decide you’ll do it “someday”. We both know how often “someday” usually comes around, right? Do as the zivaMIND Agreement you signed on Day One and commit to doing the lessons daily.

Having said that, I also want to stress that if you DO get behind in the emails and course, DON’T think that behind is the same as hopeless! Just pick up from wherever you left off as soon as possible! You’ll find it very easy to get back in the flow of this program, I promise you.

My Experience With zivaMIND

As I had mentioned in the previous post, I am a veteran meditator. I’ve been doing it for over five years and never miss a day! I started out with free Chopra Meditation and progressed to HeadSpace, which I’ve been with for more than two years. I should mention that both of these are mindfulness type meditation styles. zivaMIND meditation is a mantra-based meditation style. In fact, that was one of the main reasons I wanted to try it. I’d done so many different mindfulness meditations and thought it was time for a change.

Unlike what Emily recommends, almost all of my sessions have been with the 15 minute meditation video. This is because I wake up before my wife and need to make sure I don’t fall asleep or have it take longer than 15 minutes. I’m responsible for waking her up after I’ve finished. Eventually, I will do more of the solo stuff. That’s my admission to you, though.

The Emails and Lessons

I found the daily reminder emails very helpful and each of the videos progressed logically from the beginning to day eight. I thought the lessons flowed well. The additional resources were very helpful.

It was a bit of a switch for me into mantra-based meditation. For a mindfulness veteran, it can be difficult at times remembering to allow the mantra to just be and not focus ALL your attention on it! Even though mindfulness has you pay attention to things and then let them be, for some reason letting the mantra repeat itself was a challenge at times. I was just too aware of it because it was so new to me.

Eventually, I was able to take the same approach to it that I was used to taking for my breath. Then, it just faded into the background and I made real progress with stress reduction.

The Resources

The resources that accompanied each day’s lessons were for the most part helpful. I enjoyed the two TED Talks as well as the custom meditations (zivaRELEASE, etc.). The only things I really didn’t benefit much from were the webinar calls and the questions form for days 1, 2, 5 and 8.

Let’s get to the nitty gritty,ok?

If you’re ready to try zivaMIND meditation now, click here.

What I Liked

• Course content easy to follow and review
• Daily emails kept me on track
• Bonus resources were helpful and appropriate for each lesson
• Customer service was responsive and helpful
• Videos were professionally produced
• Bonus meditations were great for specific challenges
• The course felt more like a retreat than book learning
• Emily is a warm and funny (self-proclaimed) geek

What I Didn’t Like

• The questions were not really helpful and there’s still a bug in the software that erases and replaces some answers from previous questions
• The webinar calls were too long and the audio quality was poor. Think recording your cell phone conversation and you’ll get the picture. Maybe it’s just the audiophile in me-LOL!
• There are still some bugs in the site that take you to pages with gobbledy gook code that means nothing. Somebody from the team needs to do a usability test where they click EVERY graphic or link on the site to see what happens.
• The refund policy is overly restrictive. You can only get a refund before you have viewed Day 1 content.

Final Thoughts

The Lessons

I’m a seasoned meditator. I didn’t require a lot of help to get me into the zivaMIND meditation practice habit. I still benefited from the lessons, however. After I’d gone through the entire course and most of the resources, I appreciated being able to easily review things I didn’t quite get the first time or just needed more help with. Learning more about mantra based meditation helped set me up for success with the course.

I was able to establish a challenging meditation habit. My previous practice was that I would meditate in the early morning AT SOME POINT. Switching to doing it first thing was tough at first. I already get up very early. I just thought of it like waking up earlier to work on my business. Except the business was ME! The new practice took well before the 66 days I referred to earlier. Now, it’s just automatic. Wake up, meditate, wake up the wife and puppy!

The Cost

For a veteran meditator, the $250.00 price tag might be a tough sell. However, if that same meditator was really interested in changing to another effective style of meditation, it’s not a stretch.

The Community

I never requested access to the private Facebook group so I have no comment on that. My current interaction with Facebook is minimal and because I haven’t figured out how to stop group notifications, enrolling in anything like this terrifies me. This is MY fault and not theirs, to be clear.

I would add that even though all levels of meditation experience can benefit from zivaMIND meditation, it does appear (to me) to be created for the student new to meditation. If you’d like to read more about the zivaMIND meditation course, including testimonials from some well known people, follow this link and scroll

Bottom Line

The zivaMIND meditation course helped me turn the corner on a nagging health issue I’ve had for the last year. I have no scientific proof of this. I only know that I made this breakthrough since I’ve started doing the zivaMIND meditation course.

I would absolutely recommend the course and accompanying bonus content and resources. I think it would be a great initiation into meditation for an absolute beginner. However, I honestly believe anybody looking to make a change toward mantra-based meditation would benefit from the program as I have.

If you’re ready to try zivaMIND meditation now, click here.

Full Disclosure: I mentioned this in the previous post and at the beginning of this article but I want to repeat it once more. I received a full scholarship into this program for the purpose of doing this review. Nobody from zivaMIND meditation made any conditions of this scholarship. The only request that was made of me is they would appreciate a review if I did the course and benefited from it. This is exactly what I’ve done here. My opinion is MY opinion and not one  for any purpose but to help you make an informed choice about the zivaMIND meditation course.

Jeff’s Edit:

I apologize to my readers. I thought I had mentioned in my full disclosure that I was an affiliate of Emily’s program. As Patrick has pointed out, I didn’t. The omission was not intentional. I WILL receive compensation if you buy using the links I’ve placed in this article.

This does not affect my review in any way. I would NEVER recommend a product I didn’t believe in and I also believe I gave an honest opinion of the course including what I liked and didn’t like.

Jeff