[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I'm your host, Deb Masner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach, and alcohol free badass. I have found that there's more than one way to address drinking. If you've ever asked yourself if drinking is taking more than it's giving, or if you found that you're drinking more than usual, you may have reached your own alcohol tipping point. The alcohol tipping point is a podcast for you to find tips, tools, and thoughts to change your drinking. Whether you're ready to quit forever or a week, this is the place for you. You are not stuck and you can change.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Let's get started.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you. I want to take a sec to invite you to the next alcoholiday. It's a monthly dry group where I help people practice not drinking. This is for you. If you feel like you're struggling, if you feel like you're stuck, if you feel like you're broken, you're never going to get it. I want to just support you and arm you with lots of different tools to battle cravings.
Work on your thinking about drinking. Be more kind and compassionate to yourself as you're doing this. You know, drinking is a habit and it's probably something you've done for years or decades. Even so, it takes a while to unwind. And that's why I'm so passionate about focusing on practicing, not drinking, working on progress, not perfection. I love the saying focus on the direction, not perfection. And I think it's important just to have these types of groups, programs that just give you a safe place that has no shame, no judgment. A safe place where you can just learn new tools and just start unwinding the habit so that it gets easier and easier for you to drink less or not at all. I would love to have you join the next alcoholiday. It starts the first of every month. As a podcast listener, you always get 20% off by using the code love love and it is hosted on a private platform. It is a HIPAA protected platform. It's really important to me as a nurse just to have privacy and a safe place for you. And what you get is daily emails, lessons, accountability. You get lots and lots of tools to battle cravings. You get a really detailed guidebook journal to help you out during those 30 days, 31 days, whatever the length of the month is. And then you get downloadable audio meditations. Just something to go to when you're feeling a craving. We also do weekly group chats weekly group support calls led by me and another sober coach twice a week. And then there's also a private chat where you can just share with others, support others, and it's just a great place to practice not drinking. The cost is $89 us dollars. That is so it's less than $3 a day. Plus use that lov code to get your discount. And just a little background on me. I have been a registered nurse for 20 years. I'm a board certified health coach. I'm a smart recovery certified facilitator, an addiction certified mental health professional. I'm a mindfulness instructor. And then you all know I like to call myself an alcohol free badass. I've been alcohol free for almost four and a half years now, so I would love to see you in the next group. You can sign
[email protected] alcoholiday and join there. I also will link it in my show notes. Wherever you are with your drinking journey, just know that I am rooting for you, that you are not broken and you can change. Thanks so much.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: On the podcast today, all the way from Australia is Rory Kinsella. He is a meditation teacher, sober coach and founder of Wise Monkey Way. He's a former heart drinking journalist who found meditation during an early midlife crisis and quit drinking in 2017.
And I am really excited to connect with Rory today. So welcome.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Very happy to be here.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: That was like a super brief introduction of you because I know, like, I can see guitars behind you and I know you've done a little bit more than journalism. Do you want to just share a little bit about who you are, what you do or have done?
[00:05:02] Speaker C: Yeah. So my name's Rory, I live in Australia, but I'm originally from the UK. And as Deb can see from my background, I've got four guitars that you can see there's another six somewhere. As a child, I wanted to be a rock star, and I haven't yet fulfilled my dream, but I'll say yet I'm still hoping so. I grew up in the UK and yeah, I guess we'll talk about the drinking aspects of that, but I. Before becoming a journalist, I was a musician and spent most of my twenties in and around the music industry. So I was in a band, signed to a small record label, and we toured around the UK and we were weirdly famous in northern Italy for a couple of years in the early two thousands, which was bizarre. And I was a dj and I ran a little record label with my school friends. And then I became a music journalist. I was very much in my twenties living this booze soaked life of, well, because England, anyway, alcohol is everywhere. But England has a very much got a pub culture, drinking culture, and it's perfectly normal. So the legal age of drinking is 18, but it's perfectly normal to have 1516 year olds in the pub with their fake ids. And I guess, yeah. So drinking was normal in my teenage years and my twenties especially, because I was operating in those kind of entertainment industry areas. And I like to talk about this in that alcohol was great for me as a teenager because I was quite a shy person. I'm a natural introvert. I was talking to someone yesterday about Myers Briggs, and I always used to come out as an e, an extrovert, but only because it's based on behavior. And I used to, I did have lots of friends and I did used to go out all the time, but I'm a natural introvert. I think what I originally liked about alcohol as, say, I don't know, a 15 year old, was this ability for me to not be in my head the whole time and overthinking what people, you know, overthinking all the aspects of being in a social group. And instead I could be like, hey, I'm party man, and dancing on the tables. And enjoyed having a role. This is where the music thing comes in. I enjoyed in those arenas having a role as being part of the entertainment thing. So I was the bass player in the band, or I was one of the dj's and it was. Or I was the promoter and it was good. I enjoyed having that stability of a role. And then alcohol, let me, I guess, embody those, the extrovert parts of those roles. So enjoyed that boozy twenties in England, so finishing in London, whereas, yeah, I became a music journalist. And then I'm interviewing all these people who are famously big drinkers. And then when I hit 30, there's this visa arrangement between England and Australia.
So I moved to Australia and continued, I have a friend who laughs about this and says, you brits, you have your twenties in London and then you come to Australia, and then you have your twenties again in your thirties. So I have my twenties again in my thirties in Sydney. And then when I was continuing working as a journalist and then in web development until I had what I call my early midlife crisis, where that 20 years of partying up to age 35, suddenly the balance tipped and it wasn't so fun anymore. But I was, I guess, my drinking type. I was mostly a binge drinker. I have been a daily drinker at points, but my overarching drinking type was a binger. And I would, you know, I would struggle to count the weekends when I didn't drink between, you know, 16 and 35, if there were any, so. And it would often be Thursday, Friday, Saturday. You know, I've been to Glastonbury festival seven times. I went to burning man. I went to, you know, enjoyed festivals. So through that bingeing, and, you know, everyone knows that hangovers get worse as we get older, I was realizing that that fun few hours on a Saturday night, not only costing me the Sunday hangover, but was really robbing me of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, because I wasn't feeling, I mean, I wasn't throwing up or anything, but I wasn't feeling productive or I was not thriving in any way. It was survival mode. Do the bare minimum at work. And it reached a point at 35 when I was just like, hey, I can't. I don't want to be like, a 55 year old version of this. There must be, must be more.
So at that point, I. I hadn't figured that booze was the problem.
My initial thought was djing is the problem.
So I. I hung up my headphones, and I was a smoker as I quit smoking. So this was both on, in the aftermath of my 35th birthday and at that point, having given. So that was me kind of symbolically giving up the party lifestyle.
But I really didn't, didn't recognize drinking as being, well, either a problematic part or there wasn't any role models for me to think, oh, I could give this up, I could stop drinking here, and we'll talk a bit more about that in a sec. But, yeah, at that point, so, 35, I was like, right, stop smoking. What do I do? And mid thirties guys do this all the time. They go, right, I'm gonna run.
I bought some running shoes, and I went from not being able to run for more than five minutes to I ran a marathon in within a year. And I loved that. And it was like, oh, this is great. I can feel good. So, you know, having had years of putting things in my body to change my conscious state, so. And booze and party drugs to then be able to go, oh, I can run a half marathon or a marathon and get these endorphins running around my system, and I know the runners high, they call it. And I was like, this is great. I feel good.
And even from just a normal weekly run, and I still have this now, if I don't go running for even, say, four or five days. I'm just feeling a bit depressed. And I would say inverted commas for no reason, but it's not for no reason, it's because I've not exercised. So this was a real eye opener to these natural ways to change how I felt subjectively, you know, how happy I was.
And, yeah, realizing that we have this quote called the infinite pharmacy within, so we can change how we feel by, you know, it's. Everything we need is in there. So endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, these are all living in the body.
And my first attempt at accessing these was through, through exercise.
And then I was on this kind of holy than thou like fitness mission. And that led me. Then I had more energy and I was still drinking, but I was making these big binges much less frequent. So my way of moderating was to say no to things and maybe only go out, you know, once a month instead of every week or once every two weeks. And that was me limiting the. I guess limiting the damage that I was causing my, my well being.
And then a year after I did that, so at 36, then I had this amazing mentor at work who was noticing that I was doing all these psychological reading around of psychology, and I did a neuro linguistic programming course. And he was like, meditation is what you should look into. And I was like, oh, I was going to say I hadn't thought of it before, but I had. And, sorry, this is a very long, very long answer to your short question, but I had tried meditation ten years before, and this was in one of. It was in my very first media job. And we had this crazy.
The proprietor of the magazine was this funny little guy who, before the work day, he would say, right, everyone sit down, close your eyes, we're meditating. And that was the only instruction he gave. There was no, like, use your breath or use a mantra or anything like that.
And I was like, just guessing from, you know, what I'd seen on tv about what meditation was supposed to be. So I was trying to clear my mind and I failed spectacularly. And then I. That really put me off and I didn't like it. And it was, it was, it was funny anyway, because all the sales guys from the magazine were just rolling their joints, waiting for it to be over. So that put me off. But when this mentor guy, because I looked up to him so much when he suggested it, I was like, oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.
So then started this search around various different meditation types. And again, like, with the running, I was like, ooh, hang on. I close my eyes for 20 minutes and I feel better. And I didn't put anything in my body. I just allowed my body to do its thing.
And I wasn't completely satisfied with the first technique I got, which was mindfulness. So breath meditation.
So kept looking until I found vedic meditation, which maybe we'll talk a bit about later, which. Where we use a mantra, which is a word or sound that we think silently in our minds. And after doing that, I just felt so relaxed and comfortable in my skin. It was like it was giving me all those things that I was looking to alcohol for before. That is, I'm content. Like, there's nothing I need to change here. There's nothing I need to damp down. Like, I'm not overthinking things. I'm not feeling worried socially or about work.
And then that magically kind of made this impact on my drinking in that I needed it less. I needed to drink less.
So I didn't. I wasn't needing a crutch. It was like I'd been healed in some way, and I threw away my crutches like Lazarus.
And so then that then started the next phase, which was moderating even more. But I still didn't have a role model or a clear.
It never occurred to me until a year or so after that to stop drinking completely just because no one in my friend group had stopped. And I wasn't an alcoholic. I hadn't been arrested.
Maybe I should have been arrested a couple of times, but never been arrested, never lost the job.
Because, especially working in the industries I worked in, it was very accepted. And it was kind of funny. Like, in London, the company I worked for, we had me and this irish guy, Matt, used to. We kind of compete to be the trashiest person. And there was this hat, a comedy hat that we had to wear. It's called the hangover hat of shame.
But it was really like a bit of a badge of honor. So, you know, if you came in late hungover, you had to wear the hangover hat. Shame. And then in my Sydney job, they had this thing where, because I would always be hungover, and they came up with this name for it. So based on my surname, it was, you were Kinsella ed if you came into work so hungover that you were visibly or, you know, you smelt drunk. So it wasn't. I wasn't getting negative consequences from that behavior because of the kind of industries I was working in. But when meditation came in, I started to get more mental clarity and less need of that crutch. And the need to drink fell away. Until in 2017, on a meditation retreat, I had this eureka moment, helped by one of the yoga teachers who was there. I went, I could not drink. And that might be easier than this wrestling with myself on do I go out and drink and write? Because the equation I would do would be, I could go to this thing, but I have to write off the following week in terms of being productive.
And I was just thinking, that is not. It was basically never worth it. Whatever the Saturday night event was, it was not worth a week of my productivity and feeling normal.
So we had this meditation retreat. It was over new year, and then when I came back, I just thought, writing, do try January 2018.
And then kept going. And here we are, six and a half years later. But, sorry, that's the longest answer to a simple. You just said hello, and here I am still talking.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: I love it. That's what I'm here for. I'm just like, I love to hear people's stories. And you have a unique background. Growing up in the UK and being in the music industry, that's really cool. And just a lot of. I was taking notes so I could come back to a few things, but one thing I was thinking of was, like you said, you're naturally an introvert. And I hear that so much from people who have quit drinking, like, thought I was an extrovert. I was the life of the party. I was, you know, and when you remove that and it's just you, like, we find that we're just. We find our true selves of what we really connect to or how we interact with the outside world. And I just thought that was interesting.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it is a big one. And when I write email newsletters about this, the introvert extrovert ones always get a lot of reaction. And I think it's that introversion is misunderstood by.
It's kind of seen as a negative quality in large measures. But I think it's good to define it. Doesn't mean that you're necessarily shy or awkward.
The definition I prefer is that it's about. It's about how you charge your batteries.
So, as an example, I used to live in this party house with my friend Meren, and she's a complete extrovert. So, for example, if we'd been out on a big night out on the following Sunday, my recovery thing from too much socializing would be, and, you know, too much partying would be to just sit, read a book or watch a movie or something, listen to music.
Whereas she, because she's an extrovert, she would have, like, nine visits to. She would get on her scooter and go around the neighborhood visiting nine different people because that was how she recharged. And that's. That's such a good way of thinking about it. It's not, you know, we're both friendly. You know, I was gonna say extrovert, but we're both friendly, outgoing people who are happy to chat with people. It's just there's a point where I. My batteries run out, where she's getting charged up more and more through these same interactions.
And if we think about it like that, there's no kind of.
I think as a teenager, I was probably thinking introversion's bad because we live in an extrovert world.
But, yeah, you're right. People, I think a lot of people, when they stop drinking, are like, well, hang on. I quite like spending time on my own. And the thing that I'm going through at the moment is there's a. I have to find a balance. Otherwise, I'll just stay in the whole time, hang out with my cats. So, yeah, everything in balance. But alcohol definitely does skew. Skew it so that you become more extroverted, which has, you know, it obviously has a positive side or people wouldn't do it. And I always like to recognize the positive reasons that people start drinking. So whether it's to fit in more or I like to talk of it as it is a wellness strategy, people do it because they want to feel better in some way. It's just a crap wellness strategy, or it's just a short, short term, quick fix wellness strategy. And that's where I really. Where my meditation teaching comes in. Because for me, it ticked some of the boxes that I did go to alcohol for, like, feeling comfortable in my skin, not being anxious about upcoming events or work things that were going on, and managing stress, like, at the end of a busy work week, I would just think, I need to let off some steam here.
And when I became a daily meditator, I just didn't have those same triggers. I felt comfortable. I was okay saying no to things. That was one of the first things I noticed in the week after I learned this style of meditation, because before, I'd have these people pleaser things where people would say, hey, it's Wednesday night. Do you want to go out for drinks? And my. My immediate reaction would be, no, definitely not. But I would find myself saying, okay, yes, as a people pleaser because I didn't want to let someone down.
And then being able to more find the middle ground, which was like, yeah, I'll come for drinks, but I will have a soda because I was more comfortable in my skin and comfortable in my true desires, which might be to say no and do a good day's work the next day or something like that. So thinking about alcohol drinking, recognizing the positive reasons that people drink, which sometimes is to fall asleep, and who would say that sleeping is a bad thing to want to have? It's just not a very good, it's a very short short term with sleep. It's great because it's even, it doesn't even get you through the night. It gets you to like 01:00 a.m. when you have the rebound effect. But, and for stress, like the stress, what is more stressful than a hangover?
But if we recognize that people are going towards it for positive reasons and there's this 8 billion or trillion dollars or however much it is of marketing going into telling us these things, then we start off from a point of not making people feel guilty and we just say, hey, you were using this as your wellness strategy before. Here's this thing that people in India came up with 5000 years ago. Give it a go. It's much cheaper and you feel better the next day.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I agree so much with you and I love your approach. And I think it's so important to have these kinds of stories and approaches that aren't your typical, quote unquote, you said alcoholic. You know, like, you don't have to hit rock bottom. You could be binging. You could. And, and of course it makes sense that you're drinking for all the reasons you said for stress management, to sleep, to help with social anxiety, all of that, like, yeah, that makes sense. There's this tool and it works really quick in the short term.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: But the long term, it's, it is.
[00:24:56] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's cooling. Sexy.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:58] Speaker C: And there's like, it's for sale in everywhere you go, you know, every meeting place. It's there.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think for, one of the points I like to get across to people is like, you're not broken.
Your brain is doing exactly what it was made to do, move you towards pleasure and away from pain in the quickest way possible. And it's learned that alcohol does this and so we're just unlearning it. And what I like about your story too, is, you know, you were still working on yourself. You were running, you learned this new meditation, and you were still doing these things while you were still drinking, and you're just slowly unwinding the habit instead of the whole black and white. You have to be perfect, that kind of thinking. So I want to hear more about the vedic meditation and how it might help people change their drinking and kind of go into that, since that was so helpful for you. And I think if someone's listening, I think it could be helpful for them, too.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
Well, I guess the main thing where I come in with meditation, because, you know, I didn't invent meditation.
It's big and popular in the world, and it's even big in sobriety circles. Like, it's in the twelve steps. I haven't done the twelve steps, but, you know, in AA, they do the twelve steps. And step eleven is meditation, but it's step eleven. Some people, sometimes people take years to get to step eleven because they're going through all the, you know, recriminations about all the bad things they've done to people and handing over their power to God, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm like, well, look, meditation is this thing. Let's do that first. Like, before we do anything, any thinking about, you know, why am I drinking? Let's just do the meditation first.
And that's going to make us feel better. It's going to. It's going to fix lots of the physiological things. So. So with meditation, I like to think, so if we talk about stress as an example, and often there are lots of different ways of coping with stress, including psychological approaches where you reframe things or you add in more positive ways of thinking.
But I like to think of it primarily as a physiological thing. So rather than trying to think our way out of our thinking problems, we instead send signals from our mind to our body saying, you are safe, you are okay. And then it stops producing this stress chemistry, which makes you think, oh, did I say something stupid then? Or what's that person going to say? Or did I wear the wrong shoes? Oh, I better have another drink. Right? So, meditation, my approach is, let's bring it in first, and then rather than leaving it to this extra light thing. So it's step eleven in the twelve steps, or is often something where it's like, I'm going to get sober or alcohol free, and then I'll start discovering myself, and maybe then I'll get meditation when I'm, like a nice, clean, less trashy person. So I'm like, no, just let's put it right at the front, and then you'll start feeling better and use it as this transitional tool, because I think it's often people think of it as, you know, I'm not in a good position to do this. They think that they need to have somehow paired themselves to start it. Whereas I'm like, well, look, you didn't prepare yourself to have a drink. You were in your messy state, and you reached for your coping mechanism. Do the same with meditation and just start, you know, don't make a big deal out of it. So my approach with the vedic style and why it resonated with me through my teacher Tim, when I learned with him, which was in 2014, was this very laid back approach to it. And this is vedic meditation comes from what we call the householder tradition. So if we think of this is a very big simplification, but we'll talk about it in terms of two main schools of meditation. So I'm from the householder school, vedic meditation, and then you have the monastic school. So, for example, mindfulness is from the monastic school. So if you went to your local mindfulness center, it might be run by a buddhist monk or the headspace app. The guy who set that up was a monk for ten years before he did that. So the monastic approach is often about discipline and focus and, you know, austerity, maybe taking yourself away from normal life. You know, they live in monasteries, monks live in monasteries, whereas the householder approach was designed for. Yeah, householders who are people with families, jobs, daily concerns. They're not on this, designing this spiritual existence where they're getting closer to God as their main thing. They are wanting to live their lives more successfully, you know, be better parents or partners or friends, be successful at whatever their chosen profession is.
And because of that, it is designed to fit more easily into your day.
So we do it in the morning and the evening, but we specifically sit comfortably. And this seems like a very trivial thing, but it made such a difference to me as a not very good yogi. So, you know, the tradition, if we stopped someone in the street and said, hey, draw a meditator, they would draw someone in lotus position with their hands cupped in their lap, sitting up straight. And if I adopt that position, within a minute, that's all I'm thinking about is my back and how uncomfortable I am. And that is not helping me feel comfortable in my skin. It's not changing my body's physiology away from stress. I'm just becoming stressed about how uncomfortable I am. Whereas with the vedic approach, we have our back supported, so we sit anywhere that's comfortable. So I can see, like, a nice couch in the background for you. So if this was a session and, you know, you've got back on your office chair, either of these are good places to do it. In the car is a good place to do it, somewhere where you. You have your back supported. And that just made such a difference to me to have this approach where we're not trying to control it, not trying to focus or concentrate or block anything out, we instead use this mantra. So a mantra is a word or sound that we think silently in our minds, which gives us something neutral to put our awareness on.
And because it's a word, it worked for me really well, because if I, as an overthinker, when I'm thinking to myself, I'm basically talking to myself in my head.
And with the mantra, I'm just putting this nice, content less word in my mental mouth to shut it up, to have it saying this nice thing. Whereas when I did breath meditation before, so I'd be there with my back straight, you know, uncomfortable. But then I'd also be able to fully carry on a conversation while focusing on my breath, because they seem to be two different things.
Whereas the mantra seemed to occupy that thinking voice in my head more easily. Now, I'm not anti mindfulness. I'm just talking about my experience of it works for millions of people. It's great if it works for you, keep going with it. But for me, once I tried both of them. I just felt more at home with the Vedic. And I would say to people, try out every technique you can. Like, I've done the stare at the candle meditation. I've done loving kindness meditation, and all those. Those other ones that you can find all over the Internet these days.
Try them all out and find the one that works for you. But for Vedic, for me, it just clicked the first time I did it. And it was like, this is how I describe it. It was like my mind was this clenched fist, or had been this clenched fist, and it was just able to unclench and relax. And then that changed so much for me. Without me having to think my way out of stuff, the more laid back version of me was not seeing problems where there weren't really problems, wasn't doing worst case scenario, thinking about things that could happen at work, wasn't worried if I'd said the wrong thing. And that then meant that my stress levels reduced and I had more clarity about what I wanted to do. And that then meant that I could see that my relationship with alcohol wasn't, wasn't, you know, wasn't giving me what I'd signed up for when I was 16 or whatever, or the cost is like one of those, one of those subscriptions where it's like the first year will be this cost, and then it just silently goes up in the background. Well, they're delivering you less and less value each year. And I think this is another key thing that for me, it was my mid, what I call my early midlife crisis. So that was 35. I was 40 when I stopped drinking completely. And I rarely get people in their twenties, for example, coming to seek my help, because I think that equation of getting value out of it doesn't flip until, you know, over 30, over 35, I don't know, because we have rubber bodies when we're 20, or whatever the thing is, or, you know, it's also the tolerance that we build up in our bodies, so we have to drink more as we get older, which then means we get worse effects from that. But also this idea that, you know, I don't, I'm not anti alcohol and I don't regret my twenties. Like, I had a great time and it's part of my story. And I just say to people, look, it doesn't mean that whatever you did before was wrong, it's just no longer relevant for you. And it's a chance to move forward. And we don't need to do our recriminations over the past, and we don't need to do all the twelve step stuff where we probably don't have to make amends to all these people that we've wronged.
You could choose to do that, but let's just get you meditating and then voila. A lot of your triggers for drinking, in my experience of doing myself and then working with people over the last six years, using meditation as a tool, like we do all the stuff about, you know, think about your triggers and think about your why and that kind of stuff. But the you that has meditated is going to be in a much better position to not be, not fall back on those old coping mechanisms than the you who hasn't meditated. And that's so clear to me in terms of people I work with where, you know, they'll have a setback and they'll drink when they weren't planning to. And I'll always say, in as the least judgy way I can, did you get your meditation in that day? And the answer is almost always, no.
So it's often quite clear to people that when they get their meditation in, they're much more likely to be able to stick to those goals they might have. And I talk about my community is called wise monkey way. And this came about because I talk about how we have a wise monkey version of ourselves, which is the one that creates New Year's resolutions, and says, oh, I'm going to go on a diet, or I'm gonna write a novel or whatever it might be. And then we have the wine monkey, and the wine monkey's like, you deserve.
[00:37:27] Speaker D: A glass of wine.
[00:37:30] Speaker C: You've earned this. And these two monkeys can compete in our minds, and we can feed either of them. So we feed the wise monkey through doing things like meditation, through exercise. We just had wise monkey may, so I had people do challenges, like daily activity, daily journaling. Obviously, daily meditation goes without saying. But then we also did a newsfast. So not actively seeking out news, which was really, really interesting. But again, all of these things designed to. To put the wise monkey version of you in charge. And not. Not that it's not good to know what's going on in the world, but too much news is, I think, not very healthy. And I worked in news for 15 years, but that was actually, of those three challenges, for me, that was the hardest one to start, but then the easiest by the end, because it would be like, whenever there's a free moment, I would just feel tempted to look at a news app or the people in the group who consume traditional media, like, specifically, especially the radio. Like, if you listen to normal radio, there's news all the way through it, you know, every hour, every half hour. But removing news, it made a good effect on one. I had more time in my day, so I'd be reading. Reading a book in those. So, you know, I'm having my lunch, for example, where I would read some news, and I was reading a book instead. And I was like, right, I feel better. And, you know, I haven't drunk for six years, so that's not one of my things that I'm working against. But. But it helps me, you know, if we're all. We're all looking to be happier, and that's if we think of that as our overarching. One of our goals is to be happy. I was happier, definitely happier by the end of the month while not consuming news. So all of those things also, you know, what we eat, all of that feeds into this. Putting that wise monkey version of us in charge to keep the wine monkey at bay.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: I love that. Yeah. And I can. I, like, agree so much with what you say. And I think a lot of it, like, you talked about people in their twenties versus their thirties and alcohol. Like, that's why I call it the tipping point. You know, where I mean, just, it gets to the point where it's taking more than it's giving.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Well, can you kind of walk us.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Through a vedic meditation and maybe share, like you mentioned, people you recommend meditating every day. Like, how long? How much? Just do you have some guidelines around that? And can you give us.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Yes. So I'll talk about it for a bit and then we'll do. We'll do, like, a two. I'll talk you through, like, a two minute version. But. But what we would normally do.
So I recommend people meditate for 15 minutes to start with 15 minutes. And in the full vedic system, we do 20 minutes in the morning and the evening. I don't want to scare people off, so I say, right, well, let's start with 15.
And people tend to find it easier to meditate in the morning just because most people have more control over there mornings.
But I recommend people meditate in the early evening.
So in. In witching hour or whenever you would be tempted to have a drink. So this is when that wise monkey version of you has.
[00:41:08] Speaker D: Has.
[00:41:09] Speaker C: Has expired or run out. That's usually for, you know, people who aren't drinking when they wake up. It's usually around that four, five, when they're thinking, right, a drink might be a good idea here. So I say, like, to start with, you want to definitely be doing the meditation there. Because if we think, well, what. What are people using alcohol for? They're using it to change their mood or change their conscious state from either. Something like, I'm stressed, I'm bored, you know, I've had enough to. To forget about it, switch off.
And that's what meditation also does. But let's do a straight switch one from the other and have our system being meditate in the early evening. So I recommend twice a day for the full benefit, which would be before breakfast, before dinner. But if you're starting with one, I'd do the early evening one. And what you would do for that is find somewhere comfortable. So, as we were saying before.
And I'll talk you through it, deb, as we do. Okay, so sit with your back supported, but your head and neck free. So not lying down, not encouraging sleep, but definitely relaxed.
So I encourage people not to treat this like an exam. So I'm not going to be marking you, I'm not going to be giving you a grade. We want to let go of all of those rules of normal day to day life so you don't get points in this for trying harder or controlling the experience.
It's about relaxing and allowing the process to unfold.
So if you want to play along, I invite you to close your eyes.
[00:42:59] Speaker D: On and to help ourselves adopt a relaxed attitude, we'll take a nice deep breath through the nose inside out.
[00:43:17] Speaker C: Again, a nice deep breath through the nose.
[00:43:22] Speaker D: Inside and release any tension you might be holding in your body, particularly in your shoulders, your neck.
Make sure you're not clenching your jaw or crowning.
And allow this experience to be messy.
So you may have noises in your.
[00:44:10] Speaker C: Environment.
[00:44:13] Speaker D: You may have children or animals around your feet.
We want to welcome all of these things into the experience and what we will be doing in this meditation is thinking a word or sound silently in our mind.
And the word we will be using is.
And we will think this word gently and softly in our mind.
And this will give us something neutral to place our attention on so that our mind is not running away with other thoughts.
As we do this, we will naturally notice other thoughts come up.
This is good. We don't resist other thoughts.
All we do is gently favour or prefer the word aham in our mind whenever we remember to.
So continue thinking the word aha. Own peace, not using effort, concentration or control, just seeing how lightly and softly you can think it.
The only way you can go wrong is by trying too hard, but remembering that it's not a test or an exam.
Thoughts are a natural part of meditation.
When you remember, come back to the word aha.
We will continue in silence for another minute or so.
Okay, now let's keep our eyes closed, but stop thinking the mantra in our mind.
Now let's take a moment to notice how we're feeling in our bodies.
Notice if we're feeling calmer than we did before, even if only slightly calmer.
And notice if we had an experience of sometimes being with the mantra, sometimes lost in thought, were able to come back to the mantra when we remembered to.
Then, when you're ready, you begin to open your eyes slowly.
Okay, welcome back.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: So that is. Yeah, just a taster. And I always encourage people to notice how they're feeling afterwards, rather than analyzing or grading themselves on what happened within it. So we can think of it. Like often it is enjoyable, but we want to think about doing it for the result afterwards. That is, if I meditate am I less needy for a drink if I meditate? Do I sleep better if I meditate? Am I more likely to make healthy decisions in terms of what I eat or how I react to a provocative thing that my partner says?
Or am I going to binge on that third episode of my Netflix show? Or am I going to go to bed and read my book? So, allowing the experience to be whatever it is. So if, for example, we hadn't had a nice conversation leading into this, but had instead had a really full on argument, we both would have spent that short meditation processing that argument. And that would have been good, because afterwards, it would have processed out, rather than pushing it down, as we often do. Have a drink, push it down. Turn on the news, look at some horror, push it down. We're saying, hey, I'm creating a space for whatever is in me to come, to come out.
We've got this new wellness technique which allows us to disconnect from our busy lives, but also allows us to process things out rather than pushing them down, which is what alcohol does. It's like, let's add a numbing agent. Let's add another layer of numbing agent.
And that's when people stop drinking. They're often remembering these things from before.
And I always say, well, look, you can cope with it. It's the alcohol that's giving you fear that you can't cope. You're not the person that came up with these fears or experienced these traumas in the past. You're a more mature person now and through.
You know, meditation is a friendly thing. It allows what I call your natural intelligence to take over and allow things to process out when it. When they're ready to. It's not some hostile thing saying, right, we're going to expose you. We're going to push you in the open.
But. But, yeah. How is it? How is it for you?
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Well, I guess the word that came to mind there was gentlemen like it is gentle. And I just. I think it's lovely. And I wanted to ask about the word that you choose. Is it usually a word that doesn't have any connotation with it, or how do you choose your word?
[00:51:43] Speaker C: Yeah, so that's good. So the one that I use there is what we would call a universal mantra. Aham. Aham. It does have a meaning. It means I or I am. But the meaning is not something that we're dwelling on. We're using it because it's a nice, friendly, gentle sound.
So that's the one that I use when I teach in my recordings. When I teach in person, I have a set of vedic mantras that I give to people based on their. On their age. But these, they don't have a meaning. So often when people think of mantra, they think, you know, affirmation or they think, om. So, you know, om, the most famous mantra means peace or the sound of the universe. But if I'm there thinking peace, my mind will be like, well, what's the opposite of peace? Oh, war. And then I'll be thinking, Putin, Ukraine, you know, rafa, Gaza. And that's not peaceful. So instead, I like the approach of using these sounds that don't have any meaning. So we're not trying because that's adding thinking to thinking. Whereas this is just, here's a nice little. It's almost like this internal lullaby where we're just listening for the sound quality. And, you know, as you can see, all my guitars behind me, I love music. Many people love music and find music relaxing. So it's kind of like, rather than a word with content, it's a sound that has a musical quality.
Vibration, we would say. And that vibration has the effect of bringing you to stillness. And the still version of you is not going to be looking for those quick fix solutions.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. That makes sense. And I like the internal lullaby because it is really about self soothing.
[00:53:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: And who do we sing lullabies to? Our little babies that we love so much. And we're soothing them.
[00:53:45] Speaker C: And so we're self soothing ourselves in a child. Yeah, 100%.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I feel pretty chill now. Rory, I came in here high energy, but how can people find you?
[00:54:07] Speaker C: Yes. So people can go to wisemonkeyway.com and if they want to try this out some more, there's a link in the header for a free stress buster. So that is a longer version of what we just did then. So it's an eleven minute free stress buster. So, yeah, wisemonkeyway.com. you can also find me Rory Kinsella, meditation on Instagram.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate this and what you're doing, and it was just so lovely talking to you and meeting you.
[00:54:39] Speaker C: Thank you, Deb. And, yeah, have a great rest of your day.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: You, too. It's morning for you and evening for me. I guess I did this at the right time when you said, because it's. Yeah, it's almost 05:00 p.m. my time. So I think the universe.
I'm ready to enter into the evening. Well, thank you.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the alcohol Tipping Point podcast. Please share and review the show so you can help other people too. I want you to know I'm always here for you, so please reach out and talk to me on instagram at alcoholtippingpoint and check out my website, alcoholtippingpoint.com.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: For free resources and help.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: No matter where you are on your drinking journey, I want to encourage you to just keep practicing. Keep going. I promise you are not alone and.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: You are worth it.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Every day you practice not drinking is a day you can learn from. I hope you can use these tips we talked about for the rest of your week, and until then, talk to you next time.
