"The Wine Monkeys and Wise Monkeys" with Rory Kinsella

Intro
Welcome to the "Sober Yoga Girl" podcast with Alex McRobs, international yoga teacher and sober coach. I broke up with booze for good in 2019. And now I'm here to help others do the same. You're not alone and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling. Let me show you how.

Alex
Alright. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of "Sober Yoga Girl". I am very excited to have Rory Kinsella here with me today. And Rory is a meditation teacher who is based in Sydney, Australia. And he specializes in helping people quit drinking, using meditation as a tool. And I am really looking forward to speaking to him today because we have been connected on social media for so long. And I was actually a guest on Rory's podcast a few months ago, which is amazing. So we finally got to talk for the first time and now I'm having the opportunity to hear his story as well. So thank you so much for being here, Rory. And I'm super happy to have you here.

Rory
Great. Thank you, Alex. Good to be on. Good to reconnect.

Alex
Yeah. And now I'm closer in the world to you. So what time is it now? Are you three hours ahead of me in Sydney? Is it noon?

Rory
Yes, in the same kind of time zone.

Alex
That's so cool. Yeah. Amazing. So tell me a bit about yourself. So you're based in Australia. What was your life like before you became a meditation teacher? What did you do?

Rory
Before as a meditation teacher, I have had quite a few media jobs. The way I normally talk about it is that in my 20s, I had a lot of jobs around the music industry. So I grew up in the UK, live in Australia now, but grew up in the UK. And as a teenager, my dream was to be a rock star, you know, a classic teenager's dream. Wanting to be in bands, wanting to play music. And when I was 15, I got a bass guitar and I would practice for hours and hours every night, dreaming about being on stage and dreaming about recording albums. So I did all that practice. And then when I went to University, I was much more interested in getting drunk all the time. So I left my guitar at home. But then at the end of University, I got the opportunity to join this band who assigned to my favorite record label at the time. And I was like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And that led into a few years of doing music, principally as what I was doing, not really getting paid for it, but being in bands, running club nights, DJing had a record label with my friends. And when I finally needed to start making money, I managed to start writing about music. So I was a journalist. And as you can imagine, as we're talking about alcohol here, all those things that I was doing were highly alcohol-related. So it was very normal. But growing up in the UK anyway, we were going to pubs when we were like 15, having our fake IDs and sneaking in. And no one seemed to care really if you weren't really old enough. So, yeah, drinking a lot then and then completely normalized heavy drinking. University in the UK is basically like boarding school but with cheap alcohol and drinking every night. I think I went six days in the first year where I didn't drink, which was a bit of a challenge. I didn't make the one week but then falling into this life of music and then journalism, which meant that I was just drinking a lot, mostly binge drinking, but could be binge drinking four nights a week kind of thing. And living that music life and then living the journalism life, like media, is a very drinking-heavy industry as well. So living that life in London and then moving to Australia and continuing to live that life like Australia, is very much like England. Yeah. The way I talk about it is that I had this early midlife crisis when I hit 35 when I started thinking, hang on a minute, I've been drinking heavily for basically 20 years and living this party lifestyle, but couldn't or didn't want to see myself at 45 or 55 or 65, still being the kind of the DJ in the corner at two in the morning trying to hold onto his youth. So that was the real start of the turning point for me when I started to think, hey, maybe the partying lifestyle isn't sustainable, but it wasn't really then that I stopped, quit. It was another five years before I quit drinking alcohol. And it was quite a gradual process for me the things that I quit first were number one was DJing. I decided that DJing was the most problematic thing, and that's why associated with the party lifestyle. So quit DJing and quit smoking and then started to look at, hey, how could I be a bit more healthy here before I'd really made a hero of the party lifestyle? It was a huge part of my identity to be like the rock and roll Rory, as my friends called me, and priding myself on being the last man standing or to be able to go to a music festival and not sleep for three days. That was a real part of my identity. So starting to look at how I could change that. And while I was still drinking, I started to exercise more, and I got heavily into running. I'm one of those all-or-nothing type people. So I went from never having run at all to running marathons in the space of a year. And the exercise was the first glimpse for me into seeing how I could change my conscious state and change the way that I felt without some external substance. So I could feel good and I could feel energized and have this hit of endorphins without you know, taking a pill or a drink. And I was like, wow, hang on, there's this natural pharmacy within that I can access. So that started opening my eyes to this other world that wasn't reliant on things you could pay money for. And that then led to things like, I did a neuro-linguistic programming course, which was about uncovering my limiting beliefs around various things. And then that led to meditation, all of which I was drinking through all of this. But then it was when I started meditating, I felt like this weight had lifted off me and I had much more flexibility around these previous identities that I had. So one thing I had a problem with before is that I was very persuadable. So if you said, hey, let's go out for a drink on Wednesday, I'd be like, okay, where are we going? And then I would drink until no one else was drinking. And straight away, after I learned to meditate, even, like, the week after, I was like, hey, I'd rather not drink on this Wednesday. I don't want to be ruined for work tomorrow. I'm just going to have a soft drink, which is such a very simple thing to lots of people, but I never would have considered doing that. I would have just been like, no, it's a bit weird to not have a drink. So I started seeing from meditation that flexibility around being able to not drink on certain occasions. And it meant that, yeah, I started drinking less or having these occasions where I didn't drink, but it still took another couple of years before I finally came around to accepting that life would be better without alcohol at all and actually making the break and doing it. I guess there are a few turning points in this very long-winded answer. The main turning point to me quitting completely was this meditation retreat that I went on in Mexico in 2017, where obviously on a meditation retreat, you're not going to drink. So that was that week of clarity that I had. And there was this yoga teacher on that trip called Claire Robbie, who I interviewed for my podcast yesterday, who she hadn't been drinking for a year. And I was like, oh, wow, there are people who don't drink, which within my circle of friends, there wasn't really anyone that didn't drink or my close friends. So I saw her example of you know, you could just not do it. And then so many things fell into place as I started to look at what my life might be like without it, thinking about all the downsides that alcohol had. Because I got to a point where I was no longer getting the benefits of alcohol if you can call them benefits. Like, I wasn't enjoying it like I used to. The hangovers getting worse and worse, and the good times were getting fewer and fewer. And I was like, well, hang on, I'm avoiding going out because I don't want to get drunk. So I'm just either being a hermit or getting wasted. I could just switch this to not drinking. Hey, did you know that people go out and they don't drink and they have that sociable time and then they don't spend three days trying to recover. So it was that one-week meditation retreat, which when I got back to Sydney, January 2018, I had this day of being like, well, I've got someone leaving due today. Should I drink or should I not? And I just thought, yes, but I don't want to waste this week that I've spent feeling so good, decided to go and not drink. And then that was enough to set me on having a Dry January and then got to the end of Dry January. And then I was like being this marathon running type, all or nothing person. I was like, right, what's the next goal? I set 100 days as my next goal. Got there and through that, there was like Australia Day here, which is like the 4th of July. There was a ski trip to Japan where I was like, including an amazing pub crawl in Tokyo. I was like, no, not drinking through that. There was a wedding in New Zealand. And having got through all these events, I was like, well, hang on, what more could there be? You know, like a wedding is a huge hurdle that many people have to get over, a sober wedding and a holiday. So then I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to extend this a bit longer and see how we go. And yeah, that was four years ago.

Alex
Wow, that's incredible. And I love how just that experience of having that week meditation retreat and experiencing sobriety and then not being wanting to waste it, it just propelled you to keep pushing forward. And I had similar experiences in terms of, you know, being on yoga teacher training, being in these settings where I was away feeling so good. But I don't think I made the connection that it was because I wasn't drinking? I think I thought it was because I was doing yoga and eating healthy? And I never saw it as momentum to stop at that point. I always was like, oh, I can't wait to get back and drink again. So I think it's amazing the way that was like a kickstarter for you. And it really connects to the work you do now. Right? Helping people stop the same way that you did.

Rory
Yeah, 100%. So what happened from then is by that point when I gave up, I had been teaching meditation for a year at that point, and I'd been as a novice teacher. And I was trying different ways to get people interested, generally talking about the benefits of meditation, and being a former journalist, I was writing articles, but nothing was really getting cut through. And then I started writing about my experience giving up alcohol. So I wrote an article about my 1st 100 days of not drinking. And it just went off, like, got published on this mainstream website here and then got picked up by Apple News. And in like two days, 100,000 people had read it. I was getting all this interest in my meditation business, even though I hadn't talked about being you know, I wasn't saying, hey, come and learn meditation. I just said, here's what it's like to quit drinking for 100 days. By the way, I teach meditation. And had all these people being interested because it made me realize that so many people, they're not yoga people or they're not meditation people, which means that they don't engage with any of that at all. Whereas when I was talking about alcohol and really talking about it, this is the thing that I've kind of learned is that alcohol is a wellness technique. It's a way that people-- a tool people use to feel better and to make themselves, you know, survive day-to-day life. It's just a really rubbish wellness tool that has all these downsides to it. But the reason people use it is because they want to feel calmer, they want to feel more relaxed, they want to be able to sleep, they want to relax in social situations, which they're all kind of positive things to want to have. It's just that meditation is-- sorry, yeah, meditation is a much healthier and more sustainable way of accessing those same benefits. So I realized that one, I could connect with more people by talking about alcohol because it's a more common thing that people do. And then, two, show the reason that people gravitate with many of the reasons that people go towards alcohol, you can get those benefits from meditating. And from my own experience, what I noticed is that the need to drink would dissolve over time. It made it so that I could-- because even when in a couple of years after I started meditating before I completely gave up, I had much more freedom around alcohol. And it just didn't occur to me to give up. So it wasn't like I was trying and failing. It just didn't occur to me. It was something to do. Whereas when I finally did decide to do it, I'd already done all that work. I'd removed all the stress from my system, those triggers around drinking. So when I actually did it, it was quite easy. And then that's translated into me. So I obviously now attract people who want to learn to meditate because they've resonated with me talking about alcohol. And then I've developed more programs specifically around that. And what's been amazing to see is how consistent meditation really makes it so much easier to stick to drinking goals. Like, if you meditate twice a day, you will be much more likely not to drink. If you're planning not to drink, you'll be much more likely not to do it. And the way that I describe it is like in the course I talk about how we have wise monkeys within us, and then we have a wine monkey. And by meditating or doing yoga or whatever our wellness practice is, we stock up on those wise monkeys. This is a way of talking about adaptation energy, so that the more of those we have, stuff goes wrong in our day, whether it's, you know, we forget our phone or a car comes past and splashes us or we're late for our meeting or whatever might happen in a normal day, those things would chip away at our adaptation energy or our store of wise monkeys until that runs out. And when that runs out, we'll be like, I'm done now. I need a drink. So the wine monkey comes out, which is often why people can easily not drink in the day. But when it comes to that witching hour, they've spent all that energy. So the way I teach it is that by meditating, you stock up on extra wise monkeys so that that wine monkey keeps getting pushed down, and you just naturally feel that you don't need a drink. So if stress is one of the reasons that many people drink, you're removing that trigger, and you're giving people a way to relax because people want to just go, right, I'm switching off. So you give them this tool of meditation, which helps them do that, and they just naturally find that it's much easier for them to say, hey, I'm not going to reach for a drink now or I'm going to be out at dinner, and I'm going to say, no, thanks. I'll just have a sparkling water, please.

Alex
Yeah, totally. I mean, I don't know which and I'd be curious to ask you which meditation techniques that you use, but I have found for me, it's like basically intervening from those moments where I'm triggered and just using the breath to tap into the moment and kind of diffuse it. And what I've learned is that a trigger will only last you know, however long, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then it will pass. But if you can navigate it in another way, like intervening with that habit loop, it can help you break the habit. And that's what I found is so magical about it.

Rory
Yeah, 100%. So being mindful in those moments, using the anchor of the present moment to help you surf those urges. You know, like you said that that difficult period often only lasts ten minutes, 15 minutes. A group of mine were talking about the other day, and it's often that time when you arrive at the bar or the restaurant and it's ten minutes around, people ordering their first drinks, and there's this natural awkwardness at that moment anyway, because there's maybe new people there or you're in a new situation. So we've been conditioned to have a drink to numb that awkwardness. But the interesting thing is that that awkwardness goes away after ten, 15 minutes, anyway. Whether you have a drink or not, you get used to it. So, yeah, being present through that and saying, oh, I'm feeling awkward, that's okay. Like accepting those feelings and not having to do anything about it. But I guess the technique that I teach is, so it's not a mindfulness technique. We don't use the breath. It's a self-transcending technique. So like transcendental meditation or what I teach in person, which is Vedic meditation. So you use a mantra, which is a word or sound that has no meaning. You repeat it silently in your mind, and this brings you towards a state of stillness and can take you to a place beyond thought. So we talk about transcending, which is moving beyond thought into a place of inner silence. And by doing that, you allow your body to rest more deeply than it does when you sleep. And that means that you're able to offload, process out stresses that you've been carrying around. So when you do you know, get into these what could be awkward situations, you don't have that backlog of anxiety, which is making things hard for you. You're naturally more relaxed. And yes, so you've processed out a lot of the things which would be making you need a crutch of alcohol. You just become generally, more relaxed person, but then also being able to yeah, surf those urges in those moments.

Alex
Yes. You know, this sounds like a type of meditation that I have been exploring lately. I'll tell you what it is. It's called here, its active consciousness meditation is what it's called on the schedule where I'm doing it at the Yoga Barn. I don't know if you've ever been to the Yoga Barn in Ubud.

Rory
Yeah, I have.

Alex
So it's with each Chakra, we hold our hands in a Mudra, and then there is a repetition of a Beej Mantra. And there's been all these other sensory experiences like a drum and a candle and incense. But I have found it so-- I did it once and I was like, I need to do this every day. And so I've been exploring, returning to it. And it's something that I previously, back when I started my yoga journey, I don't think that it would appeal to me because it's just so out there. And I think I needed to sort of be met where I was at in terms of something much more accessible, like the breath or a guided visualization was more relatable for me. And now that I've been on this yoga and meditation and pranayama journey for a while now, I feel like it's meeting me where I'm at if that makes sense. So it reminds me of that. I don't know if that has any similarities.

Rory
Yeah. I mean, the Beej Mantra part definitely. Beej means seed. So it's a seed mantra that plants a seed in your consciousness and uses the anchor of sound herein to bring you towards, to change your conscious state. We don't do any of the drums or the other stuff. It's very stripped back and there are no requirements. You don't need candles. You don't hold your hand in mudras. You don't sit in Lotus pose. You sit comfortably on a sofa as if you're reading a book or watching Netflix. And all you do is close your eyes and repeat this word or sound, which appealed to me because it is very simple. There's no watch your thoughts and you know, try and distance yourself. All you're ever doing is think this. If you remember to, you think this word, which is soothing to your mind and brings you towards stillness. So I did mindfulness for probably six months before I found this, and I got benefit from it, but it didn't click with me, and I didn't love it. So I would find that my back, like I'm not a good Yogi, so my back would ache if I was sitting in Lotus pose or even if I didn't have my back supported. So when I discovered Vedic meditation, I was just like, oh, I can just sit comfortably. So one of the things is that we're minimizing things that will keep us at the surface. So things that will keep us at the surface are physical discomfort and mental activity. So we minimize physical discomfort by sitting comfortably, leaning back, and not playing statues. Like, it's not like you have to avoid scratching yourself if you've got an itch or coughing or rearranging yourself. That's all okay, do that. And then minimizing mental activity. So not judging yourself for not being able to clear your mind, not analyzing what comes up, and aiming to think this mantra in as effortless a way as you can. And it's really funny when I start because I can explain the meditation technique in about five minutes. But it's a big difference between explaining the concept of effortlessness and then actually being effortless. Like, it's an easy concept to get. But a friend of mine describes it like, it's like learning to ride a bike where the steering wheel goes the other way. So there's this YouTube video of a guy who's engineered his bicycle so that if you turn left, the wheel goes right. And in an abstract way, you think, right, I could do that. You just switch what you're doing and I can just set off. So this guy thought, all right, well, how long will it take me to ride this backward bike, say, 10 meters, 20 yards down the drive? And he thought it would maybe take a few days. It took him five months to learn how to do this because it's completely different to how you operate.

Alex
Right.

Rory
His five-year-old son instantly learned it in two weeks because he had a much more plastic brain and the ability to learn. But it's like with meditation, we can hear the concept of, okay, don't try, just be effortless. But actually doing that involves you falling off the bike a lot. So falling off the bike in this term, in terms of this is trying too hard, trying to control it, wanting a deep experience when you're having a shallow one. All of these aspects, which are pretty much all under the umbrella of mental activity or trying to control, they're like this, you know, a pair of shoes that are laced up too tightly. And we're just undoing those different threads each time. And it's a process of not trying to make anything happen, but letting go and allowing it to happen. And that just-- I just felt more connected with that when I learned than the mindfulness, which I did get benefit from. But I never looked forward to doing it. And it was kind of like I could do it because I have a personality where I say, right, I'm going to do this, and I just do it. But with the Vedic meditation, when I learned that, I was like, oh, I know how to do this. I'm going to look forward to doing it. So I look forward to doing it. And then if I didn't do it, I'd be like, oh, I really need to do this. And someone mentioned this the other day. They said, can you get addicted to meditation? And I was like, you can and you will, but don't worry about it. It's a good, healthy addiction. Like, we're addicted to breathing oxygen, if you like.

Alex
Yeah. And I can totally relate to that because I'm at a point now where I started doing a daily practice of a meditation or pranayama, and I notice when I haven't done it, I don't feel as well. I'm craving dessert or sweets, you know. And as soon as I intervene and do the practice, I feel completely different. It's magical.

Rory
Yeah. Why I talk about those the wise monkeys. You're stocking up on the wise monkeys. The wise version of you will make good decisions all day long, all week long, all year long. But it's when you're stressed or tired, then you start making bad decisions. You start making short-term decisions. You go for the quick fix and, you know, your quality of life and your happiness will be made up of thousands, if not millions, of decisions that you'll make, both big and small. And the version of you that has meditated will generally make a better decision every time. And it's amazing to see with the groups that I work with that the strong correlation between the days that they meditated twice, which is our program, and the days that they didn't. So I get them to say you know, how many times they meditated and whether they had a drink or not. And no one says that they have the two meditations and a drink. It just doesn't happen. It's when they don't make time for the practice or they don't prioritize it.

Alex
Yeah.

Rory
That's when things go wrong. And it may also coincide with they had a busy day or a stressful lunch with an in-law or a parent or something. But it's those days that they don't prioritize the meditation when they find that they couldn't stick to their drinking goal. It's just very clear, and it's amazing to see how effective it is. It just changes your conscious state. So it puts that part of you that had the bright idea at whatever point, hey, I want to change my relationship with alcohol. It puts that person back in the driving seat rather than the weak-willed version of you. Like, I think I compare it to say, if I have a really bad night's sleep, for whatever reason, I have two hours sleep. That following day, I'll be making bad decisions on what I eat for breakfast. I'll be going, yeah, I'm going to have the chocolate croissant from the cafe, and I'm not going to go for a run, and I'm going to get take away burger for lunch. But any decision point I'll make, the less healthy choice. That's similar to what we're doing. Or I'll have you know, five cups of coffee, you know. Wherever I could make a decision, I'll make the short-term decision. And that's because I'm not rested. And what meditation does is puts that rested version of you in control more of the time. And that just means that you're making better decisions all the time.

Alex
So tell me about-- I'm curious. You mentioned your program, is the two meditations a day? Tell me more about it. Is it pre-recorded? How long are the meditations? What is it all about?

Rory
What I've done is I've adapted-- so I learned Vedic meditation, which can only be taught in person. And when you learn that you get an individual mantra and you go through, you witness a Puja ceremony, a gratitude ceremony, and there's a taboo against teaching that online. So I've adapted that. So I teach what I call not quite Vedic meditation. My course is called "Not Quite Alcoholic". Not quite is my thing. Yeah, not quite Vedic meditation. So I use a generic universal mantra. And I have 31 recorded meditations for that. So that's a recording that you would use every day for a month. And they are 15 minutes long. And what I do, there is a three-minute intro talking about something around effortlessness or one of those key elements or principles of this style of meditation. And then I'll get people going doing the mantra, and then there are ten minutes of silence, which some people are like, look, I just paid this money and you're just giving me silence. But it's setting up that experience of if you have a fully guided meditation, that's not really meditation. Meditation is about creating a relationship with yourself, which can only really be done in silence. So, guided meditations are good for showing you how to do something and giving you a structure to do it, but it's good as soon as you can to graduate to silent meditation. So that's why I provide these, like, you know, stabilizers on a bike where it has the three minutes of letting you know, starting you off in the right direction, then ten minutes of silence, and then another few minutes on the end where I talk about-- I kind of verify and validate the experiences that you probably had based on me having taught hundreds of people how to do this so that you have the confidence to do it the following day and to know why and how it's helping you with your drinking goal. Because a lot of my role in being a meditation teacher is to change people, to kind of get people away from the misconceptions they have around meditation. And the misconceptions they generally have are if I'm not clearing my mind, I'm not doing it properly. You know, there's this idea that it's about clearing your mind, and if you can't switch your mind off, you're not doing it properly. So it's a lot about undoing that preconception and saying, look, your mind will think, we're not trying to stop it thinking. All we're doing is giving an anchor to come back to whenever you remember what you're doing, whenever you remember that you're in this meditation experience. So it could be you thinking about some annoying meeting that you had yesterday where your boss was an idiot. You could be thinking about that for eight minutes, and then you're like, oh, where's my mantra? And then you come back to it and you might think that that's a failure of a meditation because you spent eight minutes thinking about this annoying meeting. But instead, the way to think about it is that was on your mind anyway. You just didn't let it come up because you're too busy doing work or you were, you know, playing a computer game or you were doing whatever you were doing. So what we're doing is we're providing this silent space where your mind can unwind. It can unwind those stresses that are there. Or one way I talk about it is that we each have a web browser in our mind, and we've got all these open tabs, and it's giving us a chance to go through those tabs and be like, oh, right, there was a video playing on tab five, taking up my mental capacity without me really realizing it's just there chewing up bandwidth. So when we meditate, we allow our mind to go to that thing that has been there all along and go right, okay, let me think about that annoying meeting because I'm in my most relaxed physical state, I will have a more reasoned way to close that off. And I'd be like, that's fine. My boss is an idiot. This isn't my build and end-all job. I'm looking for a job in the New Year. Close. Right. So rather than it just being there pestering you by allowing it to come up in your most relaxed state, you're able to resolve it in a way that allows you to put it away. And this is all done, not consciously. You'll just come to that realization yourself. And at that point, you remember that you have a mantra and you'll come back to it. And it's not to say that this is the only way you can do that. You know, if you went for a lovely walk through the rice paddies in Ubud, you would be in that relaxed state and you would do that. But this is more efficient in that you can do this by closing your eyes for ten minutes or 20 minutes, and you don't have to be around the beautiful rice paddies and you don't need an hour to go and do it. So although you've thought for eight minutes of those ten minutes about this annoying thing, afterwards, that will be off your mind and you will be better able to focus and you won't have that thing that's annoying you that's going to make you want to drink. So it's saying, look, even though you thought through all throughout that meditation, that is good, that is a good result. But often people, when they start, they'll have a few deep meditations where it's like I didn't think about anything or I was kind of drifting through this beautiful, visual landscape and I'll be like, great, that's also good.

Alex
Yeah.

Rory
The deep ones are good, the shallow ones are good. The only bad meditation is the one that you didn't do. It's just your body at different times needs different things. And if you've got something on your mind, you need to let it run around and dissipate its energy. But that's not the enjoyable meditation, but that's the really good functional one that you need. So yeah, I recommend that people on the course, well, we start at one a day to ease them in because two is too intimidating. But then I recommend that people do one of these in the morning. So my schedule is get up, have a shower, meditate. So I try and do it before I turn my phone on or before I've taken it off airplane mode. Meditate and then that will set me up for the morning. So I'll be able to focus and I'll be able to prioritize the things that I want to do. And then the second time that I get people to meditate and that I meditate is around 05:00 P.M. and 06:00 P.M. When in the context of drinking is that witching our time where people have a habit of drinking, it's the post-work drink. And it's that point where-- but you've used up that adaptation energy in the day. You've spent all your wise monkey credits, and that's when the wine monkey could come out. So that's when you meditate again. And it's a great way of sealing the day and putting the day away and giving you that extra bump of the wise version of you for the evening. Yeah. And when we only do one a day, I say just do that evening one. But it makes such a difference to changing people's conscious state. And yeah, as I keep mentioning, that wise version of you is not the version that's going to reach into the fridge for the automatic unconscious beer or glass of wine. It's the much more conscious version of you, which is like, hey, I'm feeling good. Maybe I'll go for that moonlit walk, or maybe I'll work on my side hustle, or maybe I'll call my, you know, gran, who I've not spoken to for ages, whatever it might be.

Alex
And I love how you said something earlier about how people will or-- this is my tendency is that when I was younger and I started meditation, I thought I was the only person in the room that did not know how to do it because I could not control my mind, and I had so much chaos going on, and I knew that I had this undiagnosed mood disorder. And so it was constantly a flaw with me that I was, like, attacking myself right, for not being capable of meditating. And so I love how you set that standard of, like, you know, the only bad meditation is the one you don't do. And if you sit down and your mind is taking you somewhere, it's because it needs to go there. And I love that because I think a lot of people who probably come to this strategy of quitting drinking and using meditation are probably going to be quite similar to me, and they have a lot going on in their heads. And if it turns into then, like, a war with yourself about, like, I suck at this, I'm bad at meditation. I can't meditate, then it's just, you know, kind of turning on yourself when that's not the point. And so I wish when I was younger and I had explored this, I really had that messaging put out to me, which is that you know, we have a brain, and it's designed to think. And so if you're thinking you're not a failure, your brain is just doing its job, and you just gently invite yourself to come back to the moment.

Rory
Yeah. Game changer. And the way that we teach it in Vedic meditation is that there are two main schools of meditation, or aimed at two types of people. So there's the monastic type aimed at monks and people who want to fully live that spiritual life. And then there are types, which we call householder techniques. So householder technique is aimed at people like us who have businesses and are interested in relationships and success and normal things. Right. The 99.9% of people who don't become monks and nuns and the types of meditation that are designed for us, they're more flexible and they're less about this austerity and discipline. So the idea that we have meditation tends to be more from that Buddhist lineage, which is, you know, if you go to learn Buddhist meditation, you'll learn it from a Monk. That's their practice. And that's then being mindful all day. It's a 24 hours practice and involves that discipline because that's what monastic types do. And you know, if you go on a Vipassana retreat, it's strict. You do not look at people, you do not smile, you do not talk. Whereas these transcending types of meditation are more aimed at people who are out in the world who have 20 minutes here and there to meditate, and they're not going to be able to clear their mind because they've not been doing this all day long for 15 years or whatever the people in the monastery have been doing. So it's setting yourself up with a technique which is designed for people like you, not for monks. That was a huge turning point for me and really resonates when I teach people, they're like, no wonder I struggled with this. You know, you're trying to do what this Monk spent 20 years doing, and they can clear their mind, and they can change their heart rate to the exact BPM they want to do. And they can do all these crazy things which sound magical, but that's working at this all day, every day. And that's not something that most people have time to do. They've got to pick up their kids from school or they've got a presentation for work. They've got a small window to do this. So it needs to be a very targeted, effective technique that isn't going to make them feel like a failure because they can't clear their mind, which is not going to happen.

Alex
Yeah. And I love that because I feel like your approach makes it so accessible and so approachable and so inclusive and welcoming for anyone who's looking for a strategy. And so I think your program is really amazing. And as I get more into meditation, I can appreciate it more. So I'm sure you're changing so many lives in what you're doing. Incredible.

Rory
Yeah. So it's been such a pleasure to do that. So when I originally did it, set it up a couple of years ago, it was just the guided meditations. But then what I've been doing recently is I've launched this course called The Six Steps for Not Quite Alcoholics, which gives a bit more structure around it. So it's still based around that meditation thing, which will 100% work. And what I said to someone the other day is, you do not find a long-term meditator who is a heavy drinker or a heavy smoker. Those bad habits just dissolve over time and meditate. But I wanted to give a bit more structure around it. So with the new course, we now have weekly seminars. So it's like a 90 minutes seminar and with a group check-in, and then I talk about each step, you know, one of which is meditation, one of which is accepting that life would be better than alcohol and imagining what your future self is. Some of the great things about this group course are, you know, we do a group checking, and people just spend five minutes saying how their week was. And it's so useful because everyone else can be like, oh, that's exactly what I was struggling with this week. And it's just inspiring to know that you're not that different from everyone else. So we have that, and we have a chat group where people post whether they did their meditation and any challenges they'd had. You know, at the beginning, people were like, I'm not a group person. I'm not going to like this, but then they're so loving it because it's like this. There's someone who described it as a cheerleading squad in your pocket. So even if you had a hard day and you didn't meditate and you ended up having a glass of wine when you didn't mean to, you've got these dozens of other people going, you know, you're not back to square one. And everything you've learned so far is still there. What have you learned? What did you learn from yesterday? Oh, you learned that when you don't meditate, it's harder to stick to your goal. So that's been really good for me and good for me to witness because with the recorded guided meditation course, I would generally not hear from most people because there wasn't that interaction. But having these group meetings has been great for me because it just inspires me to do more because it's like, you know, this stuff really does work, and I can see it works. So that's, you know, a huge part of what I'm doing now. And what I'm teaching this week is you know, getting them to share their story with other people because it's hearing from someone like you, a story that's similar to yours inspires you to be able to make that change yourself, which is my step six. And it's related to step 12. And 12 steps are, you know, you've benefited from something, and then you pay that forward by teaching other people what you learn. It doesn't matter if you've not even given up for many days in a row, but if you've changed your relationship with alcohol, as all the people in my course have, or you have got to a week or 30 days or 100 days, then you're further along the road than someone who's just started. And that's going to be more able for people to relate to than someone like you or me who's like, no, I'm four years without a drink now, and I'm becoming less relevant every day because I'm going further and further away from the people that I'm speaking to who are still drinking now.

Alex
Right.

Rory
So that's why it's so valuable to have other people telling their stories within the group, but then also encouraging them to speak to people around them, not in a kind of boring way where it's like, you should do this, you should do that. But just saying, hey, I've done this, and this is what I felt like before. And this is what I feel like now. That's so powerful when you're not, like, telling people what to do, but just saying, look, this is what I did. It makes such a big difference.

Alex
Yeah. So I have one more question for you. If you had any last piece of wisdom or advice for someone who is giving up drinking, what advice would you give?

Rory
So this may sound a bit controversial, but I've been coming around to it recently. Goals are good, but systems are better. So if you're setting yourself up for I'm going to do Dry January, for example, which is coming up. It's, be wary of what happens at the end of January. If you just want a month off, then that's fine. You can reach your goal, but if it's your way into doing something longer, then be careful around it. So the example I give around this is that I set myself a goal this year of reading 52 books. So a book a week was what I wanted to do. I was a bit ahead of schedule and hit 52 books in the last week of October. Since then, which is seven weeks ago, I have not read a single book, not a single one. What happens when you've reached the finishing line is you finish. So that is something for people to think about if they're starting out. It's much more important to change your overall systems and your habits than to have this one, you know, a week or a month sprint, not drinking. That's not going to have any long-term impact if that's all you do.

Alex
Right.

Rory
Whereas I would much prefer people to halve the amount of alcohol they drink or quarter it forever and have 30 days off or 60 days off or even 100 days off if they then go back to how they were before it's making long-term changes and knowing that a short-term goal could trip you up. If you want something to happen, if you want the changes to last for longer.

Alex
Yeah. Oh, that's a great nugget. Goals are good, systems are better. It's brilliant.

Rory
Yeah.

Alex
Well, Rory, I just want to thank you so much for your time and being here and sharing your story and your journey with our community. I think it's going to be so inspiring for so many people and I'm going to leave your information in the episode description so if anyone wants to connect with Rory and join one of his meditation programs and check that out, I think it would be super amazing. So thank you so much for your time and I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon.

Rory
Awesome. Thank you so much, Alex. Love what you do.

Alex
Bye.

Rory
See you.

Outro
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of "Sober Yoga Girl" with Alex McRobs. I am so, so grateful for every one of you. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next one and leave a review before you go. See you soon. Bye.