Alexandra McRobert, known as Sober Yoga Girl, is a former party girl turned international yoga teacher and sober lifestyle coach. Originally from Canada, Alexandra spent her twenties partying in Dubai, the land of bottomless brunch and unlimited drinks. Alex andranow supports other women in finding spirituality and sobriety through Sober Girls Yoga - which is part of The Mindful Life Practice, an international online yoga community she founded. In this podcast Alexandra will offer weekly episodes with insight into her life and journey, including stories, strategies, and sometimes with special guests. Dive into topics such as triggers around alcohol, yoga philosophy, speaking to family and friends and mental health. You’re not alone - and in being her open, authentic self, Alex helps others find and feel that.
You can find Alexandra's upcoming schedule here: https://www.soberyogagirl.com/p/upcoming-retreats-and-trainings-47b
In this episode, I share the raw and honest story of why I’m stepping away from social media for 30 days. As someone who has built a business and community online, this decision wasn’t easy—but it feels necessary. I dive into my complicated relationship with Instagram, how it mirrors my struggles with addiction, and the ways it’s impacted my mental health and relationships.
You’ll hear about the inspiration behind this detox, the ancient wisdom from the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, 12 Steps, and Buddha Dharma that guides me, and the incredible community that has joined me on this journey. I also explore how this isn’t just about rejecting technology but reclaiming attention, setting boundaries, and reconnecting with what truly matters.
If you’ve ever felt addicted to your phone or overwhelmed by the pressures of social media, this episode will resonate deeply. Tune in to hear my first reflections on this detox, how it’s already shifted my habits, and what I hope to discover over the next 30 days.
Hi friend, this is Alex McGrov, the founder of the Mindful Life practice, and you're listening to the Sober Yoga Girls podcast. I'm a Canadian who moved across the world to the Middle East at age 23, and I never went back. I got sober in 2019 and I now live full-time in Bali, Indonesia. I've made it my mission to help other women around the world stop drinking, start yoga, and change their lives through my online sober girls yoga community. You're not alone, and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling. Let me show you how. Hi friends. Welcome back to another episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. Today is a bonus episode. I don't normally do two podcast episodes a week. I don't normally do one on Wednesdays. But I have a lot of time on my hands right now because today is day one of a 30-day social media detox for me. And I've tried social media detoxes before. If you've followed Sober Yoga Girl podcast, you have listened to me talk about doing them before. And I've made it somewhat far. I think I did a full month of a social media detox in August of 2023. And it was honestly the best month of my life. I remember feeling more present with people. I felt more connected to the people around me. I read more books. I wrote more. Like I wrote a big chunk of Sober Yoga Girl, the book, in that month. The Mindfully of Practice even made progress. Like we didn't completely die as I was expecting when I went offline. I remember taking better care of myself and my space because I felt like it was worth it. I was cooking and cleaning. I eventually remember logging back onto my Instagram at the very end of the month just to post something about whatever it was, a new program I was offering or something. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm just gonna log on and post this one thing and then I won't use it to excess anymore. And we all know how that goes. It's like when you say, you know, I'm just gonna have one drink and then you're the most drunk person at the party, right? So Instagram always sucks me in. And for me, it very quickly goes into a full-on addiction. So for me, Instagram is my main issue. It's the first thing I open in the morning and I doom scroll all day. And I find when I'm on YouTube, I usually go on Twit searching for something really specific, and then I will watch the video with an educational purpose. You know, I don't just like watch YouTube all day, but I know there's some people that do. For me, checking in with Instagram is just my reflex when I'm bored, when I'm lonely, first thing in the morning. Something I've noticed too over time is that Instagram has gotten less and less beneficial for me as time goes on. So I joined the app Instagram in 2014. And when I first joined the app, it was just people's photos that I knew. And I loved being able to stay connected and keep in touch with people. There was no marketing on the app. I don't even think there were advertisements. And I remember when you would get to the end of a post, the day of posts that you hadn't seen yet, there was this green check mark and it would say, You're all caught up for the day. I don't know if you all remember that. But now Instagram seems to have turned into this algorithm of endless nonsense. So I find I can literally stay on Instagram for hours and hours. And I've noticed when I'm looking at stories, like yesterday I was I was counting my story viewing, and it was I would see three people's stories, and then I would see an ad. And all of my ads are for houses and sale in Bali because you know, I've been Googling houses for sale. I've been thinking about how I really want to buy my first home soon, just kind of dreaming about it. And the algorithm knows this. And, you know, I'll follow the link, I'll check out the house, I'll do the math on my budget, I'll research the neighborhood where the house is, and then I'll just go back on the app and go back on Instagram and go deep into it again. So that's what my stories are like right now. And in my Instagram feed, it's just like videos and clips of Taylor Swift and her new boyfriend Travis Kelsey, which I enjoy, but I feel like I'm never seeing any posts from my loved ones because I'm constantly just seeing all this content that's fed to me by this social media algorithm machine. And like, don't get me wrong, I like Taylor Swift, but I don't want to be this walking encyclopedia of every moment of her life. And I feel like through my Instagram addiction, this is who I've become. Like I wasn't this obsessed with Taylor Swift before the algorithm turned me into this obsession. My relationship with social media is complex though, right? So I have all of these issues, yet at the same time, we have to agree that social media is how I built my business as an entrepreneur. It's how I quit my job as a teacher. So I started out in sober Facebook groups, building this community online, sharing about my sober journey. And then I grew my Instagram account to over 20,500 followers. And honestly, whenever people ask me how many how I got so many Instagram followers, I tell them the truth, which is that I have an addiction. I really do. And it's through having this Instagram addiction I've been able to connect, engage, post, share, like, comment, and and just kind of build my community. Something I was thinking about this morning that's really funny is when I got sober from alcohol, one of the biggest things I was struggling with was losing my identity or my identity changing, right? So I had built up this identity through alcohol as Alex the Party Girl. And it felt like I didn't even know who I was without drinking. And the same feels to be true now without Instagram. So I've built up a community on Instagram over the last five and a half years into my sobriety, and I call myself sober yoga girl. My handle is Alex McRobb's, but but I will refer to myself as sober yoga girl. And it feels like this really big identity I've built. And I'm like, who will I be without it? Right? And I know that my social media addiction issues are as bad as my alcohol addiction issues, but maybe even worse. Because when I had alcohol, it was usually at nighttime at the end of stressful days. I would binge drink sometimes in the daytime, but that would be, you know, on the weekends or whatever. And towards the end of my drinking, I was drinking every day, but I was still sober for the whole work day. With Instagram, it's the first thing I'm on when I wake up. I'm on it all day until I go to bed. Now, I've told you that I've tried to quit Instagram a few times and I've always ended up coming back. Now, something that has made this Instagram detox different is the community that I've built around it. So I happened to post on my stories the other day that I want to get off Instagram, and I heard from about five people that they wanted to get off Instagram too. So I made a little WhatsApp group and I have been working on some daily inspiring emails that you'll receive if you sign up. And within two days, 65 people have signed up for the social media detox. It is unbelievable. And you can join us anytime. You, I'm gonna send the link, I'm gonna pop the link at the on this episode. So if you want to join social media detox, just click the link and join. And what amazes me in the group is that all the conversations that we're having, shh, they show that we all share so many fears and stresses around both using Instagram or social media and leaving Instagram or social media. So a lot of people find that it's a huge waste of their time. It triggers feelings of self-consciousness, anxiety, other mental health issues. But on the other hand, people are afraid of quitting social media because they're afraid of losing their connections with others if they leave. And there's other business owners in the group like me that are afraid of their business declining when they go offline. So today has been the first morning of my social media detox. And within three, the first three hours of being off of social media, I woke up at 6 a.m., I meditated, I cooked myself breakfast, and then I decided to go to the water temple in Bali and I prayed, and it was just beautiful. It's almost like the water temple in Bali is like a cold plunge. And because it's just like super cold, clean, beautiful water coming from the rocks, and there's a little ritual you do. You pray, you meditate, you splash water on your head, and and you drink a bit of water, and it was just a beautiful thing to do. That I guarantee, if I were on, if I were still on social media, I would just be lying in bed refreshing my Instagram, right? But I had an abundance of time. And then when I was leaving the temple, I kind of felt like having a ceremonial cacao. So I rode my bike into town, and that was awesome. And now it's like 9 a.m. And I started writing this, and I was sitting in the cafe drinking my cacao and writing, and my phone rang. And it was a guy that I've been seeing for about like when I did the math, I was like, I've actually been seeing him for only 10 days, which seems wild because I just have so many feelings for him. Um, and I had messaged him last night to tell him that I was detoxing off of Instagram and he should message me on WhatsApp. And I, you know, I hadn't heard from him, but I was like, okay, I just need to let this go. And it instead of messaging me on WhatsApp, he called me to ask me how my day was going. And the thing about our relationship so far is that it's existed mostly on Instagram. So I'm gonna tell you the story of how we met. I he's a he's a singer-songwriter, he's incredibly talented, he plays the guitar, and he was singing live last year in the resort where my family stayed for Christmas. And I went up to him to introduce myself because I thought he was really cute and really talented, and I was just like seduced by his voice. Um, and so I added him on Instagram and he added me back, and I posted this story, and I could tell from stalking him on Instagram that he had a girlfriend. And I also want to point out that I had a boyfriend that time last year. So nothing happened. We just were Instagram friends for a year. And fast forward to one year later, I posted on Instagram that I was back in Canada for the holidays, and he asked me if I would be going up to the same resort again for Christmas, which is it's about maybe two and a half hours out of Toronto, and I was. And he asked me on a date, and the date quickly escalated. It was the most fun and romantic and special 24 hours ever. And our messaging continued on Instagram. So he was DMing me on Instagram, and a lot of our relationship so far has been DMing every single day. He also replies to my Instagram stories. He's not as active as me, so he'll post like one story a week, whereas I'm post like my whole day on Instagram. But I was really scared going off socials that we would lose touch, that he would forget about me quickly. Cause I had said to him, I think I had given him my WhatsApp like a he had asked for my number maybe a week ago, and I gave him my number. And I'm like, why is this guy not messaging me off the app? But I don't want to be too um, you know, like I don't want to come on too strong or whatever, which I think I haven't been able to avoid. I've been trying to play it cool, but I think he knows. Like I really like him. Um But uh I was afraid, you know, he'd forget about me or we'd lose touch. And I'm sitting in this cafe and he called me and I was like, oh my god, this has made my day. And he's just like, Yeah, how's your day going? What are you up to? And I was thinking that, you know, by disconnecting, he was forced to take more initiative to catch up with me rather than just look at my Instagram stories, right? And I started thinking a lot about that and how my relationships with my friends and my relatives have really changed since I've been overseas. And I think on the one hand, they feel like they've been able to stay in touch with me because I'm constantly posting so authentically and vulnerably about my life. So if you follow me on Instagram, you know like probably 80% of what's going on. The only things that I keep private are things that are like sensitive or you know, I don't feel is appropriate to share. But I'll talk about like, you know, just now I talked about my dating life, right? And so if you're following me, you kind of know what's going on. And but I the same is not true because they're not posting their lives like this on social media. So I feel like I don't really know what's going on with them. And then when I'm bored, I just doom scroll, right? But if I have all this free time, then when I'm bored, instead of doom scrolling, I could pick up the phone and like actually call them and have a voice-to-voice connection. And so yeah, this this phone call from him just made me feel so happy and so connected. And it really felt like it was really intentional. It wasn't like he had just stumbled upon my stories and thought that he would message me, you know, like he's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call Alex. And and that made me really happy. So today I was thinking about how all of this connects to yoga philosophy, and and something that I think is really cool is like the main yoga philosophy texts and the Buddhism text that we study. So yoga philosophy comes from Samkhya, right? And uh Samkhya originates from around the same time as Buddhism. And then we look at the 12 steps, which are which talk about or kind of have their roots anchored in Christianity, right? All of these texts have are super ancient wisdom, but they can relate to all modern challenges. And so I was thinking today, like, okay, what are the connections that we can make to these studies? So we'll start with Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. In the Yoga Sutras, we learn about the practice of Pratyahara, and this is the withdrawal of the senses. And what it teaches us is to turn inward, away from external distractions. And that's what we're really doing when we're doing a social media detox, we're practicing pratyahara. And social media is one of the loudest distractions in our world today. And so logging off even for a little while, it's an act of pratyahara. It's reclaiming your attention, it's reconnecting to your inner self. And the Bhavaga Gita speaks about karma yoga, and this is acting without attachment to the results of our actions. So think about how often we post on social media with the expectation of likes, comments, or validation, right? Like a bunch of I I said earlier, like I was just posting on my stories this week because I wanted this guy to message me. I was looking for his validation. And by having this detox, I'm instead I'm creating for the joy of creating. I'm I'm living without seeking external approval. The 12 steps has several different steps to reduce or to address our addictions. And step four of the 12 steps asks us to take a fearless more moral inventory. And I'm wondering what it would be like to extend that inventory to our digital habits. So, how does scrolling impact our mental health, our relationships, our sense of self-worth? Having the detox is giving us the space to honestly evaluate how social media fits into our lives. And the Buddha Dharma. So I just started studying the Buddha Dharma with my teacher Rolf. And the Eightfold Path from the Buddha Dharma encourages right mindfulness. Social media often pulls us out from the present moment. It fragments our attention. And by stepping away, we can create room for mindfulness by being fully present with ourselves and our lives. So I'm thinking about this detox less about rejecting technology and more about reclaiming my attention and setting boundaries in my life and aligning my habits with my values. It's an opportunity to reflect and reset and reconnect with what truly matters. I'm gonna be writing every day during this detox, except for my 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. That's January 8th to 16th, and I can't do any talking, writing, or reading during that time. I'm just gonna be meditating for about 11 hours a day. And I'm terrified, but I'm super excited. And I'm started a new Substack called Dharma Daily with Sober Yoga Girl. And if you want to read my posts about my journey, it's mostly gonna be about the social media detox right now, but I'm gonna be connecting it to modern philosophy. If you want to read that, just make sure you subscribe to my Substack and you'll get all the updates there. And if you're doing the detox too, I would love to hear how it's going. And I'm gonna pop the link in this episode so that you can jump in our WhatsApp and update us. All right, have a great day, everyone, and and I'll see you soon. Hi, friend, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. This community would not exist without you. So thank you for being here. It would be massively helpful if you subscribe to this show and leave a review so that we can reach more people. And if we haven't met yet in real life, please come hop on Zoom at the Mindful Life Practice because the opposite of addiction is connection, sending you love and light wherever you are in the world.
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