Introduction to Vedic Meditation - Part 2 with Rory Kinsella

Lots of you have been asking questions about Vedic meditation, after hearing how profoundly impactful it's been for me, so I took the time to sit down with my friend Rory Kinsella to learn more about the practice. 

Vedic Meditation uses a mantra and you sit comfortably in a chair rather than in a classic meditation pose like lotus, so many people find it more accessible than other styles. 

In this episode, Rory will talk about learning to meditate ten years ago, how it changed his relationship with alcohol and what he’s learned from teaching thousands of people to meditate over the last eight years. Alex will also share the impactful experience she has had with Vedic Meditation learning from both Rory on his retreat and Jenn Agostini online. Alex has now chosen to integrate Vedic Meditation into her Yoga Teacher Trainings going forward because of how impactful it is, and she is excited to share it with you!

Join Alex and Rory's retreat in May of 2025 in Bali at: https://www.wisemonkeyway.com/a/2147781106/wGVhfYH8

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, friend. This is Alex McGrobs, founder of the Mindful Life Practice. And you're listening to the Sober Yoga Girl 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. So I thought it would be great if we can kind of have the conversation together. So how are you, Rory?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I'm good. Uh yeah. I I still love the fact that you after the retreat, you came away loving the meditation. And then also you inspired me with the yoga. So you'll be pleased to hear I went to yoga today. I've been trying to go several times a week. So I think that was really nice. And we we also had that nice aspect on the retreat where we would watch each other teaching and we'd both be going, that fits so nicely with what I teach. Um so that was, yeah, I'm I'm glad for the opportunity to come and come and chat about it as always.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Amazing. So I was wondering if you could share your story about how you started with meditation. And I actually don't even know if I've ever heard this. Maybe you told it on the first time you were on my podcast. But yeah, I would love to hear because you've been practicing for like 10 years, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, 10 years. So I um I came across uh meditation in general and specifically Vedic meditation uh 10 years ago, where I was at this real turning point in my life. And it was it wasn't when I quit drinking, but it was when I made a really significant change in my lifestyle. So I was 35 when I learned. And for the previous 20 years, I'd been my whole identity had been around drinking, partying. I was a DJ, I was a club promoter, I was a in bands. You can see my guitars in the background. I'm almost like, oh, I didn't realize I left these here, even though they're all perfectly aligned. Um, but yeah, I I'd reached a point on my 35th birthday where I realized that I couldn't sustain the lifestyle that I'd been living before. And the day after my 35th birthday, where we'd had this crazy, really seedy warehouse party, um, I woke up the next day and said, right, something's got to change. So it wasn't alcohol, interestingly. Then I quit smoking and I quit DJing. And I was like, right, we'll put the partying bit behind me. And what I what I then did is I started looking around for for what else there was to do. Because that that that took a big part of my life away, it took a big part of my identity. So if I think about my identity in my 20s, it was around that, like I was like a I was prided myself on being the last man standing. One of my nicknames for my from my friends back home in England was Rock and Roll Rory. So if I wasn't rock and roll Rory, then what was I? So I I went down a few avenues, uh, one of which led me to meditation. So I got fit and started running. That was one thing which was really important to me. I did a few psychology type things, like I did an NLP course, and then I had this amazing mentor at work at my old job who said, Hey, why don't you try meditation? And I'd read a couple of books, like I read Um The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, which was weirdly, it was going around in a book book club at work. Um, and then I also read uh The Power of Now, and I was like, okay, right, I'm gonna give this meditation thing a go. So I started looking around at various different types, and I, you know, I would do meditation at yoga studios where we'd sit up straight, or I would I did a mindfulness course once a week for an hour for six weeks, and I I enjoyed the mindfulness in that I could immediately see that I got benefit from it, but something wasn't like I wasn't loving it. So I continued my search around, and I've been hearing things about Vedic meditation and transcendental meditation. So these are these are kind of both words for meditation from the same tradition. And I went to a transcendental meditation um intro talk, and I didn't like the vibe of it. They've they're quite corporate y, they've they've got offices in most big cities, and they've got loads of celebrity endorsers as well, but I didn't like the vibe. They put on this really cheesy 90s video, um, and that and then asked us these weird questions. So, anyway, I was inspired by the style of meditation, but didn't like their vibe. And then I heard about Vedic meditation and how Vedic was the same from the same tradition, but didn't have any uh kind of the politics and cult-like nature of TM. So I learned. So this was back in 2014, and I immediately loved it. I was like, wow, like I could feel while I felt the benefit of mindfulness, like generally, and I would feel it in the day after, you know, the day after I did it or during the week, with Vedic, I just felt immediately a tangible letting go. And one of the ways I describe it is like it was like my my mind was this clenched fist, and using the mantra, which we'll talk about in a sec, that allowed me to let go and and truly relax. And then that that one inspired me to want to dedicate myself to doing it regularly, but then I also noticed the the benefits start to come through. And although I didn't stop drinking for another couple of years after that, the nature of my drinking definitely changed that week, and I've I was a keen journaler, so I can prove it, it's it's in my notes. Um, like that, that that very week going out, and normally for work drinks, I would have just you know drank till no one else was there. But this one, while and regret it and while not wanting to do it as well, because I knew I'd have this pattern, I was able to say, hang on, I don't want to do it, so I'm not gonna do it. And I I had the the courage and the clarity just to say, oh no, I'm gonna have a soda, lime, and bit and bitters, which is my drink of choice. And it was fine. So so while it took me a while longer to come around to the idea of quitting drinking tomorrow, learning to meditate was at this real crucial point. And where it fitted into my story was I call it my early midlife crisis. So it's like that first identity of what I was like in my 20s and early 30s, thinking about what I do now as a meditation teacher. That point there was kind of bang in the middle. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Amazing. That's so incredible. And and when you first trained in it and learned how, did you just start immediately with like the twice-a-day practice for um like was there ever any blips or what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, so so with with Vedic meditation, rather than other styles where you kind of dabble a bit, Vedics is set up where it's a bit more there's there's strong encouragement to go in hard with a with a with a non you know, non-negotiable is the word that we use, a non-negotiable twice-a day practice, at least for the beginning. So I I finished teaching a course this morning, and I don't, you know, people aren't going to commit to forever, but we say, right, commit to at least a week of doing twice a day, so you can see what it's like. So that's really built in, and and because it's because it of the way it's taught, which is usually in short succession, so four days in a row or four days within a week, usually, um, you get this momentum going. So it's much easier to go into that twice-a-day thing. Um and I happen to have one of these personalities that that sticks to things. So there's this there's a framework I use by a lady called Gretchen Rubin, um, who's got several books, but one of them is called The Four Tendencies, and within that, it's about how we relate to habits, and one of them's called the upholder, and the upholder sticks to sticks to habits. So I'm kind of good at doing that, and I can motivate myself to go running in the morning and and all these things, but that's the good side of the upholder. But the bad side of the upholder was I smoked cigarettes for 20 years and I was a heavy drinker, uh, and I don't know when to stop, even you know, even good habits. So, my example was during COVID, we had a lockdown in Sydney that went for four months. And I decided, you know, not knowing how long it was gonna be, I decided at the beginning of this that I was gonna run a half marathon every week for this lockdown. And it gets to week 12, and I'm exhausted and I'm I've not committed it to anyone. I've just said to myself, I'm gonna do this. And then I felt compelled to continue doing it. So, so that helped me do my twice a day. But then that's been really interesting as a teacher. Because when I first became a teacher, which is eight years ago, I was like, I assume everyone's gonna be the same as me. So I say, right, the rule is we do it twice a day. And then people would come in and they'd they'd struggle and they they they other things would get in the way. So that's what inspired me to look into Gretchen's work. Because while I'm an upholder, many other people are what she calls an obliger, which is they'll they'll do things, but they're thinking about other people. So it's a kind of people-pleasery tendency. And I get a lot of those people coming to me, and you probably do as well, because they really benefit from teachers, because teachers provide accountability. Um, so that was a really interesting process for me, having personally been such a kind of keen bean student, and then then noticing people who struggled, not because they weren't, they didn't um see the benefit, but just because they had this other personality thing going over, going on at the same time where they'd be thinking, oh no, I need to do something for my family member, or no, I need to work harder for for my manager or whatever it was. Um, but yeah, I I I wouldn't say that I've been every day twice for for 10 years, but I've probably only had three or four. I think in the first few years, I had a couple of days when I'd be hungover when I didn't do it. Um, but I would say that I've done all but one or two for the last seven, seven or eight years or something.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Wow, that's incredible. And okay, wait, the upholder, the obliger, right? Is this the same framework where because we've talked about the rebel before? Is this where it is coming from?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

I would have got us to do it on the retreat. So, yeah, the up the upholder. So it's about how we deal with expectations. So internal expectations and external expectations. The upholder does both. The obliger will tend to do external expectations over internal ones. Meditation is really an internal one, so it's about a teacher helps bring external accountability to it, expectations. The other ones are the questioner who makes everything an internal expectation. I hardly see any questionnaires uh coming to me to learn, interestingly. And the fourth one's the rebel. Uh and the rebels, the rebel's interesting. In on the Bali retreat, interestingly, we had a we had a few rebels. I get quite, I think drinkers, drinkers tend to be rebels. Yeah. So um, I really uh yeah, rebels are interesting because it's kind of a reverse psychology thing where you go, okay, everyone meditate twice a day, apart from you rebels, you don't meditate at all.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

You know, this is so funny to me because I really want to look into this and know what I am now, because we had a really I'm like, am I a rebel? Because I want to tell you guys what happened for me, is that I was like, This is unmanageable. I cannot do two meditations a day. I need to walk in the morning, blah, blah, blah. And so I think Rory said to me, do two 10-minute meditations a day instead of two 20-minute meditations a day. And it was, or maybe you said do one 10-minute a day or there was some kind of exception that was made for Alex. Um, and then like by a couple of days later, I was meditating twice a day for 20 minutes. And so, do you think that makes me a rebel? Like, where would you have you diagnosed?

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I I don't know. I think because this is the other thing that that she deliberately calls them tendencies. So we're all all of them, right? It's not boxes like Myers Briggs is boxes, right? And it's just it's just a framework to help to help people realize. So I think you you you probably are an upholder in lots of ways, just because of the way that you operate. Um so I'm not I would say that you you you might be an upholder, yeah. Maybe some rebel stuff, but we've all got a bit of rebel. So I think what I like about is it's when you notice, oh, I'm rebelling against this for the sake of it, then you can choose choose not to do it. But um, yeah, with the twice a day, uh you get half the benefit from two 10-minute ones. But I kind of feel that it's it's easier to mentally because what your problem that you reported there is it just doesn't mentally fit into the day, like there's not enough time for it. But when you when you meditate for 10 minutes, it's not that busy mind that's looking at how much time have I got. You're you're in your calm state. So I'm kind of tricking when I say that, I'm tricking people into doing it. Because after 10 minutes, they're often like, oh, I can go a bit longer. And also after 10 minutes, that's really when you start enjoying it. I the first half of the 20 minutes is often the the the more busy part, and the second part's the the the calmer part. But um if I only had if I if for some reason I only had 20 minutes in the day, I would do two 10 minute ones.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, on this note of structure, this is one of the things that I admire most about what you do. And I think I probably said this to you when we were in Bali together, is that um I feel like in the way that I lead, it's very nonchalant of like, do what you can, fit in yoga when you can, do it at night, do it in the morning, blah, blah, blah. And as a result, I think that really benefits maybe people that feel motivated to make that work for their lives. But I love how you have this consistent framework for people's day. So the way that Rory structures this is like first thing in the morning, and then um, because a lot of the people he's working with are getting sober from alcohol. And so he'll say, like, do the meditation, the second one at the witching hour, you know, like the 5 p.m. time when we want to drink. And then as life progresses, it will often get earlier um in the day whenever you're feeling that little mind busyness. But I love this because what I witnessed in your students is like they were able to self-identify. Like it wasn't like they had all necessarily straightforward done to meditations a day for like ever, but they were able to self-identify. Man, my life feels a bit in shambles right now. It's because I didn't meditate. And that's boom, boom, boom. I did not do that thing. And now I'm feeling like this. And I was like, wow, that whereas I think it takes, certainly for me, it's it sometimes takes me longer to come to that conclusion. Um, like this morning, I'll give the example. I actually didn't meditate. Um, I woke up, I had missed this call, and I was like, oh my God, trying to figure it out. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna meditate. Um, and then I was like, okay, I'm just gonna get a coffee going. And then I ended up having a call with my teacher, which was profound, you know, and I had some really great calls today, but I was like in tears on the call with my teacher, which was like needed, you know. But then I look at this day that I've experienced like I've just cried a lot this morning and I'm like, that's fine. But perhaps I would have had a more solid ground to stand on if I was like the meditation comes before all of this, you know, all these messages on my phone of like. Um, and so I just love that that framework. I think that's really supportive for people in finding a consistent spiritual practice.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah. And you know, I with with all of this, I don't take credit for this. This is what I learned from my teacher, who learned from their teacher, who learned from their teacher. And and I think that is a really beneficial part of it. And if it was up to me, I probably would be a bit more nonchalant and easy with people, but because it I it's it has real value. And I think uh even recently, in that my my alcohol program that you you popped into by mistake the other day, I've tried to be a bit more structured with it and not not to not to make people guilty or ashamed, but just to be clearer on what what what um what things need to be completed. And that's not necessarily being alcohol-free for a certain amount of time, but it's do this exercise, do this thing, go out of your comfort zone, um, fill out this journal thing, just to be a bit clearer with if you want it to work, this is what I think it should be, and and being quite explicit with that. But but no, like with much of this, this this was passed down to me, and I I really appreciate it. And I I think it's I enjoy passing it on because it's not natural for me to do that. But one of one of the reasons for that, you know, so if if exercise is a uh uh something we could compare to, like if I run twice a week, I think that's that's quite good, or and then I go to yoga, say three times, I think that's really good. Why we want to be a bit more um strict with meditation or a bit more frequent, even, is because it it wears off, right? Whereas my one long run a week could last me. Um, and now this might not medic physiologically be true, but this is how I how I think about it. A meditation's benefit will wear off, like sleep, the benefit of sleep wears off. It's not like you can go because you had a nice long line, it's not like you can skip sleep tonight and expect to be in a good a good state. So it's like you can skip it, but it's like you're you're skipping sleep. And and the reason that I use sleep as an example is because we're we're giving ourselves greater amounts of rest. And and this is often a comparison made. You know, a night's sleep is worth way more than a meditation, but a meditation can top up the restfulness of sleep. And this is why the the I'm I really, especially for drinkers, uh, you know, so sober or sober curious people, make make a point of the the evening, the early evening witching hour one being so important. The morning one, because the people tend to find the morning one logistically easier to do, because you know, we we tend to have quite set morning routines where you can add it in and you can just get up a little bit earlier and do it. Um, but the the one that you get more tangible value from usually, and especially with um uh people coming off drinking is that is that evening one because you've lost, you've spent that restfulness that you've got through sleep, uh, and you're in that danger zone. So for for you know, most of the people that I work with, they're not morning drinkers, they're not they're not thinking about drinking in the morning, but it's our willpower goes down during the day. And this isn't just about alcohol, but for anything, we're we're more, you know, I'm more likely to scroll through Instagram. I don't want to trigger you, I know you're on your detox your detox. Uh I'm I'm more likely to scroll through an unnamed um social media app later in the day when I'm when I'm uh um when I'm tired, right? Or or if I've slept badly, for example, I'm more likely to um eat eat badly the next day or not not exercise. So we'd we're we're topping up our restfulness for it. But like you said, the the structure is really important. And we also with with the groups that I do, and this wasn't part of the traditional training, but I think it really helps. We have WhatsApp groups, and we say, right, the group who learned, you're gonna text, you're gonna put a little tick in in the app for every meditation. It's not full process. But it adds a nice bit of social, positive social pressure where people think, I don't want to be the one who doesn't put my ticks in. And that, you know, which helps obligers because they don't want to let the team down. So that's bringing using the fact that they're an obliger or they're a people pleaser, which can um can be uh not helpful for their meditation habit. We we're we're we're making it useful by creating a group experience from it, which is the same with you know sober groups as well. There's there's that idea of you start, you take yourself out of thinking of yourself and you you think about the group dynamic a bit more.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I love that actually, that your group, we all sent little ticks to each other and someone we had a discussion at one point over like, do we want to stop this? And someone said, I like it because I it feels like we're waving at each other. And I came to appreciate that. And I do feel like that group has like I'm in many of these WhatsApp groups through many different retreats and trainings and blah, blah, blah. And I feel like yours has kept alive the longest of all the ones I've been in this year. And I think part of it was that shared like journey that we're doing together of the meditations. And someone said it's like we're waving at each other, and I just I love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, and and it's so simple, just the little tick. Like I've I've got all these groups muted because I'm also in lots of them. But it's nice to be able to, so it's good to have it muted because you can just look in and see, you go, oh, all those people are still continuing. It's a good reminder of all that stuff that we did, and we all had our goals and our reasons for doing it. And oh, yeah, they're all they're doing it too. So it's it's it's nice for that reason.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Totally, totally. So I have a question for you about so Vedic meditation is different than other meditation practices. And uh, I know everyone here is coming into this from a different meditation experience, and there's different types that we'll see more commonly practiced. Um, for example, you see a lot of guided visualizations in in yoga classes where you're taken on this journey by a teacher who's guiding you through imagining something basically. And then there's like mindfulness meditations where you're becoming more aware of everything around you. Like I can hear this rain or I can hear, I hear the whatever, the ding on my computer. Um, I feel like the heat of this cup in my hands. This is mindfulness. And I'm just wondering if you could explain like what makes Vedic meditation different than other styles like this that we might be familiar with.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, of course. So um one way I like to introduce this is to say that nearly every meditation technique uses one of the senses or multiple of the senses. So, with you know, breath meditation being the most classic, you know, the most popular uh meditation style, that uses the feeling sense or the kinetic, kinesthetic sense. You you feel the breath coming in and you can pick different places to feel it. The visualization that you mentioned is using the the sight, even though we're doing it in our minds, it's using this the sight sense. Um with Vedic, we're we're using a mantra. So a mantra is a word or sound that we think silently in our minds. So because we do kirtan together, that's mantras, but it's singing them out loud. With this, we're using it as a as a calming word that we say in our heads. And that means that, yeah, so the sense is the sense is different. And then what that what that's designed to do is we think the mantra easily and gently with our eyes closed. And what that does is means that while we're thinking this calming sound, it's hard for us to think other thoughts like, I can't believe I missed this morning's meeting, um or or or whatever it might be that's on our mind. So it's it's a tool to to uh bring us inwards to a place of stillness. But what what is interesting about how you described mindfulness, and this this is also um interesting for people when they learn if they have done mindfulness before, is that mindfulness is about generating more awareness within the meditation experience, like hype hyper-aware, being aware of everything. Yeah, focus, focus, for example, focusing on what I'm hearing or focusing on my breath. What we're doing with Vedic is we're kind of lulling ourselves into a state of deeper relaxation. So rather than being really aware of what's going on, it's more like we're going towards a more of a sleep or dream state. So often when you see someone deep in in Vedic meditation, they'll well, one way we've got our another difference is we have our back supported, which Alex and I discuss because often she'll not follow. Maybe you are the rebel, because that's another rule you broke. Um, so generally we have our back support supported. So that's either on a chair or if we're in a yoga studio, we we might or move people to have their backs against the wall. And what that allows for, so if you're set up in lotus pose, for example, you're not really going to fall asleep because you're using effort and uh uh effort as well as awareness and focus. So with with with the Vedic and the mantra, we're we're kind of lulling ourselves more into a deeper restful state. And even on the on the mind map that I draw, or we we talk about the amount of awareness that you have. So if the goal of mindfulness is to have a hundred percent awareness all the time, what we're moving towards in Vedic is is zero percent awareness, right? So when the phrase that we use for this is transcending, and that's why it's called transcendental meditation. Transcend means to move beyond. So what we're moving beyond is we're moving past the thinking um field in our head into a place of no thought. And this is uh completely different to becoming more aware of everything. So what this movement towards a place of stillness and nothingness does, it's kind of like like sleep, we're we're switching off or we're moving towards being switched off, but uh we we're able to go deeper than sleep because there's this evolutionary thing where when we're sleeping, our mind is off, but our body kind of stays half on. So if you look at someone sleeping, they're often breathing quite heavily, or you know, you'll see the sheets in the morning and they've been moving around. Um so that so uh our part of our survival mechanism is if the mind is sleeping, the body's ticking over. So what we do in this style of meditation is we're moving our mind towards stillness, that uh, but we're still awake, right? We can still hear it if if karaoke man starts singing, or you know, if there's a car back fires, that then gives our body permission to switch off. So all of this is allowing us to rest more deeply in our bodies during meditation than in sleep. Um, and what that then does is allows us to let let go of more stresses and um sanskaras and traumas that we might have in our body more than we would even when we sleep, because our body's like, oh, we've got permission to switch off. But for that, it means that it's often not a glamorous meditation uh position. So I might be sat back in my chair and I might be slumped forward. People often, when they're deep in meditation, will have their head slumped forward, which is not Instagrammable. So if people have done mindfulness before, and this is the interesting thing, both mindfulness and this, they're looking to give you um more present moment awareness, less stress in your body, but they're doing it in a different way. So another way that I compare this, it's like the word meditation is like the word exercise. And there's under the umbrella term exercise, there's like ballet, there's um ultimate fighting, there's you know, synchronized swimming, they're all completely different. Um, so but they're all generally designed to increase your physical dexterity or fitness in some way. So all meditation is designed to increase your present moment awareness, reduce your stress levels, increase your intuition, help your spiritual evolution, but it's in a different way. So one of the things that I have to get past with student, newer students, is they bring the ideas from mindfulness into it and they're trying to focus their way through it. And I'm like, hey, you don't need to do that in this. And I had a I had a student recently who was a she was quite a successful kind of type A um person. Um, and she'd been doing quite a bit of mindfulness and she was ready to try hard, right? And I kept explaining it to her, and at some point she twigged and she was just like, oh, this is naughty meditation. That's what she called it. It's like, oh, you get to you get to not care, you get to be lazy, and and and that is surprising. One, because it doesn't fit with some other styles of meditation, but two, because it doesn't fit with any of the rules of um society in general. Like it's no one at school was like, hey, just be nonchalant, you know, go with the flow. No sporting team is like, you know, just just chill. So it's it's about re-educating people that this is this is different. And one of the reasons that it's different is because it's from there there are multiple schools uh in in in the meditation traditions. So one of them being designed for and by monks, and the Vedic being more from a householder tradition, so householders being regular people who don't live in monasteries, have businesses and families, etc. And because of that, because they haven't got 12 hours a day to do mindful gardening and mindful honeymaking with their bees or whatever monks do, um they they had a technique designed which was more one more enjoy more immediately enjoyable, and two more um able to be fitted into the day. So within 20 minutes, you could do it rather than trying to be mindful all day, you could do it in this quick hit. Um so so yeah, when people kind of get it, and it's often through, you know, so I do recorded meditations and it says the same stuff, but one of the real benefits of learning Vedic meditation properly, and by property I mean in a in a live or live online situation, is because I'll say something like be nonchalant, don't worry about it, and then I'll say, How is your meditation to people? And they'll report, I was trying to focus, I was trying to block everything out, I was sitting upright. Because people people will just overwrite the simple instructions with what they think it should be. So when we we learn, and you would remember this from the course, a big component of the course is we'll meditate together and then I'll ask people how you know, how is the experience? And it's not to test them, but because I can't see into their minds what they're doing, they're generally trying too hard. And that comes out when they describe their experience, and they don't realize that until you know three times in a row I point it out to them. Um, so I've had people who've been doing like my recorded meditations for a year and getting benefit from it and not drinking from it, and then they'll do the course and they'll be like, Oh, this is so much more enjoyable when I actually followed the instructions. I'm like, they're always in the instructions, but you've just overwritten it, or you don't realize you're doing it. Or um, so I have a uh a teacher colleague who who said something recently. He was like, The technique is simple, but you are complicated, which I I really like because people think, but it can't it can't be that you know, surely I can't be let off. Surely it can't be naughty meditation. Um, so that's a key difference. There all, you know, and I'm I'm I'm not saying that it's better than any other style, but it's really worth trying, especially if you haven't managed to make a habit out of another technique, is it tends to be well for my experience and and for many of the students that I've taught is that they prefer it and it it's it's more tangibly beneficial, which then makes it easier to make a habit out of it. Not that you wouldn't have got that benefit if you'd done mindfulness twice a day, but you may not have felt like doing it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah. So from my experience, I think one of my main issues. So I really it kept coming into my world through both you and my good friend Jen. And Jen put on a training for the mind life practice in January of 2024. Um, and my issue with that, it was great, but then it felt like we were kind of dropped off and left to our own devices after that. It was like three days, and then that was it. And so it wasn't enough for me to build a consistent habit. And then I didn't see the benefit. Um, and then in contrast, learning with you on the retreat, what was so transformative for me was that we we got into a habit of doing it for seven days in a row together. And then it was funny because it was so transformational and so beneficial that I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to put this into my advanced teacher training. And so Jen was coming back and I'm like, you're teaching this, and we're doing it. And so on my advanced teacher training, we practiced, we practiced mantra meditation, not exactly this like similar strategy, but um a little bit different. And um my students were self-like my idea was okay, we're gonna scaffold them into this, like we're gonna give them a bit of guidance and do it for a few days. And then by day four, I was like, neither me nor Jen was free at 2 p.m. for the regular like sit together, and we kind of left them to their own devices. And then they were left to their own devices for the for an entire month, but they were all meditating twice a day. Like they were all saying that they were doing it wherever they were in their villama, in the yoga shamala, whatever. And it was like incredible. It was the most calm, um, the least drama. And for a one-month program, there's always drama, there's no drama in this group. And I really credit that to the meditation because you know, they the people were triggered, myself included, but they had a coping skill that they knew how to do on their own, that they could do on their own. And that made the difference. And then the second thing I'll share is that for me in getting a routine with this, what's made a difference is that I think I would get distracted by. So I did a lot of guided meditations before I started working with you. And so I would get distracted by like searching my insight timer, searching my Gabby app, and then I wouldn't know what to do, and then I didn't have a structure, and then it was lost, you know? Whereas this requires nothing except me just putting my insight timer on timer and sitting down. And and that to me has felt a lot more sustainable because there's less choice and I can't handle like all the choices, you know? And so, and so that's what's been so so helpful for me.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah, I I remember that that that you know option, you know, option paralysis thing. Because when I when I did mindfulness, which was just with a uh a lady here in Sydney, she taught us three techniques. So we did breath meditation, we did body scan, and we did loving kindness, which are all great meditations, but she kind of just said you can just pick which one to do anytime. And I was like, I don't want to be making these decisions, having to make these decisions. So that was another reason that I really like this one. It's this this is it, just you just do that, and the other part of it is that you were alluding to is it's designed to be for people to be self-sufficient with it because it's so straightforward. Um, the idea is that people get up and running, and you know, I will still offer support and I do my Zoom meditations and all that, but you you know what to do by the end of the training, and that's necessary because if you're going to do it too twice a day, you can't be linking with someone else's schedule, not for twice a day. So you want to be able to do that. And and the other reason that twice a day is is achievable is because you know, 20 minutes is not get to the yoga studio in 20 minutes or get my yoga mat out. It's just I could close my eyes now and do it for 20. Or if I really struggled, I could do 10, and 10's still good. Um, so it's it's making it achievable. And it's not, you know, like you say, that not having to choose what to do. Like insight time has got like a million meditations in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Um, there was something I was gonna say there, but I can't remember. Well, what did you say before? You said Insight Time we're having choice, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Oh, making it manageable. Yes. This is what I was gonna say is that something I love. I join a lot of Rory's group calls now. Um, and something I love is that I see people joining in every um state. Like some people are in their workflows, some people are in their car, um, they're just wherever and they're making it fit into their lives. And I think with an asana practice, um, it's a little bit harder to do that. And that's why having a sustainable twice-daily meditation um is a benefit. And Jen was actually saying on the 300-hour YTT that she would say to everyone, meditate, uh meditate every single day and then asana when you can um to yoga teachers, you know, and I would agree with that um absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Yeah. So often on the calls, we'll have people in their car on the way home, or it's it's evening Australia, morning England. So that the people in the UK often have their dressing gowns on. It's just cute.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

So me and Rory have two different things coming up uh that we want to share with you that where he's gonna be teaching Vedic meditation. And the first is this pranayama and meditation YTT that I'm leading. And it's gonna be great because not only is Rory teaching Vedic meditation, but I'm teaching all the different other meditation styles. So you're gonna get like a self, a dedicated self-practice with Rory of Vedic meditation, but then you'll also learn all the other ones as skills that you can like basically as add-ons and of things that you can facilitate in yoga classes. And I'm super excited for that. And that's online. And I think that's gonna be different than my online experience that I had last year because we're gonna be together for the long term, like from January through to April. Well, Rory will not be there all the time. He can come back if he wants to and say hi, but he'll be teaching at the very beginning the Vedic meditation, and then I'll be with you for the rest of the year. Um, and we also have a Balinese pranayama teacher who's gonna be teaching the um the pranayama practices later on. And so that's going on. And then the second thing is that we're doing uh we're doing again the same retreat that we did this last year, which is a Vedic meditation and yoga sobriety retreat. And that is in May. So if you guys have any questions about any of that, we're gonna we'll stop the recording in a couple minutes and just kind of like chat to the people that are live here with us. Um but did you have anything else, Rory, that you wanted to to share or add?

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Um just just you know, more encouragement to do it. Like I was a bit unsure doing it, but um, you know, it's the best decision I've ever made. And yeah, I just love teaching it because it's watching that transformation when I see people when I see it click for people and they're like, oh, I now get it. And they can just really see, you know, we we were talking about this before, like you were saying to me, because a lot of the students on the retreat were were long long-term meditators from my from my community, it was you could tell you could you could see the proof was in the pudding, yeah, right? Well, uh, first of all, a lot of them were already, you know, a year plus sober, but by being twice a day meditators, you know, there wasn't any of that drama. We had that thing of you know, there are a few things wrong, and there was the karaoke noise that we kept having, but everyone was able to take it in their stride. So one, that's from them being, you know, regular longer-term meditators, but I see it, you know, whenever I teach day two, day three, I've had people come in and they're like a wreck on day one, and then day two, they're just I can just see that they're much calmer after having done it like twice. I'm like, this is so, this is so powerful. For for doing, you know, you you've not taken any medication, you've not had a lobotomy, you've just done this very simple practice where you've closed your eyes, followed a specific sequence for 20 minutes. And people, there's there's people who've you know not slept properly for years, and then overnight they're like able to sleep. I've had I've had people who had a lady who is 75, who'd been on sleeping tablets for 25 years, she weaned her. Yourself off in consultation with their doctor in two weeks and now doesn't take them anymore and sleeps like a baby. It's like this, this works.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

And I had an experience too. So it was, yeah, first of all, within your students, it was the least, uh, the least drama and the the highest tolerance for stress I've ever witnessed in a in a retreat like that. Because often it's it's pretty intense for people to come into Bali if they haven't had any experience of life here. Things are just different. There's different things happening. You know, there's temple music, the the lizard, there's lizards. There's so many things that can just trigger someone who's just not used to this environment. And it was just the highest tolerance level I've ever seen of um of just being nonchalant. It's not like they were trying to hide their stress, it was like they literally were just like, This is where I am. And I was like, oh my God, like this is so crazy. Because normally my first day of a retreat, I'm just like like running around and just dealing with stuff. Um, and it was a quite a big group. I think we had 12, right? And highest tolerance level, I would say. And then the second thing is just within me, I came into it in a pretty uh dysregulated state, which I was really trying to not let on. And I think I I think I performed well, you know, but I was a little bit dysregulated because I had just published my book, and that was like really intense. And I definitely was talking to you about it and some of the people. So they knew that I was, I was still, I was well enough to like to be a good co-leader, I think. But I definitely felt like holy crap, this is a lot to have my life story on Amazon, like and the way people are interacting with me. And now I'm, you know, I'm navigating through this trauma, I'm having PTSD symptoms. Like that was all happening in the week leading up to this retreat. Um, and then the meditation practice was just like this. Like by the end, I was like, holy crap, I I feel like a different person. Um, and that to me was um was was so was so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Yeah, and then you also had your super fan Bev, who was uh giving you confidence about your book all day, every day.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

I love her. She I was like, You're the marketing manager. She had read the book on the plane, and she just knew all the characters and she kept telling me where she was in the book. It was it was super surreal to be like someone who's like going through my life story day by day. That was really intense, and to be there for it, and like, but I loved it. It was it was really nice to have her, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

We yeah, so so she she's been one of my students for what two two two and a half years or something. And and in the closing circle, I think she said something like I love you, Rory, but I really love Alex.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

She's so sweet.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

And I think she I think she sold the book to everyone on the retreat. We did my first book signing on the retreat, every single person bought a copy. Um, and Bev was definitely the the uh the inspiration for that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

All right, we are we have five minutes left of this hour, so I'm just gonna stop this recording. This was awesome. It was great to catch up. Um, so I'm gonna stop it and then if anyone has 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.