Meditating into Sobriety with Rory Kinsella

Episode 101

Meditation and Your Sober Journey

Here at Tribe Sober we encourage people to quit drinking and then to go on and learn to thrive in their alcohol free lives. We offer free coaching, hypnotherapy and an online yoga course and various therapies.. It’s important to experiment, to get back in touch with what you really like to do – it’s all about building a life that you don’t want to escape from.

My guest this week is a meditation teacher in Australia who offers a course called “6 steps for not quite alcoholics” – he is offering to help people to change their relationship with alcohol from a different angle – he is suggesting that they meditate daily for a few weeks and then see how they feel about their drinking.

Rory shares his own struggles with alcohol and explains that once he got into meditation he found that alcohol no longer fitted in with his healthy lifestyle…

I began by asking Rory to introduce himself

In this Episode

After Uni Rory joined a band and then became a music journalist and going to free gigs/festivals were all part of the job
All his relationships during his 20’s were built around drinking, partying and having a good time
He moved to Australia at the age of 31 and became a “lifestyle journalist” – he was expecting this job to be less boozy than that of a music journalist but he was wrong
He was sent to review a week long vodka festival in New Zealand and then was sent on a 3 day trip to Las Vegas to reviews bars and restaurants…
Rory started to notice that his hangovers were getting more severe and that it was taking him longer to recover
At his 35th birthday party he had what he calls an early midlife crisis – DJ’ing at a warehouse party he realised he was not enjoying himself – combination of drugs and alcohol was making him feel paranoid and he wasn’t even enjoying the music – he decided he just didn’t want to be living this kind of life at 45
He quit smoking and DJing the next day but carried on drinking – although he had an inkling that life might be better without it but he was nowhere near accepting that he must stop
However he did start exercising – and being an “all or nothing” kind of person (like most of us drinkers) he was soon running marathons
His running made him realise that he could access serotonin and endorphins which could change his consciousness without using chemicals.
As he puts it so well – he was able to access the “infinite pharmacy within”!
As Rory got fitter he started to explore different types of meditation and began to feel that there could be a light at the end of the tunnel
He discovered Vedic meditation which is what he now teaches
Meditation was reducing his triggers and his stress so he was drinking less but still going on binges
Once he got healthier he realised that alcohol no longer fitted his lifestyle – his body was clean and he didn’t like the effect of booze
Rory’s approach is - rather than say “Don’t Drink for 30 Days” he says “Meditate twice a day for 30 Days” and don’t think about alcohol so in other words focus on your meditation practice and you will gradually lose the desire to drink
His turning point came 4 years after starting his meditation practice – he was teaching by then and just didn’t feel authentic drinking and teaching meditation so he quit
I love his wise monkey analogy – when we wake up we have a credit of 3 wise monkeys – they get used up during the day and we need a crutch to keep us going – and that’s when the wine monkey comes out!
So he advises topping up your wise monkeys (or adaptation energy) with a meditation practice in the evening – that will put your back in charge and keep the wine monkey away!
Rory believes that we must focus on building various “systems” to sustain our sobriety – meditation is

Published on 3 years, 8 months ago

Podcast Episode Details

Meditating into Sobriety with Rory Kinsella