In this episode, I meet Sam Goldfinch and Ellie Crowe, who are both hosts of the Present and Sober podcast and sober coaches. Sam and I have been connected on Facebook for a while, and I recently shared one of Sam's poems in the Sober Girls Yoga Facebook Group - thus striking up a friendship! Both based in the UK, Sam is the creator of Sober Rebellion, https://sober-rebellion.com/ and Ellie is a mum, yogi and entrepreneur, founder of Pump Up the Present. https://www.pumpupthepresent.com/ In this episode I hear their inspiring stories and journeys with alcohol, and advice they would give for people starting their sober journeys.
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Follow me on Instagram @alexmcrobs and check out my offerings in yoga, meditation and coaching at http://themindfullifepractice.com/.
Transcript
hi friend this is alex mcrobbs founder of the mind for 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
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hello everyone welcome back to another episode of sober yoga girl i'm really excited because i've done a few solo episodes but i'm really excited to be sitting down with a couple of guests for the first time in a while and so today i have sam and ellie with me and they are the co-hosts of the podcast present and sober they are also sober coaches sam's community is sober rebellion and ellie's is pump up the present which i just learned is a 80s song that i'm too young for
[Laughter]
um but they're both alcohol alcohol-free and i'm really excited to hear about their journey and to how they are doing the work that they're doing now so welcome to the show thank you so much it's it's a very
exciting moment to be here so we really appreciate you having us on it's nice to have you here i am i was a guest on ellie and sam's podcast earlier actually and sam was speaking a little bit about how we got connected which is that sam posted this really beautiful poem about yoga that i actually asked can i share this in the sober girls yoga facebook group and i shared it and it was really well received and a lot of really nice comments on it and then we sort of got to messaging and and thought hey why don't we do a little podcast um swapping so we can get to know each other and and hear each other's stories so that's how we ended up in this uh zoom room together yeah yeah thanks thanks for that i'm so glad that uh it resonated with you it kind of i said to you at the time sometimes with poetry it just just happens i feel like i got a new yoga mat and i was like huh and then i just wrote a poem um so i'm glad it had a it had a good effect on people that's cool yeah so i was wondering if maybe we could i could hear a little bit about both of your sober journeys and how you ended up to uh to kind of get to the point you are now so i don't know who wants to start going ellie oh really i'll go for it i always start in the middle so i i i was a massive social drinker and never never really saw alcohol as anything but you know this is just part of my life and it's i didn't think too much about it at all i it changed after having kids so i've got three kids they're all quite close together
and with having kids my life changed my life changed massively and became rather stressful and more busy than i ever could have imagined it being and it just everything changed my my body changed my um i had a lot of hormonal difficulties after my children and the parents amongst us will appreciate the sleep deprivation and how tortuous that is we don't have a lot of social support here so we everything falls to my husband and i we both work i run um a couple of businesses so life was just very very complicated and so alcohol changed from being something that was kind of embedded in my social structure and activities to this escape at the end of the day this like release valve at the end of the day and over time i i just hated the way that i felt i hated that i was you know wishing the days away because i'd wake up feeling exhausted not well rested at all mildly hung over i'd then have to get through the day with work household stuff kids and then it would just be completely depleted right through the day then have to try and get them all to bed and you know it's just like having a mountain to climb all through the day and then having a glass of wine at the end of the day was like this ah finally finally i can breathe a sigh of relief and what i i didn't realize at the time was that alcohol it simply doesn't relax us like it exacerbates stress it causes stress because of the elevated levels of stress hormones in the body but all of this was like it i had no um no knowledge of that whatsoever i just had a very firmly entrenched belief that alcohol relaxed me and that was it was like pressing the the brake pedal at the end of the day easing that racing mind and just having some means of stress release and an escape but and this went on for some years and towards the latter end of it i was getting really frustrated because i just i didn't like the way that i felt and i was really really worried about my health so i was 30 38 39 and i just i didn't like the level of hold that it had over me this reliance that i had on it so i had a yoga practice and wine and those were my two means of self-care which now looking back seems really really sad but that that was the reality of it and i i tried to moderate for a long time and this was the making rules for myself so oh i'll just drink on a weekend then and what that meant was that the days that i didn't drink i felt deprived i felt like i was missing out and i'd be wishing my life a way to get to the weekend so that i could then let off steaming and i'd always end up scuppering myself because i'd manage two or three days and then feel like a champion want to celebrate with guess what a glass of wine is the reward and so that the weekends started to become longer and longer and i didn't have any good coping mechanisms for when life threw me a curveball so when things were intense and more difficult than usual more challenging than usual i didn't have any tools so it would be then pressing the effort button and oh well i'll just i'll be back on it next week so i was just stuck in this cycle which i think is quite common for people and by just absolute chance on my facebook feed came this sponsored ad from this naked mind and it was for a pdf called the six vital things that you need to know about moderation according to science and so the two things that stood out to me were moderating because that's what i was trying to do really badly and science so i like to know how things work why things are the way that they are and i read this paper with trepidation because you know what's this all about and and it showed me really really clearly in scientific terms i couldn't argue with that this belief that i'd held for so many years alcohol relaxes me that the exact opposite was true and so i had this really strange moment where days before i would be feeling deprived if i wasn't drinking to my desire to drink just went in an instant it had gone and it was this weird weird feeling because at the same time as i felt this relief if i don't have to do this anymore at the same time i had a lot of questions around well how do you socialize as a non-drinker i've lived all of my adult life as a drinker how do i socialize will my friends want to socialize with me as a drinker so there was some questions bubbling around but the overriding feeling the overriding emotion was very much of excitement and curiosity i kind of liked that it was a bit subversive not drinking and so i just decided to stop and i thought i'm not going to tell anybody because i don't know what's going to happen and it's uncharted territory and about a week later i'm now on so annie grace is the first behind this naked mind i'm now on her email list and she sends me an invitation to the alcohol experiments this is the january 2020 alcohol experiment and my first thought was it's 47 and i was questioning spending 47 on myself but this is like how little i valued myself and i managed to um put that to one side thinking well look if i don't drink in january i'm gonna save like four or five hundred quid i was drinking a lot of wine and very expensive wine so i thought well i can foot the bill for the 47 and the thing was really interesting about that was one something changed in that moment where i decided to invest in myself and back myself and secondly because i'd
invested 47
i decided that i was going to make sure that i went along to every live session with the coach i was going to watch every single video i was going to do every single journaling exercise i could squeeze all of the value out of it and so when i went into this program i was just it completely changed my life like i was i was feeling very very differently physically all of the benefits of not drinking came thick and fast i had this clarity that i had thought long gone i had peace in my life for the first time that's all i wanted was peace and i felt so much at ease my anxiety had disappeared and i started to tap into this joy like a childlike joy and again i thought that that had gone with childhood i thought that as adults we didn't have access to that anymore so it was just this real profound awakening that then it was stirring this thing inside me i'd had a lot of as a drinker i'd had a lot of professional discontent i was kind of stagnating and i felt that i felt this pull to something bigger like i was supposed to be doing something else but i couldn't figure out what it was i didn't have the clarity once alcohol was out of the way it was really really clear that i wanted to be aligned with service like i wanted to be offering something to other people and so the two things kind of came beautifully together because i'm looking at these coaches that are running the program thinking well what a wonderful thing to be able to connect with people like knowing there must be so many mums struggling in the same way that i was i decided even with the the voice of like who the hell do you think you are you know a couple of weeks sober who are you to become a sobriety coach but i just knew and so annie uh opened up this naked mind institute online for the very first time at the end of that month she was taking applications for her first set of coaches to be trained online and so i signed up and uh trained with um trim with annie for six months and it was just the most wonderful wonderful experience finally finding the thing the thing that you love doing the thing that you are meant to be doing and a little while after that i then went to train with jolene park who is known for the term grey area drinking and and that is where i met the fabulous sam who's my lovely co-host hello thank you so much for sharing that ellie and something that stuck out to me that really resonated with me is you sharing that you're too well few things stuck out but one was sharing that your two coping mechanisms were wine and yoga and i can so relate to that and i think there's so many people who generally find yoga after sobriety like that seems to be the trend i see is like people will find yoga in whatever in their as part of their recovery path and then um but for me i was i was similar to you in that i was practicing yoga and drinking alcohol simultaneously as like these two coping mechanisms and i also resonated with you sharing about how you thinking like 47 was expensive for this naked mind and it seems so ridiculous in hindsight because like i face this all the time with people saying that you know something's too expensive or whatever but you know when you look at how much alcohol costs and how much we're willing to spend on a night out it's just outrageous and it's not even alcohol it's not even just alcohol but it's like the taxi the cover at the bar the the nachos you order at 2 a.m you know like it's just and it's just mind-blowing that people then think that investing in themselves is so expensive and maybe that comes down to what you said was like valuing yourself so little that you you didn't feel that you were worthy of that investment yeah that's precisely it that's precisely it and that's the thing that is really it's really sad looking back at myself as i was then but this is why curiosity is such a powerful tool and what had happened in in reading that one pdf and having had a belief like i believe that alcohol relaxed me as much as i believe that the sky is blue and so to have that flipped on its head it it it blew the doors off it was it was like this well if i'd been wrong about that what else have i been wrong about i could be wrong about everything and so that it was it was like this
little [ __ ] of like this little opening and to to to cultivate that curiosity that's where you know the opening was for well you know maybe maybe i am worth investing some money like what might happen and so it can be the the smallest little step but you know because it's not it's not really about the cost at all it's it's about your your readiness and your willingness for change but this is where as i said i think curiosity and compassion for yourself for you know being a human being those are the the two things that you know i try to focus on not just for myself but all the people i work with thank you so much for sharing that story and then so you met sam in the gray area drinking um coaching training which i've heard so much about i'm actually really curious um to to learn more and maybe do that course someday but tell me about your journey sam yeah so so yeah me and ellie did meet there that was really cool and i'm sure we can uh we can talk about that a bit more but for me i guess it makes sense to kind of talk in phases because uh we might be here a long time otherwise but i guess the first phase would be you know grew up in the uk drinking culture is you know it's everywhere like i have my first drink i have a 12 or something you know really quite young hanging out got some guy to buy some cider at the shop or whatever and it just became like uh it's just what became what we did i used to be a big skater really into sport and then alcohol became like the thing that we did at parties and you know and then we used to go to town and no one checked ids back then so you know at 15 16 we were out getting you know going out on friday nights and and it was kind of like uh i didn't i don't think i consciously knew this at the time but i had some quite like extreme ocd back then and it was kind of like a respite from my mind like it was the one time where i was like oh gosh like a deep sigh in my head like oh god the constant matter it's just gone for a minute how lovely is this and you know that got wrapped up in you know independence and fun and all this kind of stuff and going out and having a good time but you know i never really my mates i used to kind of like drink a lot early and then i'd be like wanna eat or go to sleep and go home like they'd be like yeah let's stay out til four i'd be like i don't want to be here so i'd be like sat like bored wanting to go home and i had a weird relationship with alcohol it was kind of really important to me but i think i didn't like it that much other than the first bit the first like short bit right and then i got really flat really quickly but then i went to uni and then i got into the rave scene and then suddenly staying out till god knows when in the morning made a lot more sense and it was funny because two parallel journeys open to me like on the one hand i was going out and losing myself you know rave seen recreational drugs drinking partying like way too much i could not say no to anybody so i was really messing myself up but actually at the same time those experiences combined with i basically read the power of now by air cup tolle when i was like i think about 18 when i first got to uni and my brain just went whoa you know i'm not my thoughts who who who knew that to be true and then and so i i got kind of like ironically kind of addicted to the spiritual search as well so i was reading everything that you know the bhagavad gita ancient tibetan text like anything i could get my hands on i was like oh here there's something here there's something here and so running in parallel through my entire 20s was this you know increasingly extreme kind of um drinking and also this wonderful gift of like the spiritual journey and i i left i went traveling for about about seven and a half years um and i went to australia and you know did a lot of the kind of like cliche uh pieing and went and spent some time in southeast asia and drank my whole way around it and then i went to poland and i was teaching and it was tefl which is a really heavy drinking culture so i spent a lot of time just drinking you know a lot and but i'd never i it never really occurred to me that oh dude like this is something you're gonna need to sort out it it kind of it was just how it was and then i guess i took i got a promotion at work and that kind of changed everything so i got promoted to be the assistant director of a school and there were 20 odd teachers in the school most of them were kind of new and the thing with tefl is teachers aren't ready to teach when they get there you do a one month crash course you land in a school and you need like two years to sort your head out to learn how to teach and so you know that's kind of what i was doing and i loved it you know i was standing up in front of groups of people and teaching and teacher training and coaching i didn't know at the time you know because i figured out huh it's actually way better if you let people make their own mistakes and don't spoon feed them right um but i started going home each night and drinking for a really different reason i was drinking to relieve the stress and to deal with my anxiety that was that was kind of coming up and up and and it kind of changed everything for me i had this strange period where you know weird things started happening i was speed walking home from work so i could open a can of beer i was walking home on a monday night with my mate going to the supermarket buying a load of you know alcohol that was supposed to last the week or whatever or a few days going home drinking it and then the next day walking home with my same pal and having to like
pretend oh [ __ ] i left my pencils at
work or whatever i'm gonna go back and get them because i in my brain i was like if i go to the shop he's gonna know i've drunk all that boot and i was in this like i was just consumed by it you know and i was trying to moderate and i was having on off and i'd kind of read some of the books and blogs i read um holly whittaker's blog um hip sobriety was the first thing it was like a punch in the face one night i was like whoa like i could have written this i could have written this and it really felt like a direct line to my soul that was aching and it was like sort yourself out and so i started taking a month off from two months i've started consuming quit lit and reading it like crazy and and then in the end none of that worked you know i'd have enough time away that surely i'd learned my lesson and then i'd go back and in the end i was like dude you got to do something so we did a year um and that year turned into 19 months and you know we were talking earlier
alex about how i actually did decide to to drink again um after about 19 months or so but interestingly at the time if you'd have asked me is this a good thing is this because after a few days i was like oh what have you done like you've been going around telling everyone how great this is and now you're back back in it again but actually i'm so grateful for that like i'm so great it wasn't my worst drinking on paper but it was the pain of the cognitive dissonance was was really there with me and but i learned like dude you haven't been totally honest with yourself there's a community element i if i'm honest one of the reasons i started drinking is because i you know i was in a romantic well there was a romantic relationship i was kind of really hoping was going to work and it wasn't working out and my last ditch attempt to kind of make that work was i'll just have some drinks then and uh you know and reflection that bending that contortion of me and the breaking of my boundaries to try and fit into someone else's i mean i'm like wow like that was painful but boy did i learn a lot from that and um yeah that's it from that moment on i kind of started a blog unaddicted started writing that was so cathartic it's like self therapy and uh and and then my spiritual practice just because i'd been literally for the best part of 15 years had just been consuming everything and i got it intellectually but suddenly it landed suddenly i realized oh i've had a spiritual ego i thought i knew what this was but then boom and i started having these insights and i started just living in a feeling more and more and uh yeah the rest is history you know i started my business over rebellion i met ellie on with jolene park i just you know we knew immediately that we needed we were going to do something together um it's so funny because we've only been recording our podcast for about a year or so and like i think jolene's course was a little was a way back before that but the last two years of my life i feel like they're like 10 or something so many things has happened it's blowing my mind that it's only been that long but i'm so freaking grateful i'm so grateful that things got as [ __ ] as they did i know that sounds mad but i really really am because i wouldn't want to be on that merry-go-round not for anything and i can so relate to that that's like what i was saying earlier when i was on your show you know what would i say to my old self like my really young self i would i would probably let her make all the same mistakes because they all leave you to you know where you are now and the amazing work that that you're doing in sobriety probably wouldn't have come about had you not hit that your version of that bottom yeah no doubt like i it's like i always say like it was a data points in this naked mind we talk about you know if you drink when you didn't plan or it's a data point right it's just something that you're going to get information from and i learned so much from my kind of mistakes and to me the moment you do that your mistakes flip into successes so they're kind of bound together in this like amazing you know two sides of the same coin um and yeah i think that's why it's so important to just be compassionate for yourself wherever you are whatever's happening however many mistakes whatever it is you've made you know hold yourself in grace because you just don't know you there will come a time where you'll look back and you'll be like holy moly it's like my life has been created by a divine hand right like everything was as it was meant to be at the right time yeah and i think it's so interesting the way you've described you two meeting each other and just knowing that you were gonna do something together and i think that speaks to how strong our intuition gets in our sobriety you know we can perceive things in a lot more clear and grounded state and we just know like okay this is someone who i'm meant to work with or like we can kind of sense um i don't know what it is like sense energy sense uh have a stronger gut instinct that you can act upon because you're not numbing out those um everything that inner wisdom that in the guidance like we riff on that a lot right and we um because it's really important to us to build so we wanted to build present and sober with that as the fuel because we both you know run things with different fuels that have a cost and you know we we just we were really excited to to experiment with that and all the programs that we do we we really really are encouraging people to as ellie you describe this beautifully but basically turn up the dial on your own internal wisdom right because for so often for so many of us we've been doing things for other people for so long and or maybe we've been making the intolerable tolerable by drinking and then suddenly we're left with all this amazing opportunity and knowing how to when we're doing things for the right reasons is just super important you know because there are so many amazing opportunities out there learning to listen to we say voice that's a metaphor right it comes as a feeling or sometimes it might be a voice or tapping into that inner gps is like super powerful the inner gps i love that so tell me about the work that the two of you do now like both apart and together you both have your two separate um sober coaching businesses like what's that all about well the the two businesses jointly came together as present and sober so we we started the podcast off about just over a year ago yeah um it was it was born into this world and it's it's just been so much fun i don't think we were talking about this yesterday that i'm not sure we had like a specific goal in mind with it we just we just felt the calling and then to realize like how well it's been received and to hear directly from people our listeners that are finding what they need in it it's just it's the most wonderful thing so initially a lot of our energy was going into our individual businesses and you know we both do coach people one-to-one and run groups but it's become increasingly clear that we can have a greater impact and reach more people by combining forces and working together so the the podcast is the home of you know and it's it's accessible to everybody it's from all the main channels and then behind that we're starting to uh build other things where people can come into our world so the first thing is that we have a facebook community so again it's entirely free it's open to everybody but it's just a place that's really aligned with the podcast where the conversation can be continued and we spend as much time as we can in there uh we'll go and do lives and uh we're building up a bank of content you know for people to be able to a bit like the podcast you know there's so many great episodes we've had around triggers and cravings and subjects related to alcohol and subjects that have nothing to do with alcohol at all so there's there's just a huge amount of free content that's that's there for people to just start dipping a toe into um and getting to know us before something else might make sense like some of the the paid programs that we have yeah and we um you know to us the whole present and sober thing it really is it's you know it's not just a play in words it's absolutely we're really really the power of the present moment and yoga and you know we were talking earlier about the true meaning of yoga unity like being with our true self and yeah we love that so much and for both of us it's just been so wonderful because we we we love workers to our program at the moment stay stop solution we're working with our it's kind of like our founding beta program for this it's been so good and people have had some such amazing shifts there and it's it's for people who effectively know how to stop for a bit but they keep going back or perhaps they might be a few years in but they don't feel free because ultimately as we all know here i'm sure the behavior is like it's a bit of a red herring at the end of the day if we wave the magic wand for anyone who didn't want to drink and just stop them drinking their internal world didn't change it's like walking out of one prison and into another one so the question is well how do we what's upstream of that behavior like what are all the reasons why it makes sense for us to drink and you know so we look at you know forgiveness and we look at courage and uh clarity and you know connection with ourselves and the people around us and uh we just love being in that space we um yeah it's kind of funny like you said alex like i don't even know why in a book as well so the podcast medium is kind of helpful for that there's some there is something about the the connection between the two of us and subjects that can be quite intense and challenging but to bring the likeness and the levity to it so you know we have so much fun recording our podcast and um it's it comes across like people like to be a part of that and we hear so much you know but like people have difficult life circumstances and tragic tragic things happen and so to have some a space that that feels very very different it's it's like a little oasis for people um and and and ruthlessly practical at the same time yeah yeah that's really important i think we're always trying to and i'm sure like i could we could hear it in what you were saying earlier alex as well if it you know it's got to help right like spirituality or whatever it might be is to me like that like saying it's ruthlessly practical it means that we can make a difference to our lives with it it's not just a nice idea it's not just like oh that's a nice idea i can kind of adopt and walk around and give myself a pat on the back and make myself feel better it's like no this is like this is it you know this is how you build the life that you want to live the life that you want to inhabit that you that you deserve you know that perhaps you've been tempering with alcohol or whatever innocently um so you know i feel like we've we've you know we're on different missions but we've got so much in common even with umalex because the community element is huge the wanting people to just live their best life and find joyful movement and joyful mindfulness and you know it's such a wonderful thing to be aligned you know we were both saying that we've been teachers and ellie i know you've had a number of of businesses and to know that you're doing something good for the world that's made but it's just not quite you're like it's not quite it though is it you know and hearing that call and yeah we want to build a space for people where they can go on that journey and feel safe doing it in the knowledge that it's not always going to be comfortable you know there's going to be discomfort and we we're honest about that on our programs like this is going to be a ride you know because getting out your comfort zone is a bit rocky at times and it's supposed to be and that's okay you know that's okay growth is that's what growth is like um yeah and i love that you mentioned a big part of it is like having a sense of safety on that journey because i think that's a huge element of it is like you you know you when you're going into that sober um like dipping your toes into the sober space it's like something completely different than your norm and what you're used to and so if you have a place where you feel safe and supported to be yourself completely as you're processing that whole um the journey and all the ups and downs that come with it i just think it's beautiful i think there's just something really leveling you know i've i've been in in my of my lifetime i've been involved in all sorts of different corporate businesses and groups and communities and i've never come across people that convene in the way that they're doing
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sober groups within the sober movement it's uh there's just a real uh real openness to be like not just for yourself people are willing to be open and vulnerable and to share themselves as they are but also this willingness to allow other people to be themselves and to learn from one another and to cheer each other on and support eachother it's i've never come across a community anywhere else like it and it doesn't matter which group you go into every group has that same essence and it's it's so special and i think the you know the the more that we can
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Uh help people um you know find what they need in those spaces and sam was talking about the the semantic bodily element it so often gets forgotten you know will people focus on the behavioral change and not necessarily thinking about the emotional side of things so what we're trying to do with with everything that we touch whether it's the podcast or the groups that we run is is combining the two elements the the cognitive element and working on your beliefs and your thinking patterns but then also the the somatic bodily element and really bringing in practices that you know there are certain things that like cold water therapy is a great example when i'd never even considered it and it came up shortly uh after we started the the grey area drinking training with jolene it came up there and i came across wim hoffman thinking who's this crazy dutch guy he's amazing like really drawn to him and at the same time i had that old voice the one that didn't want to spend the 47 dollars on myself that was saying oh no you don't like being cold so that doesn't sound nice and then the other voice the one that i like to turn up uh was well why why why why wouldn't you try that and so i did and and as a practice for me and it's not for everybody but as a practice for me it's been highly transformative and it's it's an integral part of you know every single day of my life you know i'm making myself get very very cold and very very uncomfortable so just opening up people's worlds to different things that you can try to see how it makes you feel because we're so often so disconnected from that and this is why i think yoga is such an important part i i felt like my yoga practice was really limited whilst i was drinking but the the one thing that it allowed and it was like the very opening so i i practiced restorative yoga with a fabulous teacher on a one-to-one basis and i was in a very bad place mentally at this point and i remember it being
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intensely uncomfortable to have to be still and she really taught me how to inhabit my body and to start to feel again and it was just again like this this little opening that then grew and grew and so whilst whilst i you know my um i had as i said earlier yoga and wine as my self-care it was very limited and it all opened up into something else entirely but just for people to have that like that little one access point it can it can change everything so being open and being receptive to trying new things it's a really really big deal yeah i 100 agree with that just kind of seeing where it ends up leaving you and maybe you'll like it and maybe not and um but you can learn a lot from just like taking the risk and
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seeing what comes from it yeah it's so i mean like we're sorry we all have like this this amazing you know central nervous system that's different for all of us and i think it's just it's really easy to compartmentalize and be like oh this is an alcohol problem like i just need to focus on that and deal with that but actually it's a holistic thing and particularly if our goal is true freedom the goal is not to stop drinking is to build a life so good that drinking doesn't make sense anymore because then that question of oh god how do i know i'm not going to go back like people like i hear people ask me that question all the time how will i know i'm never going to go back to drinking or and that they're fixating on or needing the answer to that question and the truth is that you just transcend that so you'd only ask the question anymore like it's not just a different game it's a different conversation and um yeah with love and compassion and curiosity that that conversation starts to open and we don't we can have that conversation with ourselves and with our bodies and um yeah i'm so grateful for that and uh it's really lovely to hear that we're all doing that in our own different way for people because i think it's a real gift and uh yeah how cool is that huh and so i'm wondering if you had any wisdom or advice for someone starting out their sober journey what would you suggest what would you say that's a good question i know what i answered the last time and i'm just seeing if i genuinely want to see what my answer to that now is it would just be to um to lean in despite the discomfort know that feelings are not giving you you know your feelings around what you think it's going to be like or they're not giving you information about the future they're giving you information about your current belief system and what's moving through your perceptual reality now you're not getting real information about what it's going to be like so if you take that leap you take that leap of faith and it doesn't have to be a forever thing you know just be like i'm gonna do the month i'm gonna do the weekend i'm gonna whatever then this incredible thing can start happening where your subconscious mind catches up with your conscious mind and then you're like hey like i don't even have to like have this is it real is it not real thing like i feel great i'm just gonna feel great for another month and another month so uh step out the pressure cooker you know that's all made it doesn't have to be like that it's not always going to be comfortable there's going to be times you might have a few days where you're like oh you know but and that's okay that's okay so um trust that thing that's pushing you it may not be the loudest voice in your head it may just be this quiet comforting
knowing that you're this is right for
you so lean into that lean into that
yeah i agree it's that
it is that this is how i always describe
it just it's how it makes sense to me
i needed to go through this process of
turning down the volume and all of the
ambient noise and the
the volume of the voices of everybody
else
and this is all of the
belief systems and the story and then
being able to turn up the volume of my
own inner voice my own inner wisdom
and
it's not that you
exclude everything else but you find the
right balance
and then you can be
it like it's not always going to feel
comfortable but it's always going to
it's always going to feel right
where where you're where where you're
led
and
the the thing that i think that goes
along with this is to know that you can
always choose again
so
when we inevitably
fall to all patterns because we're human
beings
that
we can have grace and compassion for
ourselves and we can hold space for
ourselves and
allow us allow ourselves that
opportunity to course correct without
creating more meaning and without
judging ourselves and creating a whole
lot of uh emotional baggage that we
don't need
so
trusting trusting yourself
ahead of anything and everything else
and then
having the patience to to course correct
when you need to
thank you so much for sharing um
great advice and i love how sam like
paused to be like i wonder what my
advice would be today because i feel the
exact same way about this is that like
at every moment that i'm asked this
question like what would your advice be
it's like always evolving and changing
um and so
i think it speaks to like how many
different
answers and tools and resources and and
different ways of of sobriety that there
are out there for everyone and just kind
of finding the things that like resonate
and work with you
yeah it's not about necessarily going
through the internal filing cabinet all
the time sometimes it's really is about
tuning into well what's real for me
today yeah around that and that's the
beauty of it it's different every single
day you know
it's so true
yeah
so where can um our listeners find you
on social media on the internet where
are you
yeah so i i i think the best thing
really like the podcast is just the best
place to find us it's present and sober
we're on all the normal channels and
apple and android and you know find us
everywhere um we do have a facebook
group by the same name and instagram and
basically it's always the same name
wherever you go looking for us you'll
find us on that um but yeah i mean come
come hang out on the podcast and if
you'd like to know a bit more you're
going to find out a lot more about what
we do and why we do it and uh
yeah all the info and everything will be
over there is there anything else to add
ellie i think that's
no i think that's it comment come have a
listen and uh you'll know pretty quickly
with
pretty sure that we uh you know we yeah
we um
we're a bit silly we like to turn you
know we like to talk about bring
lightness into into the dark and um
yeah we do swear sometimes as well so
apologies
well thank you so much for being on the
show today i really appreciate it and it
was really cool to to meet you both and
hear more about your journeys with
sobriety with yoga with everything with
your podcast so really appreciate your
time
yeah thank you so much genuinely like
so enjoyable to have these conversations
and uh thanks so much for having us yeah
thank you
hi friend thank you so much for
listening to this episode of sober yoga
girl podcast this community wouldn't
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you