.png)
Conscious But Grounded
Conscious but Grounded is a podcast about spirituality: high vibe living in the real world. I ask questions like: how do we connect to the magic, spirit, source, the universe - but with our feet firmly planted on the ground? How do we show up in a conscious way and harness that to make big paradigm-busting change in the day to day of our lives?
Conscious But Grounded
S1: Ep 5: Spiritually upgrade with one lifestyle decision
My sobriety is at the heart of my spirituality - there is so much to say here.
I will go on to talk a lot about sobriety and addiction - and the relevance of that particular journey as it pertains to spirituality. But for now, I wanted to broach the subject by saying that, for me, it is the ultimate spiritual upgrade.
I really hope you enjoy, relate - or that it provokes some food for thought?! Please leave me a review as it makes a big difference! Thanks so much.
Links:
Hey! I'm Rachel! I am a qualified Holistic Life Coach and Mind Body Practitioner, Embodiment Coach, Yoga 500hrs (plus lots more extra yoga quals). I'm also an award winning content creator and have 20 years' experience in digital. I'm a mum of 3 kids and I live in the Peak District - oh and I have ADHD and I am sober. My passion is helping midlife women turn meltdown into magic!
Offerings:
My luxury retreat for midlife women! (free workshop in the pop up too)
Book a coaching taster spot with me half price
Goddess Codes Chakra Masterclass (GODDESS7 to get for £7)
Find me here:
Hi everybody. So episode five I think we're on. Hopefully you're getting an idea about the type of thing that we're going to be talking about here at Conscious Book Grounded. You may not even be listening to them. Who does that? Who goes, in order, in sequential or chronological order? Nobody does that. So I don't know why I'm even referring to that. So wherever you're listening from, maybe it's five years into the future, maybe it's one day after this is recorded hi. So I'm finding that certainly setting out my stall for this podcast, what's working for me is to record when I'm walking, when I'm traveling. I know, I knew I wanted to record things that just came. To me, I think that works best. In therapy sessions, it works well, the therapist might say, what's on your heart today? What's going on? And then things just come forth. And I think there's something really beautiful there. Because we don't over strategize. We let things flow a little bit. We let things just happen. And there's so many things I could talk about, like if I start a list, I'll never stop. If I make notes, I will make notes on every single thing on planet Earth. So one thing I want to do, apart from, I feel like everything's been quite extreme of consciousness and rambly, is focus down a little bit, focus down a little bit. And so today I wanted to talk about one of the things that Probably I'm known for now, which is one of the things, which is my sober journey and my sobriety story is very much one of a non linear route to drinking less. A hell of a lot less, almost nothing. And then where I stand today, which is, I'm on a dog walk, so that's probably what you can hear, which is very much in that kind of one day at a time, but it's very much not like I'm not like clinging to the work tops. I don't really think about alcohol. I do occasionally. So at this stage, I'm about, I'm coming up for 50 days on this trip around the sobriety train track. I do feel very solid in my sobriety really solid. I felt this solid before and then drunk again. So I take those statements with a pinch of salt, even though they're coming from my own lips. And I've learned now to just be a little bit more humble and Not be complacent. So when a thaw or a little germination of a little seedling drops in, I take steps to make sure it doesn't bloom into anything else, it doesn't take root. My, I'm gonna be really concise with my drinking story here because I think So many of you have heard it, but what I wanted to share, what I wanted to focus on in this podcast episode is how to spiritually upgrade with one lifestyle decision. And that's getting sober. It is no coincidence that so many people in sobriety have a spiritual practice. It is no coincidence that a lot of spiritual people are sober. I actually had a a podcast about it called The Sober Woo. We did about seven episodes or eight episodes or something like that. You can go check that out. Sober Woo. It's still live, I believe. I think there's a huge link. I've also mentioned in one of my previous Conscious But Grounded episodes that there is definitely a link between people who seek out altered states and also people who seek out spirituality and Want to explore other realms, feel awakened, searching for something and it's complicated, right? It's really complicated, it's really nuanced, it's really personal, and it goes into the realms of brain science, trauma, all these different things. So I just wanted to speak from my own experience, which is that definitely my drinking has a connection to my spirituality. I felt like when I drank, and even as recent as the last time I drank I feel like there's an immediate off switch to Sorry, that's a train going past. Hopefully I can block that bit out on the sound. And, There's an immediate turning off of my spiritual tap as soon as I pour a drink, in the same way that I've seen memes about people with ADHD things like that, which I definitely identify with. As soon as they have a drink, it turns off the noise, right? It tunes it out. I don't have a spiritual connection, hardly at all. When I'm actually having a drink, I could easily sit that Sunday in the garden and have a drink and kind of, Connect in a very surface level way. I often would speak to my Nan because I feel like she gets me. I feel like we have some stuff in common and I would be like, sorry, Nana. I know it's probably not the best thing for me, but it's just what's happening right now. And so there was that connection, still, but really. That kind of sense of flow, sense of magic, sense of crown chakra connection to source, to signs. Every time I had a drink all sung over I would never see any signs. What's that about? Like I would never notice the numbers, I would never see the feathers. As soon as I'm Sober and in flow and in creativity mode, in creation mode, helping people, connecting, doing my thing. Signs left, right and center. I will walk out my door, I will say something kind or do something kind or something good. And I'll look down and I put my foot on a big fat white feather. Or I will be on the phone to somebody who I know is right, a good connection for me, planning something with them. Look at the clock. It's 1444. It's just nonstop. It's nonstop. Okay. And then when I'm Drinking or hungover, that connection just seems to evaporate. I'm sure, absolutely sure, there will be also not just a spiritual reasoning for this. There will also, I'm sure, be some kind of psychological reasoning for this, of course. But in my spirituality, psychology and science are spiritual. It's all encompassing. There's nothing that's not spiritual when you believe that life is spiritual. That there is, people say, oh, what about this? What about that? But that is spiritual. Every single part of how we are, how we act, how we show up is spiritual. So in the yoga sutras, it's basically a mental health manual. I'm like, this is describing cognitive behavioral therapy, but by an Indian sage. Thousands of years ago, so what I'm really wanting to bring home is that I made the decision about 10 years ago to start looking into whether alcohol was still serving me. I was very much just like a typical 90s, yeah, I said I'd give you my story and I never did. I'm going to do it in a few sentences. Typical 90s drinker, blah, blah, blah kept up with the boys, big drinker then went to uni, continued drinking, then settled down a little bit but still had binges, was a binge drinker, had kids, realized the two things did not get on very well. and started to really think, shit, I think I need to do something about this. Not because I'm an alcoholic that needs to go to detox, but that this is a habit that I socially and spiritually, psychologically am really connected to and I'm finding it really hard to stop this pattern. I was never really, saying that I was going to say that I was never someone that could have one or two. I actually could, If I was like cooking at home, there was definitely a period when the kids were young when I could definitely have one or two. Over the years it became I couldn't and it was very much like we're either drinking or we're not drinking. And that was my pattern, to be honest, in most of my drinking career. And it just didn't go like the person I wanted to be, the mom I wanted to be. I was in a constant state of cognitive dissonance where you know one thing is true. But you can't stop doing the other. And you're a foot in both camps and it's tearing you in half. Whenever I had a drink, it would immediately alleviate all of my stressful feelings. It would help my rage or depression. I was absolutely self medicating. 100%. Particularly because the drinking takes less of a social turn. It's more about Drinking wine, in your garden, having a fag, hiding it from the kids to just cope with the craziness of home life. Sometimes, it wasn't always oh my god, this is awful, I need to medicate myself away from this situation. Sometimes it was like, it's Friday night, like I want to feel all those going out vibes even though I'm not going out, but then the next day, I would feel impaired. I would feel low. Like I'm actually somebody that, I'm honestly addicted to feeling good. Hence why I got into drinking alcohol in the first place. It feels good. Hence why now I'm like really addicted to being. It feels good. I don't like feeling bad. Part of my healing story has been about distress tolerance and cold water therapy and things like that, like getting in the ocean in January in Ireland. That will help you learn a bit of distress tolerance. In terms of this podcast subject and what I wanted to really Talk about and introduce or even just reiterate for the listener who is also sober and spiritual. It's just like sometimes it's nice to listen to a podcast that just confirms like you're in the same headspace as that person. It's like the number one spiritual hack. Have a closer connection to the universe. You can do all the things but if you're still drinking, you're lowering your frequency. People talk about high vibration. Honestly on a scientific level I don't even know what that means. Frequency vibration on a scientific level. I don't know what that means. What would that look like if it was to be measured? What I do want to know, what it feels like on an energetic level. I absolutely do. On an energetic level, it means getting out of bed, feeling positive, feeling you can carry out the tasks in the day ahead, not just begrudgingly and with misery and ugh, God, but with a real spring in your step and also just a connection. You're driving the car on the way to a kid's activity and there's a beautiful rainbow and your heart just sparkles and you have those glimmers, right? And you're high vibed, like your skin has a sheen to it, like the physicality of being high vibed, all of that stuff. It's all great. It's all great. And we can all relate to how if you don't drink alcohol for a sustained amount of time, you're going to get that back. That's what I understand about being high vibe. It's also about, you've got that motivation back. So yeah, you are going to go to the gym. You've got that energy back. So you are going to practice yoga. Then your channel to the divine, your channel to this next level understanding of what it is to be alive is getting clearer and clearer. and you start to think, is this just my imagination? Mate, your spirituality is your imagination. Your imagination is spiritual. That's where our spirituality takes shape and takes shape. It takes shape and kind of the form takes in our imagination. So when we close our eyes and we meditate, we can use our the blackness and the colors behind our eyes to guide us. We can see impressions there. I've seen all sorts of things there that I've needed to see. Those things only happen when you're sober. And also, and this is something I'm yet to discover because I only ever clock up, historically, speaking the present as an affirmation, I historically only clocked up months and months, long chunks. But I've never done a complete sober full year and so people have told me, long term sober friends have told me just wait, wait till you are a year sober, wait till you're two years sober, three years sober. I consider myself long term sober on the one hand but on the other hand it's not been continuous sobriety so I honestly can't own that at all. And I'll never not be honest about that because that's part of my story and what is the point in not being honest about your story? I own very much where I'm at with my sobriety and my sober journey. And yeah it's not been a linear one, but the biggest spiritual hack, the biggest upgrade is honestly putting down the drink. So if you're somebody that listens to this, you're listening to this now, and you're like, I'm loving all this spirituality, I'm getting into it. Perhaps you're in the early days or a year or two into your spiritual journey. and you're still drinking. Honestly, I really don't judge you. Everyone in my life, practically, apart from my sober friends, obviously, drinks. But what I would say is, start to stack up some time, do a week, do two weeks, do a month, and do 90 days. And 90 days is something we all agree in sober circles, is the first kind of real Trunk of time where you go, whoa, and if you have a slip here and there it's okay Just keep going. Like I said on episode four about for spiritual entrepreneurs It's just so important to Keep going on this journey. Keep going with the not drinking. It's the biggest spiritual uplift that you will have. It's clearing out that mind crap of alcohol. It's a toxin. It's a neurotoxin. It's gonna cut off those amazing parts of our brain and our soul that can connect to some kind of higher consciousness. and it really will upgrade your spirituality. Guys, I'm going to leave it there. I just felt that was an important subject just to touch lightly on and just channel and just get out there because it's been such a huge, probably the biggest part of my story has been Quitting alcohol and how that changed my relationship. It gave me a more authentic voice It enabled me to become more confident and not give a shit what people think and not give a shit about what people say about the content that I create and be more brave and authentic and Actually anchor into what I know to be true for me and that has all happened through quitting alcohol. So please leave a review, really helps my little podcast. If you leave a review, leave a comment, email me, hello at rachaelbradyyoga. com. Follow me on Instagram at rachaelbradyyoga. Yeah, that's all for now guys. Take care, bye.