Another episode recorded live in Sober Week! I was so excited to sit down with Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0 and learn about his beliefs around the nature of addiction, and the role of yoga in recovery. A highlight of this episode is Tommy's explanation on the role of nutrition in sobriety. Tommy Rosen, a vinyasa flow and Kundalini Yoga teacher, is a leading authority on addiction and recovery, with 30 years of experience helping people overcome addictions of every kind. He is the founder of the Recovery 2.0 online conference series, the 8-Week Awakening program and the Recovery 2.0 Coach Training Program. Tommy is the author of Recovery 2.0: Move Beyond Addiction and Upgrade Your Life. Learn more about Tommy's work here: https://r20.com/
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You can join the Sober Girls Yoga Challenge to recovery program here. https://www.themindfullifepractice.com/30daychallenge. Follow me on Instagram @alexmcrobs and check out my offerings in yoga, meditation and coaching at http://themindfullifepractice.com/.
Transcript
Alex: Hi friend this is Alex McRobbs 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.
[Music]
Alex: Okay. All right, hello hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Sober Yoga Girl Podcast. So, this is a really exciting episode for a couple of reasons. Um first of all, our guest is Tommy Rosen, which is really exciting and Tommy is an expert in the fields of addiction and recovery and he's a yoga teacher. Been teaching yoga for decades and he does a lot of work with one of my teachers Rolf, so really excited to have him here and also this is the first time I've ever done an episode with a live audience. So, we have like 20 people on the zoom call right now from all around the world here who are going to join in and they're going to be listening along and asking questions as well which is really really cool, so thank you everyone for being here and thank you Tommy for being here. How are you doing today?
Tommy: Yeah, I'm having an amazing day for for me. I just, I you know it's the beginning of my day at 7:00 am and so I'm just getting going, but so far so good.
Alex: Amazing and for me it's the end of the day so um I'm coming from the future, you're in the in the past.
Tommy: I love it, you're in my future. It's incredible.
Alex: So, why don't we start off by maybe you can tell me a little bit about your kind of journey with addiction and recovery. Like where did it begin? And um, yeah.
Tommy: Okay so uh, first of all welcome everybody and thank you for having me and I'm delighted really delighted to be here and to get to speak about this. Uh, you know such an important topic and and central to my life and to the life of so many and uh I I often, someone will ask me that question you know, tell me about the you know your your addiction and sort of you know, how did that work and so for me so we can bring everybody under the same roof. No matter what your your background is, your history is, you are a human being. If you're listening to this I'm going to assume that and as a human being you like me and everybody else have experienced addiction, whether you think so or not and so I'll try to explain that, that concept. My addiction began in my mother's womb. There I was not aware of myself, I'm a fetus, I'm growing in the amniotic fluid in my mother's womb. The amniotic fluid is filled with the chemistry of my mother's life, her addictions, her excitements, her joys, her challenges, her happiness, her stresses and sadness. All of that is imprinted into that fluid that's around me and I'm taking in literally not just the nourishment of my mother but I'm also taking in her chemical reality and I'm gonna be there for nine months and then I'm gonna come and I'm to be born into this world and I come into this world and I come into this world to a great extent. At that point, uh influenced by the experience and the history and the life story of my mom, of course my father had his input too in my genetic makeup, when I'm born into a world and in my world I'm born into a world of disconnection, confusion, difficulty, um, tension, stress, the environment around me of course. I'm just an infant. I'm just a newborn. I I can't understand what's going on around me. I'm just trying to make sense of the world. My my job is to survive. That's it. At that point and everyone else's job around me is to take care of me and to create a an environment of safety. Only I'm not registering an environment of safety the way that I know that is because my family has described to me that the first year of my life were when my parents were most at each other's throats. My mother and father fighting, yelling, screaming and they would get divorced about a year later. When I was one. So, I know that the environment and the the the world that I was born into was a world fraught with uh sadness and bitterness and anger and so as a infant I'm registering those things. I'm also registering other things which are positive. Oh, I have a home, an environment, a place to be. I'm alive, I'm being fed, um I'm being taken care of on some level and the emotional reality around me is uh who can say what the language is for a pre-cognitive infant to be able to express that but it's probably something like terror, very frightening to to hear the the the emotional difficulty of the people around you. I can't remember any of this. This is all just hearsay from friends and family members but what I can remember and what I do remember is a sense through my childhood of an itch that could never be scratched. That something was wrong. Uh, low grade not panicking but low-grade anxiety. Anxiety is just something's wrong you don't know what it is pretty much you're not sure where it comes from and so I grew up in a very excitable personality. A very uh uh oriented towards movement and athletics always move move move move and it was there was a light side and a shadow side to that the light side is, isn't it wonderful to be in a body? How amazing to get to run around and to be free and to be athletic and have fun with your friends and the shadow side of it is if you never learn to sit still and you're always running and always moving. You never get to know yourself, you never ever get to know yourself, you will never be able to know who and especially what you actually are and so my my movement was sort of the mechanism by which I just stayed away from the deep-seated, low-grade anxiety that I was always experiencing. So, we call that hyperactivity hyperactive in the brain. In the mind lots of thinking hyperactive in the body, lots of movement, lots of frenetic. I started to really act out in my childhood, which I didn't understand as acting out but I started to my first sort of place that I went aside from movement was to the one place that children can go if they're allowed to change their consciousness and that's food I went to, food I went to sugar. Sugar is the gateway drug. Nothing else is the gateway truck. Sugar sets you up for weakness in every way. It sets your cells up for a certain way of being in the in the day and when you repeat that over time you are really setting yourself up for an addictive manner of being in the world and what I started to recognize was, it was sugar-filled diet more and more movement and hyperactivity less and less ability to actually ever be still. So my baseline is anxiety. I reach out, get high sugar crash, come back to my baseline anxiety. Now repeat that for a lifetime. Just anxious, reach out, get something, get high, come down from it, return to your baseline. Now, it's very important that we all get on the same page here. That's why I'm trying to describe addiction like this. I'm just setting up a pattern for me. It was anxiety, other people come to this pattern of addiction. This frequency of addiction, if you will they come to it through anger, rage, you could come to it through depression, repression, you can come to it through anxiety, like I did and other other forms of fear can seep in and become your baseline and by baseline I just mean the way you understand yourself or the the frequency, the energetic sort of uh print of how you understand yourself. So, I understand myself as an anxious person. Although, I couldn't use those words as a kid. I would just say, wow I'm having so much fun ah you know isn't this fun, you know? But I was never ever calm. I never knew contentment. I only knew and and this is a really important thing too, I only knew the satisfaction of craving. Craving, satisfy the craving and be in relief from the the thing that is underneath the craving or causing that craving to continually come up. So, my understanding of contentment or joy or happiness was nothing more than to relieve a craving, relieve the craving. Be in the state of relief and that's happiness and that's very sad for someone to only know a happiness and a contentment that's simply related to relieving a craving. So, I set up this pattern for myself through my life and now that you understand the pattern a little better you can look at your own life and say how do I do this, how do I distract myself? What's my belief system? What am I believing about myself? About others? About the world? What do iIbelieve about this body? What do I believe about my capabilities as a human being? What do I believe about my family? What do I believe about the food I eat? What do I believe about the planet? Am I living in a way that is hopeful or am I living in a way that leaves me feeling a little bit worried and a little bit stressed all the time? So, this is like the main inquiry. Now I don't have to tell you about cannabis, alcohol, psychedelics cocaine and ultimately heroin. All of which I experienced in great great uh to great excess. It's the same thing you might say, well it seems a little more extreme than sugar, okay sure it's it's more extreme in the effect it has and the influence it has upon your life those those substances but it's the same thing. There's a there's a low-grade anxiety in me, there's something wrong and I don't know what it is, it's like the itch you can never scratch. Reach out, get high, relieve that feel, good feel plugged in feel excited like you know hey, this is working. Cannabis, this is working for me then eventually crash and return to what you think is you. Which is this baseline anxiety eventually what happens when somebody lives this way is their body or their mind their life their relationships break down hopefully sooner than later. So, that they can reach what we call a bottom and we can talk about that next phase of my life and recovery. I just want to, that's a long-winded way of saying that I believe everybody has this. I don't believe everybody is is a drug addict or an alcoholic but I believe everybody is thinking and behaving in ways that are keeping them out of a more truthful understanding of who and what they are.
Alex: Thank you so much for that and I love that answer because I feel like you, you're universalized this um experience which there's such a um there's an idea of like someone who's addicted being like the other um like there's something wrong with them, there's something like morally wrong with them but in reality it's I think it's Rolf that says that it's just on the normal spectrum of human suffering, right? And we all um experience that to some degree and then it's like, it's not necessarily. It's not the substance itself but it's like the underlying um the underlying issue that we're solving with a substance.
Tommy: Exactly, exactly yes and so there's a wisdom uh there's a wisdom to addiction. Addiction is uh it's it's an unfortunate result of a of an effort to try to solve a problem and so it's really a quest. Like, like people who become addicts will, when they get sober or they find recovery later on, they might reflect, wow um now that I have recovery, now that I have yoga in my life now that I I know how to center myself and to actually touch upon the truth of who and what I am now. I realize this is what I was always seeking. That I was always seeking this feeling but I was just seeking it in the wrong ways. I didn't know better and those wrong ways become addictive in the mind and body and spirit and then they can, they can take our life which is what, what's so dangerous here about addiction. They certainly can take our serenity, um long before they take our life. So, it's a quest uh this group of people um, I'd say all human beings are on a quest whether they realize it or not. Whether they use that language or not but we're all on our hero's journey and we're all trying to find out the riddle of our life and we're all trying to, you know, figure out how should I plug into the world in a meaningful and engaged way. I think everybody's in that and I think the quality of our um sort of the the things that we choose to help us along that path obviously are going to influence the outcome, the experience, the direct experience that we have in this life so you know, I recommend and I highly advocate for processes, philosophies and practices that engender and and and and embody the truth and move us towards a greater awareness and consciousness of of who and what we are and of course really that's the definition of yoga, right? So, yoga in the broadest in the broadest term is that movement from say a disconnection to this place of union and and and however that can happen by the way. However, that can happen is yoga. So, it isn't necessarily on the mat, on a yoga mat, doing physical postures but it might be and I highly advocate for that, it's it's joyful and it's it keeps this body um, in in pretty good shape, you know? Energy moving and and the stuckness that can happen in the body, emotionally and otherwise that can be processed along wonderful thing. So, advocate for for yoga so strongly and and meditation and and also you know breath work and also diet looking really looking at your diet and these, these four things yoga, meditation, breath work and diet make if you can work on those areas of your life um really good things come to pass, you know? Really good things come to pass whoever you are and also of course you know for me you know, 12 steps uh the the the essence of what's in the 12 steps is something that really valuable to help a person along anybody you know any human being.
Alex: So, tell me more about your journey. When you um, like so you were part of the 12-step program, how did you, when did yoga come in? How did you discover yoga and like what role has that played in your journey?
Tommy: Um, I was fortunate to find and to start practicing yoga when I was in my in my first year of recovery. So, I got sober uh in June of 1991 and shortly thereafter I I moved from New York to San Francisco and I was walking down the street and there was lit, literally a neon sign, a huge sign that said yoga and I uh you know this was right as yoga was about to explode in the United States it's 91. There had been a mini explosion in the in the late 80s where a lot of the teachers that became the most famous teachers in the Western World had trained in the late 80s, you know? The Shiva Rays and the Shankhorns and the Brian Cass and Baron Baptiste and uh Mack Strom and and just, just and and a holy host of others that I can't remember right this moment but they were all trained in the late 80s or maybe 1990 and and and yoga was about to just just come into its own, in the Western World through the 90s and then the 2000s. Like epic epic epic growth all the way up until march 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic. So, this unbelievable growth of yoga and so I found this class in San Francisco, I went in there, I practiced. It was a 90 minute class,five minutes into the class, I thought I was going to die. I literally like put like a torrent of sweat coming off my brow as I'm in downward dog, you know? Shake, literally everything shaking and I'm like, Oh My God, what what is this? Like, I'm not in good shape, I'm not in good shape, I just remember thinking, Oh My God looking over here, this this girl over here, this guy over here and just be like see them like very comfortable very at peace and I'm like Oh My God, Oh My God. What, how do I get to that? How do I get to that? And uh the teacher came by and she patted me on my lower back, she said you know someday this is gonna be a rest pose for you and I was like well, not today. That's all I could say and I somehow survived that 90-minute experience and I laid there in shavasana and I felt at peace. Like, I felt the depth of peace that I had only ever found through severe drug abuse. Like, I had never ever ever felt this kind of peace, stillness dropping in the full weight of my body on the ground in the yoga studio. On just a puddle of a huge ocean of sweat around me and what had come out of me in terms of tension. I just can't express how important it was and so I I began a love affair with the practice of yoga but I want to be clear. It was not an everyday thing for me for those first few years because it was painful. I, I loved the effect but it was very difficult for me. So, there was sort of this resi, I had a lot of resistance to the practice and the practice was extremely physical for me and I hadn't yet realized some of the deeper possibilities of the practice. So I would say I approached my yoga very um in a very surface kind of way. I was interested in my body looking a certain kind of way and I was interested in uh you know being able to achieve a posture just to achieve the posture and my orientation to it I would say was not exactly where it needed to be but even with all those imperfections in my approach, yoga started to work on me in a very deep way and I started to become capable of stillness. I started to be able to release the the unbelievable tension and stress of my life that. I had always carried and that was my first year of recovery. So, I'm, I'm working with a sponsor and going to 12-step meetings almost every day. I'm working the 12 steps and I'm going to yoga maybe three days, four days a week and that's how that sort of unfolded for me. From the beginning, it was it was like the most incredible gift um to have, to have both of those things going on and even to this day, like you know sometimes if I'm traveling for a while or doing whatever, I'll miss I'll miss a few days maybe a week of practice. Come back to the practice and when I come back, I'm like what blessing this is, to to know what to do, to know how to operate this frame, to know how to release tension, to know how to come back to center, to know how to quiet my mind. I, it's just this is why I scream from the rooftops, from Recovery 2.0 rooftops, like please if you're in recovery, and that's everybody, please start practicing yoga. Start practicing physical, also intellectual, understanding the concepts of yoga, it's very important also uh service. Be of service. Also um, the breath and get a get a hold of what's possible here with the breath and and learn to sit still and meditate and I, I just you know, I know that in our society still today people think that's you know generally still I think people still think like, well that's cool or that's good work out you know but I think people generally still don't understand the the full treasure that's here and and like me they will meet their own resistance in their coming to the mat. They will meet like the the mind saying, no no not today we're too busy. Okay, there's something else to do, I've got this to do, I'm stressed or oh God I'm sad, I'm lonely, I'm, I'm anxious. Uh, whatever it is like I don't want to get on the mat. I don't want to get on the mat but the minute you do it like the whole day shifts for sure, 100% of the time. 100% of the time has never not worked, you know? What I mean so, I'm just screaming from the rooftops. If you're in recovery from addiction, you have got to pick this up. You've just got to experience it and bring it into your life as a as a as a daily practice or just even a second to second practice of awareness.
Alex: So, tell us about a bit about Recovery 2.0 because I don't know if everyone in here knows um, about your community. Like, tell us about the work you do and um the different offerings.
Tommy: So um, the very long story short about how this started is that in my recovery of years, the first 10 or 12 years of recovery I started to see myself and my behaviors and my patterns. In relationship with women, so romantic, relationships in relationship with this body and the breath, relationship with money and career and abundance was a real challenge for me, in my life. So uh, I picked up gambling addiction and was it was in there for a while in my recovery and so all these areas in my life were like even though I was sober, which was a wonderful thing, I was still struggling in some of the most important areas of my life and so those struggles brought me to another bottom in recovery. An emotional and life crisis bottom and I had become very stuck in my body, my back hurt, I was really really like really in trouble and this was around 2003 when this all sort of came to, okay I'm I'm sober, I'm in recovery and I'm miserable and I came to understand from speaking to other people who could be honest with me that I was not the only person in recovery who was miserable. That I was not the only person in recovery struggling in relationships. That I was not the only person in recovery struggling with this body, even though I had a practice. I was not the only person in recovery who struggled with purpose and and a meaningful way of being in the world and and trying to create abundance and and to have success uh even just, I mean success just to be financially free. So, I found out that all these people had been liberated actually at work the 12 steps. Worked to liberate, so many people from their core addiction, but then there was all of the rest of life and the way we are in the world and it was like gosh, I need another lesson plan. I need another teacher where's I I I really don't know what to do and and people were suggesting things and I was open and I took suggestions but I was stuck and so I started looking for something else. Something in addition to and through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, a lot of fear and a lot of humbling. I was miraculously led to the door of my next teacher and my next teacher was in the bigger sense in the energetic sense. My next teacher was actually um yoga in a much much deeper deeper sense than I had ever experienced it before and it came through a man who I refer to as my teacher named Guru Prem and Guru Prem is very much alive and well and here in Los Angeles and became one of the most important figures in my life and he taught me how to breathe in a whole different way than anyone ever had. He taught me how to move in a whole different way than anybody ever had. He talked to me about life, he helped me to rebalance the energy systems of my body which were way way out of whack and he gave me a vision of recovery that no one had painted such a comprehensive possibility for healing as what he painted and what he was showing me was that healing wasn't about you know oh well, you're isn't it great that you're 10, 12, 15 whatever years sober. That does not, that is not a benchmark of your healing. That is a benchmark of consistency, being on a path of abstinence and that's important and someone like me and someone like most people, I would say need a very advanced technology for liberating themselves and he gave me that technology I transformed again. I became free in a deeper way than I had ever known. The stresses continued to release. My body healed, my mind healed, my behavior changed, my relationship with the day became different. Sadness practice in the morning sought to practice in the evening something personal to me not getting on the mat in a big room of people but different. More personal like we, we in in 12-step programs, we do talk about spirituality and a power greater than ourself and the higher power and God and spirit and all these things and it's like, this was like okay you've been talking about those things now for 12 years and you have belief about those things what if I told you that that belief could be turned into knowledge. That you could go from somebody who believed in God to somebody who knew God. That you could go from somebody who believed in your potential on a day-to-day basis to someone who is living that potential on a day-to-day basis. What if I told you there was a power greater than you but it was a part of you inseparable from you? And all you had to do was align with it and and you had to align with it through doing certain yogic practices and yogic principles and yogic work and you could align every day one day at a time like clockwork and just set yourself up for a new rhythm in life and that that old pattern anxiety reach out. Get high, crash, return to anxiety had snuck its way back into my life at 12 years sober. It had maybe been there the whole time but I didn't see it so here was a deeper detox. A deeper level of work and I took everything that he taught me and everything that I learned in the 12 steps and everything I learned in my philosophical quest and spiritual quest and I put it together and I founded this company called Recovery 2.0 to share those, those lessons and those practices and those possibilities with anybody who was interested. That's what it is. So, we have a membership, we meet on Mondays and Thursdays every week. We do an immersion every month. We do uh, we meet in all kinds of different, you know special ways. We have in our community, we have for free for anybody anywhere, we have uh over 30 meetings a week. Uh these are Recovery 2.0 recovery meetings for anybody dealing with any form of addiction, whatsoever can come there and show up for free at any time. They want, we have meetings probably right now for all I know, Um, they're going on you know four, five, six a day every day and so that's happening and um I rewrote the 12 steps um to bring some updated language um to the to the length to the older language that's there. Not not to necessarily change the spirit of the steps but to to make the language more accessible for people today. I took away the the word God, which is problematic for a lot of people. I took away the gender reference to God of being a male god which is a big problem for a lot of reasons. Um and uh, just created some more powerful empowering inclusive language and and Recovery 2.0 is retreats destination retreats around the world and online courses and I wrote a book called Recovery 2.0 which has been very helpful for people and you know that's in a nutshell that's sort of the work that we're doing right now um, you know? It's like there's hope, hey you can heal completely, totally you know? Anyway.
Alex: Amazing.
Tommy: It's a very hopeful inclusive optimistic way of living.
Alex: Amazing, oh it's you know, Tommy, you have such a grounded presence and I can tell from the way that you, you know, articulate yourself that you have so much passion in, in what you do and I just I it's just I think it's so cool that you're here sitting in front of me because I feel like I've quoted you like a million times in like you know different trainings and workshops I've done and so yeah it's just really amazing to hear to hear your story and how you kind of got to this point and how you're sharing your, your knowledge with the world.
Tommy: Thank you Alex, thank you.
Alex: So, I'm wondering now if anyone um I want to kind of open it up to everyone that's here. If anyone has any questions for Tommy in particular or anything you want to share if you want to just put up your hand, I'm doing a little like hand up thing um and I'll uh unmute you?
Tommy: Don't be shy something's got to be on your mind lots of things on my mind i can't be the only one
Alex: Oh, we've got Jessie.
Jessie: Yes, hi there. Oh I'll lower my hand. Perfect um so, I actually have a question about the eating. So, it's really interesting that you brought that up because I've like stopped drinking and I was like oh I solved all my problems but I didn't um right then it was eating and I really resonated with what you talked about. So, I know you talked about like getting on your mat every day as a way to help with that but um but how I don't know. I feel like I'm stuck in it. I'm like stuck in the loop and when I feel like I'm getting past it then I get like pulled back into it and you can't stop eating they tell me.
Tommy: Um yeah so uh, thank you first of all. Great question and there's so so much to say and I want to say some of it um so when we're talking about addiction uh so a behavior you continue despite it bringing a negative consequence into your life. So whatever that is any behavior you continue despite it bring a negative consequence into your life. So, we can look at our relationship with food and we can say okay here we are out of balance or here we're in bounds you know but the relationship is what we're talking about not the food itself. So, it's the quality that you're bringing to your relationship with food that we want to examine and look at. There many many times, I've stepped up to the refrigerator, opened up the fridge, looked in and then became aware of myself and said how did I get here? I'm not hungry, why did I come over here? What, what what's in here that that is is going to be helpful to me in this moment, you know? And to catch myself being unconscious walking over to the fridge, looking for a solution is a really powerful, incredible moment for me and then and because I want to pay attention to that moment. So, I'll say to myself okay, what was I just thinking a minute ago right before I got up? I was over there, maybe I was writing something or thinking something or doing what was I just doing when I went into unconsciousness. Got up without even knowing. Walked over to the fridge and opened that fridge before I came back into consciousness again and asked myself wait, wait why am I here? And as I trace it back for me, there's always an uncomfortable thought or feeling that preceded that action. This lays at the heart of the work of recovery from anything and we're talking about awareness and the the understanding of of how we and why we behave the way we do with regards to food addiction or food imbalance whatever this relationship you can't give up. That relationship you're going to be in that relationship for the rest of your life and sometimes you will reflect, I have a good relationship with food today other times you will say, as you said here, feel a little out of balance with my in this relationship today. So, the first thing we want to recognize is this is a relationship. Okay, next thing you crave the things that are in your body. This really important thing you crave the things that are already present, the more pasta I eat, the more I want to eat it. I've noticed that the more sugar that's in my diet the more I seem to be looking for it and so for me to sh to shift and to change out of that pattern which is what you've asked about.
Jessie: Yeah.
Tommy: I want to, I want to break out of this immediate pattern, right? Here you need to take one 24-hour period, maybe you know, it's 72 is good but I want to just start it with a day at a time. One 24-hour period of eating some different things than you've eaten previously. I mean literally and I would look for you to the four buckets. The four buckets, this is very so I teach a program called the Food Reset and in the food reset we go over this over four weeks and we have a complete and total reset of our of our relationship with food but the four buckets that we talk about are juices, fresh that you make yourself preferably or you go to a really high-end juice bar where they're using organic vegetables and you know that it's great if you can get that juices. Um, smoothies some of these are different than juices some of these have a lot of different ingredients um a lot of superfoods very nutrient dense things third bucket is salads so these are this is fresh greens lettuces, lettuces of multiple kinds lots of colors lots of different lettuces, cucumber, avocado, tomato. Those are the four basics in a salad, lettuce, avocado, cucumber, tomato and then you can go out from there in any direction you want big. We have a whole whole three hour presentation on salads to really help people understand what, what a salad really could be and then the final fourth bucket is uh soups and stews. Soups and stews soups and stews are really really important because they are highly bio available sources of nutrition. You've got vegetables that have been softened by being cooked in the water and really easy for your body to take in these nutrients. So, you start to look to those four buckets and you get yourself organized. So, I said to you 24 hour period plan, three meals for yourself. Plan three meals for yourself. If you just do that and you eat some different things and let's say you could do that for the next few days make some, make a plan. If you don't know how to make stews or make soups you can learn easily but it's very simple. Take an onion, dice it, put it in some coconut oil, brown it add in your celery your um your carrots and your zucchini those are the four you're going to be getting nutrient dense bio-available nutrition into the body and it is going to change everything for you in the way you feel about food and the way you feel in your relationship, it's going to change your microbiome. I could tell you the things you need to let go of. I think you probably already know what they are for you. It's different for everybody but for me I need to let go, when I'm going through my, my cleansing my resetting I'm letting go of dairy, I'm letting go of bread. If I do that and no, no added sources of sugar whatsoever into anything, no honey no no nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing because you don't need it. It's not important just do that a few days and you are going to find yourself and by the way move the body while you're doing this. Move the body, sweat, go out do it do a beautiful yoga class, go on a hike, ride your bike but sweat and this is how we live well. These are not these are not, it's not rocket science and then the final thing I want to say to you personally on this is and this is something we go deep into in the food reset, is you need two hours from the the last thing you put in your mouth and the time you go to bed. You gotta plan for that two hours when you're done with dinner, say seven o'clock, say you finish dinner at seven, finish go to bed at nine o'clock or later. The problem comes when we go to bed at midnight or one o'clock because then you get hungry you get hungry late night we all know what this feels like. It's a bit of a challenge, so help yourself to some water, help yourself to some herbal tea no honey and then go to bed on an empty stomach. Your body now can rest 12 hours later from the time you finished your dinner at 7 a.m you can begin to eat again but not before. Give your body a 12 hour rest eat in a 12-hour window if you do that and really pay attention to that, you will you will not even believe how fast you come into alignment and you get to experience something else now that's a very physical, very practical approach to changing your relationship with food of course there's the spiritual part of this, there's also a psychological and emotional part of this. We all know psychology and emotions are very connected to our food. So there's a much much bigger conversation than what I'm saying but I'm telling you that if you just do those few things, you'll feel different in your body and you'll begin to bring that relationship into balance and you can go from there and uh and
Jessie: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Tommy: I wish that for you.
Jessie: Yeah, thanks okay.
Alex: That was a great question. Um now, I want to do that program. So, thank you so much for asking.
Tommy: Come join us, we will get going again and I'm not sure, maybe October. Yeah, we like to go right before the holidays. Right before people really mess things up for themselves.
[Laughter]
Tommy: It's good to get get started on the right track to end the year on a good note.
Alex: Yeah, um does anyone else have another question? We have Pooja, go for it Pooja.
Pooja: Hi um thank you for this. It's um just mind blowing, it's amazing. Um I have a um a question. I'm sober uh six weeks now um and um I'm struggling with the sugar because I'm I'm just hungry um I'm trying to I think replace all the sugar with all the stuff with all the soda I was drinking and I'm finding it very difficult to um break the habit of sugar but also to really understand what I'm feeling because I was very numb. I was drinking every day so I was kind of like really numbed myself out and I'm fine. I've been drinking for a very long time, for 20 plus years and so um I was just wondering if you have any tips or any advice how to kind of regain that connection? Um, if that makes sense. I'm trying to like get that connection and it's um eluding me and I'm feeling a bit frustrated and so I'm going to like have a bit of sugar and kind of satisfy myself. So yeah, any advice would be really helpful? Thank you.
Tommy: I want to say um, congratulations on six weeks. It's so, it's so monumental and you must just take a moment while your inquiry expresses a desire to go even deeper. You must take a moment also to congratulate yourself because you wouldn't be able to ask this question if you were drinking today and so just the fact that you're not drinking allows you to be able to ask a deep question like this, so congratulations. Um, I don't know how we missed, as a society, the idea that when somebody gives up drinking there will naturally be a blood sugar problem. A blood sugar imbalance for that person because your alcohol that you've been drinking has broken down into your body as a sugar a complex sugar and then you remove the alcohol from your diet, we'll call it a diet, you remove the alcohol from your diet and all of a sudden there's a quite a bit of sugar that isn't present that your cells have become used to and your microbiome has become used to and all of a sudden it's not there. So, these cells, literally these organisms in your body not you but the organisms start asking for the thing that they've become accustomed to which is sugar and so it's very natural especially for people who have, who have had a relationship with alcohol when they let go of that relationship it's so totally natural to feel sugar cravings. Which is why one of the cliches about alcoholics anonymous is sort of the the the table of breads and sweets at the back of the room in meetings and people being overweight and not being in particularly good shape because everybody is a gone after the sugar in the absence of alcohol. So, it's good just to know that first of all to to be able to call it out and and to recognize like, this is a normal thing that you're feeling. It doesn't mean it's uh uh there's nothing wrong with you. It's a very normal sort of thing to experience and then of course the question is okay, got it Tommy and what do I do about this? So um, I interestingly for me what comes through for me, for you is for you to start a really powerful breath practice and to begin to start to do some Pranayama exercises. Do you know what I mean when I say that?
Pooja: Um, I've heard of a lot of Pranayama. I've heard, I've done a few classes with the um MLPC. I'm, I'm picking up more classes, um but uh yeah.
Tommy: All right. So, here I'm just gonna sound self-interest, self-interested um but I want you to join our membership but you can join for seven days for free. Okay, now in those seven days I want you to experience something that's there in the membership and it's called the Breath Workshop and it'll be free for you because you're a free member and you're just trying free trial. If you don't want to uh pay you if you, if you don't cancel in the first seven days, you'll be charged 27 a month. After that so um, if you don't want to continue to be a member then cancel and then you won't be charged. If you want to be a member then you obviously continue but I want you to join and I want you to type in into our search bar Breath Workshop and I want you to do the Breath Workshop. I want you to do it as soon as you can, today, tomorrow and I want you, it's two hours. I want you to go through it and learn the breath that I teach you there and I want you to bring that as a daily practice into your life and I want you to continue to eat food as you do and um are you you said you were drinking sodas?
Pooja: No. I was when I was drinking alcohol.
Tommy: I see.
Pooja: I used to have spirits with sodas. So, I used to try the diet soda so I think that also created havoc and I couldn’t stop.
Tommy: And now you're not doing that, so I want you to really lean into the four buckets that I mentioned earlier and start getting some nutrition into your body. A lot of hydration and the foundation of all this I want to be that breath practice and start to look at the breath as a form of nourishment and see it as the primary form of nourishment and see it as the thing that is going to provide me with something that I'm craving even though that's counterintuitive and then do this breath practice every day 11 minutes. You'll see it in the workshop, 11 minutes and I'll put in the chat bar. Um how you join into our free trial anybody's welcome uh it's r20.com forward slash join this to everybody.
Alex: Amazing.
Tommy: There you go.
Alex: And I can put that as well in um in the episode description and send it out as well.
Tommy: So that's something that you can take advantage of this week for free and just do it also we have a YouTube channel which is just packed with a lot of amazing things there so that's always free so take advantage of these resources but when people start a certain breath practice and they come back to the foundational reality of nourishment breath is our primary form of nourishment we have to really see it that way.
Pooja: That's awesome. Thank you so much.
Tommy: Yeah.
Pooja: I'll definitely take up all that advice, thank you.
Tommy: Thank you Pooja.
Alex: Amazing. Well, this has been such an incredible interview. We're right about at the hour mark so I don't want to go over time um but I just want to say thank you so much Tommy for being here. Really, really appreciate your time. Thank you for everyone for showing up and participating and listening like this has just been incredible so really really appreciate it.
Tommy: Thanks, thanks Alex. Um, I'm I'm as I said to you before we began um your work is amazing and and what you're putting out into the world is excellent and keep going please and keep keep rocking it and uh let let us know when this is coming out I don't know if this is coming out or if it's just available or how that works but let us know how to how to promote um what we've done here today.
Alex: Oh incredible, thank you so much and I hope we uh we meet in real life someday. I'll be uh over on that side of the world and I would love to do a training or an event or something like that.
Tommy: Beautiful, I I want to recommend to you Alex that you come join us in India, just fly over um in March so.
Alex: I saw that. I actually saw it. I saw that on your website, I was like.
Tommy: Please come join me in March.
Alex: Incredible.
Tommy: Yeah yeah yeah beautiful, thank you all for being here. Um, have a blessed day, a blessed day. We're so fortunate.
Alex: Yeah, thank you so much.
Tommy: Okay, bye for now.
Alex: Hi friend, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Sober Yoga Girl podcast. This community wouldn't exist without you here. So thank you. It would be massively helpful if you could subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast so it can reach more people. If we haven't met yet in real life please come get your one week free trial of the Sober Girls Yoga membership and see what we're all about. Sending you love and light wherever you are in the world.
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