The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Meg and Bella discuss the ups and downs of navigating an alcohol free life in Australia's alcohol centric culture. This highly rated podcast, featuring in Australia's top 100 self improvement podcasts, is a must for those that are trying to drink less alcohol but need some motivation, are curious about sober life or who are sober but are looking for some extra reinforcement. The Not Drinking Alcohol Today pod provides an invaluable resource to keep you motivated and on track today and beyond. Meg and Bella's guests include neuroscientists, quit-lit authors, journalists, health experts, alcohol coaches and everyday people who have struggled with alcohol but have triumphed over it. Our aim is to support and inspire you to reach your goals to drink less or none at all! Meg and Bella are This Naked Mind Certified Coaches (plus nutritionists and counsellors respectively) who live in Sydney and love their alcohol free life.
The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Mindfully Non Drinking With Psychologist Simonette Vaja
In this episode, we explore the transformative power of mindfulness and meditation to support drinking less alcohol with Simonette Vaja, a trauma-informed psychologist and mindfulness teacher. Simonette introduces her ABCD model—Attention, Breathing, Compassion, and Detox—a practical framework for fostering emotional resilience and supporting an alcohol-free lifestyle. From enhancing decision-making to cultivating inner peace, her approach offers profound insights into how mindfulness can be a cornerstone in the journey to sobriety.
Simonette introduces us to techniques like vagus nerve breathing, which activates the body’s relaxation response, and guided meditations to nurture self-compassion and overcome challenges such as perfectionism and anxiety. By addressing not only physical detox but also mental and emotional renewal, her approach provides a holistic path toward personal growth and emotional healing.
This inspiring episode highlights the profound impact of practices like Loving-Kindness Meditation, encouraging listeners to embrace self-love and deepen their emotional connections. Whether you're navigating early recovery or seeking greater balance in life, Simonette’s insights offer a roadmap to a mindful, alcohol-free life. Join us to discover how mindfulness can transform your journey toward freedom and well-being.
LEARN MORE ABOUT SIMONETTE VAJA'S WORK
Web: https://www.artistryofwellbeing.com/
Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/simonettevaja
MEG
Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
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Small group coaching: https://www.elizaparkinson.com/groupcoaching
BELLA
Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Bi-Yearly 6-Week Small Group Challenges: Learn more: https://www.isabellaferguson.com.au/feb-2025-challenge
Free Do I Have A Drinking Problem 3 x Video Series: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/JTFFgjJL/checkout
Free HOW DO I STOP DRINKING SO MUCH Masterclass: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/7fvkb3FF/checkout
Online Alcohol Self-...
A huge welcome today to Simanet Vajar. Psychologist, mindfulness and compassion teacher. Simanet, you are joining us four weeks into our six-week alcohol-free challenge. We've learned a lot around habit change, emotional resilience, neuroplasticity, and we've touched on nervous system regulation. We know how important it is to well regulate first, to become more mindful when we are trying to break free from alcohol, and in fact, I have shared a few of your awesome meditations from Insight Timer with the group, including your two-minute laughter meditation, which is absolute gold. So I am probably, from a selfish perspective, needing a bit of guidance when it comes to mindfulness and meditations and breath work and all the rest of it. You are the guru that I learned from, so I am so glad you are here. A huge welcome and over to you.
Speaker 2:Lovely. Thank you so much for having me, and it's a real pleasure to be here as well. And meditation and mindfulness is one of my absolute favorite topics, and you know, we teach what we need to learn, and the most beautiful thing about being a teacher of mindfulness and compassion is, every time I talk about it or I guide someone through it, it's reinforcing it for me as well. So it really keeps me as the therapist you like, or the psychologist, on track, because I go into that beautiful space as well, and the more you do it like any muscle, the easier it is to slip into that space. But a lot of misconceptions about meditation. There's lots of different types, so we'll have a bit of an experience. I'll take you through a couple of different practices that I found are really practical. They're ones that we can actually do anywhere and they're not relying on anything else. So I think that's the beauty of it too. So I'll run through an ABCD model, just because it's easy for me to remember it that way. So A is for attention, b is all about our breathing and how our breathing is connected to our emotions, and the C is the compassion for self, compassion for others, and the D is detox. So part of detoxing is also detoxing from things like social media, alcohol. It's like setting yourself up a little bit of a challenge to see if you can perhaps detox from social media for a certain period of time in the night, different things like that or you might have a weekend where you don't use it. So let's start at the beginning with A, and that's all about attention. So what we know is when we have an addiction or we have a craving, it's quite loud in our body system, so our attention goes to that, and then there'll be a quality of, you know, conversation that we have with ourselves, that split that can go on in our psyche. It's like one part of this goes go on, just have it. No one's going to know, you know, just have another one. Oh, it won't hurt. And you find yourself walking back to the fridge and you know, coming back and pouring it. So there's that automatic pilot.
Speaker 2:What am I giving attention to? So, with a mindfulness meditation practice, that's what we're building our muscle. We're building our muscle of attention. What am I focusing on? And we're connecting it with our, if you like, not willpower, but our choice maker, that observer self. And so that's why we practice it because it's the foundation for insight, personal insight. It gives us reflective space, which is an opportunity for us to notice. Oh, what are these thoughts, these ruminations? Are they supportive or are they making life hard for me? Yeah, and we've all got those critical kind of inner voices. So mindfulness what am I giving attention to will grow whatever I give attention to.
Speaker 2:So when we sit in a practice, we might have a word, one word that we focus on, and that's what we're going to give our attention to. You can also focus on a sensation. It might be a sensation in your heart, or there might be a sensation, you know, just a pleasant feeling somewhere, and you can help have that grow. You can focus on any of the senses. You could focus on a sound bird call, being present to bird call, perhaps, or the fan. You know that white noise can be helpful to us sometimes.
Speaker 2:So what we give attention to in a meditation practice, we narrow it down to one object, and what I'd like us to do is to have a go just for a minute to sit and think of a word. Now, we're going to choose a word, so you choose any word at all and that's going to be like your mantra. So some traditions have mantras and they're usually Sanskrit and they have a significant sort of sacred meaning. So we can also choose a word of something that might be a special place for us, or it could be an emotion like love or peace or calm. So choose a word that would be nice for you, would be pleasant for you to focus on, a word that would be nice for you, would be pleasant for you to focus on, and it's simple and it's easy to remember. And once you've chosen that word, we can close our eyes or we can keep our eyes open, it doesn't matter. I want you just to repeat that word in your mind so you can hear your own voice saying that word over and over again, just gently. But we also hold this kind of approach you would have heard of this before of kind of openness and curiosity and not being again.
Speaker 2:Notice what the thoughts are, but we're not going to give them too much attention. We're going to come back to our word. So whatever grabs your attention, whatever you might be analysing and judging what that word is, you know did I choose the right one. Let it go and just come back to that one primary focus. So this is a concentration practice. It builds up our skill, if you like, of attention and choosing to focus on what we want to focus on. So it's an active one, because your mind wanders off, your thoughts wander off, you bring them back and that's really all you're doing. So you're not necessarily going to relax, because you are quite alert and attentive. Bringing back, bringing back, and it's only for a minute. So it's like we're doing a quick muscle exercise there.
Speaker 2:Now, what I'd like you to do this time is have a listen to the sound of the bell until you can't hear it anymore. Okay, what I'd like you to do this time is have a listen to the sound of the bell until you can't hear it anymore. Okay, so you're listening to when you can't hear it anymore. Now, did you feel like that took you into a relaxed place? Just listening to that? It's pretty cool, isn't it? So one pointed focus, we're concentrating, we're bringing our attention to it. It just helps. Still, we become still, and it wasn't very long, that wasn't even a minute, and it kind of has that effect. Now the next one, which is the vagus nerve breathing. Have you done that one with the deep breaths?
Speaker 1:everybody probably has a different, different level but not necessarily not part of this call all right, but we'll do it because this is fantastic.
Speaker 2:So we get, I guess, throughout the day with our work, with our thinking, with our reasoning, all of that that we're doing, we also get tight in our body as well, and we get faster perhaps, yeah, or then we get exhausted. So the deep breathing is activating the vagus nerve, which is responsible for rest, digest. So you know, when we get really stressed over a period of time and it's prolonged, we can have digestion issues, gastro, all of these things, because we're in that flight, fight, freeze mode all the time at the moment, because you're detoxing, you've got emotions coming up and they're uncomfortable as well. And I don't know if you've noticed, but when we feel different emotions, there's different things happening with the way we breathe. We breathe at a different pace, we breathe in a different part of the lungs. It's fascinating, and there's all these different types of breathing exercises you can do to evoke different emotions. Yeah, so you've probably heard of rebirthing. You know they do a particular type of breathing and it sort of opens up a lot of tears and anguish. But we can also use the breathing to soothe and calm ourselves, and that is the one that I'll show us how we can do. We can all have a go at it.
Speaker 2:Basically, what it is is that we're again giving attention to the inhale. We might be counting to four. As we inhale through the nose, we hold that breath, expanding the chest, hold that breath for two, and when we exhale, it's always with a smile and a sigh because it's like we're saying, ah, it's done, yeah, I'm ready to just sit and do nothing if not, yeah, not really, but deep breath, hold it, exhale and get that last bit of air out. So if you are sitting down and you smile and exhale, if you just lean forward a little bit, it puts a bit of pressure on your tummy and you get a little bit of extra air out. And then you pause again and if you do five repetitions of that, that switches on this automatic relaxation response in our body. Now, this is a fantastic thing that we can switch on ourselves. It's automatic, but we can also consciously switch that on by doing that repetition of breathing. So again, it's a combination of attention taking in the deep breaths. You might count. If that's easier, you can count to four, hold for two, exhale for six, hold the air out for two and then do your five repetitions and you'll notice. Then you scan your body and it's like I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker 2:So whenever you've got to do anything where you get a bit more aroused in a negative way, a bit anxious about doing a session, presenting or anything like that, if you do this breathing it takes that away and you feel calmer, your heart's not beating as fast, you're digesting your food and that also means that the prefrontal cortex we're able to function from that part of our brain and that's the part of the brain where we can be proactive instead of reactive. So why don't we have a go at doing maybe three rounds of that, just to get a sense of it? And again, it's taking a nice big, deep breath. It's not sort of you know this kind of thing, it's more expanding outwards and you could even imagine that you're filling up the belly, yeah, just to get it even deeper.
Speaker 2:So big, deep breath in and out, holding it and haaaaa. It's not a hoo, it's a haaaaa. This is how you get the laughter happening as well. So I interrupted the flow there. So big, big, big breath in, hold it and haaaaa, and you can make that sigh as loud as you want. It just depends on where you are, let that air out, pause, and if you push forward you might see you can get that last bit of air out as well. When you're ready, do the next breath in. We'll just do one more. So nice big breath, expanding the ribs outwards, holding that and ha, very good. And now closing the eyes and very gently thinking of your word again and, just for the next minute, bringing your attention to your word and I'll let you know when the minute has passed. Okay, and so just rolling the shoulders back and coming back into the room, back into the call. Yeah, well done, well done. So you might have noticed some of that running commentary as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can definitely relate. I was having internal debates around whether my chosen word was the right word that I really wanted to choose.
Speaker 2:I had about three words.
Speaker 1:I was bouncing around.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes, and that's it's like that analytical mind comes in and we're like, which choice? And another choice comes, and so it's so active, isn't it in there? And then it's like you'll have perhaps another one. That's sort of saying, oh yeah, this is not going to work. I hope it hurries up and we finish this, because I need to get on to some other things.
Speaker 2:It's like there's so much running commentary going in there and when we pause to reflect reflect we get to hear the habits of thought. Those habits, yeah, and so it's really worthwhile working on focusing on more supportive ways of thinking, and the easiest, quickest way to do that is to think of kindness and compassion for yourself, which you probably never do. You might have it for everybody else, but you might not have so much kindness and compassion for yourself. So we hear a lot of talk about empathy and we need to be empathetic and some of us are too empathetic and all of the rest of it, and we can burn out from too much empathy depending on the profession we're in. So compassion now is researched as evidence-based best practice for dealing with vicarious stress, so cumulative stress that we collect from other people, yeah. So having self-compassion and what does that look like? We can do affirmations so we can listen to affirmations, or we can write some of them down. We can maybe put some notes around and those affirmations would be things like may I be well, may I be content in my life, or may I have harmonious relationships. It's like wishing well towards yourself. How many of us do that? It's like you well towards yourself. How many of us do that? It's like you just forget yourself. So compassion is a really important part of being able to, if you like, reprogram our mind. And, as we know, neuroplasticity what we give attention to, isn't it what we keep repeating? Over a period of time, grows those connections, gets more connections, and we can retrain our mind. It's not even retraining, it's growing new neural pathways.
Speaker 2:So the concept that explains all of this is Dweck Dweck's work on growth mindset. So growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset. And she did like 30 years of study, looking at education, looking at children and what they were taught. What were they taught about getting it right or that I haven't got it yet? And she found out that just by saying I haven't got it yet meant that children continued to learn. They wouldn't give up because I haven't got it yet, which means children continued to learn. They wouldn't give up because they haven't got it yet, which means I still can learn, whereas children with a fixed mindset they've learned what they can and there's nothing more to learn because that's as good as you get, sort of thing. So it's limiting our continual growth. So, looking at growth mindset, meditation is one of those ones that really helps us to open up to building those new neural pathways and letting go of the old ones that aren't working for us anymore. And we can do that over time and we can keep doing it until we're, you know, 60, 70, 80. So it's never the thing about you can't teach an old dog, it's not true. We can keep learning.
Speaker 2:Kindness seems to be the quickest I find way to re-talk to myself Was that a kind thing? I said no, okay, what would be? Well, just give yourself a little bit more time. You haven't got it yet. And you know, when we look to the future, how do we see the future? Do we see it as something with possibilities and opportunities, or are we thinking, oh my gosh, it's just getting worse and worse and worse? We don't know what the future holds. So why would we think the worst. I reckon it's better to make the choice to think well, it's going to be okay, I'm going to be okay. So it's slightly different to positive thinking, because sometimes positive thinking can get a bit too much. It's not real. This is being kind to yourself. I haven't got it yet. I'm getting there every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, giving it a try, and this is particularly helpful if we're trying to let go of addictions. Yeah, habits of thought, perfectionism. Perfectionism creates anxiety. It creates that feeling of imposter syndrome. Perfectionism creates anxiety. It creates that feeling of imposter syndrome. Perfectionism is a problem. It's great because it gets you going places with your work and you know you get things done, but when you have that attitude towards yourself, it's a hard taskmaster, isn't it? Yeah, so compassion.
Speaker 2:What I'd like to do now is to do a lovely guided meditation just to give you a bit of a flavor of how perhaps you could start to be kind to yourself and that it's okay that you don't feel like awkward, because you might might feel a bit awkward to start with with that. So let's just see Sometimes I find people cry Very often when you sort of say something nice to yourself or you hear something nice that really acknowledges you. You can feel quite sad. You know tears can come. It's sort of oh really me grateful, all right, so let's have a go. Go at doing this and again, you don't have to close your eyes, you can if you want to, and you're just using my voice as a guide. And this is a compassion, loving, kindness meditation.
Speaker 2:Tara Brack, again on Insight Timer, she's got beautiful loving kindness meditations that you can listen to. And if we listen to them then we start to internalize them and then we have our own voice. Yeah, so let's have a go at it. Them, and then we have our own voice. Yeah, so let's have a go at it.
Speaker 2:So if you just connect in with your body and notice from the top part of your head all the way, scan through all the way down your chest, your back, down into your belly, lower back, bring your attention into your hips and you're just noticing what are the sensations like in your body, bringing the attention to the legs and with your hands, perhaps just resting your hands, if they open up the fingers, so they're nice and spread. Just resting your hands if they're open up the fingers, so they're nice and spread, and see if you can bring your attention just to that lovely rhythm and rise and fall of your breathing. Just notice that a bit of expansion and contraction and that rhythm in itself can be soothing and calm. And then you might like to just place your hand on your heart and get an impression of yourself and you can internally just repeat these suggestions that I make and just see how they kind of land into your heart.
Speaker 2:So may I be well, may I be well. May I be healthy and strong. May I be healthy and strong. May I have peace of mind from time to time. May I have peace of mind from time to time. May I have peace of mind. May I have harmonious relationships. And may I have love and feel love. May I have love and feel love.
Speaker 2:Maybe add a few of your own and then get a picture of someone you really love. They're really easy to love and imagine them, and it could be a pet. They're easy to love, could be a partner, children, a colleague, a friend. Get a picture of someone who's really easy, that comes to mind First person, or first one that comes to mind, and then, as you picture them, look in their eyes and say may you be well, may you be happy in your life, may you have peace of mind and body, healthy, strong body, and may you have harmonious relationships. And maybe add a few more I love you. Just just let that land with them, the impression of them. Then you can extend that to perhaps just someone that you know not that well. So it might be someone perhaps that you buy your coffee from, or it might be someone from the supermarket that serves you. So you don't know them, but you're just coming in contact with this other human being. So get a sense of who that might be.
Speaker 2:We can offer the same suggestions, if you like, same wishes of wellbeing to them. So may you be well and may you be happy in your life, may you feel fulfilled, may you have harmonious relationships, may you have peace of mind, healthy and strong body, and may you have love and be loved. And then have yourself there again. Picture yourself, and that you can equally say may I be well, may I be strong in body and have peace of mind, may I have love and be loving, I have glorious relationships, may I be fulfilled, and just allow that to land. And you can always add more people into that picture. It's sort of the longer you do it. It kind of rarefies it and makes it even more so, more so full in your heart. And so just bringing your attention back now, letting that go, okay, back again, yeah, opening the eyes and being back in how'd you go with that one?
Speaker 1:I loved it. It's so peaceful, good, and it was emotional. Was emotional coming back to yourself after yeah, yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, and you know the other one that we can do, but we didn't because I thought it might be. You know, a bit more challenging because can do, but we didn't because I thought it might be. You know, a bit more challenging because we're not going to be able to see everybody is if you've got someone in your life that's really irritating, really irritating and aggravating and you can't get away from, because they might be a relative or they might be a manager, or you know someone that is in your friendship circle and they really annoy you. This is a really good one to do about them. So you imagine them or ex-partners. Can we do it? I?
Speaker 3:do it, can we?
Speaker 2:do it. It's almost like it's insanely quick to shift you from that terrible frustration or that hurt that you feel because it's a bitter thing that you carry around. They're fine, they're oblivious to it probably, but you carry it around as a grit in yourself. Yeah, not a pleasant thing. So I just find, if I can do that practice, I usually do that person at the end. I find over time I can do it. Of course I want them to be happy and healthy. I don't want them to die, you know. But I do have a bit of a chuckle and I say may you rest in peace. I know, which is not very genuine, isn't it? But anyway, I catch myself, I catch myself, but eventually, over time, it's something about because you're giving that intention. It starts to become a little bit more true and that's obviously because it's starting to wire up in your brain and it's becoming a truth for you and that person. When you see them again, they just don't hold the same charge and in fact you can have a whole different relationship with them because you no longer got those blinkers on, if you like, yeah, but sometimes you have to keep away from people and you don't ever have to see them, but just in yourself. If you're carrying it around, it's a really good way just to shift it. Yeah, so that that's my a, b, c, d model. So a attention, what am I giving attention to? B is all about breathing. Learn about the different ways you breathe. When you're feeling certain things, you have a panic attack, what type of breathing do you do then? When you're depressed and sad, what type of breathing do you do when you're shocked? It's really fascinating and it's automatic, but it's also in our control. So the vagus nerve breathing is fantastic for us because it can help calm the nervous system. As we know, our mind is part of our nervous system, so we're going to be able to think in a more clear way. And then, if we can just think, what's kindness here or compassion I can have for myself? What do I need to do to help myself? Yeah, it means we count. I'm as important as everybody else, no better than or worse than. I'm equal. So it helps you to do your self-care stuff. Now, when are we going to do all this? That was I was alluding to that In the third space the transition times, so in between meetings, or those bigger transition times from work to home home to work, lunchtime or when we have the weekends.
Speaker 2:There's transition times, micro ones throughout the day. What are we doing in those breaks? We're usually pretty unconscious or we're processing something that we didn't like we did. We might have made a mistake, or we had a difficult conversation and we seem to just still carry that with us to the next meeting or to the next encounter that we might have to do or the next report we've got to write.
Speaker 2:So what we're suggesting is the third space is an opportunity to be more mindful and give attention to the quality of my thoughts. How am I breathing? Have I got some tension in my body? Have a drink of water, have a talk to a friend or think about a holiday? It's like mind shift. Shift the mind into something neutral or more positive, and then we go into the next meeting fresher and with a more, if you like, open to whatever's going to happen.
Speaker 2:We can't multitask. We think we can. You can't. If there are two rabbits, you can't catch both of them at the same time. Really, you can't. You have to go for one and then you go for the next.
Speaker 2:How quickly can we shift from one task to the next? That's the key, and mindfulness gives us the ability over time to be able to shift really quickly. So when I'm with you, I'm 100% with you. I'm not thinking about the last appointment I had. When I'm at home with the kids, I'm with them. One, you know 100. When I'm with myself, doing my mindfulness in nature, I'm with nature. So it's this, that's what they talk about presence, being present in the here and now. All that means is I'm right here, now. I've got my attention here, my senses are taking it in Touch, taste, smell. That helps us to get present.
Speaker 2:Anxiety we seem to be lost in our thoughts ruminating, ruminating Emotions. We get caught by them, they grab our attention and it's important for us to express them. But sometimes we get locked into them because it's sort of a habit too. How do we shift out of it and what can we learn from those emotions as well? Can we value them? Yeah, give them time.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think that combination of reflective time, if we can help build that strength of attention and we do it with kindness towards ourself and others, it just takes a lot of angst out of our life, yeah, and it just helps. It's not always possible to do it on your own. That's why we have those apps and we have teachers, because it sort of helps to have someone help guide us, to sit with us and to do it. So groups are fantastic for meditation and online in person listening to it, anything that brings us into the present for a little period of time, reflective space journaling there's lots of different things, but anyway, they were the ones that I wanted to highlight to you today. All right, so back over to you, isabella.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. So many takeaways, particularly just around trying to stop the mind from going off into loops and just getting comfortable with being present. We've done a lot of work in this program around avoidant behaviours, knowing that alcohol's one, but knowing that we've also got a whole lot of other avoidant behaviours, and it's a skill to be learnt to be present to slow down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:And I also loved your self-compassion and letting go of resentment, because they're two big trigger emotions. Yeah, and we've been speaking a lot here around letting go of resentment, because they're two big trigger emotions. And we've been speaking a lot here around um, letting go of alcohol being, yeah, 10 physically stopping, but 90 about our emotional resilience. So I've always got a few questions, but I'm going to open it up to everybody else to see if they wanted to kick off first any questions. There are any questions there. If anyone has one, jump on in.
Speaker 3:Thank you, that's really great. Thank you for that. My question, or observation, is I've always thought I'm not very good at this. So, and strangely enough, I was doing a hypnotherapy session because I couldn't sleep and I just waited for the breathing exercises to go, because I don't enjoy breathing very much, and then I got into the hypnosis and straight to sleep. But is it true that it's just practice? Yes, because I do find I just have a real block with a lot of this.
Speaker 2:Well, if the breathing isn't see, do you have asthma or anything like that, or do you have trouble?
Speaker 3:with it. No, I've always been a mouth breather, but more and more I'm a nose breather.
Speaker 2:Now Okay yeah, look, you're doing it for a certain purpose. So if the breathing is not for you and it's not for everyone, so people with asthma won't like to do it, or some people have sinus issues, or you've got a cold, so then you can't do the breathing, so then you can't do the breathing, you're going to feel more anxious. But I find guided meditation, so you're hearing a voice that you like, but you've got to find a voice you like. Some of the voices are annoying, I find you know, so you turn them off. But that's all interesting information for you about yourself and how choosy you might be. And you know, can I be more accepting? So we learn a lot about ourselves, because it's introspection, it's making you be introspective. So meditation is perhaps the foundation for personal insight, and if we've got insight, then we've got something we can hold on to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to manage that to go okay. Well, this is something I need to work on. How do I get rid of this? We can ask someone to help us, a professional. We might be able to work it out ourselves. Yeah, so, and it's always going to be a bit different Every time you do your sleep yeah, the sleep hypnosis. Sometimes it might work and sometimes it mightn't work. Yeah, do you find?
Speaker 3:that. Yeah, for sure, yes, definitely, yeah, okay, that's kind of good Then, definitely yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's usually when we give it up. Then we give it up, but actually just keep at it because it worked like the challenge. You know, if we can say okay, 21 days, I'm going to give it a go and see how that progresses for me. Yeah, Thank you Okay.
Speaker 1:Does anybody else have another question for Simonette?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's not so much a question, I suppose, but I just wanted to start off. Thank you, simonette. Yeah, it's not so much a question, I suppose, but I just wanted to start off. Thank you, simonette, your voice is so soothing.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm glad. I was thinking it was a bit croaky, but that's good.
Speaker 4:I've got a lot of dust around. I'm renovating.
Speaker 4:Bella said at the beginning that she'd always wanted to look into meditation and hadn't got around to it, and I must say that I'm exactly the same, and Bella had put out the mocktails and the meditations and I still have not looked at them yet, but I one of my goals at the start of this was to find something that was calming for me, because I'm the sort of person that I basically have two states of being, and one is busy and one is asleep. I don't know how to relax. I find it very difficult to do so, yeah, and so one of those was starting yoga, which I've started just once a week, about four or five weeks ago, and that is learning too, because I do feel like a drongo during that. People are breathing out and getting into it, and you know all of this and I'm just sort of looking at everyone with one eye open, but I'm throwing myself into it, and I suppose what really resonated with me today in particular was the calm self-talk between meetings, tasks and bad conversations.
Speaker 1:I've written down and thank you for the question. That was awesome. Now, sibynette, where can we find you? If we want more of that soothing voice, yes, yes but also if people want to just learn more about you and what you offer and provide.
Speaker 2:Well, I have got a website called the artistryofwellbeingcom and my name as well. It will come under that too. So simonettebargercom and the Insight Time is the most prolific for me as a teacher. I've got a lot of guided meditations on there, and for sleep as well, and I listen to them from time to time. And yes, once I settle into Port Macquarie, where I'm living now, I will start to do a regular meditation class and I'll do it online. And I'm also because I'm in Port Macquarie, which is sort of a holiday destination, I'll be looking around to see what can we do. You know weekend retreat, things like that. So, but that's that won't be until next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll start that in the new year, thank you, thank you. Please send that meditation online group course when you do it because I would love to be part of that.
Speaker 2:That be amazing. Love it. It's really nice to do and and I guide it and so it just means you just turn up. Sometimes you think I don't want to go, but if you can just turn up, you get the benefit, and it's over that regular time that we really do start to go. Yeah, I like this. I'm going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1:I feel the most relaxed right now that I've been all week.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot of smiles.
