Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

Hey, it's Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we're going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that's one or two or 31. It's up to you, you get to set your own goal and that's why it's more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It's totally free. I've got prizes, I'm going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it's just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I'm your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you're in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking, and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn't remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast. With me your host Molly Watts coming to you from well, let's see. This morning, it was snowing here in Oregon this afternoon. On my way home, it was a huge hail storm. In between there was some sun there was a little rain. I don't know what to tell you folks, this is a very unusual spring pattern here in Oregon. And although there's a lot of rain in the forecast, which is not so unusual, I'm ready for some sunshine, I am ready for some sun. This is April, we are officially in April and April is Alcohol Awareness Month. If you did not know that. This started a long time decades ago, when recovery programs were really trying to bring up awareness of alcohol and alcohol misuse, really. But over the course of time, people have used it more as an educational focus for alcohol recovery, alcohol abuse. And for me, I just want to encourage all of us to create a more mindful relationship with alcohol. And really, that begins with awareness, being aware of our alcohol habits, being aware of our thoughts around alcohol. And so in honor of a April being Alcohol Awareness Month, all month long, I am celebrating by giving you the opportunity to work with me in step one, this is the last hurrah for step one. In May, I am officially moving it over into and converting everything into my new program. But during April, if you register for step one, you still get to work with me and have a one on one coaching session included with your enrollment fee. And that is a one time enrollment fee, this won't ever change. It is a one time enrollment fee that you pay once and you have lifetime access. There's really nobody else doing that in this space. And I just want you to know that that's never gonna change, lifetime access and group coaching once a month included. So that's ongoing for again, as long as you want to come be a part of the community and really, you know, becoming alcohol minimalist somebody that has a mindful relationship with alcohol. This is a long term life long change, in my opinion, right? I want to help you create a peaceful relationship with alcohol for the rest of your life. So this is how I do it. And so if you come and work with me in step one in April, and you can sign up any day, anytime you go to www dot Molly watts.com/step One get yourself registered, we will do our one on one coaching and you will have access to the course, you'll have access to everything to my book all of it for for lifetime. So I really hope you'll check it out. Again, this is the last chance during April to get a one on one coaching session included with your with the price that you pay. So go to www dot Molly watts.com/step. One to learn more. All right, sorry, that's a big intro of kind of an infomercial, whatever. Right? I'm sorry that I have to get that word out. I really am excited about what's coming in May. I mean, I couldn't really be more excited about the program that I'm offering and launching and that every one that's in step one gets to automatically be included in that is a pretty great deal as well. But we will talk more and more about it. I'm not ready to tell you all about it yet, but I am getting there. So during April, take advantage of this last chance for step one. Today on the podcast I am this is an older, not older gosh, it was maybe I don't know, a couple of months ago that I actually had this conversation with Dr. Luke's new ski. And Luke is all the way over in New Zealand. And he is a somatic healer. He is somebody that wrote a book called Soma wise get out of your head and get into your body. And he is also a practitioner, mentor and facilitator of compassionate inquiry, which is a therapeutic approach that was developed by Gabriel monta and it is aimed at helping people on earth the root causes of their suffering and self destructive cycles. He was just a fascinating conversation. And Luke says that authentic change begins with silence, stillness and the courage to look inward. We talked a lot about getting silent and being still, and I really just appreciated my conversation with him. I think you're gonna love his perspective. And he shares some some pretty hard stuff that he went through as well. So please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Luke snow ski. Hey, Luke, thank you so much for being here. I am super excited to have our conversation all the way across the world in New Zealand, and welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. Thank you, Molly. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. And I'm glad that we can make it work despite being on opposite sides or opposite ends of the ocean. Yeah, opposite ends of the ocean and some some fairly significant timezone, time timezone differences, right. So differences, I'm in the future. I'm to come in tomorrow. Yeah, right. So awesome. Well, I am really looking forward to sharing your work with my audience. And I really want to start just from the beginning with you, because I know, in our brief conversations that it is, where you have come from what you do now, in terms of the people that you work with, and the work that you do, really started with a personal journey for yourself. And so often, and that certainly was the case for me, you know, I did my own transformation, and then, you know, worked on becoming a life coach for you. You have taken it even further went and got a PhD. And so tell me a little bit more about that journey and kind of the the personal to academia. that that has happened for you. Thanks, Molly. First of all, I think you're absolutely right, that it's our own personal journey that allows us to be the coaches and the helpers that we all are in fact, one of my teachers, Gabor Ma Tei would identify it as the wounded healer. I think we're all wounded healers. Yeah, so So my journey, you know, it's, we talk about addiction. And I, when I talk about addiction, or use that word today, let's not assume I'm referring to the diagnosis or the formal classification of addiction, I'm referring to the the somewhat universal experience the universal human experience of addiction, which is that problematic relationship with a behavior and substance that even though we attempt to move away from it, because it's impacting our life in negative ways, we can't seem to do it. And so in my case, my addiction or the or the behavior that I had a problematic relationship with it was porn. And during my 20s it was it was a matter of I think very early in my 20s. I sort of had the hunch that this this wasn't good for me. But it no matter how many times I tried to use willpower to move, move away from it. It just kept coming kept coming back because eventually, the stress would get so overwhelming or something would happen to the stress would accumulate. And Oren was the only sort of life Jack Could I had on that sinking ship? Whenever the stress did capsize my ship. So it really wasn't until I started getting curious about the relationship I had with the behavior. Why asking myself why and getting curious around the context, the emotions, the situations, the triggers that would lead to that use. And it was very strange, because instead of willpower, where I was focusing on sort of porn as the problem and moving away from it, and judging myself and shaming the behavior itself, when I got curious about the why, and just stopped focusing on porn at all, porn just disappeared. So it was it was this really drastic, vastly different way of moving away from the havior behavior, one that required no effort, seemingly no effort, because what I was focusing on was the precursors to the porn use what was happening in my life and in my body, that led me to want to use porn to begin with. Oh, okay. So I mean, I love that because you're preaching to the choir, I talk about it all the time. I mean, so we, we talked briefly about whether it's porn, or alcohol, or gambling or food, or you name it, right? If you do not figure out what's going on behind the scene, you will turn to something typically turn to something else. So what I hear you telling me is that you stopped focusing on the action, which I tell my tell my listeners all the time, this is not about controlling the number of drinks you have controlling the habit, it's about understanding why the habit manifests in the first place, and what you're trying to what you believe you're getting out of the glass, whether it's like I said, whether it's the glass or or porn and what you said, is so impactful, because the, the shame associated with it, right? So that is a huge factor for people that are overusing alcohol, and what a kudos to you for being strong enough to just come out there and say, this is something that I had, you know, that I had a problem with. It's an In fact, it's that because it's now free of that shame. And that guilt that you're referring to the shaman that guilt is actually the experience that perpetuates the next cycle of reactivity to continue. So So one of the ways that I was really able to remove the shame from my experience was firstly, to acknowledge that this behavior, the substance, whatever it may be, for the listeners respective lives, but in mine, it was porn. Porn was a solution for something else at some point. And here, I was demonizing and trying to punish the things that was protecting me from, from the pain and the discomfort and the emotions that I didn't know how to deal with that I didn't know how to face that I was uncomfortable with until, and that's that was my pathway out of it, I got more comfortable dealing with the pain that the point was a solution for so that I didn't need the point anymore. It was it was it was as if the the the need for it just magically just vanished. And then when we talk about shame and guilt, well, why would we shame and guilt an aspect of ourselves that is actually protecting us. And this is when I started substituting compassion and acceptance for the shame and the guilt. And lo and behold, well, well, now I was all of a sudden, I don't need this behavior as a crutch anymore. But the neat like I said, that I got curious about the craving in my body, I would ask myself questions, a series of questions. What am I sad about? What am I angry about? What am I stressed about? What am I what am I not confronting? Or what am I avoiding? What situation in my life am I avoiding? And every time there was an answer, and every time there was a somatic response, every time something in my body either like spasms or twitched or shivered, or an emotion came to the surface or I cried whatever it was, I got into contact with, with the experience that my subconscious mind my body was trying to protect me from. So here, I was leaning for porn as a way of avoiding this discomfort. So, okay, you brought up Cymatics. So let's talk about that. Because it's a big part, again, of something of things that I talked about, I talked about being able to articulate the feeling and being able to really recognize it and understand what happened, what is happening in your body, because that feeling is a vibration in your body. And so you want to be able to identify, you know, just like you said, is it a shiver? Is it A, is it a tension. And so talk to me about that part of your own healing, and then kind of where you have gone with that, in your studies. I would say that we cannot fully heal or integrate our traumas or our past emotional wounds, without actually letting our body guide that process. Our body will be the determinant and the factor as to whether or not we are, quote unquote, fully healed. I don't necessarily agree with that term. But it's our body that guides that process our mind likes to think it does and it will change its mind has changed its course all the time. And in fact, if we measure our progress or re measure our capacity of healing based on the expectations of our mind, we will always fall short. Because the mind always thinks this is just going to be just going to happen if you make the best plan, or have the best strategy, all of a sudden the work is done. If you have some talk therapy and you reach an insight, oh, well, now I understand it. So I'm healed. But that's not how it works. So So I would say the relationship between what the mind thinks about this process of healing and the actual process of healing is, let's say you turn on a light in a dark room. And that's like the talk therapy. That's the understanding the intellectual understanding. Great. So you've turned on the light into dark room, and you see there's a huge mess in a dark room, you still have to clean up that huge mess. And that work that's much slower process of actually tidying things up getting rid of stuff, and cleaning, that's the work of the body. So the quick, the light might turn on very quickly. But the work and the processing into the integration of that experience is a lot slower. And it requires us to be more compassionate and gentle and patient with ourselves. Because the body heals at its own pace. We don't get to control how quickly the body processes, old conditioning and old reactivity and old wounds. That's something that we have to almost surrender. We have to trust that the body will heal on its own, in its own pace, at the pace that it's that it can that is able to. And this is of course where practices that assist our capacity and being more comfortable being uncomfortable and being more resilient things like meditation, breathwork, cold exposure, exercise, you name it. If we're utilizing this as a practice that improves our physical, mental and emotional capacity to be with discomfort, then we can be present with ourselves as we process these old core wounds. Just a quick break to talk with you about Sunnyside. You'll hear me talk about it on the podcast and truthfully I have so many students and group members that share with me how Sunnyside is their preferred tool. It helps them build their healthier drinking habits and really create that peaceful relationship with alcohol. It's a tool that I feel very confident in recommending. And the Sunnyside team has recently in September launched a new iOS app. And that iOS app is going to just enhance the existing text message experience. It makes it easier to build healthier drinking habits for anyone looking to cut back or simply drink more mindfully. The new Sunnyside community is also available only in the new iOS app. And it gives you access to an engaged community of like minded people who are also on a journey to cut back on drinking and build healthier drinking habits. It's a safe private space. And you'll get access to inspiration and advice from Sunnyside members as well as coaches. I encourage you to go check out Sunnyside go to www.sunnyside.co/molly to get started on a free 15 day trial. That's www.sunnyside.co/molly. Okay, so you mentioned just a few right there some of these somatic techniques. And I would love for you to expand on that a little bit. Because I'm pretty confident that not everybody, my audience, in fact, until I dug it a little further, I've heard about it. But I didn't really appreciate all these things that are considered somatic techniques. So talk to me about kind of what you help people do, you know actually do to create that process in their own bodies? Right. Beautiful. Thank you for that. So it might be better to describe it as, rather than here's a list of activities that you can do that our somatic practices rather than viewing it that way we might be able to better explain it by saying how you do it is more important that you do it. So So let's say we take meditation, right so some people might sit cross legged and they'll fidget and they'll move around and they're thinking about their lunch and they're beating themselves up because their mind is wandering all the time. And they can't sit still and there's fidget Enos watching me meditate. I think that sounds a little bit like yeah, there you go. And this might be a common experience because we think that okay, just because I'm going to engage in the in the activity of meditation, that I am fulfilling this somatic practice, check, check the check the box items sort of thing. Instead, it might be helpful to to view it well. How is this? How can I imbue? Or how can I infuse this activity that I'm doing with this quality of stillness. So I like the word stillness rather than meditation because when we're still we're noticing, let's say we noticed the itch that wants to be scratched on our face, or we noticed the fly that lands on our arm and We want to swatted away, or we noticed a little ache in our neck or knee or whatever that discomfort that we want to move away from. So when we invite stillness into our experience, we're saying, can I observe this situation without reacting to it, because it's that reactivity that gets us in trouble in everyday life. It's that reactivity that has us moving towards those behaviors we think we want out of our life, we keep saying, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move away from this. And yet, it's that reactivity, that impulse in our body, that makes us say, Yep, I'm conditioned to do this habit. And I'm going to grab it, and I'm going to utilize it right away. So when we take something like meditation, and we then infuse it with stillness, we take it from something that's, you know, it's healthy. It's a healthy lifestyle choice, it's beneficial. But now we turn it into a transformational practice, because we're diffusing the reactivity. And so now we take that same quality of stillness, and we say, okay, let's apply it to breath, work, breath work like Wim Hof breath work, where it's activating, and it activates the nervous system, and it can be quite uncomfortable. All of a sudden, we invite the quality of stillness. And we actually have this powerful experience of witnessing, as our body goes into a stressed state. And then we observe it without doing anything without reaction. And then it comes out of that stress state at the end of our breathwork practice. And that's highly useful for us to be able to practice that capacity of facing stress, not responding to stress, and giving ourselves the experiential evidence that we can actually pass through this. So that's the cultivation of resilience. And so now we can take stillness again and bring it to sauna, bring it to ice bath, bring it to yoga, bring it to exercise. So it's really about this intention of staying connected to what we feel in our body as we're engaging in the practice of choosing not to respond, choosing to accept rather than avoid or numb or take our attention and divert our attention away from the practice. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I and I love everything you're talking about. And I love the fact that there's practices that people can, can learn and do to improve their own. I talk to people all the time about being okay with discomfort, discomfort, right, we got to be okay, being uncomfortable, and not try to change that all the time, not try to not even try to distract ourselves from it, just try to sit there with it and be there with it and understand that we're going to be okay. And it's amazing. Once people start to really, I talked about allowing a feeling and allowing an urge to be there. And when we start to do that, to your point, it does become easier. And it's it's a it's a practice, right, it is a skill set that can be developed. And when one chooses to then apply it to multiple areas of your life, right? Absolutely. And I would say that the practice of it is so important, because otherwise it's just an intellectual concept. So we read a book or we see a quote, and we're inspired momentary like, it's like taking a bit of brain candy, and we get stimulation, mental stimulation, and we think we've got it. But we don't, because the subconscious drivers in our body are so strong. And this is one of the things that happens when people start living life from the inside out, essentially living life connected to their body, rather than the outside. And one of the first things that we come into contact with that were confronted by is just how strong these urges to react are. It's a humbling experience to really face the reality that despite our minds best intentions, despite the thoughts of wanting change, the process of change is really challenging, because here comes this overwhelming emotion or this overwhelming sensation and discomfort. And guess what, every inch every fiber of our body wants to reach for that programmed reaction. And this is why the practice is so important. If we don't practice that in a controlled safe somatic environment, the chances of us being able to lean on that capacity in everyday life is very small. And then we sort of beat ourselves up for not being able to change but when when in fact, the only thing that's necessary is a little practice just practicing this capacity to be still and observant and responsive rather than reactive. And, you know, this is something that I talk about quite a bit here at alcohol minimalist is we want to do things that we are going to be willing to do for the rest of our lives. Right. This is a practice and a skill set and being able to allow discomfort and the things that you're talking about in terms of meditation and exercise. eyes and pay. I gotta tell you I'm not too I don't know too much about ice baths, though I've heard that there's a lot of people jumping into them these days. So I'm sure that there is wonderful benefit, I've got to have to look into it a little bit more. I'm not, it's not. I don't want to quite yet. But hey, so all of this stuff, all of these options, all of these, these somatic practices are things that we can incorporate. And hopefully, not only are they going to help us feel more, be more resilient in those moments, but I think they're just part of that whole thing. I talked about it all the time, just kind of, you know, when we develop a healthier, healthier, happier brain, right? It helps us because it's really managing our mind, the end of the day, it's, it's that connection between our body and mind. And if we are our bodies, working with us, not against us, it's going to be a lot easier, right? Absolutely. Well, you're also, you're also talking about practices, all of these practices, you know, let's bring up the ice bath. For one you said there's a hesitation there's a mental story that's there at present for you possibly around ice baths and this hesitancy to do them and this is present with most people. Most people have a story about jumping into an ice bath, possibly until they until they start doing it. But but the the where I was going with this was it's also present with some breathwork practices, or even meditation where there's a boredom or boredom or an angst that people come into contact with, when they meditate. The thing about it is while the mind is protest, protesting and saying, oh, no, this is not good. I'm not doing this. All of the studies point to a different conclusion, which is that this is really healthy for the body. So then we get into the situation of do I have to trust my mind's perspective on everything? Do I have to study? Do I have to believe the story of my mind? or is there other evidence that I can sit that I can consider that's opposing this opinion, in my own mind? And I give this example, too, there are certain bodily functions that the mind labels as nope, no, thank you. I don't want to I don't want to experience that, but to the body, their therapeutic. So one example is when the body gets a fever, no one likes to have a fever. No one enjoys having a fever. So the mind is saying, No, I want to get rid of this experience. But to the body, the body's like, Please give me this fever, because it's helping me heal. Another example is when the body vomits, or when the body has diarrhea, I think we're going to hear we're to throw up. Yeah, exactly. So here's the body saying it's time to get rid of this toxin. And the mind is saying, Oh, this experience sucks. And we might be able to apply that same rationale or thinking to a practice like cold exposure. Were all the evidence suggesting the benefits to the immune function to circulatory function to mental health, all that all of the all of that scientific evidence, contrast the opinion of the mind saying, No, thank you, this is hyper uncomfortable, this is not something I want to experience. So I'm not going to do it. And, of course, the cold can be so confronting that we do have a real significant experience of fear and panic and angst. And then the thoughts that come in and say, Oh, my God, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get hypothermia, I'm gonna die. This is not healthy. And yet every time we give ourselves the experience of passing through this intense discomfort, and coming out the other side, not only are we giving ourselves the mental, physical and emotional health benefits of it, we're also programming that capacity to say, I can face discomfort consciously. And I know that there's something on the other side of it, which is a hugely important quality for leading a life of meaning, a life of purpose, a life of conscious direction, rather than a life of reactivity and being stuck in a cyclical pattern, if that makes sense for us to break through. Yeah, if we want to break through conditioning conditioning that was placed on us since early childhood, that's going to be an uncomfortable process. Yeah. Conditioning from our childhood and or conditioning that we have just done to ourselves, right. I mean, I talked about this all the time, when you develop a habit of drinking that doesn't serve you, you, you typically have done that, because you have repeated you were you have repeatedly drank every time that you responded to a negative emotion or like for me after work every day, it was the same old story like I need that that was the story that I had. I needed to drink to help and relax and unwind. Right? So then you do that enough times. Suddenly, you've got to you've got a very strong habit pattern that has to be it has to be broken and it's not not necessarily easy. It's certainly not easy unless you undercover uncover what it is that's driving it in the first place. Absolutely. Not just uncovers the big journey of the soul for healing, right because once we, once we discover what's beneath the surface of this, we find that there's something beneath the surface of that which is beneath the surface of that and it becomes like I'm sure some people have heard that comparison of personal growth being like peeling back the layers of an onion, there's more and more and more layers to peel back as we discover more about ourselves. That certainly was the case. For me were some of the things that I became acutely aware of with my own life, were not accessible until I fully stopped and moved away from porn, to see its that its fundamental purpose was actually to move away from uncomfortable emotions. And that the way that it was expressing itself in my life was a while, after six months in a relationship I'd reach for then, when there was when the real opportunity to communicate and be vulnerable with someone where they're at because I didn't have those skills. Every time, I didn't know how to assert my own needs, or communicate boundaries, instead out passive, passive aggressive and rebel against that relationship by seeking solace and comfort through porn. And those kinds of huge, bigger picture dynamics don't reveal themselves until we move away from the behavior and give ourselves some space to reflect and see what's what purpose was the serving, what context has this been most alive within me. So again, it's it's this journey of self discovery when we stop that automatic reactive cycle. Okay, so you went on, you got a PhD, you now work with people to help them in their own healing journeys, and especially doing somatic therapy, therapies, you also have written a book. So talk to me about some a wise. So summarize, the subtitle is get out of your head and get into your body. And at the core of that is, I've been working with people for nearly, let's see, 20 years, about 20 years now, all of them in different contexts, but the body was always at the focal point of that the way that I was helping people. Three reasons, right? All the stories are different, but three fundamental reasons why people came to me while they were sitting in front of me, firstly, they either wanted to improve their health. Secondly, they wanted to create some kind of authentic change, right, they couldn't change, they needed help creating change. The third reason was more peaceful relationships. So the relationships are dysfunctional, there's some kind of emotion to some kind of dynamics and patterns that were stressful, distressing for them, and their and their family. At the core of all three of these, whether it's holistic health, whether it's authentic change, whether it's harmful, harmonious relationships, at the core of that is a connection to our body. If we're not connected to our body and receiving the wisdom that it has to offer, then we don't have the truth of our situation, what we have is a story. So it's like following a nutritional dogma. Because this book or article said it was healthy, rather than listening to the feedback from the body, you know, if something is healthy by the body's response to it. So again, it's it's learning how to listen to the body, so that it becomes your ally and guide in these three major directions. So symbolizes an invitation, because everyone talks about, well, we need to be more connected to the body, stay connected more to your body, feel your emotions more. The problem is that not that not many resources, actually describe that practical process to how to process of how to listen to your body, and why listening to your body can be just as important and sometimes more important, than listening to the thoughts that you may have on on a certain matter. So the book is a guide, and it starts sort of from the inside out. So it starts with the lifestyle choices that you're already doing that you can now bring a different attention or a different attention to that lifestyle choice to see how your body's responding. So you can learn the body's wisdom again, then it goes into the quality of stillness. Because I do think that meditation can be a relaxing activity, or it can be something deep and transformational, that you can use as a tool to learn how to listen to your body's language. Again, and then it moves outward. Because it's easy to say, I'm going to stop arguing with my partner, I'm going to stop having that angry reaction towards my kid. The problem is, again, if we don't have practice, staying connected to our body, during lifestyle choices during a meditation practices during these other controlled environments, to be able to call on that capacity to stay connected to ourselves when we're in relationship with others, is going to be very hard. So symbolizes this progressive, progressive way of learning how to listen to and connect to the body so that way, you can stay anchored in your body as you're navigating everyday life. So that way, reactivity is not the norm. That responsibility is the is the norm. So responsibility is a unique word. It's our ability to respond to a situation and summarize is the Guide to Becoming more responsible to cultivate that ability to respond. Oh, I love this. Folks. I'm going to link that in the show notes on where you can pick this book up, but I think it's probably a very good sounds too. Knee like it would be a very good starting point for folks to understand where they're, you know, just the the basics is that true? Loop? Yes. Well, it's not just the basics, but it's also the argument that maybe in a world that's dominated by ideas and concepts, and thoughts, maybe there's this, this foundational wisdom that we've let go of that's deep in our body that we're ignoring, and for a reason, or disconnected from. And when we, when we reconnect with that wisdom, all of a sudden, that what that opens up in terms of the possibilities in our own life, what mindfulness actually means to consider, firstly, what what's happening in my body in this moment, what's happening in my mind in this moment, and that's already a better position to be in, then what is my mind telling me about what's happening right now. Because if we start collecting information around, okay, this is what's happening in my body, this is the motion that I'm feeling. This is the story that I'm telling myself about what's happening, all of a sudden, we have a better understanding of what we're actually engaging with, rather than just reacting to our mind, which is our imagination. We're not reacting to the real world, when we're only reacting to our projection about what's happening. It's very, very impressive work. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and talk with me about it to share with this with my audience, because I know that it's very paralleled all of the things that we talked about. And while I'm not quite yet ready to go jump into ice water bath, I am considering it. And I think that the the being able to sit with discomfort, being able to be more curious and compassionate with ourselves is just really fundamentally the way that any of us can become a better version of ourselves, and, and hopefully, do just what you said those three areas. And I think those are kind of universal, right? I mean, I think just from your 20 years of practice, I would say, but those three areas are kind of universal for people, in terms of who are looking to become a better version of themselves. Absolutely an eye. That is the fundamental purpose that I why I wrote the book and why I teach meditation, I don't think meditation is this activity that we get good at. For me, it's a pathway to being better at our own life, though you've described. We can be better at our own life, when we are more still, when we are more responsive rather than reactive. All of a sudden, the relationships in our lives are experienced with more ease, and more comfort and more slow flow rather than being sort of sabotaged or held captive by our reactivity, which sends the relationship into the same dynamics into the same arguments into the same situation over and over again. And it leads us to those experiences of perceiving ourselves to be stuck to why does this keep happening to me? So the way out of that is through the body, not through the mind is through staying grounded, so we can discern what's real here? And what's my imagination? What's actually happening? And what's my story and interpretation of what what's happening? And how do I navigate that knowing the difference? Yeah, yeah, that's another one. I'm going to have to practice to lose being still. I know, I hear you. I totally agree with it. So Well, Dr. Lutz, new ski, thank you so much for being here all the way from New Zealand folks. And I will link everything in the show notes so you can pick up some a wise and you can also check out Luke's other offerings because I'm sure that there are people here listening that really are gonna get a lot from from everything that you teach, so I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Molly, for having me. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol. Now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com