Renowned meditation coach and author Sandy Newbigging is a regular contributor to our magazine, and we love reading his words of wisdom! Read on to enjoy his most recent contribution, to our Winter 2019/20 issue.
Sandy C. Newbigging
Sandy C. Newbigging
Watch Sandy explaining the 4 hidden causes and what you can do to enjoy more mind calm at www.sandynewbigging.com/blogs. Sandy’s no.1 best-selling book ‘Mind Calm’ is out now.
In this extract from our Spring 2019 issue, Sandy Newbigging shares how we can ‘spring clean’ our minds to access greater levels of joy and peace in our lives.
Before Christmas, we published a sneak peek of Sandy Newbigging’s article – ‘The Love Lesson’ – from our Winter 2018/19 issue, and today we are pleased to share it in full. Sandy has many words of advice to share on how we can learn how to give love without limits.
In this extract from our Summer 2018 issue, our meditation writer Sandy Newbigging discusses the perils of becoming overly attached to a particular outcome – and how we can break the trap.
The Attach Catch
Break the trap of attachment
By Sandy Newbigging
Attachment happens whenever you believe that being, doing or having x, y or z will make you happier, peaceful, loved, successful or some other desirable state. Being attached makes you move away from wanting certain things to believing that you need them to be OK.
Growing up, you probably learned what a good life looks like: how much money you should earn, the kind of house you should live in, the type of person you should end up with, the shape of body you should have, even the make and model of car you should drive.
Highly motivated to achieve this good life, we take our rulebook of requirements and set about doing everything we possibly can to make it all happen.
Temporary highs at best
I remember getting into a convertible I’d just bought with the advance from one of my earlier book deals. Before leaving the showroom, I sat for a few moments looking around at my new purchase. I felt great! Then I looked to my right and noticed a little scratch on the side panel and thought: Oh well, I’ll be happy when I get that fixed!
Sitting in my expensive convertible, which I’d spent years working to get, my mind gave me about five seconds of pure joy before it found something to judge negatively and resist. Can you relate to this? Without realising it at the time, I had immediately become attached to the scratch being removed before I could fully enjoy the car again. This is just one example of the many times when I inadvertently fell into what I refer to as the ‘Attach Catch’.
Left unseen, the mind can postpone your peace and happiness and be busy forever.
Attachment and the compulsion to overthink
There is a direct relationship between being attached to things being a certain way and the compulsion to overthink. Whenever your mind believes that it needs something to be OK, it becomes very active in trying to figure out how to get away from where you are now and into a more appealing time in the future.
Attachment dulls your experience. It stops the present moment from ever being good enough, leading to discontentment. Attachment leads to a very limited life in which you need to control and manipulate things to fit your rulebook of requirements. As a result, the mind is given good cause to start producing copious amounts of thoughts about how to improve your circumstances.
Quick cure: Let go of things needing to be different
Ever catch yourself thinking this classic attachment thought? I’ll be happy when…
Take a moment to consider all the things that you think you need to change, fix or improve before you can be truly happy: whether it is your job, relationship, finances, the healing of a physical condition or something else.
Then consider this simple statement in the context of your attachment: I can want this without needing it. When I invite my coaching clients and course or retreat participants to do this exercise, I see the same transformations happen time and time again. Common responses are ‘I feel relief’, ‘I feel calm’, ‘I feel free’, along with a range of other really lovely experiences. What happens for you when you are courageously contented?
With the days becoming darker and nights closing in, it is an ideal time to nurture your inn er light. On e way to do this is to play with praise. By praise, I don’t mean anything religious. Rather, a very natural way of being that is experienced by being present and rising above judgement and criticism.
By Sandy Newbigging
Praise creates gratitude and gratitude leads to love. It is a choice that you can make at any moment, irrespective of what’s happening, and possesses the power to immediately make you feel good.
Let me prove it to you now. Wherever you happen to be as you read these words, find something that you do not like. (I know it’s not a very positive thing for me to ask you to do, but bear with me, we are going somewhere!) Then, once you’ve found it, actively think negative thoughts about it for a few moments.
You might notice a stain on the carpet, a pile of dirty clothes that need to be washed, or hear music that you don’t like coming from your neighbour’s place. Find something now and think negative thoughts about it for a few moments. As you do, notice what happens within your body and emotions. Do you notice a heaviness or constriction in your body, or any downward-spiralling negative emotional experiences?
Now, with the exact same thing you were just being negative about, I want you to find something praiseworthy. I appreciate that you may have to really stretch your imagination and be creative, but nevertheless, for a few moments, I want you to actively think positive and praiseful comments about it in your mind. For example, you could now choose to be appreciative of having a carpet that keeps your house warm, clothes to wear and fully functioning ears that are able to hear sounds.
Again, as you do, notice what happens within your body and emotions. If you genuinely do rise above the previous negative opinions by focusing on what you can praise, you will find that a change occurs within your psyche. The feedback I receive when asking people to do this includes that they feel lighter, more upbeat or open and expansive. Now here’s the point. Miraculously, the thing you were originally criticising did not have to change for your inner experience to improve – your experience changed and improved simply through the power of praise. This simple praise game illustrates a liberating possibility when it comes to enjoying freedom from problems and lightening up your life. It proves that your emotional experience of life is ultimately your choosing. By “experience of life”, I don’t mean the external events occurring because they can often be outside your direct control. However, your inner experience of life can always be an uplifting one if you choose to make it a priority to praise. Happiness comes from you being okay irrespective of what’s happening. If you have to manage and control your life so that it looks exactly how you think it should, then you are going to limit your opportunities to be happy.
External forces will govern your emotions and your mood will go up and down like a yoyo. However, with the power of praise you enter into a state of joyful existence, flowing from one moment to the next, effortlessly enjoying the journey. By cultivating an attitude of praise, gratitude and love, you don’t have to wait for your life circumstances to improve before you can experience your heart’s greatest desire. You can love life and be happier now!
Join Sandy’s Calm Clan www.calmclan.com if you are interested in meditation, selfempowerment and living fully.
Body Calm
From our Winter 2015/2016 issue. Be the first to read the next issue of Positive Life in print – Subscribe.
By Sandy Newbigging
We become what we focus on the most, so the Body Calm technique offers simple ways to connect with the power of meditation and embody a series of positive virtues and focus points. When thought and felt regularly, these can transform your belief system and mental and emotional habits, in turn affecting your physical wellbeing.
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to observe a number of common beliefs held by people struggling with a range of health complaints, with some of the most harmful being, ‘I’m unsupported’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m unworthy’ and ‘I’m weak’. The purpose of meditation is to rest within your real Self: the calm consciousness that is always within you, and discovering the aspect of your being that never gets stressed, sick or suffers. Even if your body is uncomfortable or presenting undesirable symptoms, you can find wellness within.
Body Calm meditation helps you to befriend your body, give it the rest it needs to recover and improves the communications between mind and body. With regular practice, it helps form new, improved beliefs; ones that encourage physical health.
The ‘CALM’ part of Body Calm stands for ‘Conscious Awareness Life Meditation’ and involves two main elements:
1. Being Gently Alert with your Awareness Wide Open – a technique I affectionately call GAAWO.
2. Occasionally thinking Body Calm Thoughts that help to heal the sources of stress.
Calm Thoughts are short statements used during open and closed-eye meditation that act as the antidote to any attitude that might be having a detrimental effect on your body or behaviours, and consists of three components: I am + Positive Virtues + Focus Points.
Despite being two of the shortest words in the English dictionary, ‘I’ and ‘am’ together are two of the most powerful. When you think or say ‘I am’, you are referring to the absolute aspect of your Self that is unconditioned consciousness, unbounded being and infinite awareness. ‘I am’ is pure, powerful and infinite. To harness the power of this statement, we marry ‘I am’ with a series of ten positive virtues. These encourage the mind to form healthier beliefs and help you to embody healthier states of being that support good health.
Each Calm Thought also has a recommended location within or around your body on which to put your focus when thinking it. With the inclusion of these focus points, the power of the Calm Thoughts is magnified significantly by working in a number of ways. All of the focus points are symbolic and appeal to the mind–body connection. For example, when it comes to the interconnectedness between the mind and body, most people I meet who feel they are ‘unsupported’ also tend to present lower back problems. So thinking ‘I am supported’ while focusing on the base of the spine can heal the belief and perception that you are unsupported.
By working in harmony with the symbolic nature of the mind–body connection, you reduce mental and physical resistance and more easily shape a new, healthier belief system and a more supportive attitude towards yourself and your body.
Sandy’s new book Body Calm is out now and is full of more great tips and advice on using the Body Calm meditation technique. sandynewbigging.com