12 Issue 116 Spring 2016 INTERNATIONAL THERAPIST www.fht.org.uk

Sandy Newbigging, FHT accredited course provider and author of Body Calm, talks about

meditation and using the mind-body connection to

heal and stay healthy

Body calm

You don’t need a doctorate from Cambridge or Harvard to know your

mind is constantly causing changes to occur within your body. Simply watch a movie that’s a bit of a tearjerker and the undeniable evidence of the mind-body connection can fast end up rolling down your face. Bear witness to injustices and you can feel your blood boil. Your stomach can churn when contemplating concerning thoughts, and you can � nd your mouth watering at the mere thought of a food you enjoy. Yet despite the proof being proli� c, it is easy to neglect the mind when helping the body to heal and stay healthy.

Stress is cited as one of the biggest causes of the majority of physical diseases. It affects the immune system, triggers in� ammation, increases blood pressure and plays a key role in cardiovascular disease, digestion disorders and insomnia – to name but a few. At the same time, meditation is known to be one of the most effective ways to signi� cantly reduce stress. Yet, again, despite these facts staring us in the face, there are still relatively few methods of meditation used to actively support the healing of the body, with even fewer techniques having been specially designed to target the mind-based causes of stress and ill health.

Body Calm – a meditation-based self-healing systemBody Calm is a system for self-healing and sustained health. To describe it at its simplest, Body Calm offers a life-changing philosophy, quick-start cures for resolving sources of stress, and an enjoyable meditation technique that cleans up the communications happening between the mind and body to help bring about a healthier belief system. Based upon a decade of discovery at my clinics, academy courses and retreats, I’ve also mapped the human body to create � ve directories listing the probable mind-based causes of a whole host of physical conditions.

The secret source of stressAlthough stress is often named as the main cause of ill health, it isn’t the reason why people get sick. This is because stress is actually caused by inner con� ict. Furthermore, for con� ict to be present within your mind, body or life, there exists the presence of the two opposing forces of resistance and attachment. By this I mean whenever you encounter a stressful situation, it is not the event itself that makes you stressed. Instead, it is the disharmony arising from an inner con� ict between a reactive resistance to something you don’t want and an unseen attachment to something you think you need. For example, imagine you are running late for an appointment and are feeling stressed. The resistance might be in relation to people thinking badly of you and the attachment might be getting a speci� c outcome from the meeting. In this case, it is your inner con� ict about being late that is making you feel stressed, not being late. Within the context of reducing harmful forms of stress, Body Calm aims to heal these hidden causes of con� ict.

Recognising that stress is caused by the inner push-pull con� ict of resistance and attachment is an extremely empowering revelation. It stops you being a victim of circumstance and puts the power to be calm � rmly in your own hands, which helps your body to be healthier. This is vital because you may not be able to control life to make it always pleasing and pleasant. However, when you notice you’re stressed, you can take steps to actively reduce resistance and appease attachment, returning yourself to a more restful state.

Holistic | Self help

Rest in your serene selfIf you are feeling unwell and visit a doctor, work with a health practitioner or seek advice from a friend, one of the most common recommendations you’ll receive is to give your body rest. It seems an easy-enough task. Relax. Take some time off, put your feet up and chill out so your body has a better chance to heal. Despite ‘get some rest’ appearing to be a simple thing to do on the surface, most people I meet don’t know how to calm down, disengage from doing and let their body ‘be’.

Central to Body Calm is the invitation to rest in your conscious awareness. The ‘CALM’ part of the name actually stands for ‘Conscious Awareness Life Meditation’. By meditating using the Body Calm technique you can become more aware of the consciousness that is present within you. Over time you can discover your consciousness has no outer edges, is always present and beyond the physical body. It is a serene and secure state of being that you can return to any time, where all is wonderfully well and calm is continuous. It is my hope that by using Body Calm, the phrase ‘go home and get some rest’ takes on an entirely new meaning for you and that once you return, you stay for good.

The proven benefi ts of meditationMeditation techniques such as Body Calm stimulate the relaxation response, which is known to decrease physiological stress and psychological distress. Over the past few years there have been thousands of studies published on the effects of meditation on physical health and here are just a few examples…

Meditation and sleepInsomnia is experienced by millions of people worldwide. Not only can it be frustrating to be unable to get to sleep but, due to a lack of good quality rest, insomnia can lead to a whole host of physical conditions because the body is given little opportunity to carry out its maintenance and repair projects. In one study by the University of Southern California, it was found that across two groups, the people who meditated showed improvements in sleep quality compared with those in the control group who didn’t meditate.7

In another randomised controlled trial of meditation and chronic insomnia, 45 individuals were asked to meditate over an eight-week period.8 The results again showed that those who meditated reported signi� cantly greater reductions in ‘time awake’ and ‘insomnia severity’ when compared with the control group that didn’t meditate.

INTERNATIONAL THERAPIST www.fht.org.uk www.fht.org.uk INTERNATIONAL THERAPIST Issue 116 Spring 2016 13

Sandy C. Newbigging is the bestselling author of six books including Body Calm, published by Hay House (available at www.hayhouse.co.uk). He is the creator of the Mind Detox

Method, accredited by the FHT, and the Mind Calm and Body Calm techniques; and also founder of The Calm Academy (www.thecalmacademy.com), where he trains CALM Meditation Coaches. Sandy has recently launched the Calm Clan (www.calmclan.com), a membership website open to anyone interested in meditation, self-empowerment and living fully. FHT members can enjoy a free 60-day trial by visiting http://tiny.cc/emdg9x www.sandynewbigging.com

Meditation and anti-ageingOne study conducted by the University of California during a three-month meditation retreat found that there was an increase in telomerase activity in meditators.1 Telomerase is the enzyme that maintains and builds telomeres, which affect how your cells age. These tiny caps on the DNA help to stop it unravelling, and research shows longer telomeres help to protect us from disease. Quite remarkably, the study found that meditation could slow the ageing process of cells. The implications of this are massive because if the telomeres stay healthy, your cells are more able to stay healthy, your body stays healthy and you can literally live longer.

Other research has found that meditating regularly can even offset the age-related thinning of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which suggests that meditating helps parts of your brain stay healthier for longer.2 Furthermore, in another fascinating study, researchers compared gene expression in meditators versus non-meditators over an

eight-week period. Incredibly, meditation was found to impact 1,561 genes in novice meditators and 2,209 genes in experienced meditators.3 These � ndings are signi� cant because upon closer scrutiny of the genes that were impacted in the meditators, they were ones associated with slowing the rate of cellular decay. Again, this suggests that meditation can slow ageing.

Meditation and pain reliefRecent research has also shown that meditation inhibits and relieves pain perception, with some studies � nding that meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in different parts of the brain, including the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex and thalamus.4

Chronic tension-type headaches (CCTH) are the most common type of headache, and stress is widely known to be a major trigger. In one study examining the effect of meditation on headaches, it was found that the severity, frequency and duration of CCTH were signi� cantly different in regular meditators compared with non-meditators.5 Overall, people who meditated were found to bene� t from early relief in chronic tension headaches.

Meditation and cancerIt is common for those facing a cancer diagnosis to feel both scared and somewhat helpless as to what they can do to help the body heal, beyond traditional medical interventions. In a recent study by the University of Calgary, Dr Linda Carlson led a team of scientists in exploring the effects of meditation and group therapy on patients with breast cancer.6 The study compared the telomeres of patients doing regular meditation and group therapy sessions with patients who only attended a six-hour stress-management seminar, which represented standard treatment.

While the scientists found that telomeres shortened in the control group that only did the single seminar, very encouragingly, they didn’t shorten in the group that did meditation and group therapy. This shows that meditation and being open about your feelings can have a positive effect at the cellular level in women with breast cancer.

References1 Jacobs TL, Epel ES, Lin J, et al (2011). Intensive

meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators, Psychoneuroendocrinology 36(5): 664-81.

2 Kang DH, Jo HJ, Jung WH, et al (2013). The effect of meditation on brain structure: cortical thickness mapping and diffusion tensor imaging, Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience 8(1): 27-33.

3 Dusek JA, Otu HH, Wohlhueter AL, et al (2008). Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response, PLoS ONE 3(7): e2576.

4 Nakata H, Sakamoto K, and Kakigi R (2014). Meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus, Frontiers in Psychology 16(5): 1489.

5 Kiran U, Girgla KK, Chalana H, et al (2014). Effect of rajyoga meditation on chronic tension headache, Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 58(2): 157-61.

6 Carlson LE, Beattie TL, Giese-Davis J, et al (2015). Mindfulness-based cancer recovery and supportive-

expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors, Cancer 121(3): 476–484.

7 Black DS, O’Reilly GA, Olmstead R, et al (2015). Mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality and daytime impairment among older adults with sleep disturbances: a randomized clinical trial, JAMA Internal Meditation 175(4): 494-501.

8 Ong JC, Manber R, Segal Z, et al (2014). A randomised controlled trial of mindfulness meditation for chronic insomnia, 37(9):1553-63.

Self help | Holistic

Central to Body Calm is the invitation

to rest in your conscious awareness

PIC

TURE

S: S

HU

TTER

STO

CK