#54 - Vipassana Meditation with Sandra Irving

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Sandra Irving about her morning routine, Vipassana meditation, finding your target audience, growing and changing yourself and more. 

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Ryan  

Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the Morning Upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that are also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20 minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development, upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morningupgrade.com. Thanks for letting me share. And now on to the show.

Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan  

Hey, Sandra, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

Sandra 

Good. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for having me.

Ryan  

You're in Sydney. So it's actually nighttime for you. So I was gonna say good morning because it's almost 10 o'clock here. But for you, that's not the case. So why don't you tell everyone who you are, what you do for a living and then what your hobbies are?

Sandra  

So my name is Sandra. I live well. Sandra, being officially but Sandra Lavelle is what I go by on Instagram and my socials and with my clients. I'm a wellness coach and speaker. I work with my clients to help them create a life worth loving. And My hobbies are meditation, yoga, and eating lovely places with good food.

Ryan 

Why don't you tell me about your meditation, everyone has a different way of how they meditate, what does yours look like.

Sandra  

So I use a technique called forpasta, which was taught to me through a meditation retreat here in Sydney, me the Blue Mountains of apartments technique is an ancient technique that was passed down from Buddha through India. And the technique basically, is used to develop focus in the mind to be able to dissolve bondages in your energetic field or beta form for you. Because it's a lot when you first hear that I know. But basically, Meditation allows you to dissolve bondages in your energetic field. So what that means is, in our energetic field, we have a lot of compounded energy, because our energetic field is made up of subatomic atoms, and they can become dense or fluid at different times. And so there's a positive technique. Basically, what it does is teach you to focus on your breath, do a body scan through your body, and keep an equanimity, which is like keeping yourself fully economist's to any sensations that you feel in your body. And what that does is it allows you to dissolve any of the compounded energy in your body, because compounded energy could be a pain, basically. So if someone has pain in their shoulder and they need it or their back, it's just because that parts of their physiology have compounded and become denser. And so the reason why I love the person so much is that it teaches you how to keep the focus on the body and have no reaction to the compounded energy. And over time, that's when your energy starts dissolving all of this compounded energy. And then that leaves you it alleviates you from pain and suffering. So it's basically a cleansing tool of our energy centers for both the mind-body and spirit. So that's why I love it so much.

Ryan 

I think it's safe to say your meditation routine is a lot more sophisticated than mine. I'm literally just closing my eyes and breathing. So that's I find it fascinating though, like meditation, that really is what we're doing, like eyes closed breathing, but there are so many different forms of it. I find it really fascinating, you know, so I wanted to ask you, you know what yours looks like?

Sandra 

Yeah, thank you. Definitely, the simplest form works as well. Of course, you know, closing eyes and breathing definitely does allow us to focus on our breath. But what happens on an unconscious level of the things that I've just mentioned, and we may not even know that that's happening when we're doing what you're the simplest form of meditation.

Ryan 

So is your meditation. Is that part of your morning routine?

Sandra 

Yes.

Ryan  

So what else do you do in your morning? What does that look like?

Sandra  

I change up the cereals often. I do like Cheerios, they are an Australian brand of cereal. They're quite good. I often go for weeks as well. It's another Australian brand of cereals. I'll have a shower in the morning, mindfully. I like to stay fairly mindful. I won't touch my phone until I leave to put my phone in the car when I'm going down to the station to go to work in the mornings, I work in the city so I commute either by train or a drive into the gym because there's I alternate days when I do group workouts with, with a group, about half an hour from my place, from the shower to the meditation to the charity hose to the, to the feeding of my cat, to getting in the car and, and either driving to the train station or the gym, heading into the morning getting coffee or a tea in the office sitting down and just preparing myself for the start of the day. That's typically my morning routine. I also like to slip in an audiobook or podcast, through the commute, or I will read a book as well.

Ryan 

Yeah, sounds like a great way to start your day. And we Cheerios in this household to Honey Nut Cheerios, not the less healthy version, but still Cheerios. Great. So let's talk about your business. How do you grow it? How have you grown it? What have you had the most success with? Marketing or anything else that has helped you?

Sandra  

Yeah, marketing has definitely been at the forefront of the growth of my business. I've invested a lot of time and energy in understanding systems, processes, and structures around marketing, that enable me to implement growth strategies around, for example, you know, making sure that I've got the marketing plan solidified in my business around the mission, the vision values, going into kind of the annual goals for the business and then creating campaigns. So I find marketing to be one of the best things about growing my business. I'm not, by any way, a marketing expert. I leverage a lot of marketing consultants and experts in the industry to gain insight, I believe every good athlete has a coach for multiple things. And so leaning on experts for specific support in times of need is definitely something I encourage and utilize for myself as well. So making sure I keep myself well aligned with some really solid advice, has always been really helpful.

Ryan  

With marketing, are there any specific channels that you rely on? Is it social? Is it your website? Like what does that look like for you for your business?

Sandra 

It's been fairly organic at the moment. However, I have just invested in generating social media campaigns through Instagram, to develop an ad strategy through Facebook and Instagram. And that's still pending a lot from investing a lot of time in it. But the ROI is yet to be explored. Because I'm still waiting on finalizing some development in one of my onboarding strategies. So I'm just finalizing that first and the online portal that I've created. And then that's when I'll turn on the because I'm getting enough work through referrals and organic work as it is at the moment, just buy the alignment. Because once we start focusing on the mission, vision values, and the brand, then the organic clients come through regardless. And then when you put when you plug in a digital marketing strategy around that, that's when I know it's the trajectory is going to go through the roof. So I need to make sure that before I have that marketing funnel turned on, and that strategy turned on through Instagram and Facebook, I mean, to ensure that I've got the right user experience for my client. And that's where I'm spending a little bit of my time now, but not too long, and should be all good.

Ryan  

Good. What's the biggest challenge in your business?

Sandra  

The biggest challenge in my business? I would say niching. That had been my biggest challenge. Prior to today, it's been niching my business, being really specific about the types of clients that I work with and market to, because I've worked with so many amazing people that are so different. And all of their challenges are similar, but they're not. They're not a specific target market. In a way. They're quite diverse. So yeah, just really making sure I target a specific type of market with my marketing campaign was one of the biggest challenges.

Ryan  

We have the same thing with Ballantine. We try to figure out who our niches who we serve best, I think every business goes through that it's hard to appeal to everyone you know, you need to identify who you serve best and really hyper-focus on that group. So I can relate to that answer. Let's go back to personal development. Let's talk about any habits that you have. I know you're big into quantum physics and neuroscience and some of the things we're talking about before we started recording. Do you have any habits as a result of your like your the studies that you've done like in the research and just living in that world? Are there any habits that you've developed, that you can share with us?

Sandra  

Yeah, the habit of self-awareness. Yeah, it's a big one. Just being mindful and aware of your thoughts and feelings. and experiences I'm having and how I'm playing out my role in life and in general and making sure that the person that I am being in any given moment is someone who comes from authenticity and love. And so being fairly authentic to who I am, and being in alignment with who I am. And being in alignment with who I am, is being at peace with saying, you know, the thoughts in my mind and expressing my feelings, I want to be able to express my feelings and my thoughts, right, just as they are. So just being so aware of who I am and how I'm showing up and making sure it's in alignment with the person that I have created for myself.

Ryan  

Like how do you create a structure or a process around that? Or is it just literally reminding yourself every day of being present and whatnot? Or do you create a routine around it? And how does that work?

Sandra  

Yeah, I have a model that I've used in the past. And so it's called the five A's model. And so this is something that I created when I was working on realigning myself with who I wanted to be. And so it was called awareness. So the five A's model and the first A was called awareness. And that A is around making sure that I'm mindful of the thoughts and words that I'm using, and the behaviors that I'm exhibiting, that was just the key number one. Number two is acceptance, accept that there are parts of me that are still not in alignment with the person that I'm wanting to become, and accept that that is the case. And it's okay, just accepting our true authentic self accepting ourselves for who we are in any given moment because the thoughts and feelings and emotions have served us at some point. And so even though they may not be serving who I want to become, they have served us at some point. So we need to be grateful for what they have done for us in the past. So just accepting ourselves is a number two, awareness, acceptance, alignment, and then it's all about aligning ourselves to who we want him to become. So this is where we spend a lot of time visualizing and putting down goals for who we want to be, and saying them in the present tense. And so what that does is it allows us to have the person that we're becoming and so something that I like to do for this part is also listening to affirmations or subliminal programming around a specific type of affirmation. So it may be that you want to increase your confidence and be a more confident leader, you can listen to some subliminal programming on YouTube, around confidence, and then that will say, a series of affirmations at a certain frequency while you're asleep. And then it affirms your neural pathways to align with that. So it's all about alignment, to who we're becoming. And so a really good exercise for this, that's really as simple as creating a vision board, just visualize who you want to be, in 434345 years time, who do you want to be. And there are lots of different strategies with alignment that you can do this is where all of your self-care techniques and all of your habit formation, stuff comes in, just aligning to who you want to be. The fourth A is called action. And so action is about maintaining, keeping a consistent log. So habit tracking, habit formation, it's all about, you know, creating a routine, like similar to the morning routine you spoke about earlier, creating a routine and repeatedly being determined and disciplined to continue to do it. Because you need to retrain yourself to be able to action who you want to become. Have you ever heard the saying of being who you're becoming know who you are? So that's it's a similar way of that. So just follow those action steps. And then the last one is an adjustment. Now along the road, you know, we have a plan and we want to get there, but everything's fluid, right? It's not a straight line. So adjusting, adjusting over time, you know, there are lots of different things that come up. And, in the course, the course may change and it's totally okay. One of the biggest challenges, petulant challenges people may face is feeling frustrated with the fact that they are unable to control the outcome of a situation we can influence the outcome as much as possible, but we may not ever arrive at the destination that we have desired. And so allowing ourselves to adjust and be fluid with the outcome is something that I find really important in the strategy that I use for myself with that there for personal development.

Ryan  

How have you the framework around it and thought about listening to subliminal messages while I sleep? Does that actually work?

Sandra 

Yeah, definitely. I worked with a client who wanted to boost her confidence and get a new job. And so she listened to subliminal programming the night after our session. And she also worked on her goal of wanting to get a new job and the next day she went into work and she felt so super confident, dressed better, she woke up in a more invigorated state. And she, she was offered a promotion. And so she had on heart says that it was because of the subliminal programming, she felt different in the way she felt changed her.

Ryan  

Now you gave me to do the thing I listened to. I used an app called relax melodies to create white noise, like a newborn going to sleep. And I wonder if they have that as a feature? Because it's a pretty intense app. I'm sure they do. So thanks for sharing that. I'm gonna look into that. You're welcome. To send you I've got one last question for you. And then we'll wrap up with you telling everyone how they can learn more about you. It's sort of a big question, but maybe like in 30 seconds or less, if that's possible, in your opinion, what is the meaning of life?

Sandra  

Constant evolution, constant evolution or just transcending energy. That's what I would say the meaning of life is just changing and growing and experiencing.

Ryan  

Yeah, basically getting like 1% better everyday kind of concept.

Sandra  

Yeah, ultimately, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan  

I believe that too. Excellent. Well, this is great. Sandra, I really appreciate you jumping on and speaking with us and, and sharing all the great advice. If someone wants to reach out to you and learn more and connect with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Sandra  

Yeah, sure, they can reach out through booking a breakthrough session with me through my website is www.Sandralovewell.com. Or you could also connect with me on Instagram at Sandra Lovewell, or on Facebook at Sandra Lovewell.

Ryan  

Excellent. We'll link those up in the show notes. Thanks again, Sandra. And thanks, everyone for listening.

Sandra  

Thank you, Ryan. Glad to be here. Thanks.

Ryan 

Thanks for listening to the Morning Upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morningupgrade.com for more content.