Sandy finds a remedy for heartache

He's one half of TV's detox dream team – but he's had to survive his fair share of turmoil.

GLOWING, healthy of body and mind, dazzlingly good looking with a vocation that took him around the world helping others. Life as one half of Edinburgh's ultimate lifestyle guru couple wasn't going too badly for Sandy Newbigging.

There was the television series in which he worked his "mind detox" skills on people with conditions and illnesses most of us would prefer to keep strictly between ourselves and the bathroom cabinet, the lucrative book deal for the self-help tomes penned with his partner, the equally dazzling nutritionist Amanda Hamilton, and a thriving business sorting out clients' screwed-up lives.

But, as they say, into each life, a little rain must fall. Today, Sandy has swapped the grand Victorian villa in the Grange he once shared with Amanda for a more humble second-floor flat in Murrayfield Place. Their two-year relationship is history, the perfect couple who make their living from telling the rest of us how to live our lives have gone their separate ways – on a personal level, at least.

Still, at least Sandy has his own way of handling the misery of a painful breakup – meditation.

"I'm going away in the summer to Greece to meditate for two and a half months," he explains. "I was with Amanda for two years before we split up. I found it quite hard to deal with really. I've refocused my efforts into what I'm passionate about, to enjoy peace, happiness and health and make sure I have got a better work-life balance."

Peace and happiness are his mantra – he's even created his own word to define the holy grail that most of his clients tell him they want more than anything.

"I call it happeaceness, it's a word I came up with for a bit of fun," he says, breaking into a broad 'TV presenter' smile. "I found that if people had a wishing tree they would ask for permanent peace and happiness."

And, of course, a cure for their chronic diarrhoea, cystitis, adult acne, alopecia and psoriasis – the "embarrassing" conditions that make up the third series of his and Amanda's UKTV Style television "reality" show, The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses, in which they whisk the stars of the show off to a spa in the sun for a spell of body and soul cleansing, washed down with Amanda's favourite wheatgrass juices, several coffee enemas and Sandy's Mind Detox.

The series is the channel's most successful homegrown programme and has evolved into a third series which kicked off earlier this week. Sandy has taken it all a stage further with mind detox retreats, where those who prefer to sort out their toilet troubles without viewers gagging in the background, can benefit from his skills in relative privacy.

Soon he and Amanda – partners in business, still – will launch their latest book and a fourth UKTV Style programme, this time working their magic New Age-style touch on the nation's fatties with the Life-Changing Weight Loss programme.

In it, Sandy, with a stick thin physique which he once showed off as a male model, will claim that being overweight is as much to do with toxins in the body caused by dieting and the way our body reacts to food as the traditional calories-versus-exercise theory.

"Do you understand?" he asks earnestly as he explains the up-and-coming diet venture. It's a question that he regularly poses as he attempts to explain the basis of each of his theories: the way the mind stores personal traumas in ways which can physically manifest themselves years later, the way every cell is our body is linked to our thought processes and even how our negative attitudes define our bodyshape.

Unpicking the sequence of events that led to him becoming one of the country's best known "mind gurus", he admits: "I was bullied at school. I grew up in Barnton and my childhood was happy until I got to school. I was bullied a lot and I quickly realised that when I was helping someone else, I wasn't getting bullied.

"I was scared of reading," he continues, "I couldn't read out loud in English class. I ended up faking illness for a month so I wouldn't have to go to school."

It was during that time off "sick" from the Royal High School that the quiet teenager found himself flicking through a book at home. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior put his bullying experiences into perspective and within weeks he was a regular at the local library, devouring every word he could find on the "self-help" shelf.

He was working as a temp at Standard Life and with a degree in international management under his belt when he found the inspiration to switch careers.

Since then he has become a familiar face on television alongside 33-year-old Amanda and, more recently, launched New Beginnings in the Borders, a country home where clients can pay around £1650 for five nights and days of talks, workshops and – to cap it all – a firewalk.

"People ask what I'm actually trained in," he nods. "I have to say that I kind of made up mind detox, but it's based on neuro-linguistic programming and coaching skills with an understanding of how the human brain works."

Now he can add a little more life experience to his CV too – his break-up with Amanda. "I still have negative emotions, I'm human," he shrugs. "You can wallow in them or you can resolve them and move on. I believe in being human – not everyone is perfect."

• The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses is on UKTV Style on Monday at 10pm. For information about the Mind Detox programme, workshops and retreats, go to www.sandynewbigging.com


FATEFUL MEETING

WHILE studying for a degree in international management at Heriot-Watt University Sandy had a number of part-time jobs. As well as worked as a temp for Standard Life, he occasionally modelled clothes for the Evening News' F-Files supplement. It was during this time that he met a life coach and realised that he would like to pursue a career in this area. He started to train as a life coach shortly afterwards.