Welcome to the Archives of the Mindfulness Practice Daily Reminders

MPDR began as a result of my own experience as a physician, mindfulness practitioner and teacher when I perceived a need for follow-up support to my patients' initial mindfulness training. As many of us have experienced, mindfulness is pretty simple, but not so easy and remembering to practice mindful awareness can be quite challenging.

As a result, in July of 2014, I began to provide ongoing support to participants from a Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) group in the form of a daily email called Mindfulness Practice Daily Reminder, sent out at varying times of the day. The purpose of the MPDR was to help the participants remember their intention to practice present moment awareness through formal and informal mindfulness practice. Opening a reminder email represents a decision to pause, step out of automatic pilot mode and into the here and now by intentionally and kindly bringing attention to the sensations of three breaths.

Each daily reminder has 4 components
1. Invitation to bring awareness to 3 breaths
2. Quote, poem, link to video, article or blog-post relevant to the practice of mindfulness.
3. Photographic image created from my formal mindfulness practice with a camera.
4. Wishes for the reader

My intention is that the daily email be, to quote Forrest Gump’s mother, “…like a box of chocolates: You never know what you are going to get”. My thinking is that the variation and novelty in the content, as well as the time of day sent out, may help to sustain interest and motivation.  Novelty encourages attention and a curious “beginner’s mind” orientation. Novelty and repeated practice enhance learning.

In our society, we are already bombarded with multiple demands for our time and attention and the daily reminders are not meant to add to that stress, but rather to support a practice that is meant to reduce stress.  For this reason I suggest the receivers of the reminder consciously choose whether they have the time and/or the interest in reading/watching anything further, rather than automatically clicking on the link.  In this way they are bringing mindful awareness practice into conscious decision making and action.

Over the past year, I have received many requests to be added to the list from other people who have graduated from mindfulness programs and from professionals in our community who are teaching mindfulness. As a result, the community of people receiving the emails continues to grow.  If you would like to be added to the “bcc” list, please send an email to me at drmlfreedman@hotmail.com.

Please enjoy the contents of the MPDR archives and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to email me at the above address.

Wishing you a mindful day,

Lee

M. Lee Freedman, MD, CM, FRCP(C)

Toronto, Canada