MPDR Archives Blog Post #176 - January 22, 2015

Bring your attention into this moment

By noticing the next 3 breaths 

 image by M. Lee Freedman 

“Our bodies are always in the present. Our sensory data continually reports whether our current experience (either inside or outside of ourselves) is perceived as good or bad for us. If an experience is initially felt as positive we tend to move toward it, if aversive we tend to move away. Experiences we find neutral may escape our conscious awareness altogether. These tendencies are often the first step into our habitual reactions of clinging, avoidance, rumination, or anxiety depending on the nature of what is showing up.

Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges from intentionally training to regulate our attention and affect and a willingness to encounter, at least temporarily, whatever is arising so we can come to fully know our direct experience. Why develop this capacity? Because we can then choose to de-fuse or get some distance from difficult thoughts and feelings that may often overwhelm, or in which we become immersed. We can make more skillful choices about how to respond to life challenges and disturbing emotional states.”

-Dr. Patricia Rockman

excerpt from post “Dealing with Difficulty”

to read the full post, please click on this link:http://www.mindfulnessstudies.com/blog/page/13/

Wishing you a mindful evening

Welcome to new recipients of Mindfulness Practice Daily Reminders

As many of us have experienced, mindfulness is pretty simple, but not so easy and remembering to practice mindful awareness can be quite challenging. These daily reminders are intended to help us remember our 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 bringing attention to the sensations of three breaths. Then proceed with your day. You may choose to treat this as an experiment by noticing if and how this brief pause impacts on the next moments of your day.

The second part of the reminder email consists of a quote, poem, image, link to article and/or link to short video relevant to the practice of mindfulness. The images included in the emails have all been created from my mindfulness practice with a camera.  I suggest consciously choosing whether you have the time and/or the interest in reading/watching anything further, rather than automatically clicking on the link.  In this way you are practicing bringing mindful awareness practice into conscious decision making and action.

Please feel free to share these reminders with others who may be interested.  If you know anyone who would like to be included in the list of recipients of the reminders, please ask them to email me directly. Please let me know if you would like to remove your name from the email list at any time.

Lee

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