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This article was originally published on LinkedIn on 12 February 2020.  To all who have taught me love - family, friends, lovers, and strangers, I wanna thank you. Thank you, for coming into my life, for staying, for leaving, for returning. Thank you, for making me laugh like I have never laughed before. Thank you, for making me shed tears I never knew I had. Thank you, for choosing to put aside your phone just to be present with me. Thank you, for awarding me a genuine smile each time I see you. Thank you, for wondering if I needed something while you were getting one for yourself. Thank you, for leaving me a random message, just to check in on me. Thank you, for keeping an eye out for an empty seat for me, after I had offered you mine. Thank you, for pointing out my shoelaces were undone, even though I had never spoken to you before. --- Thank you, for offering to show me the way. Thank you, for syncing your footsteps with mine, as we walk down familiar paths. Thank you, for that brief moment of touch, from which I felt your warmth. Thank you, for asking permission. Thank you, for asking for my opinion. Thank you, for trusting me with your deepest secrets. Thank you, for not saying anything, when you sense there are no need for words. --- Thank you, for forwarding a poem or article to me, when you think I might enjoy reading it. Thank you, for sending me photos of your travels, during your travels. Thank you, for taking all those pictures of me. Thank you, for looking into my eyes, and for letting me look into yours. --- Thank you, for asking how I'm feeling today. Thank you, for reminding me to travel safe, rather than berate me for being late. Thank you, for teaching me to slow down, when the world is moving too fast. Thank you, for telling me to take as long as I need. Thank you, for inviting me into your space. Thank you, for reminding me that perfection doesn't exist, and I am okay just the way I am. Thank you, for saying you will never hurt me. Thank you, for saying you will always be my sanctuary. --- Thank you, for helping me peel off those masks. Thank you, for making me a better person, in one way or another. Thank you, for raising your voice that day, which made me realize that all you wanted was to be heard. Thank you, for reaching into the depths of my anger to reveal that it was only fear. Thank you, for showing me that underneath the need to control, lies a desire to care. Thank you, for taking such good care of yourself, for fear of pulling me down with you. Thank you, for saying that you are learning to love, without the need to be loved back. --- Thank you, for telling me what you want your funeral to look like, and how your ashes are to be taken care of. Thank you, for including me and my loved ones in your well wishes. Thank you, for all the heartfelt words you have said. Thank you, for telling me about your boundaries, and asking me about mine. Thank you, for just listening. Thank you, for making me feel safe. Thank you, for your patience, for letting me be. Thank you, for cheering me on, even when you have no idea what is going on. --- Thank you, for assuring me it is okay if I don't want to share my thoughts. Thank you, for saying good-bye, even though you don't have to. Thank you, for allowing me to say good-bye, and sometimes make a silent exit. Thank you, for reminding me that this may be the last time I see you. Thank you, for reminding me this isn't the first time I've met you. Thank you, for the many, many lessons on love. -----
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 WHEN: Tuesday 16 July 2019, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
WHERE: 46 Sims Place, #01-197, Singapore 380046 ABOUT THE TOPIC: Secular mindfulness is currently being applied in an increasing number of fields such as neuroscience, cognitive-behavioural therapy, healthcare, business and management, and education, with more and more research proving its benefits for our wellbeing. Mindfulness Coach Erin Lee advocates that modern mindfulness should not be learned as a technique but as a life skill, and practiced not for a quick fix but as an integral part of our everyday life. This talk will introduce the foundations of secular mindfulness, and engage the audience in experiential practices of attending to our own body and observing the nature of the mind, as well as inquiry into practice experience to gain insights into how we are living our lives. SPEAKER: Erin Lee Mindfulness Coach and Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher, Mindful Moments Singapore In The Mindful People Series, we interview people from different walks of life and get them to share their mindfulness experience, as well as how learning and practicing mindfulness have made a difference to their personal and professional lives  MiMo: How did you get into learning and practicing mindfulness? Wanyin: I had been hearing about the benefits of mindfulness via FB and in the news, and was keen to learn something new. With so much going on at work, it's hard to "switch off" after work and I was hoping that mindfulness could help with that. MiMo: Tell us about your experience in the MBSR program. Wanyin: The practices were simple to follow, and not as complex as I had envisioned before the programme started. The challenge was to find the discipline to keep up with the daily practices, and being deliberate about applying what I've taught as I go about my usual routine. What I really found useful was the realization of how a 10-min breathing exercise was able to help me better focus and calm down. MiMo: How has mindfulness contributed to your personal well-being? Wanyin: Two key areas: firstly, mindfulness underlines the importance of staying grounded and focused on the present. Secondly, to have a greater acceptance towards myself and appreciation for impermanence state of things. MiMo: How has mindfulness supported you in your professional work? Wanyin: When faced with unpleasant encounters at work, I remind myself that things will not stay this way forever, and that feelings / events (both good or bad) will eventually pass. Similarly when dealing with my colleagues, I believe that being kind is a choice, and when faced with tense situations, you can actively choose not to react, but choose to respond kindly. MiMo: How have you incorporated mindfulness into your daily life? Wanyin: Using an app, I've been trying to alternate between a 20 min movements practice, and the 20/30min awareness of breath practice. When out with friends & family, I try to be present and centered so that I can enjoy their company fully. MiMo: Any words of advice for people who are thinking about learning mindfulness? Wanyin: Go for it. The practices aren't hard to follow. The challenge is to find ways to incorporate mindfulness into daily life, and to keep at it.  About Luo Wanyin Regular Singaporean who loves good food, and is constantly looking to travel beyond our little island to discover new places, gain experiences, and create happy memories. On top of all these, Wanyin is also working on incorporating mindfulness into her daily routine so as to be more present and grateful for all around her. Are you a mindfulness practitioner or do you know one who would like to share their mindfulness experience on the MiMo blog? Do drop us a message!
In The Mindful People Series, we interview people from different walks of life and get them to share their mindfulness experience, as well as how learning and practicing mindfulness have made a difference to their personal and professional lives.  MiMo: How did you get into learning and practicing mindfulness? Lennan: My mindfulness practice began on the yoga mat. About 10 years ago I had a disc replaced in my neck and yoga not only helped in the recovery it helped with my fitness and strength and sleep and overall health in ways I never would have imagined. Yoga introduced my to meditation, but only in small, 5 minute whispers at the end of some of the classes. The stillness and centeredness brushed up against there made me wish to deepen my practice through more focused and intentional meditation program - and that is when one of my best yoga teachers suggested MBSR. MiMo: Tell us about your experience in the MBSR program. Lennan: Right from the first session I appreciated the thoughtful and intentional nature of Erin's class. She frames each session mindfully and guided us through each meditation in a way that was both accessible and expansive. As someone relatively new to meditation I felt very supported and safe and this environment allowed for real growth throughout the 8 weeks. I was not the best student and did not always find a way to bring the assigned practices into my daily routine, but whether or not I had a week where I practiced every day or merely once or twice - I felt there was always something to be gained every time I visited the mat. MiMo: How has mindfulness contributed to your personal well-being? Lennan: My own personal mantra is that the truest path to happiness is to do things that make you like you better. MBSR in general and more specifically for me, meditation is one of those things for me. What a book can do for my brain, or a run for my body, meditation does for my soul. It is simultaneously a soul quenching and soul wringing out experience which consistently leaves me with greater focus, clarity and peace. MiMo: How has mindfulness supported you in your professional work? Lennan: Anything that makes you a better person, inevitably makes you a better teacher. From allowing yourself to be a student for 3 hours every Saturday to sharing some of the insights in class with my own students, it is essential if one is to be a good teacher that one not only sees themselves as a student, but also allows their students to see them that way as well. Beyond that the focus on taking pauses to better measure responses is also a powerful tool to add to the teachers' toolbox. MiMo: How have you incorporated mindfulness into your daily life? Lennan: The most direct takeaway is probably in trying to be a more mindful eater. With the essential nature of eating well for a healthy lifestyle coupled with the ease to mindlessly eat and literally finish meals and look at an empty plate - especially at work - and not remember a single bite. Adding some thoughtfulness to that part of my life - even in small flashes at the beginning of a meal or slowing down in the middle of a meal has been helpful. MiMo: Any words of advice for people who are thinking about learning mindfulness? Lennan: I would highly recommend this enriching life experience as being potentially life changing and at the very least a powerful action in taking more control over your emotional and spiritual wellbeing. This is the first step in a journey towards better mental and spiritual health that should be embraced wholeheartedly and embarked on immediately. ------ About Lennan Macdonald Lennan has been teaching for over twenty five years in Singapore as well as internationally. He is a husband, a father, a brother, a son, a friend, a coach, a player (not that kind of player :), a yogi, a reader, a writer, a singer, a bad dancer, a big fan and an explorer of paths less traveled. Born and raised in Canada, he has spent the majority of his adult life in Singapore where he and his wife, Tracy, have taught some and learned much in both local schools as well as a few of the better international school's on the island. Are you a mindfulness practitioner or do you know one who would like to share their mindfulness experience on the MiMo blog? Do drop us a message!
Deep gratitude to Her World magazine for featuring Mindful Moments in their April 2018 issue, as well as for writing about why we should pursue mindfulness and how we can practice it daily!   In The Mindful People Series, we interview people from different walks of life and get them to share their mindfulness experience, as well as how learning and practicing mindfulness have made a difference to their personal and professional lives.  MiMo: How did you get into learning and practicing mindfulness? Gavin: Initially I didn't know what mindfulness was all about, until I read an article that was about how mindfulness helps with managing anxiety and relieving stress. After I attended the first and second sessions of the MBSR program, I did not yet have the habit of practicing mindfulness by myself. Only after I attended the second half of the 8-week program and the full day retreat did I begin to realize that mindfulness practice is very beneficial to my daily life. MiMo: Tell us about your experience in the MBSR program. Gavin: It has been a very fruitful learning journey of experiencing and understanding the concept and practice of mindfulness, and now I am applying the mindfulness skills I have acquired at my workplace and in my personal life too! MiMo: How has mindfulness contributed to your personal well-being? Gavin: Mindfulness has actually helped me in managing my OCD. Whenever I know that I am checking more than usual, I will be more aware and non-judgmentally conscious of myself during the process of checking. I have been able to reduce the number of times of checking. MiMo: How has mindfulness supported you in your professional work? Gavin: I am now able to think more logically and focus on my work better. Before learning mindfulness, I tended to be often distracted by the many thoughts I had while I was at work. MiMo: How have you incorporated mindfulness into your daily life? Gavin: Whenever I become very nervous (I have the tendency to feel nervous almost everyday), I have the mindfulness skills handy to work with my thoughts and emotions; I would say mindfulness is becoming a very important support to my well-being. MiMo: Any words of advice for people who are thinking about learning mindfulness? Gavin: Mindfulness is something that I find essential for our day-to-day life, since we are faced with stressful events all the time, be it at work or in our personal space. You will find mindfulness to be a very amazing skill to have as it is something that doesn’t take up a lot of your time but is so effective in promoting a healthy lifestyle! ------  About Gavin Lim Gavin has worked in the training industry for more than five years, with good experience of coordinating and working together with trainers and participants, and building conducive training environments. He has been actively participating in the Hair for Hope event on an annual basis. Gavin also loves to collect various public transport collectible items as well as spotting buses. During his free time, he likes hanging out and spending time with his friends. Are you a mindfulness practitioner or do you know one who would like to share their mindfulness experience on the MiMo blog? Do drop us a message!
In the Mindful Musings series, MiMo Founder and Mindfulness Coach Erin shares her personal thoughts and views about the practice of mindfulness.  I like to observe the environment around me, especially when I'm commuting from one place to another on the train. One thing I notice is how as a society living in crowded spaces, our physical bodies are so close in proximity to one another - sometimes in an almost smothering way during the peak hours, but our mind is often miles apart, not just from person to person, but also from ourselves. As I scan the space around me on the train, I find it interesting that the first thing I see would always be the crown of people's heads. Everyone would be looking down at their phones - either busy replying to messages, or browsing the web, or playing a game. Occasionally, they would look up to check which station the train was at, and then resume to bowing down to their gadgets again. Their attention would almost never leave the screen in front of them. I would then look more closely at their faces and expressions, and what I often recognize is a shared sense of deep-seated exhaustion - perhaps leftover from a day of working and firefighting, or from a lack of restful sleep at night, or from some personal troubles. I would think, if people are so tired, why don't they close their eyes and rest for a while? Why do they choose to have an external object drain more energy from them? Perhaps they don't want to know how tired their body feels, or they dread facing how much is on their mind, so watching a random video on their Facebook feed would obviously be a much "easier" option. As a society, we are collectively exhausted, and we don't know it. Or rather, we don't want to know it. We are living in a world full of external objects that stimulate the mind, and we have gotten so used to being absorbed in them or using them as a distraction, that we no longer have the capacity to turn our attention inwards to tend to what's going on inside us. Keeping ourselves occupied with something, even when we don't need to, seems to be much more accessible than just sitting and being with ourselves. But what we are giving up in exchange for a coping mechanism masked as a temporary relief from having to confront our exhaustion, is the opportunity to know the mind and body for what they are, and how they are doing. In the practice of mindfulness, we train ourselves to constantly turn our attention inwards to observe the mind and body. Being mindfully aware of what's going on inside us may seem counter-intuitive at first, since we instinctively want to avoid or fight off anything that feels unpleasant or negative to us; but when we are able to rest our attention inwardly, we can then recognize what the body is being put through, as well as understand what the mind may be unnecessarily holding on to, thus becoming better able to take care of ourselves. In The Mindful People Series, we interview people from different walks of life and get them to share their mindfulness experience, as well as how learning and practicing mindfulness have made a difference to their personal and professional lives.  MiMo: How did you get into learning and practicing mindfulness? Pam: I came to read about mindfulness very randomly. During a certain period, I found myself falling into anxiety and negative thinking more often than ever before. I started reading up on ways to combat them and one of the possible techniques suggested, which would come to help me gain some present moment awareness, was Mindfulness. What I liked the most while reading about this technique was that there is some scientific research supporting the whole method. MiMo: Tell us about your experience in the MBSR program. Pam: As a person who had never done meditation before, I knew this program was not only about meditation. It was clearly explained to us from the beginning that meditation would be a part of the program, and the main focus would be on bringing awareness to the body's physical sensations and the mind's thoughts through observing them and just letting them happen. During the 8-week MBSR program, we got to learn a full variety of mindfulness techniques, tried to be consistent with practice at home instead of just using them once a week in class, as well as developed more awareness of myself, my body and my feelings, and just letting things happen without engaging in further thinking. The sharing of experiences in class among the participants was very useful for everyone; it gave me other perspectives or another way of thinking about the overall experience, and the different ways of being mindful in my everyday life too. MiMo: How has mindfulness contributed to your personal well-being? Pam: I realized that the whole problem with my anxiety in my everyday life was because I didn’t let things just be; I would judge my thoughts, judge my decisions, and have my mind focusing too much on the future, without realizing that the present moment was all that I had in each moment. With mindfulness skills, I bring myself back to the present moment, then make my decisions from here and move on. I see myself appreciating things more than I used to, such as the small details of everyday life, nature and each moment of my breath. MiMo: How has mindfulness supported you in your professional work? Pam: With my mind clearer, I make better decisions. I have less anxiety and I have learned that there is another approach to every problem. I have learned how to appreciate my well-being and happiness even more. In the case of any unenjoyable emotions or feelings, I would not judge or try to avoid them, but just observe them as they are, and put a small buffer between the negativity and my emotions and reactions. I have learned how to better approach stressful situations too. MiMo: How have you incorporated mindfulness into your daily life? Pam: I use simple techniques such as taking a deep breath and placing a light touch of attention on my body to bring myself back to the present moment. I try to break the stress reaction cycle by not getting captivated by my own emotions. I do not practice mindfulness for the same amount of time as I had learned to during the MBSR program, but I do continue with sitting practice or paying attention to the physical movements and my body responses when I do sports. MiMo: Any words of advice for people who are thinking about learning mindfulness? Pam: What I have learned about mindfulness is that it doesn’t encourage you to escape from stressful situations, nor make you forget them; on the contrary, it teaches you to observe the stressful feelings in that moment. Just letting things be and accepting things the way they are. It is a very nice gift you can give to yourself and your well-being. Your future self will absolutely appreciate it. --- About Pamela Qafoku Hailing from Albania, Pamela is currently living and working in Singapore. She works as a marketing executive at an MNC in the Logistics and Supply Chain industry. She holds an Msc in Marketing Analytics and Management. Pamela has always been curious about learning and keen to know and understand different cultures, which was one of the reasons that brought her to Singapore. She has been volunteering at different NGOs and giving support to different causes. Being kind and polite to one another is her motto in life. Are you a mindfulness practitioner or do you know one who would like to share their mindfulness experience on the MiMo blog? Do drop us a message!
Mindfulness Coach and MBSR Teacher Erin Lee gives an introduction to MBSR, highlighting six things you should know about the classic research-proven mindfulness training program. MBSR stands for Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. This is an 8-Week mindfulness training program, that was developed in 1979 by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Over the decades the program has helped many people significantly improve their well-being.
Here are some things you need to know about the MBSR Program: #1 - It is backed by many strong research studies showing positive benefits to our well-being, including reducing chronic pain, anxiety, and depressive symptoms; research has also shown that the program helps us increase our positive moods and regulate our stress levels more effectively. #2 - The classic MBSR program on which many of the research benefits are based, should follow a structure of 8 weekly classes, two and a half hours per class, plus one all day retreat. It should be taught by an approved facilitator who has been trained to teach MBSR, and it should also be taught in a group setting. #3 - This program is highly experiential, and it focuses less on theoretical or conceptual knowledge, and more on actually practicing and experiencing mindfulness. #4 - The practices we do in an MBSR program does not only include sitting down, there are also lying down and movement practices. There will be discussions among participants during class, but you are not required to share anything personal - because this is not therapy, you are only encouraged to inquire into your own experience of mindfulness practice. #5 - What's really unique and beneficial about the MBSR program is that you learn to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life, which is very important, since mindfulness is a way of life, and it should be a lifelong practice. #6 - This is what I highlight to many people who are considering an MBSR program - a certain level of commitment is needed to maximize the effectiveness of your learning. If you take part in an MBSR program, you are required to commit to a home practice of about 45 minutes a day in between the weekly classes. |
About The AuthorMiMo founder Erin Lee is a Mindfulness Coach and MBSR Teacher at Mindful Moments, and advocate of mindfulness as the way of life. She conducts the classic 8-Week MBSR Program, as well as the 8-Week MBSR Workplace Program. 
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ContributeAre you a mindfulness practitioner and have meaningful experiences or thoughts about mindfulness that you'd like to share? You can contribute an article on the MiMo blog! Please contact Erin to find out more.
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