COVID-19 Mindfulness Resources Update

By the MacPFD Discovering Resilience Team
Originally Published, April 14, 2020

This is a challenging time for us all as the Covid 19 pandemic has quickly circled the globe and caused massive disruption and suffering. Fear and anxiety is understandable and rampant. We all are struggling to make sense of it and to stay healthy in body and mind. One of our teachers circulated this timely poem entitled Pandemic.

The article A Brain Hack to Break the Coronavirus Anxiety Cycle provides a reminder of the neuroscience mechanisms of mindfulness. Of course it is not just mindfulness practice that is important for health and resilience. Daniel Seigel talks about the healthy mind platter which emphasizes seven daily mental activities to optimize mind-body well-being. 

The skill of mindfulness can be a valuable asset for us to try, to practice, and to share at this time of incredible stress and change.

For those who have already taken a course or who have a  practice. As Shinzen Young said this week at a virtual retreat, anyone who practices mindfulness is also a teacher, by example, and by sharing the personal benefits with others. This tumultuous time is an opportunity to practice and to share. For those who have not we suggest that you consider this as an additional wellness and optimal functioning strategy.

Here are examples of a few resources that can help you maintain or resume a mindfulness practice:

1. A weekly live meditation daily at 7:30 PM  sponsored by the “Consciousness Explorers Club” in Toronto (a mindfulness group) accessible at  their facebook page. Their website has guided audio practices including one entitled “Sitting with Pandemic Panic” . These are also archived so you can access them at any time.

2. A 10:00 AM daily live meditation is sponsored by A Mindful Society at their Facebook page. These are archived at the same site so you can access them at any time at “videos”.

3. The Insight Meditation Society offers daily live practices at 12 noon and these are also archived. 

4. Hamilton Health Sciences has audio practices of various lengths and themes on its YouTube channel

5. Yoga can be a mindfulness practice and more and many yoga studios are offering free online or recorded yoga for example, YogaShala  or Yoga with Adriene .

6. The Mindfulness Hamilton website  has listing of mindfulness resources.  This includes introductions to what mindfulness is, and on line audio meditations.

7. If you are new to mindfulness, there is much information for beginners on line including resources listed in 6.There is for an example a free introductory secular mindfulness course on line at Unified Mindfulness .

8. We are soon starting a one hour per week on line live Zoom Mindfulness and the Pandemic series based on the approach identified in item 7. You will receive further information about this via email if you are on the PDF email list. For those of you who are not please check here in a couple weeks for details and enrolment

We hope that you find this information useful. Please feel free to share it with others.

The Discovering Resilience Leadership Team

For further information please contact Ken Burgess at burgessk@mcmaster.ca