Dr. Brian Dower, LumenMindfulness.ca

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Dr. Brian Dower, LumenMindfulness.ca

Founder of Lumen Mindfulness, where we create strategies for a satisfying and sustainable Mindfulness practice that awakens your calm, clarity and contentment

11/07/2025

Just recorded a great conversation with Sophia Ha for her podcast The Mirror.

We dove deep into what it means to stay mindful in a world full of social media comparisons, and how that can quietly fuel suffering.

There’s a teaching I both learned and love:
Suffering = Pain × Resistance.

We can’t always change the pain. But mindfulness helps us turn down the resistance…the stories, judgments, and self-comparisons that amplify it.

Can’t wait to share this episode when it drops in the coming weeks. Sophia brings such a grounded, curious energy to every conversation, and this one got real.

11/04/2025

Mindfulness doesn’t just benefit individuals. It transforms workplace culture.

When leaders model presence, teams notice. Meetings shift. Conversations deepen. Engagement rises.

I’ve seen it firsthand: a simple change in how leaders show up can ripple outward, creating more trust, creativity, and collaboration. Culture isn’t built by posters on the wall or slogans in the handbook. Iit’s built moment-to-moment, in how people pay attention to each other.

That’s why I often frame mindfulness training not just as stress relief, but as a cultural intervention. When presence becomes a habit, the organization changes in ways that no memo could accomplish.

What one word might describe the kind of culture would you want mindfulness to help build in your workplace?

10/28/2025

Try this mini practice:
• Starting at your forehead, move your attention slowly down your body.
• At each spot — jaw, shoulders, hands, core — gently tense, then release.
• As you let go, feel the wave of ease that follows.
• Continue downward until you reach your feet.

Less than a minute. Instant nervous system reset. Done.

Why it works:
This practice teaches your body the difference between tension and release. Each conscious letting-go signals safety to your nervous system, lowering stress hormones and easing muscle tightness. Over time, you start catching tension earlier….before it snowballs into fatigue, irritability, or pain.

Do it anytime: at your desk, between calls, before sleep.

The body leads; the mind follows.

10/23/2025

The World Health Organization estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year due to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy $1.4 trillion Cdn annually in lost productivity.

Stress at work isn’t just about feeling tense. It has massive implications for health, resilience, and organizational performance.

Resilience doesn’t mean avoiding stress. It means recovering quickly from it.

I love working with leadership teams and showing them how mindfulness is one proven way to build that bounce-back muscle. It’s a defined and learnable skill set, and is a must-have if the mental health of your team is a priority.

How does stress show up in your workplace? And how do you, or your team, find ways to recover?

10/17/2025

This past summer, I had a kidney stone attack (yes, ouch!).

In the middle of the pain, I caught myself spiralling into mental chatter: “This is unbearable… this will never end.”

What helped?

Focusing on raw sensations. The warmth of the bath water, the rhythm of rocking in a chair, even gently pulling my hair to redirect awareness from the story to the sensation.

Mindfulness isn’t about escaping pain — it’s about changing the relationship to it. When we stay with what’s real (instead of what our mind predicts or resists), we create space. And that space changes everything.

The same principle applies at work.

Deadlines, difficult conversations, and uncertainty can all trigger their own versions of “this will never end.”

But here’s the thing:
- Stress + rumination amplifies suffering.
- Stress + presence creates space.

Space to pause before reacting. Space to think clearly under pressure. Space to recover faster after tough days.

Teams and leaders who learn this don’t eliminate stress, but they can transform their relationship with it.

That’s where resilience truly begins.

How do you create space in the middle of stress at work?

10/15/2025

I’ll be honest: I used to think I handled stress well by “powering through.”

That constant motion felt like strength. I thought resilience meant endurance.

But looking back, I see how much I carried home, how much energy it drained. The tension didn’t just disappear when I walked through the door…it followed me into conversations, sleep, and even weekends.

Mindfulness taught me that resilience isn’t about gritting your teeth. It’s about noticing when your system is overloaded, and choosing recovery before burnout. It’s about learning to reset your mind and body so you can respond from clarity instead of depletion.

Now, “doing well under pressure” means something different: breathing, pausing, moving, or simply letting the moment land before I act.

How do you recharge after stressful days?

10/14/2025

Leadership presence isn’t about charisma or commanding the room. Not true leadership, anyway.

Leadership is about showing up with full attention.

Teams feel it when their leader is truly present. They also feel it when that leader is distracted, rushed, or reactive. You’re likely already thinking of true leaders as you read this…

Mindfulness is the training ground for that kind of presence. Let me know if you’re ready to truly lead your team. Happy to help.

10/02/2025

“Mindfulness was often thought to be fluffy.”

That’s how one researcher summed up the early perception of mindfulness at work. But the evidence is shifting.

Recent studies show employees who practice mindfulness can stay attentive longer in meetings, retain more of what’s discussed, and recover focus more quickly when distractions arise. In other words, mindfulness isn’t just about calm. It’s about cognitive performance. Sound appealing?

As workplaces continue to demand focus in environments filled with interruptions, mindfulness training is emerging not as a luxury, but as a practical skill set for stronger attention, better memory, and more effective presence on the job.

If your team could strengthen focus and presence in meetings, what difference would it make?

(Article lives in the comments if you’re keen to learn more.)

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Website

http://www.lumenmindfulness.ca/

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