Marc-Antoine Landry, M.D.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Certified UM Trainer/Teacher
I am a baby doctor (neonatologist), a university associate professor at the faculty of medicine at the University of Alberta, and the author of EAT, Transform Your Relationship with Food Through 20 Mindful Exercises to Feel Better and Become More Fulfilled.
I initially began meditating in order to decrease stress, but I quickly experienced other benefits that fueled my practice.
It was not only decreasing stress, but it was changing my relationship to stress altogether. I also immediately saw meditation as a fantastic tool to discover myself at a deeper level. Moreover, I found that it deepened my relationship to my patient where I found myself more present and more empathic. Those were the main threads that I followed in the beginning.
Unified Mindfulness (UM) is a revolutionary technique designed to cultivate mindfulness and encourage meditation in everyday life. This reliable system aims to dispel myths about meditation, making it accessible to everyone. The UM approach emphasizes staying mindful and attentive in the present moment, encouraging people to clearly and accurately understand their thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. By consciously observing, you can confidently face life’s challenges, maintaining calm and peaceful behavior amid the hustle and bustle of a busy world. Similar to choosing the right approach in a strategy game, mindfulness requires a level of awareness that allows you to better understand yourself, improving your decision-making skills.
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I have explored few different kinds of mindful awareness approaches, but have mainly studied and practiced Shinzen’s Unified Mindfulness paradigm – which I discovered serendipitously.
Integrating mindfulness training into my work — with parents, students, and colleagues — is now one of my passions. I conducted a research project studying the effects of mindfulness on stress of mothers of sick neonates.
I also teach mindfulness to medical students as an elective. This is very well received. Shinzen’s system is complex in a way, but easy and accessible in another way. You always feel that you are on track, whatever happens to you. You never feel like you’re a failure or you’re not good enough. There’s always something for you.
I am always touched to hear students opening up about their stress and sharing their stories. I am a witness of the suffering that we all experience through the lens of our own life and I hope people can find ways such as mindfulness to decrease their suffering, whether it is physical, emotional or mental.