Text Meditation

Around six months ago a former aftercare client began sending me a text message meditation each day - usually about 4:00 a.m. The messages are usually simple one line affirmations like, “reading the book keeps me sober each day,” or “have a great day in sobriety.” Just simple comments about recovery, sometimes with misspellings or missing words.

At first I didn’t pay a lot of attention as about that time of day I’m heading for the gym or writing this blog. At times I found them inconvenient. But eventually I started to expect them because they’d become part of the daily fabric. If the message is late or if it doesn’t arrive I start to wonder if the client is okay.

Once, for example, he lost his phone and didn’t send messages for several days. However, he called to tell me what had happened. At that point I realized I’d come to expect his daily impromptu messages – nothing profound, just small reminders about the central fact of my life: that I’m in recovery.

This is a technique I’d recommend to those who might have trouble starting a daily meditation routine. Find someone who’ll take 30 seconds to share a one or two sentence daily meditation.