Mindfulness, But What Can it Do for My Business?
Mindfulness is going mainstream. This week came the public announcement that parliament have just finished their first 8 week mindfulness course for politicians. Mindfulness too is on Capitol Hill and apparently there to stay with an ever growing number of subscribers.
For my part, i went to the excellent Mindfulness in Schools project conference this summer. That is when the wonderful Jon Kabat Zinn the previous day had run the first led mindfulness session in the House of Commons which led to the subsequent introduction of mindfulness into Parliament. The last day of the conference he was whisked away to the policy unit of Number 10 to discuss the matter further, and to discuss the introduction of mindfulness training into the PGCE curriculum (so that all our teachers will be mindfully trained).
So why is this suddenly happening?
A large part of the acceptance of mindfulness surely has to be that it's ambassadors, headed up by Kabat Zinn himself are SO plausible. So organised, clear headed, and well lets face it the embodiment of their teachings. And did I mention that these are 'normal' people? Not a robe or a bindi in sight. Credible working people in suits and with top jobs.
At the Mindfulness in Schools Project conference there were not one, not two but THREE serving politicians involved in the conference. And these are people with a long term meditation practice. Chris Ruane, a former teacher and 4th term serving politician, who gave the closing speech at the conference: "People are far from their natures. The whole pace of life has speeded up. We are all on a hedonic treadmill. You get on it in the morning and you're on it all day long. How fast do you want to go on a treadmill? Have you got the means and mechanisms to slow yourself down or step off? I think mindfulness can help. It's helped for me. And those MPs and Lords speak about rebalancing their lives, re-prioritising, deciding what's important." Huffington Post
Apparently companies have been using mindfulness under wraps for some time. And now GlaxoSmithKline, Transport for London, the Home Office, the NHS, Ebay, Google, Barclays Bank, the Prudential and Mills and Reeve have all come out of the closet and are now willing to share their experiences.
The news that this work is now in parliament will hopefully give confidence to other businesses, schools and medical practitioners to use mindfulness to promote the wellbeing and growth of their staff and their organisations.
But what does it mean for my business?
When we first began our corporate work at Camyoga the need and challenge was very clear - how do we teach people to use mindfulness techniques practically in the workplace?
Our entire mindful business programme is dedicated to this method - teaching effective, simple, clinically proven mindfulness techniques, and the methods to integrate them into the workplace.
Read the nuts and bolts of what this work can do for you here.
Whatever is your personal or company vision, mindfulness can take you there.
This Wednesday is National Stress Awareness Day, at Camyoga we have renamed this day National Stressless Day and will be bringing you some simple mindfulness techniques each day that you can use in your daily life.
