The awareness of mental health has become a top talking point in recent years, as well as how work can affect mental health. Finding the right balance of work and life is hard when you have deadlines and quotas to meet and dwindling time to meet them. As a result, our mental health often takes the hit for it. This can cause our quality of work and our overall productivity to decline, which is counterproductive to what we are set out to achieve in working ourselves so hard. Taking the time and creating a space for meditation at the workplace allows us to recenter and refocus on what’s important. It brings you back to the present moment and gives your mind the needed break it requires for functioning at 100%.
Photo by Medienstürmer on Unsplash
What Is Meditation?
Webster’s definition of meditation is “to engage in mental exercise (such as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness” Or “o focus one’s thoughts on: reflect on or ponder over” (Merriam-Webster.com, 2021). We can perform it in several manners and over various lengths of time. It is taking a quiet moment to breathe, release the stress from the body and recenter one’s self in the moment.
Why Meditation In The Workplace?
Job-related stress has been on the steady rise over the past decade and has skyrocketed over the last year because of the global pandemic. The increase of supply and demand in the workforce has added a layer of work-related stress and depression, causing more work burnout than ever before.
Studies have shown that meditation can
- Increase focus
- Reduce the occurrence of distractions
- It can shift a negative mood towards a more positive one
- Open up the creative mind
- Reduces stress
- Lowers high blood pressure and so much more.
Five minutes of meditation a day can aid in the full benefits of the listed factors above. When you create a space in your home office or workplace for your employees to meditate, it will ultimately increase the quality of work performed by those individuals as well as yourself. That will be reflected in your bottom line and the amount of turnover you experience at work.
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Methods Of Meditation
There are countless methods of meditation and apps to aid in the medication process. Below are a few that have raving reviews.
- Progressive Meditation is the method of releasing tension from the body one section at a time by focusing on relaxing that area of focus.
- Mindfulness focuses on being present and focusing on your breath and the thoughts that are flowing in and out of your mind. This allows you to concentrate on the various sensations and feelings in the moments. We can do this or without music.
- Movement Medication (my favorite) is as simple as taking a walk through a park or by a stream of water. Simply breathing in the fresh air and listening to some instrumental music can alter your mood.
- Spiritual Meditation focuses on the more religious and or spiritual side of things. You can engage in prayer or connecting with the universe verbally or silently.
Meditation is an amazon tool to add to your arsenal and work environment. Imagine if your workplace was a place that you actually wanted to be because you had the tools to balance work and life. I challenge you to meditate every day for five minutes a day for a week and see how your life changes
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By
Angelina Wagner
