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Technology, multi-tasking, and stress are some common words that describe our modern times. People have many hats as they go from work to family and hobbies. Meditation is a very helpful practice for many people. It’s not only desirable but necessary, especially today.
The ancient practice of meditation developed many thousands of years ago in India. Some scholars go by the first mention of it in the Hindu texts of Vendatism, around 1500 BCE. Others date it back to 5,000 BCE. Regardless, it’s a practice with roots in the religious practices of India.
Meditation for Anyone, Almost Anywhere
These days, meditation has gone truly mainstream, although traditional Hindu and Buddhist meditation practices still exist. Meditation can be practiced by anyone, with or without a religious context. It’s an excellent way to make the most out of a little time for yourself.
The simplest method of meditation is listening to the sound of your breath. A general rule is to meditate for at least 1 minute for each year of your age. The older you are, the longer you should meditate. You should sit upright with your legs crossed and your hands on your knees, palms up.
Local Buddhist temples make it easy to access specific types of meditation, such as Tibetan and Korean. There are also app options for meditation to make it easier to do by oneself. It can be practiced from the comfort of home, on an airplane, or anywhere you are sitting and have a few minutes to spare.
Benefits of Meditation
The body stores emotions and a number of people experience a disconnect between their minds and their bodies. It’s also common to experience worry from dwelling on negative thoughts and past mistakes. People respond to threats with either Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn reactions (also called “The Four Fs”), and tend to use or two of those reactions. But rather than resolving conflict, their reaction is not appropriate for their specific situation and creates more problems. Meditation helps you understand your predominant threat responses and improve how you react to threats or stress.
Having a regular meditation practice has both immediate and long-term benefits. Some emotional, mental, and physical benefits are:
- Mindfulness: You will become more self-aware and be able to “be here now” in the present moment. While there are many types of separate mindfulness exercises, meditation includes mindfulness.
- Stress management skills: Meditation helps you find an inner peace and silence to be better able to handle stress.
- New perspectives: You will be able to see the bigger picture instead of worrying about small details, and you will be able to make better choices.
- Reduction of negative emotions: You won’t feel overwhelmed and distracted by negative emotions that you experience or accumulate in daily life.
- Increase of patience and tolerance: When your mind is clear and your thoughts and emotions aren’t distracting you, it’s easier to not succumb to impulsive and rash behavior.
- Increase of creativity and imagination: Freedom to create means being free of external distractions, and meditation helps with that.
- Decrease of resting heart rate: People who are prone to anxiety will benefit from meditation.
- Decrease of resting blood pressure: People who are prone to high blood pressure will benefit from meditation.
- Increase of sleep quality: It’s much easier to calm your mind and body and fall asleep with a regular meditation practice.
Why Corporate Meditation?
Workers typically experience stress, anxiety, pain, depression, insomnia, and high blood pressure, all of which are alleviated with corporate meditation to increase attention and prevent job burnout. They can even experience a reduction in PTSD symptoms and better management of diabetes. You can read more about meditation statistics here: https://comparecamp.com/meditation-statistics/.
So, why not corporate meditation? Workers that meditate are more productive. With many workers spending so much time at the workplace on a full-time basis, it is a good site to start the practice. Workers feel that the workplace is more welcoming and relaxing with corporate meditation, and they will be able to “leave work at work” rather than take it home with them.
While meditation cannot replace physical exercise, it is an exercise for the brain. It encourages mental and emotional balance that in turn aligns the body with the mind. Having the discipline to get into a regular meditation practice puts one into a mindset for getting more things done in the time one has, and even in less time than usual.
The main purpose of corporate meditation is to teach mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being aware of the present moment and recognizing and accepting one’s physical sensations, feelings, and thoughts. It brings new meaning to “slow and steady wins the race.”
Statistics on Corporate Meditation
Corporate meditation works, and it shows. Just to give you an idea: From 2020 to 2021, employers with meditation programs experienced an 85% decrease in absenteeism of their employees. Businesses experienced a 520% profit increase, and 60% of employees with anxiety displayed significant improvement of their symptoms.
Tips for Creating Corporate Meditation
If you’re interested in creating corporate meditation, visit website for more information. The process for creating corporate meditation involves business executives first undergoing mindfulness training so they can lead by example. The training can be virtual, online, workshops and seminars, or a combination of either.
Afterward, they identify workplace stressors and create a task force of people from different departments. They then create a quantifiable measurement system for ROI, such as before-and-after questionnaires about stress. Once they hire a skilled corporate meditation facilitator, they can start measuring results and getting feedback.
