Why Meditation Works Wonders for Better Workplace Productivity Meditation is one such wellness practice that not only offers immense spiritual benefits, but is incredibly helpful for maintaining physical and emotional health as well
By Pinky Daga
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Traditionally, the worlds of spirituality and business have always been considered mutually exclusive, with little to no connection with each other. However, today, with corporate wellness and employee productivity have become popular buzzwords in the industry, the scenario has changed entirely. Employees today spend almost one-third of their lives at work, and as a result, maintaining health and wellness at the workplace has become extremely important. Meditation is one such wellness practice that not only offers immense spiritual benefits, but is incredibly helpful for maintaining physical and emotional health, as well. Furthermore, it is a comprehensive wellness procedure that can easily be integrated into one's work day, and practiced regularly.
Benefits of meditation at the workplace
Meditation has been proven to not only help enhance work satisfaction, but also enhance productivity and general happiness. With a host of far-reaching benefits, it can effectively aid an employee in achieving the maximum results at the workplace, both on an individual and an organisational level.
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Reduces stress: When one is mentally strained, the stress hormone Cortisol releases inflammation-promoting chemicals known as cytokines. These, in turn, disrupt sleep, and promote depression, anxiety, fluctuating blood pressure, and cloudy thinking. Meditation helps regulate sleep, controlling the cortisol hormone and promoting the release of happy hormones like endorphins, dopamine and serotonin. This, in turn, helps employees be stress-free, which allows them to be highly productive, as well!
Enhanced creativity: Despite common perception, working in a corporate sphere requires individuals to be extremely creative. Be it the competition one faces, or the crude marketing ideologies that every company comes up with, creativity alone can act as one's saving grace. Meditation, in this regard, has been proven by science to greatly promote creativity.
Calms down the mind: When you meditate regularly, you learn to redirect your attention, and control your emotional impulses, as well as get rid of temptations. As such, it helps in calming your spirit and mind, which is extremely useful for increasing your focus, which further helps enhance one's productivity at work.
Improves self-awareness: Despite the lack of knowledge about the same, self-awareness is just as important as awareness of one's surroundings. Meditation helps promote self-awareness greatly, which enables one to be completely aware of one's emotions, feelings, thoughts, and everything happening inside of the mind. This helps employees gain increased self-control, which promotes confidence, as well.
Improves relationships: A good team is imperative to achieving outstanding results, and meditation plays a tremendous role in helping enable better communication and understanding, which improves interpersonal relationships. Workplace meditation not only improves the bond between team members, but also promotes better team engagement and improved mental health for everyone, thereby resulting in increased productivity, among other things.
Simple Meditation Practices for Work
Meditation is a simple technique of sitting comfortably, and centring one's mind, as soon as one reaches work. It is a clear technique of focusing on the moment, and the task in hand. However, it is certainly difficult to always find time to practice meditation, at work. Yet, there are a few simple techniques that one can use, not only to calm down, but also to increase focus and productivity. The versatility of the practice of meditation makes it possible to be practiced in multiple ways, simply by taking a short pause from the everyday life. Here are a few ways employees can inculcate meditation into the workday.
Music Meditation: Music meditation is an exceptional collective or individual exercise that can be practiced in the office. When performed together, it offers a collective calmness that reverberates across the workplace. However, it can even be practiced for short spans throughout the day individually, to help manage stress and improve focus.
Counting breaths: A simple 5 minutes of meditation with deep breathing, while counting the breaths, can help ease the mind for the entire day. This simply requires the employee to sit down comfortably, and breathe in and out, making this one of the easiest ways to de-stress and meditate at ease.
Work Desk meditation with nature: Nature has an amazing way of healing the mind and soul. The presence of plants, Feng Shui totems, or Chinese Evergreens, at one's work desk, helps a person remain calm and at peace, constantly. The aura that these objects cast has a further rejuvenating effect, especially when combined with meditation.
