Meditation classes reduce stress, develop a calm mind and heighten awareness – that’s why leading companies have embraced corporate meditation classes (also known as mindfulness training or mindfulness meditation), including HCL Technologies, Polaris, Cognizant, Bank of New Zealand, TCS, Wipro Technologies, and Royal Enfield, to name just a few

What is Mindfulness Training?

A common definition of mindfulness meditation is “moment to moment non-judgmental awareness”. It’s a powerful relaxation technique.

During mindfulness training participants are taught how to bring awareness to the present moment by focusing on the breath, listening attentively and observing thoughts and emotions. When applying these mindfulness techniques throughout the day, participants experience a feeling of well-being and calm.

Is mindfulness training different to meditation training?

There are many different forms of meditation and mindfulness is just one of them. Other types of meditation techniques include: mantra, transcendental, loving meta, etc.

Mantra meditation, for example, seeks to remove all thought from your mind by replacing it with a constantly repeated mantra. Loving Meta is designed to focus your thought on the feeling of love and generating more love. With these types of meditation it’s difficult to do anything else while you’re meditating. With mindfulness meditation the idea is not to remove or replace all thought, but rather to focus your awareness on that which is happening in the present moment. Therefore, mindfulness meditation is ideally suited to the workplace.

A practical example of this is: if someone said something that annoyed you, don’t spend the next 2 hours churning it over in your mind. Instead, accept that it annoyed you and then return your focus to what’s happening in this moment.

Your company benefits from corporate meditation

Mindfulness Meditation is a very effective way of reducing stress.

Benefits include:

• Higher staff morale

Reducing stress in the workplace means your employees will be happier and feel more positive about your organisation.

• Reduced absenteeism

Workplace pressures cause a range of physical and emotional illnesses (including depression). Stress suppresses the immune system so that it takes longer to recover from non-stress-related illnesses. This results in loss of work hours.

• Reduced workers compensation claims

Stress-related claims account for almost 30% of all Work Insurance claims and are about twice as expensive as other claims

• Reduced staff turnover

Employees who aren’t coping with stress at work are more likely to leave.

• Employees with better mental focus

Research shows that mindfulness meditation increases mental abilities; especially the ability to focus.

• Better inter-staff relations

When people are stressed at work, tempers flare and relationships can sour, leading to less co-operative, less cohesive teams, which decreases productivity.

• Better customer service

Staffs who aren’t stressed will be more pleasant to your clients and provide better customer service.

• Higher productivity

All of the factors mentioned above will increase productivity and improve your bottom line. Additionally, the fact that many people think less clearly when they’re over-stressed means your staff will make better decisions when effective stress management strategies, such as mindfulness training, are implemented.