Meditation in the Workplace?

prostoalex writes "Nortel, Texas Instruments, Raytheon, Google, Apple and many others are apparently finding meditation and yoga to be a very efficient way to motivate and energize the employees. BusinessWeek finds that the reasons companies are suddenly hiring the yoga experts and conducting regular classes are easily justified to the management: "increased brain-wave activity, enhanced intuition, better concentration, and the alleviation of the kinds of aches and pains that plague employees most"."

Comments

What a lot of Nonsense

[turgid]

This is ridiculous. Employers would find that their employess were productive and content by treating them with respect and dignity, managing them properly, having proper time-scales, fair working hours, etc. Enforced yoga, meditation and feng-shui is childish, silly and new-age clap-trap put about my a bunch of charlatans looking to make a quick buck out of the naieve, impressionable and those with more money than sense.

Re:What a lot of Nonsense

[Dark Lord Seth]

As someone who meditates on a daily basis, I wholeheartedly disagree. Meditation is *very* useful for clearing the mind and relieving stress. It's a useful tool for collecting your thoughts, visualizing the achievement of goals, and quieting the useless chatter in your mind that keeps you from being productive. It's a technique that's been using tens of thousands of years, and it's very, very effective. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it!

That might be because it's (or at least it seems like) your own decision to meditate. There's a HUGE difference in attitude when you go meditate on your own initiative then when you're forced to meditate during work for 15 minutes, in a hurry, without being paid. I'm no expert on these things but I'd think it's very plausible that being forced to do meditation against your will and with a bad attitude towards it effectively renders it useless indeed...

That said, I think most people would rather have easier work times, more realistic goals set by management and be treated as humans instead of expendable statistics.

Another Case of Hawthorne

[WTFRUDOINBiotch]

It's not the Yoga thats helping, it's the attention. People love to feel needed!

Whoop dee doo...

[Noryungi]

Either:

1. This is a case of PHBs buying into the latest [yoga] fad, or:
2. This is a case of PHBs trying to pressure employees into working even more than before ("See? we are a gentle, caring company! Now work for 8 more hours... you can, since you have had your yoga classes!"), or:
3. all of the above.

Frankly, that kind of thing makes me completely mad. What about paying people a decent salary?

What about not over-working them (ie: decent work hours, not permanent overtime)? This way, perhaps your employees won't need frivolous yoga classes to be productive and motivated!

What about managing companies responsibly, not in an Enronesque way?

What about day-care benefits for employees with children? You know, like having in-house day-care center for toddlers, so that moms and dads can see their kids during lunch hour, and not grow apart from their offspring?

Etc... etc... In short: decent and sensible policies? Noooo.... instead, you get these moronic "benefits".

Nothing against yoga, mind you, which I am really interested in, by the way. It's just that replacing sound management policies by yoga classes just doesn't cut it for me.

If I want yoga classes, I'll pay for them out of my own pocket, thank you very much...

(Sorry for the rant, this is the kind of Dilbert-esque "benefits" that just push me over the edge...)

What about religion?

[Hiawatha]

I've nothing against this meditation idea, but I can't help wondering. Would a company support employee prayer breaks? Not that I advocate such a practice--I can pray anytime I want, without company authorization. I'm just curious, is all...

A Buddhist meditation teacher replies

[kfg]

Yoga and meditation are not inherently New Age and certainly aren't clap-trap. That doesn't mean that New Agers don't mess up the field something fierce. I was once considering selling T-Shirts that said, "Blow the New Age out your ass."

That being said you are absolutely correct. Giving people the opportunity to take a relax and stretch without harassing them about their "productivity" would certainly be one thing they could do to treat employees with respect.

This isn't what typically happens though. It gets applied just like any other buzz word compliant band-aid program that makes them feel like they're respecting their employees while actually treating them with disdain and just as much like mere productivity machines as they ever did.

Thus meditation becomes demeaning for many.

On the whole they could do more good by letting people listen to music of their choice while they work and not having a coniption fit if they walk to the watercooler a time or two.

Meditation cannot be applied as a paliative for keyboard logging.

KFG

Yeah, this is a positive trend...

[An Onerous Coward]

Did anyone catch this?

"Sometimes meditation classes are offered as a gesture of thanks for a job well done. Consider AOL Time Warner Inc., where the sales and marketing group was reduced from 850 to 500 people three years ago. Meditation classes were incorporated to help employees deal with the new 12-hour days.

You want to reduce stress in the workplace? Why not start by not giving your employees twelve hour work days?

Spiritual materialism is the wrong attitude

[MichaelCrawford]

I find it appalling that meditation is being sold to business as a way to make employees more productive. While I think meditation in the workplace is a great idea, I think that doing so because of its payoff for the business' bottom line is simply the wrong attitude to have.

Buddha taught us that the source of human misery is attachment. In order to be free from sorrow, we must be free from attachment - and from striving.

Many people who meditate - and I suspect most Americans who meditate - do so because they hope to get something out of it, anything from relaxation, to relief from stress, enlightment or spiritual growth. But if you are striving to better yourself through meditation, you are missing the whole point. What you must free yourself from is that very striving.

The Shambhala monk Chyogyam Trungpa was instrumental in bringing Tibetan buddhism to the US and Canada in a form that could be appreciated by westerners. May I recommend a couple of his books:

• Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
• The Heart of the Buddha

Spiritual materialism was particularly rampant in the United States in the late 60's and early 70's. Trungpa worked hard to teach all the navel-gazers that that was a mistake.

I can teach anyone to meditate in about two minutes:

Sit comfortably but with your back straight. Focus just part of your attention on your breath. Clear your mind of thoughts. Don't beat yourself up if a though crosses your mind, just let it go. Then sit for a while. Try ten minutes to start with, then a little longer each day as you get used to it.

The most important thing is to just sit. How many Slashdotters ever allow themselves to just sit? To just clear your mind without thinking of anything?

Trungpa said there was no way out but to apply your bottom to the meditation cushion. I can promise you'll enjoy his books - he was quite a colorful character.

I think that the day that release from attachment can be sold to American business will come when Bill Gates gives his money to the poor, shaves his head, dons saffron robes, and takes The Vows of Refuge.

Corporate sponsored religious practice

[joshmccormack]

Why is it people are comfortable with companies sponsoring Yoga, a religious practice? Meditation is one thing, but:

http://www.niharonline.com/culture/religion/cul_ re li_hin.php
Bhagavat-Gita, a part of the epic Mahabharata, expounds the synthesis of three yogas or ways of attaining union with the Supreme Self, Gyana-yoga (union through knowledge), Bhakti-yoga (union through devotion) and Karma-yoga (union through action).

http://www.classicalyoga.org/Page18.html
There has been and continues to be much confusion over what is religion and/or spirituality. In actuality, these two words have an identical meaning. "Religion" comes from the Latin root "religio" which means "to link-back" to the spirit. This is the identical meaning of the word "Yoga" which comes from the Sanskrit "Yuj;" i.e., "to yoke" to the spirit. Even before the word "Yoga" was used, the Vedas (Hindu scripture) use the word "Yajna" which essentially means "sacrifice." The word "sacrifice" comes from the Latin translation "sacred doing." With this understanding, one becomes aware of the inseparable nature of Yoga/Religion/Spirituality.