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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"."
Anything is great to get away from the caos of work for an hour.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I find this article interesting. Perhaps some workers are wanting peace and harmony and are having trouble getting those needs met in a work environment that I see as increasingly fast-paced, stressful, and unstable. Personally I've been able to meet my needs for peace and even energy through yoga (after being dragged by my girlfriend there).
Observations....
William H. Gross, of Newport Beach (Calif.)'s Pacific Investment Management Co., who often meditates with yoga before a day of trading at his $349 billion money-management firm.
Has anyone ever listened to Bill Gross's bond recommendations? They always seem to do much worse than his actual holdings...
So employees can breathe easy: This is one perk that isn't likely to get axed.
I've heard this one before...
*****
I did Bikram Yoga at Funky Door in Berkeley. Any recommendations?
More Better Drugs!!!
Keep Everybody Happy!!!
Increase Production!!!
Decrease Absenteeism!!!
Giving people the opportunity to remain physically active during the day (which Yoga does) should be part of treating your employees with dignity, especially people who sit at desks all day.
Obviously, anyone who mentions "increased brain waves" is a crank. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that doing Yoga is not good for you, or even that these are poor Yoga instructors they're hiring - some of the best physical therapists, chiropractors and martial arts instructors combine great skills with a variety of cranky beliefs. As long as he gets your employees motivated to stand up and wave their arms around, they will be healthier and happier - even if the particular motions emphasised in Yoga are complete and utter bunk (which I do not believe, but I can conceede the point for sake of argument.)
Also, a persons perception of being healthful or content is entirely driven by psychology. If you have flakes on your staff, you can probably help them feel better by having a certified crackpot with a mellow voice tell them that doing Yoga removes static from their brainwaves. I don't see the harm.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
An added bonus is that you don't just spend your weekend recovering from the working week. You feel more inclined to go back to work on monday when you feel you have a life beyond work.
Q.
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I've encouraged others in my group to do it as well -- the Japanese have their own meditation flavour, zazen, but regardless, we all try to start our day with it, and I really think companies in the West should adopt it too on a voluntary basis.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
You're probably right to a large degree, but the work place isn't the only place where meditation or even just sitting quietly for fifteen minutes has yielded improvements -- I saw a piece on an urban school in chicago or something that was a complete disaster. The school had rowdy kids, poor attendance, and poor grades, and horrible test scores. A new principal there instituted a mandatory meditation period of fifteen minutes for all students. Within months attendance had increased, grades and test scores had increased, and attitude was significantly improved. Yoga in the workplace sounds like a stretch to me, but I see nothing wrong with a few minutes of peaceful meditation each day.
Meditation is valuable but there are a lot of different kinds of meditation. For example, breathing meditation can be done 24 hours a day. Our breath rate has a huge impact on what emotions control us in a given moment. Control the breath and you have another avenue for seeking mental equilibrium.
Then there's the "kindness" meditation which can be done at all hours while you're awake. Basically, you decide that you wish everyone well no matter what they think of you and you don't let situations beyond your control get the best of you.
I don't find value in yoga or sitting in one place humming crazy chants. Neither do most educated Buddhists. The charlatans like yoga and incense and other nonsense because it sells. The naive like yoga and incense and other nonsense because these people haven't detached themselves from the myth that you can *buy* happiness.
Corporate adoption of meditation practices seems like yet another idiotic idea from marketing. I'm sure most employees are perfectly capable of taking care of their spiritual needs without the Corporate Big Brother getting involved.
If corporations really want to help, they can focus on providing money in exchange for hours worked instead of always trying to ace full-timers out of their labor.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I agree. Caffeine has never kept me awake, but when I come off the high from it I get really tired. Now that I have quit caffeine I actually have more energy consistenly through the day instead of the highs and lows that came with drinking caffeine.
OTOH, to see this used as motivation is really silly. For example, many companies use the fear of being terminated as a method of motivation, which in turn causes undue stress. Eventually the workers are so stressed that, try as they might, they cannot work anymore. The company then pays for yoga and meditation as way to relax the workers so they can continue worker under the insane conditions.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to have some sort of sane job security situation, where hard work is rewarded by rises or other mutually agreeable benefits? Where people know if they work hard, they will reap rewards and those who do not work hard might be fired, but not before some discussion? Where the person kept on is not the cheapest grudge worker, but he most effective practitioner? Where a person is not going to come in the next day and find that they no longer have a job?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
None of these companies is enforcing. We have a choice to join if we want to. Many people do so just before going to their cubicles, if nothing else it takes of the hangover of road rage.
Yes respect is needed and so is dignity, but it seems you are not at all aware of how all this can help you. Frankly speaking try it. If not "new age clap-trap" just be alone at a quite place and closing your eyes and trying to think of nothing. You will feel much relaxed after a busy day.As for the more money than sense part i doubt i think you have been meeting wrong people. It is free for employees or very marginal fees in most of the companies :)
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Hey, that's absolutely wonderful for YOU. For it to be forced upon me as another way to bring up morale and productivity in the workplace?
Swimming, hiking, camping, and listening to music are my ways to relieve stress and bring up my productivity.
I hate sitting in one place basically doing nothing for more than 5 mins.
I wish management would learn that people are individuals and need to be treated as such. Blanket policy always pisses someone off.
Remember that.
But maybe I'm being too much INTJ on this ;-)
Since we're all talking about bullshit, I feel I have to mention that those personality types are bullshit as well. See here.
That said, geeks aren't always cold-minded individuals that want everything to make sense. Love is essentially a chemical reaction; a lie. But I have no problem living that lie and I don't waste my time questioning it. Sure it's not what it seems, but it's a nice experience, so that works for me.
In any case, i've met a lot of geeks that will believe any old bullshit (atkins has really taken hold in the geek community for some reason, for example), and plenty of non-geeks are brights as well.
This comes as no surprise - a lot of scientists have been taken in by quackery over the years, often because they are too trusting (the scientific community is built on honesty) or because they believe their powers of observation are infallible.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
If you want to relax then stop drinking caffeine and sugary drinks. You'll sleep better at night and thus will feel better at work, no need to take caffeine to wake you up due to lack of sleep the night before.
Very true. I used to drink coffee and soda, now I have completely quit. I have plenty of energy, I am active all day long, and I have no problems getting 7-9 hours of sleep at night. I don't find myself nodding off in the middle of the day anymore, either.
As for meditation, I have tried it on and off, and find the results to be very subtle. I'm trying to get back into it again, meditating in the morning before going to work, and in the evening at some point. A book I recommend is "Journey of Awakening" by Ram Dass. The way he presents his ideas makes it very accessible to most of us. Even if you don't end up doing any meditation, the first chapter of the book gives great insight into life in general.
..or maybe it could be other stuff that comes with having a new principal that actually gives a shit about the school.
I wish I could remember the company, but during the colorful months of the dotcom boom there was a memo posted on f*ckedcompany.com, presumably from one of the big chiefs of this unknown company, that said "The other day we had a very important client in the office for the tour. Upstairs near the back I detected a very noticeable smell. Luckily, the customer did not. Guys! It was 10am!" As if to say that the most important things were that the customer did not smell the marijuana, and that perhaps blazing up at 10am was not cool, NOT the fact that they were lighting up in the first place.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Great quotes:
"Buddhism is a science, not a fanatic religion like football."
-- Lama Khyentse Norbu
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion; the religion
which is based on experience, which refuses dogmatism. If there's any
religion that would cope with scientific needs it will be Buddhism.... "
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, [from Albert Einstein: The Human Side,
edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]
Dyslexics have more fnu.
Yoga, meditiation and feng-shui were around for hundreds of years before the current new-age crystal-dolphin-huggers hijacked them.
:-)
I used to work for a company that had (optional) yoga sessions once a week at lunchtime. I loved them, they were the highlight of my working week. The only problem was that I was so relaxed at the end of a session that I'd fall asleep. That doesn't help productivity too much!
Also, some of you geeks really ought to try yoga, as yoga classes are usually full of attractive women. It might do some of you good to get away from your monitors and meet some semi-clad members of the opposite sex.
So don't knock it until you've tried it
HH
--
Most people seem to be unaware of the constant stream of internal dialog that accompanies us through the day. It affects how we process all the information we receive, and therefore how we act.
This internal dialog can become fixated on a single idea. When it becomes a more important determinant of our behavior than the informtaion we receive from our senses. Everybody's had the experience of working with a coworker who keeps coming back to the same issues over and over again. We tend to put it down to perversity -- that they are just use every event as an excuse to harp on their pet issue. But it's not really voluntary - it can become a pernicious habit like drug addiction.
It's an interesting comparison, because meditation is closely related to hypnotism, and many people have found hypnotism useful in breaking destructive habits. "Free your mind" has become a familiar catch phrase from The Matrix, but what the mind needs to be freed from is not an outside force, but its own overly ingrained habits of thought. In a sense, we all can become "addicted" to certain ways of thinking about things, to the extent that we become blinded to situations that would be obvious to somebody looking at them with fresh eyes.
Yoga is not just about physical flexibility -- it's about mental flexibility as well.
Of course, the benefits depends on what your job is. If your job involves processing information and making judgements, meditation could conceivably allow you to be a little more creative. I have a feeling that most people in these kinds of positions have at best a few hours a week in which most of their creativity is done. Much of the time spent during the week is duff. For some people, giving even an hour a day to meditation could conceivably be worthwhile if they could extend the number of highly creative hours from say two to two and a half over the course of a week.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Meditation is just a way to set everything else aside until you've de-fragged those resources.
I think the best explanation of this is Krishnamurti's-- Westerners tend to confuse images with realities, and stress themselves out trying to become what the images demand. Even the gnostic gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying one must learn to see an image as an image.
I'm too much of an agnostic to profess a religion, but if I was going to take one up, it would be Buddhism. I always loved this quote from Carl Sagan:
The Cosmos and Carl Sagan
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I did RTFA, and one of the companies they held up as an example had cut their workforce from 850 to 500. As a result, the workday went up to 12 hours. I'd bet the mortgage payment they were still only getting paid for 8. So if they did any meditation, yes, they did it without being paid.
Message to companies: I don't want massages, I don't want organic chefs, I don't want meditation, I WANT TO GO HOME AFTER 8 HOURS!
Sean
The YMCA, the C is for Christian remember, has a Yoga class locally. They actually have a a flyer than explains that while yoga has roots in religion, it is now adopted by many diverse peoples. In that it promotes a healthy body and spirit, it has been adopted as a good thing by MANY religions and by many, many (like myself) who are not religious.
Zen Buddhism is very simple and in its pure form has no dogma. It says: sit down and just watch your breath. That's it. Just really watch your breath and see what happens. You have permission to come to your own conclusions after that. I once stayed at a Zen Monastery and all the monks _refused_ to become my gurus; they would just keep saying "follow your own breath and find out for yourself".