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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"."
I misread 'Meditation' as 'Medication', which might be relaxing in the workplace.
if 'fruits de mer' = seafood
does 'fruits de merde' = mushrooms?
You may as well just create a 1-2pm "Execute Powernap."
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
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?
Seriously, I recommend it. It's _the_ geek religion* as far as I'm concerned; no contradictions with physics or cosmology, no ridiculous mumbo-jumbo from some 3000 year old oral histories of nomadic shepherds, no all powerful elephant-god floating in the sky somewhere... and Zen will teach you more about programming and network administration than any number of certifications and courses.
*well, apart from Discordianism, or the Church of the SubGenius... which both have a lot of zen in them anyway - the jokes, mainly
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
... that now my firm approves it when I sleep off at my desk? Well, its a sort of meditation too, isn't it?
It's not the Yoga thats helping, it's the attention. People love to feel needed!
Make money with Real Estate Investing
News from the future -- 'ResistorCorp has Employees Chanting "Ohm" '
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
To: employees@company.com
From: management@company.com
Subject: Note Yoga team members
Dear ${team_member},
It has recently come to our attention that some corridors have a very strong smell of incense, patchouli and other unidentified substances.
As much as we value the quality of your working environment, we would like to remind you that marijuana is not yet allowed within the united states.
Sincerely,
${manager}
ps: What's with all those Pink Floyds mp3 ?
We have a guy that comes and gives shiatsu to whoever feel like being massaged.
But most of the time, instead of mediting, we prefer doing some sport (not on the screen, I mean perspiring, running around, etc.)
It is also *forbidden* to speak about work-related issues during lunch.
The guy that came 2 days ago about his weight problem is not alone and I guess there's nothing as relaxing as re-oxygenation ; SPORT.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
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!
My journal has hot
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.
Insert Signature Here
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...
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'd rather have lapdances.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Why is it people are comfortable with companies sponsoring Yoga, a religious practice? Meditation is one thing, but:
_ re li_hin.php
http://www.niharonline.com/culture/religion/cul
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.
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.
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.
Hate me!
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.
heh-heh, "enforced meditation". I kinda like the concept. Come on. Meditate! Now! Be calm. NO, CALM!
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.
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