Meditation at Work

Carolyne Gowen offers meditation programs for leaders, teams and individuals at at all levels. She keynotes at conferences, is a speaker with Saxtons, and holds workshops customised to corporate business objectives.

Meditation offers tools to counter the ineffectiveness of continual partial attention as 24/7 connectivity promotes multi- tasking and information overload. As a result, most people are suffering unprecedented levels of stress, exhaustion and overwhelm.

Meditation is resilience training for the mind and helps to cultivate space so the mind can work at its full capacity.

Meditation will improve performance at work as it:

The more stress that is accumulated, the less efficient your mind and body become. Meditation increases calm and centredness.

Real power comes from flexibility, not rigidity by being able to embrace and adapt to change. By striving for something without being attached to a specific outcome, it opens to more possibilities and opportunities resulting in action with less fear and greater presence.

Dr Craig Hassard, from Monash University has proven that meditation increases resilience.

Meditation creates a culture of wellness enhancing productivity and performance. It sharpens focus, reduces stress and therefore helps to improve the bottom line. It results in fewer employee sick days, higher morale and encourages workers to remain loyal.

Meditation creates distance between thought and action by stopping and creating space. In times of stress, emotions hijack actions. This pause helps people to adjust, calm down, think and take the right action.

Through meditation the brain transforms itself and grows new neurons. This increases the learning and memory processes of the brain. It also thickens the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for happiness.

*Research from Harvard, Medical School at Massachusetts and the Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany

Meditation helps calm the brain by quietening the random stream of thoughts. This results in focusing on the task at hand and maintaining mental clarity over longer periods of time.

A study by Harvard and MIT neuroscientists found that people who meditated where better able to control their alpha brainwaves which helps to minimise distractions. It allows better focus by regulating how things will impact on you.

Meditation helps develop intuition in several ways. By clearing the mind of the continuous worry and stress that plague clear thought, the inner voice can be heard more clearly and loudly. Intuition requires the ability to listen to the inner voice – or inner wisdom.

Steve Jobs is quoted as saying…
“I began to realise that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis…intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work”.

Meditation promotes creative thinking. New ideas are generated and problems are solved. Innovation is the result.

This has been proven by a study by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato and her fellow researchers at Leiden University, published 19 April 2012 in Frontiers in Cognition.

When feeling balanced and centered, it is much easier to respond rather than react, to be present with a client or co-worker and really listen to what is being communicated.

Meditation on a regular basis develops the ability to calmly and objectively observe a situation, notice what is being triggered, and consciously choose how to respond. The ability to be present and aware is valuable in the workplace and every other area of your life.