Wellbeing at Work
Many people feel stressed and anxious now.
Fortunately there are tools each of us can implement to feel better — to increase deep feelings of calm and relaxation, to sleep better, to have smoother relationships, and to feel better about ourselves too.
The Path offers wellness programs for companies, designed to help teams with all aspects of wellbeing at work. Please click here to learn more or email us at sit@thepath.com.
Overall I suggest three things:
Meditation
Best of all, there are four different categories of meditation, so if you don’t like one technique, you can simply try another! Below I will outline all four meditation categories, and you can feel free to practice one or to try all four.
Our “Path to Mindfulness” program actually teaches all four types of meditation in one session, but I’ll also outline them here so you can try them on your own.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation is probably the best-known meditation technique practiced in the western world. This style of meditation trains the mind to focus, and it also releases stress.
Especially now, it’s so important we train our minds to live in the present moment. What’s incredible is that many people live their entire lives not living in the present! They ruminate about the past, feeling regret about things they have no control over, or they feel fear or anxiety about the future.
Mindfulness trains our minds to live in the now. It is incredible how much stress we can relieve by bringing ourselves into this exact moment, right here, right now. For this reason this is actually the style of meditation the Pentagon teaches soldiers returning from war-torn areas because it trains the brain to focus on the present moment.
You can practice mindfulness meditation by gently placing your attention on your breath or on the sensations in your body right now. You can also practice mindfulness by watching the flickering flame of a candle or by noticing all of the sounds in your environment. Mindfulness is always about placing our attention on an object, and then often to notice how that object changes and flows.
With the breath, we can mindfully observe the deep feeling of the inhale and then the transition of the breath to becoming the exhale. With body sensations, we notice pleasant sensations, then unpleasant ones, and then neutral sensations. The idea is to place our attention on something, mindfully, and then to watch it change without judging any of the changs. The great teacher Jon Kabat Zinn defines mindfulness as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.”
Mantra Meditation
A second type of meditation is a Mantra Meditation. This is an ancient technique whose wisdom derives from the Vedas, ancient Hindu scriptures.
When you practice a mantra meditation you are invited to gently repeat a Sanskit word to yourself in your mind’s eye, silently, at whatever pace feels right to you. Usually a teacher gives you a secret mantra that you have your entire life, but if you don’t have one you can try using “so hum” and simply repeating this to yourself at whatever pace feels right to you. You don’t need to time the mantra to your breath or think about repeating it quickly or slowly — just repeat the mantra to yourself at whatever rate feels natural for you. If a thought comes to mind, just let that thought float away like a cloud, or sail away like a small child’s sailboat, and pick up the mantra once again.
With this style of meditation, you are instructed to do this for twenty minutes a day, twice a day. The recommendation is to do this once in the morning and then again preferably before dinner. Or, if you can’t do the second session before dinner, wait a few hours for the food to process and then do your second session later that evening.
Energizing Meditation
Photo by Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times of a meditation by The Path guided by Charlie Knoles)
A third type of meditation is an energizing meditation, which you can see a photo of above. This is a meditation designed to bring natural energy into the body, so you can avoid that third espresso or Frappuccino! You can do a pranayama meditation, or alternate side nostril breathing as you may have done in yoga class, or lift up your hands and do a Kundalini-style breath of fire. Feel free to play with different techniques for this or combine some to find the practice that suits you best.
Here are some energizing meditations you can explore, and there are many others you can incorporate as well:
Kundalini Breath of Fire
Fast alternate side nostril breathing - focus only on the inhale and breathe in as quickly as you can, first plugging one nostril (so you can’t breathe out of it) and breathing into the other nostril, then release that hand, plug the other nostril, and keep switching each second. Even thirty seconds of this meditation will feel very energizing!
Elbow twist. Hold your elbows up, then twist as quickly as is comfortable first to the left, then to the right, then to do the left. See if you can do this for a full two minutes. You will feel very energized afterwards!
Meditation to Accomplish a Goal
The fourth and final category of meditation is meditation to accomplish a goal, such as gratitude or compassion or even power! Usually in the meditation world we practice compassion meditation, and I love the type Sharon Salzberg popularized in the west.
Sharon invites us to choose a few phrases that resonate for you. Some examples she uses are:
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you be strong
May you be healthy
May you be free from danger
May you be safe
May you live today with ease
In this style of meditation, traditionally you would pick three phrases that you like. You would then begin by sending them to yourself. Imagine bringing, from your heart to your heart, three of these phrases and silently repeating them to yourself, taking in the full meaning of each word. It could be, “May I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I live today with ease.” You would then repeat the phrases again, so you’ve done each phrase twice.
Next you would send the same three phrases you’ve chosen to someone you love. This could be a parent, a child, a friend, a teacher, mentor, someone in your life now or someone from your past. Imagine this person sitting in front of you, during your meditation, and silently sending, from your heart to their heart, “May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you live today with ease.” Like to yourself, you would say these phrases twice to this person you live.
You would next send the phrases to a neutral person. This could be someone you get coffee or tea or a green juice from, a delivery person, or someone you see in your neighborhood. You probably don’t even know the name of this neutral person, but during this meditation you realize that they have hopes and dreams just like you do, and good days and bad days as well. “May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you live today with ease.” You’ll silent send these wishes to them twice.
Next you pick a difficult person. It doesn’t need to be your mortal enemy, just someone a little challenging for you, perhaps a relative or someone in your extended friend group or a colleague at work. In all sincerity, as someone in our lives and another human being, we can wish them this, two times: “May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you live today with ease.”
Finally you zoom out to your block, your neighborhood, your city, your state, your country, your continent, and then zoom out to all living creatures around the world, all of the humans and animals alive in this moment. Zoom all the way out and send everyone with a heartbeat alive in the world: “May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you live today with ease.”
Then you can zoom in and finally all the way back to yourself and, if you have time, send these well wishes to the most important person in your life, the author of your life, which is hopefully you!
This meditation works deeply to make our brains more naturally compassionate, and Sharon says it works if you do this only six minutes a day for two months. Please let us know how it goes if you do this! (Just email us at sit@thepath.com).
2. Thoughts
Teaching the power of positive thinking - how we can use our mind to overcome insecurities (Athens, Greece)
We have more control over our thoughts than you might think. I would suggest a simple technique I learned in a great online course called Finders Course, which suggests saying “cancel cancel” to yourself anytime you have a thought in your mind that is not helpful to you. It’s such a fun, playful thing to do, and it works!
Another option is to notice a thought that you don’t want to stay with you and then choose to let it float away, just like you would do during meditation!
We are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are not us. We can choose to nurture thoughts that are helpful for us, not vice versa.
3. Leveling Up
You can choose to level up!
Many people are not acting as their highest selves now, because of stress in their personal or professional lives. It’s important to remember the adage that “hurt people hurt people,” and to not take things personally if someone acts badly to you.
Ground Floor
If someone says or does something hurtful to me, I like to immediately picture the levers of an old-school elevator. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stay on the ground floor, at level zero, and respond with anger back. Being mindful does not mean being a doormat or letting people treat you badly, so you can use your judgement as to when the best thing is to defend yourself or to meet mean with mean!
Third Floor
But sometimes it’s better to go up to the middle level, the third floor, and to shrug your shoulders, smile, and simply move on with your day. This is the choice to not allow someone else’s negative energy or bad day to impact you! We always have this choice, to decide we don’t want to let something affect us deeply.
Up to the Top Floor
Other times the right thing to do is to go all the way up to the top, the 6th floor, and to respond to someone with love and kindness, even if they’ve just done something that really doesn’t feel kind! This choice, this freedom in our minds, is something we all have. Choosing to take that freedom is what I call “leveling up.” And meditation makes it much easier to make this choice.
I was once walking in Soho when someone bumped me, right on the shoulder. I could even hear a loud “thump!” On instinct I yelled to the woman who had hit me, “Stop!” A bystander stopped to watch what was about to happen. I said, “Come here.” She moved closer. And then I did something that surprised her, the bystander, and myself as well! I asked, “Are you having a tough day?” She looked at me quizzically. The bystander looked confused.
“If you’re having a bad day,” I said, “I just want to send you love and to say that I hope your day gets better. Could I give you a hug?” She nodded, moving closer. I hugged her. The bystander couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. “I’m sorry you’ve had a rough day,” I said. I was starting to cry. The woman who had hit me started to cry. The bystander said, “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
We all moved on with our day deeply moved. And happy. And knowing we had made a connection. I felt great. And this is the power of leveling up. We can get there and find that freedom in our minds if we choose to meditate and take control of our thoughts.
This may feel non-obvious, but it is essential to understand that we can't control what happens to us, only our responses, and we can train ourselves to have a wide range of freedom in how we want to mindfully respond to people and situations in our lives.
We offer wellbeing at work programs to help your teams get better at each of these, and many other tips for living happier, easier lives — please click here to learn more or email us at sit@thepath.com. We are here for you and to make sure your teams are living their healthiest, best lives possible, at work and outside of work too!