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Gums in group meditation smartphone apps or even organic dance mindfulness comes in all shapes and sizes counting the breath on the exhale from one it’s the psychological process of feeling present in your own body by paying attention to the moments to your thoughts feelings and the environments around you it’s argued that stress anxiety and depression can
Be managed half of work absences last year in the uk were due to stress or mental health and companies are starting to take well-being seriously it’s no longer unusual for businesses to offer mindfulness meditation classes designed to reduce workers stress while increasing productivity steve jobs at apple you know he introduced proper programs you know then
You’ve got google doing it and these are creative innovative companies now you’ve got people like you know goldman sachs doing @h you know hbo procter & gamble when you invest in your staff in this way you get more out of them they’re obviously less stressed but also they become more innovative in their thinking more creative more productive claire’s also a
Qualified gong meditation master she compares mindfulness meditation where you concentrate on breathing the driving on a slow country road the gong meditation is more like hurtling down a motorway the destination is the same but you get there much more quickly so i take up an invitation to visit her home studio for a gong bath there are moments when your wasn’t
Really thinking about anything it’s almost like you’re in a coma kind of state and it’s not what you saying there cuz i definitely felt like i lost touch with time vo dancer or organic dance can also apparently lead to a state of mindfulness you become mindful of not just yourself but your relationship to others your relationship to the cosmos and beyond that
For some people that first opening circle is quite is the hardest bit to kind of be with a group of other people that they don’t know and hold their hand and connect yeah great this hand-holding as well you will can expect to be present in your own body and your mind will certainly have a holiday for a while because we don’t talk during the session so i might
Explain some exercises and dances that were that that i will suggest we do and then you listen to your own body’s reaction to the music it’s safe to say that my body doesn’t react brilliantly and the head remembering this can be loose my movements are particularly stiff when sue instructs us to form a circle and collectively reach deep into the well of desire
Dancing with a group of complete strangers is a disarmingly intimate experience sue instructs us to shake hands or embrace as we look deeply into each other’s eyes i struggle with this but i’m struck by how welcoming and sincere everyone seems to be and there’s a fleeting moment where i somehow manage to forget about how ridiculous i must look its roots lime
Buddhism but mindfulness is increasingly popular in the west in the us alone the meditation market is estimated to be worth over a billion dollars and it’s forecast to rise to over two billion dollars by 2022 and these days you don’t even have to put down your smartphone to do it headspace is one of several well-being apps on the market it says that it offers
Guided meditation to 54 million users across 190 countries managing anxiety letting go of stress putting down our phones so there’s a meditation about putting down your phone which is available on your phone mindfulness delivered via mobile device that provides a constant source of distraction sounds like a contradiction but headspace argues otherwise we actually
Recently published a study showing that using headspace for a short period of time just two weeks 10 minutes a day could can reduce compulsive internet use actually using your phone to meditate can reduce more problematic use of technology that could cause distress the body to online while testing the app i find the biggest challenge is finding the time to use it
This is something the app reinforces by sending push notifications to remind you when it’s feeling neglected force tracing li as i increase the duration of the meditations my mind’s increasingly drifts to all the other things that i could be getting on with the way that we live our lives is over stimulating there always has been stressed but it seems to we can’t
Escape it as easily now and our minds just don’t have the opportunity to to rest feeling overwhelmed burnout losing your temper flustered i think it’s fair to say i would i feel most of those things on any given day it’s increasingly an acute crisis that needs innovative solutions some critics argue that mindfulness has been commodified oversold and the people
With mental health struggles are being exploited for commercial gain in his book mcmahon fulness ronald percy contends that mindfulness has become a new capitalist spirituality the research has been showing that there are adverse effects such as fear and anxiety and panic nobody’s asking why there’s so much stress for example in in corporate cultures when you’re
Told to sit in a corner and watch your breath instead of collaborating and organizing with your co-workers to maybe ask some difficult questions about about what’s going on in the workplace so yeah i take issue with the pacification of function of corporate mindfulness for sure after spending a couple of weeks trying out different programs it’s clear to me that
What works for one person won’t necessarily work for another and it isn’t as simple as just closing your eyes and trying out a breathing technique it might not happen straight away and finding the time to fit it into a busy schedule isn’t easy it turns out that mindfulness can be hard work you
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Why mindfulness is big business | FT By Financial Times