by Don Sadler
To be successful, every company must regularly reevaluate and reinvent itself. More and more, corporate America is beginning to acknowledge the benefits of meditation and is bringing this ancient practice into their modern workplace.
Why? Because the benefits of meditation for every employee are undeniable: clarity of thought, release of stress, enhanced creativity, and the ability to see situations and solve problems from a unique and fresh perspective.
From large, well-recognized corporations to small and mid-sized enterprises, many CEOs, business owners and entrepreneurs are recognizing that meditation (and its allied practices) can have a positive impact on the health, performance and leadership qualities of each employee as well as the bottom line of their company.
“Stress now costs U.S. businesses more than $300 billion a year, according to the American Institute of Stress, and meditation is a proven stress reliever,” says Leonard Perlmutter, founder of the American Meditation Institute (AMI), and author of the award-winning book The Heart and Science of Yoga. “Accumulations of stress can prevent the million-dollar idea from occurring if the mind is not calm enough to receive it and have that eureka moment.”
A corporate meditation educator since 1996, Perlmutter has created a structured Corporate Meditation Program that he says is designed to fit easily in the business workday and maximize an organization’s return on investment. “The training can be done in-house, with ongoing email and phone coaching support for each participant. This program makes it easy and practical for businesses and their employees to learn how to meditate and to experience the personal and professional benefits of the practice.”
“Today’s business world is full of uncertainty, volatility and rapid change. None of these factors will go away. They’ll only be amplified as the pace of technology increases,” adds Chris Walton, a performance psychologist and behavior change specialist in the United Kingdom. “The 21 st century business environment is increasingly stressful as we try to do more with less resources in the same number of hours in a day. To perform at their best in today’s corporate world, employees must be healthy and energized and they must achieve the proper work-life balance,” Walton says. “So what’s the solution? We need something that is scientifically proven to bring synchronization, relaxation and healing to our mind and body on a daily basis.
Walton believes that meditation is one of the main solutions to the problems plaguing the 21 st century workplace. “meditation is simply a deep relaxation and healing technique,” Walton says. “You do not have to be a Buddhist, a yogi or even religious or spiritual to enjoy the benefits of meditation. It is a simple technique that everyone can learn, including employees in the workplace.”