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If Mindfulness Is The Silver Bullet Of Great Future Leaders, Why Is The Movement Struggling to Grab Employers' Attention?

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I recently had a disagreement with a former surgeon about whether healthy living was determined by behaviour or environment.

Sneh Khemka, now president of international population health solutions at health insurer Aetna, believes that our environment determines our state of health while I, being a self-confessed health and fitness fanatic, argued that self-motivation and determination was more influential.

This was before my life-changing holiday to Thailand in July. I spent two weeks on a detox/yoga retreat at The Sanctuary in Koh Phangan, which involved fasting, yoga and meditation.

I was hooked and determined to maintain my yoga and meditation practice when I returned to London. That lasted a week, despite the vast benefits of yoga and meditation, which generally amount to a calmer, more productive and generally nicer me. But more importantly, they help to create a more mindful state of being.

I simply hadn’t appreciated the effort involved in getting up at 5am for my daily practice or the difficulty involved in blocking out the usual city distractions of road traffic and planes on the flight path above my flat - a sharp contrast to the soothing sounds of the jungle in Thailand.

I didn’t, and have never, considered pursuing any type of exercise in the workplace, not least because of the lack of suitable facilities and general support from my employers.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is basically the act of being aware of ourselves and of our surroundings. It involves doing fewer things more effectively, which is bizarre concept for most of us leading our super busy lives. Nevertheless, I remain determined to recapture some of the nourishing health benefits of the mindfulness techniques that I learnt during my Thai retreat, as well as at a mindfulness course at the London Buddhist Centre a few years ago, so last weekend I attended a pilot mindfulness course, dubbed an ‘urban retreat’.

Meditation guru Maitreyabandhu took the course, which is based on his book, Life with full attention. The book grew out of a six-week mindfulness course he initiated at the London Buddhist Centre, which was designed to guide people on the path of mindfulness. He is working with former lawyer Heather Phillips on developing a similar course, or course modules, for corporate use and so the course opened with a simple explanation of the concept of mindfulness and the importance of practice in every day life.

While on the retreat, Maitreyabandhu explained how cultivating a fit mind is like cultivating a fit body; it’s gradual and can’t be forced. He believes that a fit mind is characterized by integration, which he defines as being focused rather than distracted, and emotional strength, which means becoming more imaginative and insightful and learning to live with change.

He identified common barriers to developing a fit mind, such as our literate minds that assess and evaluate every aspect of our daily lives, reducing events and emotions to the extremes of good or bad, positive or negative and a success or a failure. He urged us to accept life events and emotions as they are, to feel them rather than think about them and to work through them, which I think is a valuable approach in business.

Maitreyabandhu said: “I think that we’ve become so saturated with thought that even our awareness of our body becomes about thought. Our preoccupation with thought leads to a disregard for, and an inability to, notice bodily sensations, but as soon as you step into your body you’re creating more room in your mind, which is when you can open your imagination.”

Maitreyabandhu believes that we need to be in charge of ourselves and our minds to be able to lead others. He said: “People want to follow leaders with fit minds.”

But he warned that our minds and behaviour need to work together for our mindfulness efforts to be authentic, which he said could only be achieved if we regularly (ideally at least daily) disconnect from the world and reconnect with ourselves.

Daily practice

Mindfulness appeals to me because of its relative ease of application; we don’t have to sit and meditate to enjoy the benefits, although this enhances the experience.

We can practice mindfulness through a range of simple activities such as daily walks, reducing our weekly chores, being mindful of others and being generous whenever possible. In his book, Maitreyabandhu describes generosity as an antidote to self-absorption, which he believes is ‘one of the major symptoms of depression’.

One of a range of simple exercises in which Maitreyabandhu invited course attendees, who included (mostly female) lawyers and corporate coaches, to participate on the retreat was an assessment of our daily schedules. He then asked us to identify which items made us feel most energised and asked us to consider how we might increase the frequency of such items, which is already working for me. For example, I’ve allocated more time to reading literature, without the distraction of the radio and the TV on in the background, and I’m already sleeping better, which is in turn making me more focused at work.

The fact that it is low-cost and doesn’t require special facilities in which to practice explains the appeal of mindfulness for employers. Google even has its own head of mindfulness, which proves that the movement is more than a fad and a potential silver bullet for forward-thinking companies.

So why are so many employers so scared of the movement?

Some organisations fear that mindfulness is a fluffy fad while others simply won't entertain procuring services that don't easily provide a return on investment with which they can secure buy-in from their finance directors. And then there are companies that simply don't know enough about mindfulness to take a view and haven't the time not inclination to research the subject further.

This seems a worrying oversight for companies working hard to develop their employee value propositions and/or in the throes of addressing their lack of leadership.

If I sat down again with Aetna’s Sneh tomorrow, I wouldn’t change my belief that self-motivation is key to healthy living, particularly mindfulness, but I may concede that my practice would be far more frequent if I had environmental support in the form of a quiet sanctuary – even at work - where I could disconnect from the world, if only for 20 minutes of my day.