How to Bring Daily Mindfulness Into Your Workplace

I’d like to inspire you to bring mindfulness practice into your workplace and your daily work life. It can be simpler than you think.

You can, of course, do your own meditation in your lunch breaks and do mindfulness practices at work (such as the STOP breath practice) – I hope many of you already do these sorts of practices.

But it’s even more powerful if you can get your colleagues on board so that together you can do practices that help you operate as a calm and emotionally-aware team.

If you’re interested in this, I’d love you to read this fantastic article written by a doctor in the emergency department at a hospital in Tasmania – one of the most stressful work environments I can imagine! As a team they have brought mindfulness practices into how they function together every day. It’s really inspiring!

HOW TO START USING MINDFULNESS WITH YOUR WORKMATES

If you’d like to start doing mindfulness practices and group meditation with your workmates, it’s ideal if a few of you have done mindfulness training (even just an Introductory workshop, such as the one I offer, is enough).

Once you have a few colleagues on board and keen to do regular practice, here are a few approaches you can use:

  1. Start a group daily meditation session
    • Arrange with senior management and/or those responsible for wellbeing in your workplace to find a room that can be made available for 10-20 minutes each lunch time. You could start with once a week or go for once a day.
    • Invite all staff to join you – emphasise that beginners are welcome, no experience is necessary.
    • Designate one of your mindfulness team to lead the group each time – this can be as simple as playing an audio guided meditation (here are some of mine that you can use!).
  2. Start each team meeting with a 3 minute silent mindfulness break
    • Talk with your senior manager (or whoever leads the team meetings) and ask if a new practice could be introduced at the start of each meeting where the group enjoys 3 minutes of silence.
    • At the start of the meeting you or the meeting Chair should explain to the group that the 3 minutes of silence is a mindfulness break and they can choose to focus on their breathing – but just sitting quietly is equally beneficial.
  3. Encourage your team members to do regular STOP practices throughout the day – Here is a PDF download to print and stick around the office: STOP Practice downloadable
    • Share this STOP practice PDF with your colleagues and encourage them to try it out.
    • You can also do a STOP practice at the start of each meeting.

I hope that gives you some inspiration to bring more mindfulness into your working days.!

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