Mindfulness: Bringing Meditation to the Workplace

Dear Readers,

Meditation is a critical part of my daily routine, and central to my mental health and emotional maturity. That said, I hesitated for years before bringing my practice into the work environment and sharing it with others (outside of an occasional 1:1 lesson). At the time it was too near and dear to my heart. I was threatened by the vulnerability of bringing this intimate part of my personal life into the work context.

But 5 years ago I was asked by some dear friends at New Relic to share my journey with a live  audience of 600 colleagues. So I ripped the band-aid off and embedded a 5 minute meditation in the middle of my 20 minute talk. It was well received and it inspired a lot of interesting conversations with curious friends and acquaintances. 

Months later, and the COVID pandemic had spread to North America. In order to help thousands of Relics face the reality of lock-down, I was asked to provide a 30 minute meditation once a week. Now I had a new challenge. I no longer felt as exposed leading meditation to large groups, but I didn’t have a large portfolio of meditations to draw from. Zen is a practice of simple, silent sitting. The extent of guidance is generally “sit, don’t move, don’t make noise”. So I had to create my own set of meditations, using a combination of inspiration from others and trial-and-error. I’m sharing the fruits of this labor in hopes that others can fast forward to bringing this powerful practice to their workplace.

General format:

Length: 20 minutes

I find that 20 minutes is the sweet spot for a work meditation session. With a 30 minute meeting invite this gives 5 minutes for people to join and 5 minutes to decompress and get back into the swing of the day. 

Time of day: Early morning

This can be challenging to navigate with many time zones, but I find that a workday meditation is most valuable as close to the start of the work day as possible.

Start with posture

Any time I’m guiding with people that are new (to me) I will give a quick overview of current posture. Meditation is an embodied activity. Having a posture that allows you to breathe deeply and sit upright without straining will allow you to have a fuller meditation experience. I stress the following points:

1. Hips above knees.

   • Regardless of whether you are sitting on a chair, a bench, or a cushion on the floor, having your hips above your knees will open up your lower abdomen, allowing for deeper breathing. This will generally mean putting a firm cushion on your chair.

2. Don’t let your hips roll. 

   • Your lower back should be at a 90 degree angle from your legs. This allows all of the weight of your upper body to rest naturally on your hips. If your hips roll, rounding your lower back, your weight will be on your lower back muscles, leading to strain.

3. Straighten your spine.

   • The most helpful tool I’ve learned for this is imagining that my spinal column is the string of a balloon that is floating above my head. This allows me to straighten my spine without overextending.

4. Relax your hands in your lap.

Settle into breathing

Even with experienced meditators, I always start with a quick settle into breath. I say:

Concentrate on one part of your body where you can feel the breath passing in and out. It could be your nostrils, your belly, or anywhere in between. But keep your awareness in one place and feel your breath. Without holding your breath, let each exhale be a little longer than the last.

I then give about 30 seconds for everyone to settle into a slow, mellow breathing pattern.

The best guide is there for the journey

When I guide meditation, I meditate. I am not talking through a set of steps, I am describing my own process as I follow it. I personally find this essential to keep the best pace and tone. And it means that I get to benefit from the meditation as well!

Example Meditations

Here is my go-to list of guided meditations. As I mentioned earlier, I went through a lot of trial and error, and these are the survivors of that process. There were some meditation techniques that I personally love that did not resonate with others. There were others that were awkward to guide. I have found that all of these techniques are both accessible to people with no meditation experience and offer powerful experiences to those who meditate regularly on their own.

Loving Kindness (Metta)

This is the most “buddhist” meditation technique I share at work, but it is also the most often requested. For fans of “Thinking Fast and Slow” this meditation is mentioned in the context of a study that showed that practicing it regularly increases activity in the parts of our brain associated with compassion.

There are a lot of variations on this meditation, but my favorite is from “Recovery Dharma” (available as a free download) . The general format is that we extend compassion towards ourselves, followed by someone we hold dear, followed by someone who we feel neutral towards, followed by someone we find difficult. Finally we extend this feeling of compassion in an ever growing circle until it contains the whole universe.

Meditation on Poetry

I love this meditation. It gives a lot of room for personalization, as you choose whichever poets you find most inspiring. The format I have used is:

• Read a poem by Poet A

• Pause for 2 minutes

• Read a poem by Poet B

• Pause for 2 minutes

• Read a poem by Poet A

• Pause for 2 minutes

• Read a poem by Poet B

• Pause for 2 minutes

• Read a poem by Poet A

• Pause for 2 minutes

• Read a poem by Poet B

• Pause for 2 minutes

This ends up being between 20 and 25 minutes. Feel free to experiment. You could have all one poet, or 6 different poets!

Feeling Tones

This is one of a few body-scan based meditations in my rotation. It’s a great way to objectively observe sensations and what it means to like or dislike them. While you can explore this practice with any of the five senses, I generally stick to the sense of touch as it is independent of environment. That said, if you are practicing outside this is very fun to do with the sense of hearing.

After settling down into breathing I start by explaining “feeling tones” . A feeling tone describes what you’re experiencing as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. It is usually easiest for us to notice unpleasant feeling tones, slightly more difficult to find pleasant tones, and often quite challenging to find neutral tones.

After this intro, we start a body scan at the tip of our scalps. Passing down through the body, we pause anywhere we find a sensation that we find unpleasant. Without trying to make it go away (this can be a challenge) we simply observe the feeling. I give a minute for this exploration, and then ask the participants to “take a step back” from this feeling they have found, and explore the sensation of “unpleasantness” itself.

Repeat this exercise with positive and neutral feeling tones.

Hakuin’s Soft-Butter Meditation

This slow body scan meditation promotes deep relaxation. I like to use this one if I’m struggling to get to sleep. Popularized by Zan master Hakuin in the 18th century, you can read the backstory here.

Start by picturing a ball of soft butter the size of a grapefruit perched on the top of your head. It smells like your favorite aromas and is warm to the touch. Feel it very slowly and gently start to melt, allowing soft, soothing fluid to coat your scalp. It is dripping down VERY slowly, and as it reaches an inch from the top of you scalp, you start to feel it soaking and penetrating your scalp itself, all the way through your skull to coat your brain itself.

Slowly follow this progression to describe how the warm fluid slowly coats and penetrates your entire head. Pausing at pressure points like the temples, the base of the skill, and the jaw mussels to encourage relaxation there. Continue this process down the neck and allow it to coath and penetrate the shoulders and top of the chest. 

At this point start focusing attention on the internal organs. Feel how the warm fluid soothes your lungs and spreads warmth throughout your bloodstream. Similarly for the heart. When you get to the lower abdomen describe the soothing and relaxation of your digestive system, as well as your abdominal muscles and lower back. At this point the arms and hands should also be coated, hit these points as you pass them.

Once the abdomen is totally coated and filled with soothing fluid, let it pass over and through the legs. This part will probably go faster than the head and torso, but make sure to pause at the knees and ankles to focus on relaxing them.

This meditation is a perfect example of how participating in the meditation you are guiding can improve the guidance. It’s going to be a lot easier to follow the flow of attention down the body if you are doing so yourself.

Conclusion

I occasionally slip other techniques in, but these are my go-tos. Once you have more experience with these, you’ll start to get a feel of when and how to use them best. For example, I once used Loving Kindness to set the stage before a leadership offsite that I knew would have a lot of hard conversations. This helped us all come together with empathy and a felt sense of best intentions on all sides.

I hope you enjoy these techniques through many hours of meditation!