This week I’ve been delivering a number of sessions at organisations. It’s so exciting to be part of the movement toward prioritising wellbeing and good mental health in the work place. There are some fantastic organisations out there giving time and finances toward staff care. One of the sessions I ran this week was our popular Stress Session in collaboration with the fantastic Work Well Being. The session looks at all things stress, exploring the causes, the manifestations, the costs and some solutions to stress.
One of the areas we look at as a strategy to deal with stress is mindfulness. Mindfulness is an umbrella term that covers a whole host of useful practices.
On the course we look at being with emotions, a simple technique of labelling your emotions when they become particularly intense. For example if you are feeling nervous, identifying where in your body you feel those nerves, what they feel like (a rock in your stomach… a tightening in the chest) and staying with the emotion until the feeling lessens.
Another strategy is box breathing, something that was initially developed by the forces to deal with challenging situations, but now a process used by yogis and mindfulness practitioners.
And the final point I share in the session around mindfulness is meditation. In the session we do a simple body scan, not dissimilar to the Head Spaceapproach. I can’t recommend meditation enough. It’s an opportunity to step away from our busy lives and reflect inwards. Our gremlins might have us believe that taking time for ourselves is selfish, but I absolutely beg to differ. If we all took the time to reflect and connect to our inner selves we would approach the world more peacefully, and connect more easily to empathy, compassion and love. So if Head Space isn’t your thing you might like to try the Deepak and Oprah free meditation experience.
It’s so exciting to see how the prioritisation of self care, wellbeing and resiliency building is now coming into light as one of the most important things we can do for ourselves, and if we are in a management position, for our staff too.
If you’d like to discuss how Bird can help you support yourself or your team, drop us an email.
Sending love, Hannah
*Image by Dingzeyu Li www.unsplash.com