Mindfulness At Work

Hey. I guess I'm live. Maybe? I don't know. How could I tell? I thought that was going to get like a countdown or something. Let's see. Is it the way to tell who's joined live? This is my first one if you're already here and I can't see you. Let's see. Oh, there's Anna. Hey, how are you? Thank you for joining because I was like, am I doing this right? Am I on live? Am I not live? So it's really helpful to see someone pop in here and how this works. Hey, can you send me a comment to let me know how the audio is and also so I can see how comments look.

Thank you. There's an they say, audio is good. Thumbs up. They see and I did this live the other day and he did a thumbs up and it made all these animations happen. Hey, angels. Welcome. We're just getting started and this is my first time live on Kadri working and sounds great. Good. Oh, so we have audio and video. This is like, oh, hi, tech. It's so cool. So Shannon, welcome. Tools. Good morning. Welcome. I'm Stephen. I'll get started in a few minutes and give people a few moments to join us. Yes, my first time in the Kadri Seer.

So I'm very excited. Oh, a little heart just popped up. That's cool. Did I do that? So let's see, I'm Stephen, a friend of JC's for a long, long time and a meditation teacher. So I teach meditation every day all day and it's awesome. I love it. I spent about 25 years working in tech before I made the move and I spent about the same amount of time practicing meditation of some sort. I speak wonder. I started practicing mindfulness or meditation at the end of yoga classes. So I was taking yoga classes in Boston and my teacher would often end classes with some sort of guided meditation, generally like a yoga knee drop practice where we would do a body scan.

Occasionally you're loving kindness practice. And at the time, I didn't really know a ton about mindfulness and meditation. So for me, it was kind of a break, a way to rest after a challenging asana practice. And we would go through this rigorous yoga practice. And at that time, I was practicing it with Baron Baptiste in his Baptiste studio in Boston. Although shortly after it's when I moved to a different studio and practice with his teacher who included meditations at the end of his classes. So for a long time, my kind of exposure to meditation and mindfulness was about rest and calm.

And it was about finding quiet and peace in at the end of a busy class in a class where I have really exerted myself. I went on like that for quite a long time. And the practice served me well. I don't think that it was particularly deep or that I had any, oh, epiphanies out of the practice. But I like the relaxation that I would get at the end of class . And that kind of shifted maybe eight years ago, something like that. I had some personal stuff going on. And I kind of was going through this transition.

I was becoming a dad . I have two young boys, one who's five and one who's seven. And I realized it just wasn't showing up in the way that I wanted to. So I went on this kind of inner work journey. And I got involved in the men's work community and sat in lots of circles and spaces like that. I also got involved in some shadow work programs and started to excavate my own shadow, kind of the maybe capital and lowercase t traumas from my youth. And all of those programs had some sense of, you know, let's drop in.

And there was some sort of mini meditation practice or an encouragement to start a practice on your own. And I started, I do those programs for maybe a couple of years. And eventually I realized I didn't feel like I was getting better. I actually felt like I had been resurfacing a lot of trauma and holding space for other people. Hey, Luke. Welcome. And it holding space for other men who were in these circles who were also sharing their trauma. But it wasn't providing a relief. I wasn't feeling a sense of relief from that suffering.

So ultimately I decided to stop all of those kinds of programs. I stopped participating in men's work circles and shadow work programs and all of the other somatic experiencing, you name it. And I said, I'm just going to take some time off and I'm going to practice. And I'm going to do it on my own. I'm just going to meditate. And what was kind of amazing about that decision was it wasn't complicated. I would be in the car and I would arrive to my kids preschool a little bit earlier than they were about to be released.

And I would meditate in my car. Hello, Ennila. Welcome. Yeah, so I would sit in my car and I would do a meditation practice. And often that practice was just sitting, focusing my attention on the breath. And every time my mind would wander, I would bring it back to the breath. And after about a month of practicing in that way, all of a sudden I started to notice all of these shifts, the way that I was showing up and how I was more present with my children, my partner, getting more done at work, able to focus more, how I was sleeping so much better.

And I was managing stress in a whole different way. As I mentioned early, I was a technology guy for 25 years and was in a fairly stressful role. And all of a sudden the simple practice that I was doing every day in my car provided me the relief from suffering that I was looking for. And I was like, wow. Hello , did you meditate before picking up a kiddo? Yeah, so I would probably get there about 25 minutes or a half hour before they were released from school. And generally would sit in the car for 20 minutes or so.

I kind of got a reputation among the other parents in this preschool, as they would all show up and be parking next to me and see me sitting in my car with my eyes closed, look like I was taking a nap, but then realized that I was actually meditating. I did not use an app. I had some guidance from a teacher friend of mine, which was incredibly helpful in getting started. And yeah, I just practiced on my own and did not kind of listen to background or guided meditations, although now I find guided meditations really, really helpful.

And that's after having been in the practice deeply for five years or so. And yeah, I love the practice so much that I ultimately decide I want to deepen . And I went to Brown University in Rhode Island and studied to teach mindfulness and meditation in their MBSR teacher training program, which is a kind of a comprehensive in- depth program. It's a six year meditation teacher training program and have studied in many other places. So with the path in New York City and with Dharma Moon and the Tibet House, which is the Western Cultural Center of the Dalai Lama, the Mindfulness and Health Institute , the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation, I've kind of really done a lot of training.

And it was wonderful because it really was helping me to deepen my own practice, but also how do I share this practice with other people? And that's why I'm here at Kajra. So thanks for the lengthy introduction. I'm here to talk about mindfulness at work on Mondays. And there 's three areas when I've gone into corporate environments or talk to people, executives in private sessions about how they can incorporate mindfulness and how mindfulness can help them. There's three areas that often come up and we're going to work towards those in these live streams.

Hi, Anna. Again, thank you. The first is stress. So people are feeling stressed . Life is challenging and hard. And there's work stress. There's life stress. There's balancing work in life. And that has changed so much over the past few years. As we've dealt with the pandemic, as we've dealt with shifts in the kind of way that we work and being able to work remotely. And what does that mean for us having kids out of school for long periods of time? So stress can be a real thing. And something that mindfulness certainly can help with.

And the other is sleep. So people going to work, they want to feel well rested when they go to work. And it's really helpful to feel like you've gotten a good night's sleep. And it's a challenge in our society for people to sleep as well as they could and get enough sleep. Oftentimes, that can be exacerbated or made worse by these ruminating thoughts that just won't shut off when you're trying to lay down and go to sleep. And mindfulness as a practice over time can help you develop and cultivate the ability to bring your focus to the area and a thing that you want and to quiet that ruminating mind that's simply running amok.

And therefore leads to better sleep, certainly better sleep. I used to be a two-benidryl, a guy day, every single day I would take benidryl in order to help me sleep. And now I don't have to, which are really nice. And I take naps, which I never did before either. Who likes naps? I want to see more hearts. If you like naps, I want to see more hearts. So the third area that mindfulness often comes into the profession or the work environment is just our ability to focus. And there's been this kind of undercurrent conversation for so long about multitasking and being able to do multiple things at one time, which we could discuss whether that's a real thing or not.

But our ability to actually just focus on the one thing that we want to concentrate on that's important for us at the moment is really important. And it's something that our attention is constantly in demand. We're constantly getting notifications on the phone and emails and the phones are ringing out. Kids and partners and co-workers, they all want our attention. You walk down the street, you see ads, you see all these things enticing us and trying to steal our attention away. And as that happens, it can become harder and harder to focus.

And using practices like mindfulness can help us to bring our focus into one concentrated place and our ability to maintain our focus in that place. So let's see, we're going to do a practice here in a few moments, but I want to talk a little bit about three kind of major mechanisms of mindfulness and how they come into play in our practice and things that are worthwhile to keep in mind. And I would say, you know, I often teach live and teaching in this environment where we're, I can't see you. It's really helpful sometimes to get feedback, particularly in the chat and the little heart icons, just so I know that you're kind of agreeing.

So if something I'm saying doesn't resonate or if it really does, I would love to hear comments. Oh, there are some hearts. Thank you for the hearts. I would love to hear comments or some feedback just so I know we're on the same page. So one of the reasons I went to Brown in particular was that Brown University's mindfulness center is really leading the charge in scientific research around how mindfulness practice impacts the brain or neurobiology, how that interacts with psychology. And the MBSR program in particular is a program that's been around for 40 years.

So because it is a standardized program, it could be tested and we can measure what happens as people go through a program like that. So having that foundation of research and scientific literature that supports the practices and validates them was really important to me. I didn't want to simply be a what I like to call a "meditainment person ," we were just putting out kind of fun, nice, lovely, guided meditations and although that's nice and I do do that sometimes, what I really want is I want people to find relief from suffering, from stress, and I want to help them learn the practices that are going to get them there.

So all of this research about the efficacy of mindfulness and where it works and where it doesn't work, it's revealed three kind of mechanisms that are at play in our mindfulness practice and that are important to consider, the first of which is our intentions. So why are we practicing? In fact, in the very first class of many MBSR curriculum courses or even workshops that I teach, kind of the first question that I often ask is what brings you here? And inevitably, there's a whole variety of reasons people want to relax or people are dealing with chronic pain, people are having trouble sleeping, there could be lots and lots of reasons.

And connecting with and understanding your intentions for practice is a really powerful motivator because sometimes you need a little motivation, you need to be reminded, why are you doing this? Why am I going to go sit on my cushions and practice for a while? So having a clear picture of what your intentions are is really supportive. And I should say that intentions can shift. Sometimes our intention when we start practice is I'm stressed out. And over time, you can manage the stress better. That doesn't mean it's time to stop practicing.

It might mean that your intention is to shift the way that you show up at work. And if you have employees or team members, it's about shifting the way that you interact with them and what kind of leader you are and what kind of example you're setting. So while your intention may be very kind of short term or maybe very personal initially, oftentimes we see those intentions evolving over time. So checking in with them regularly to figure out to remind yourself of why you're practicing is important.

The second mechanism is attention or moving from intention to attention. And as I mentioned before, our attention is constantly in demand. People are always, you know, people, phones, devices, everything is always commanding our attention. And being able to take our attention and focus it in the way that we want is a really important skill. It is a it's something that everyone can learn. It 's something that over time our brains will respond to the practice and be able to focus and direct our attention in a more specific way.

So attention is really important. And then the third and sometimes maybe not as obvious is our attitudes about practice. And it's really easy, particularly when you're practicing on your own, or if you don't have the live teacher that you can interact with, it can be challenging to practice on your own when you don't know if what you 're experiencing is the right thing. And you may have thoughts that pop up while you're supposed to be focusing all your attention on your breath. And all of a sudden a thought comes up and you 're caught in a story.

And it may make you feel like, Hey, I'm really bad at this meditation thing, or meditation isn't working for me, or I just can't meditate. And being able to meet those moments when practice doesn't go the way that you imagine it's supposed to go with curiosity and kindness and some self compassion is a really important part of practice. I can't emphasize it enough. So these three things together, they the intention, attention, and our attitude actually come together in the most commonly used definition for mindfulness, which is that mindfulness is paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment.

And you can see how those three mechanisms that we just talked about are present in that definition that was created by John Caputson. So we're paying attention. We've talked about attention as one of the three mechanisms on purpose. So we're doing it intentionally without judgment. And the opposite of that made with some kindness. So our attitude about practice. So there you go. All right. Thank you, Anna, for timing in and for the hearts that have been coming in. Now I'm going to move into a period of practice.

So we're on our phones. You may be in the car. You may be walking. You may be sitting at your desk, watching this, your phone sitting on the desk, but any of those things is okay. The first thing before we move into practice is just take care of yourself during practice. So if you're driving, probably don't close your eyes. Right? You maybe this is something that's better to watch the recording of than to try to do live. If you're walking, you certainly can do these practices while you're walking.

Excuse me. Sorry about that. You certainly can do these practices while you are walking. And if you at work, you certainly can do these practices as well. If you don't have any kind of special setup, you know, I happen to practice typically sitting on a cushion on the floor behind me, but you can do that equally sitting in a chair or sitting in the front seat of your car. So for today, I will practice sitting in my chair. And to follow along, you know, you can just start moving into a comfortable position in your chair.

What does that mean? Maybe not sitting back in your chair where you're slouching, but sitting upright so that your shoulders remain stacked over your hips. If you're in a chair again, feet flat on the floor, trying not to cross them at the ankles, I can often need to some pin the needle sensations, tire them out. You just feet flat on the floor. And then your hands can rest on your knees. They can be pumped up or pumps down . You can just rest your hands in your lap. Whatever feels comfortable. Sometimes putting a pillow in your lap can be really helpful because it takes some of the pressure off your shoulders as you're sitting.

Now, this practice is probably going to be 10 minutes long, so you'll probably be okay without a pillow. But when you practice in the future, just know that can be a really helpful support. I use one all the time. So as you're arriving here, feel free to just take your gaze and send it down to the ground or the surface or the desk in front of you. You need to close your eyes halfway so that you soften your gaze. You're not really concentrating or focusing on any one thing. You're just kind of looking down.

If it feels supportive and safe for you today, you can certainly close your eyes for practice. That's okay. And then start to just bring your attention to your whole body sitting here breathing. Just noticing. Not trying to change anything, just kind of becoming aware of the body breathing and sitting. Your feet on the floor, your hands in your lap, your chest rising and falling. Slowly, we're making this shift from all of the doing that we do all day to just being here, making an intentional shift from doing the being mode.

Maybe noticing any thoughts you may have. Notice any emotions that may be there. Any particular sensations in your body that may be standing out or calling your attention to them. Noticing any impulses or urges. Lots of taking a nap or getting me out of here. Whatever's kind of going on in mind. And then I'll remind you again of those questions that I brought up earlier. So what has brought you here for this time that we're spending together? What do you think of this practice and why is it important to you to try?

Thinking about what is your intention for this time. Maybe nothing comes up at first and that's totally okay. Just letting the question sit there for a few moments. What is your intention for this time? You're ready to shift practice a bit. I'm going to move to an attention practice. This one was inspired by summer nights with my little boys. In fact, last week it was really warm and we had a tent set up in the backyard. We were in the tent with a flashlight and just kind of watching fireflies listening to frogs.

And then we started making the shadow puppets on the sides of the tent. Noticing how we can focus the beam of the flashlight and make the images of the shadows of our hands small and really focused on the side of the wall or we can draw the light back and make the shadow bigger and bigger and bigger which is really fun. And we can do that with our attention as well. We can either have broad beam of our attention taking in our whole body sitting here or we can shine that flashlight of our attention on specific areas of our body.

But when you're ready, moving that flashlight of your attention down to your feet all of your awareness into your feet sitting on the floor, being in your shoes or socks, noticing any sensations you feel here. You can notice the individual toes or the space between the toes. And you have a really specific sensation on the heel and you can narrow that beam of your attention down. Just focus on the heel for a moment. And you might not feel any sensation here at all. That is totally okay and totally normal.

When you're ready, moving that flashlight beam up to your legs. You probably have to broaden the attention a bit to take in both of your legs as you're sitting here. Maybe the feelings of your hands resting in your lap, your seat on the chair. Let's space behind the knees. And when you're ready, when it feels steady and safe and comfortable, move that flashlight of your attention from your legs up to your torso, taking in your whole torso sitting here. Noticing to be any movements and the sensations of digestion or sounds.

The way that your belly may expand and contract as you breathe. The way your chest might rise and fall. And not just at the front of the body, so also the back of your torso. Noticing any sensations in your lower back or your upper back. Places where we often can carry tension. Just noticing. Maybe you've relaxed a bit, maybe not. Not necessarily trying to change anything here, we're just trying to be aware of what's here. And when you're ready, moving that flashlight aim of your attention from your torso, your hands.

Noticing the fingers and the palm of the hand. The back of the hands. The way they're resting. The way they may be in contact with your legs or each other in your lap. Checking in with your thoughts. That you're feeling right now. Any emotions that made me hear. Any impulses or urges. Knowing that it's totally okay that thoughts come up. Even though we're focusing on our hands, you may have a story that pops into your mind and it carries you away. That's okay and that's part of the practice actually.

Because when you notice that you've been carried away by a thought, in that moment that you've noticed, that's a moment of mindfulness and you can bring your attention back. So keeping in mind our kind attitude. Just being curious about what you observe, what's in your awareness. Which can contain everything, all of our experience. Good, bad, neutral. And finally, when you're ready, moving your attention from your hands up to your head. Widing the focus a bit so you can take in your whole head here.

The jaw. The lips. The brow. Through ears. The top of your head. The back of your head. And from here, when you're ready, let's expand that beam of our attention so you can take in the whole body sitting here again. Just noticing what's here now. And when you're ready, if your eyes have been closed, you can gently open them. Maybe take a wiggle. A little movement. Come back. And congratulations, you just had a few moments of mindfulness. Where we explored our intention about why you hear, why you're practicing.

We worked with our attention, how we can move it around. And our attitude for practice. That kind, curious sense of wonder. Wonder, by the way, is one of my absolute favorite words. So when I see speak wonder pop up on the feed, I'm like, ah, I got to talk about wonder. But that will be for another day. So thank you all for your practice, for the hearts, for bearing with me as I get used to being in this space, in this app. I'll be back next Monday and we'll be building what we learned today. So moving from this ability to move our attention around to anchoring our attention.

We'll play with that a little bit next week. For now, I'll be, ah, I will be on the feed, so I'm happy to answer comments. I'd love to hear from you. And I'm guessing this gets posted somewhere and people can comment on it. Is that correct? Thank you, Anilah. Thank you. So after the live is over, I'm assuming this gets published somewhere in the app. And then people can leave comments, is that correct? And if so, I'd be happy to answer questions and continue the conversation there . Maybe on the left.

Can't tell when people leave. All right. Well, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll figure it out afterwards. So thank you all and we'll talk again soon. All right. Have a good one.