Meditation Techniques at Work

There are many images people carry in their mind about meditation techniques in action. One imagines sitting alone in a dedicated room at home or in a temple, class or centre. Meditating with your work colleagues as part of your usual working routine is not, however, an image that springs to mind for most people. Yet, this is exactly what happens at Idea Village – a company in Jersey, USA. Twice a week they leave their desks, sit in a group and meditate together.

The most interesting part is that after doing this for a year they discovered that their productivity has soared. "Sales have increased by about 50 percent over last year, and we seem to get about four or five times the number of products presented to us that we did last year," says President and CEO, Andy Khubani. "I don't know if this can all be attributed to meditation, but I definitely think it has helped."

There is no doubt, as anyone who has spent time practising one of any number of meditation techniques will attest, that meditation helps focus the mind. There is a lot of chatter going on in the brain all the time, so much so, that it is easy for a lot of it to get in the way of clear and focused thinking. The value of meditation is that it provides this chatter with a space. That does not mean that it helps to silence thought – far from it – good meditation is not about fighting against thought, but about observing it. Whatever meditation techniques are used, it will enable you to create a small space between yourself and your thoughts as you gain a gradually deepening realisation that you are not your thoughts alone. The true power of meditation is that it effectively unlocks the mind from its self created cycles. What could be more productive than that?

With a new decade upon us, this is one resolution that, if kept, will ultimately be gift that keeps on giving.