It’s Mental Health Awareness week. A good time to ask ourselves are we aware as a business?

Stress at work has been shown to have huge long-term implications for people and businesses alike. Recent study by Mercer and YouGov shows that 61% (!) of employees in the UK have experienced mental health issues related to work. More than half of them feel uncomfortable speaking about mental health openly at their workplace. One out of 10 employees has taken days off over the past year due to mental health issues. We know the pain - we were part of this big group of people. In our years in a stressful environment, there were moments where we needed support and so did many of our colleagues.

While support is offered, it is often inadequate. Gym memberships are no longer a sufficient corporate wellness strategy in a world of increasing complexity, over-stimulation and stress. Don't get us wrong - we are fully supportive of sweating, but we doubt it helps employees connect with their sense of inner purpose, joy and peace.

Yoga and mindfulness are an effective, sustainable and cost-efficient support. Mindfulness-based methods, including meditation and gentle yoga, have been shown to nearly halve the relapse rate in people with recurrent depression and offer sustainable long-term support to a range of mental and physical illnesses. These practices have proven ongoing benefits for healthy individuals alike. They are easily applicable at home, by yourself and do not require ongoing learning. In fact, they require un-learning.

For many businesses, meditation is still considered ‘woo-woo’, yet research shows that it rewires your brain. There is a growing body of scientific research pointing to physiological changes due to consistent meditation practice.  Meditation increases the cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which runs our memory as well as the ability to learn new things. The amygdala (our fight or flight response centre) is shown to have more grey matter in meditators than in non-meditators. Long term meditators are therefore less reactive and more efficient decision makers. We like ‘woo-woo’ by the way. But this isn’t.

Interested in exploring the power of yoga and meditation at work? Get in touch: www.theseedyoga.com.