November wellbeing newsletter  - How can meditation help with handling stress?
 

I've just returned from seven days on a predominantly silent meditation retreat. The week's focus was exploring one of the Buddha's pieces of training called Anapanasati. Anapana means the act of breathing in and breathing out. And sati means "with" mindfulness. 

The training also focussed on the concept of impermanence, change and agility. To get a handle on impermanence, consider the entire lifespan of a Mayfly is 24 hours or reflect on the length of time British Prime Ministers spend in office.

Over the last twenty years, I've been on many similar retreats, and each time I come away refreshed and learning a new insight into how to apply mindfulness to modern challenges.  

I appreciate my great fortune and luck in being able to take the time to do these things. Many of my friends, colleagues and clients are so time-poor, lack the resources or have home and work commitments that stretch themselves to the limit and beyond. And many other people are suffering in the face of a cost-of-living crisis, and neither have the time, money, ability or inclination to step back and pause. 

The program was south of Sydney in the beautiful national park. These were the highlights (I  imagine that for many of you, this would be your definition of hell!):

-           No phones, no internet for a week

-           Most of the week spent in total silence

-           Seven hours per day of guided meditations

-           Vegan food

I've probably lost a few people at that point! I can imagine you have some questions: 

• "Why would you take your intention inside yourself for so long. Isn't it a bit self-centred"?
• "Why would you put yourself through such a challenge? The world is here to be enjoyed."
• "What's the point of focussing on your breathing? We all do it; it's natural."
• "It's self-centred - how does it help others if you feel calm and Zen-like?"

Watch the breath

Although your breath flows in and out in its own sweet way, our breathing pattern changes depending on our emotional, physical and energy landscape. For example, when we notice we’ve made a significant error in a report, our cheeks might become flushed, and our breathing becomes faster and jagged.

Lengthen the breath

The first part of anapanasati training is observing and deepening the breath. How might you do that at work? For example, before a meeting, you could take a few seconds to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, imagining that you are breathing out slowly through a straw. Then, feel the breath moving against your lips. 

Or try this - place a hand on your abdomen and imagine there is a ball in that place. As you breathe in, the ball gets bigger and bigger, rising to your neck and shoulders. And then completely empty the lungs slowly.   Imagine you are about to pitch to a new client and feel nervous. Ground yourself by feeling the back of your legs on the ground and your feet on the floor, and then practice deepening your breath.

Do these things habitually - not just when you feel stressed. For example, get into a habit of grounding yourself with a breath before starting any new conversation with a colleague. And as you add a small circuit breaker, develop some positive internal self-talk – “I breathe in. I breathe out. I’m here to listen to Jon”, etc.

Use the breath to own your emotions

Next, use the breath to explore the sensations in your body. For example, as you breathe, you might notice that you feel tense in your abdomen or shoulders. Deliberately choose to use the breath to soften the sensations you are feeling. You might use more positive self-talk such as, “Anxiety is here. It’s ok to feel these things. Anybody else would feel the same way if they had to talk to senior executives”, etc.

Accurate labelling of your emotions coupled with physical activity, such as deepening the breath and having a positive internal kindly voice, help us understand and navigate our emotions. Notice I used the term “anxiety is here” rather than “ I am anxious”. The first term is transitory and impermanent. The second is rigid and inaccurately and detrimentally locks permanency to our emotional states.”

Get into the habit of accurate emotional labelling before meetings. It will help you step back and step up and connect with your colleagues.

Returning to the questions

“Why you would take your intention inside yourself for so long. Isn’t it a bit self-centred”?

Research by Amish Jha, Richard Davidson and other neuroscientists point to significant improvements in people’s abilities and behaviours with just 10 to 15 minutes of meditation a day, resulting in progress in the following areas: focus, ability to handle pain and stress and emotional agility.

However, a trait like change to our wellbeing and behaviours takes time. Longer immersive meditation retreats result in profound changes in how people respond to stress. Daily meditation practice, intensive, immersive retreats and applying mindfulness in everyday workplace routines result in profound benefits. People become more resilient, calmer, and optimistic, become better listeners and have better self-awareness about their emotional triggers, strengths, and weaknesses.

Key takeaway - do a little every day. Set a timer and meditate on the breath for at least 10 minutes a day. And learn to embed mindfulness at work and home by talking mini two second timeouts. 

“Why would you put yourself through such a challenge? The world is here to be enjoyed.”

There is no doubt that going on these courses is challenging. At the start, I missed home, felt guilty about all the work I was missing and was anxious about the emails piling up.

But quite quickly, my mind and body relaxed, and with that space, I experienced profound creative insights into my home and work life. I don’t think these valuable gifts would have happened in an average working week.

And denying myself my regular diet, friends and family and so on made me appreciate those things so much. During the week, I experienced deep and intense moments of love and gratitude for the people in my life. A week of solitude has made me feel more joyful and connected to my job and the people I love. If we continue to satiate our desires, we can become bored and restless for new things rather than truly appreciating what we have already.

Key takeaway - set yourself a goal which is tough, causes you some discomfort, connects you to others and helps you learn some new skills. And stick to the program. See it out. It’s the tough things which are often the most valuable.

“What’s the point of focussing on your breathing? We all do it, it’s natural”

Our body reacts to changes to mental stimuli – when we feel stressed, our breathing pattern changes, and we may become aware of other sensations, such as heat or tightness in the chest. Likewise, when we feel connected to a colleague and overcome a challenge together, our bodies pattern differently; we trust each other, our oxytocin levels rise, and we feel soothed by each other’s company.  

Our minds, the neural circuitry of our brains, our bodies, and the people around us constantly listen and affect each other in a dance of awareness. For example, the tone of voice you speak to me alerts me to a potential threat or soothing. If you are harsh, my body may react in a fight-flight response to defend myself from a potential threat. But, on the other hand, when you speak calmly and make soft eye contact, I feel held, and my mind, brain and body feel assured and connected.

Our breathing and the sensations we feel in our body are excellent barometers of our wellbeing, level of interpersonal trust and effectiveness. For example, turning your attention to your breathing might reveal that a throwaway comment by a colleague has angered you. When you practise some breathing techniques, as I mentioned earlier, you connect the awareness of the physical reaction (your breath shortens) and the stimulating event (a comment that you perceived as rude). As you actively engage in deeper and slower breathing, you engage the parasympathetic rest and restore response. This has many advantages, including:

You can engage in top-down logical rather than emotionally reactive bottom-up thinking – this helps you consider the bigger picture, what is within your area of control and how best to respond to a colleague.

Rest and restore enables our brains to engage in deep critical thinking and helps us be more creative – in rest and restore, the brain makes fantastic tangential connections and perceives problems through fresh filters. In fight-flight, our brains focus on our immediate tasks and threats.

Applying a self-soothing breathing technique at a pinch point enables you to connect the outcome (my body feels stressed) to the activating event (my colleague often speaks abruptly when he is in that situation) – which can build wisdom and insight. For example, you might have an aha moment such as, “wow, when my colleague feels out of their depth, they seem to lash out. I’ve over-personalised their behaviour and have reacted badly to this in the past. What can I do to help them?”

Practising mindfulness of the breath attunes your attention to become more aware of the connections between mind, brain, body and our interactions with our environment. And practice leads to greater self-awareness and deepens our ability to connect wisely with colleagues and friends.

Key takeaway – listen to your breath and your body and have a deliberate intention to be kind to yourself. “My body is reacting because I feel threatened. That’s ok, its normal. I’ve got some tools to learn more about that which help me set strong boundaries, build self-compassion and connect with people.”

“It’s self-centred – how does it help others if you feel calm and Zen like?”

Being a coach, workshop facilitator, and business owner mean spending a lot of time listening. Deep listening can be energising, stimulating as well as tiring. However, listening well requires practice. And it starts with listening to ourselves.

People use my services for many reasons, but often it’s down to experiencing uncertainty about how to proceed and make a decision, time pressure and a feeling of tightness and constriction. 

Creating space inside helps us feel more open to change and possibility. If I feel tight, stressed and constrained, that rubs off on my clients. One of our jobs as leaders, colleagues and friends is to help others feel space, and we can do that by cultivating more space in ourselves.

Key takeaway – self-care at work is not just a "nice to have" but a "must have". I started this article by saying that I'm lucky. A parent with three kids and a demanding leadership role would rightly scoff at the idea of taking time for themselves to build space inside. Mindfulness is not a panacea for fixing all the dysfunctionality of a modern workplace. Still, it does provide a 2,500-year-old toolbox containing practical techniques which help people feel more centred, agile and joyful. If you need help and support learning more about mindfulness at work, reach out to me, and I'll explain more.

Corporate wellbeing programs in London

 A recent employemto global survey of 22,000 people pointed to the importance of wellbeing programs at work:

• Burnout - a sense of extreme fatigue - 58% of employees, said that it had affected them within the past three months. 
• Relationship with work - what does it mean to have a fulfilling professional life? 43% of employees agree that Covid-19 has decreased the importance they place on their careers. 
• Wellbeing and return on investment - employees who rated their employer's commitment to wellness as good or excellent were 75% more likely to say they were loyal to a business. 

In our experience in London and Australia, wellbeing programs are most effective when:

• the program is not a sticking plaster covering up dysfunction in the organisation but is aligned with overall training needs;
• is not seen as a quick fix by the team; more extended programs which enable participants to share ideas and best practices and help mould the shape of the program organically;
• there is a solid evidence-based approach;
• an action learning approach is adopted; enabling the participants to discuss the application of ideas and techniques to workplace challenges; and
• simple and practical.

An example of one of our current programs is with the team at Avantgarde in London. They are three months into a program and have already enjoyed:

• One to one wellbeing coaching sessions
• A webinar on stress and nutrition with Dr Delia McCabe
• A fun guided walking tour with Chris Roberts
• An aromatherapy for creativity and mental wellbeing session with author Julia Oyelye

 
Contact us today if you want to learn more about our approach to team wellbeing programs.
 
Andy Roberts

June 2022 newsletter - twenty years of wellbeing

Hi everyone

This month's newsletter is about health, wellbeing and positive ageing. 

Twenty years ago, I left my job in finance, threw away my suits and embarked on a journey of meaning finding. This wellbeing journey led to spending time in ashrams in India, learning to be a yoga teacher, practising vipassana meditation in Canada, training to be a physical therapist in Sydney and studying psychology back home in London. 

All of this was to understand what makes my body and mind tick. I wanted some answers to some common questions:

• Why did I sometimes feel lonely, bored, sad and dissatisfied?
• What could I do to maintain my energy and vitality?
• What could I do in life to make me feel useful and needed?
• What could I do to feel good in my own skin and not like an imposter?

Over 20 years, a lot of answers have emerged. However, I'm not sure whether that was due to everything I'd studied and taught or simply because the passing of time reveals insights about what's truly important.

In this newsletter, I've set out some of the physical things I do most days; the little habits that build over time to enhance and sustain wellbeing. Next month I'll focus more on the psychological tips and tools. For the last six years, I've lectured in wellbeing and mindfulness at the College of Medicine and Dentistry at James Cook University. This role has made me even more appreciative of the importance of solid research supporting wellbeing tools and practices. Unfortunately, there's a lot of quackery and bullshit out there.

I hope you find some of these ideas helpful and share them with friends and colleagues. And please share with me the things you do that have helped over the years.  

As you think about your wellbeing practises, think about this COACH model of wellbeing developed by Daniel Levitin:

• Curiosity - be interested in the world - explore another person's perspective
• Openness - be agile and open to different views and try new things
• Associations - cultivate warmth in your relationships - do some of your wellbeing systems bring you closer to others?
• Conscientiousness - explore tenacity and grit - leaning into suffering and challenges can often lead to the greatest growth
• Healthy practices - Identify the wellbeing systems which sustain you and stick to them

Here are some quotes from the inspiring Daniel Levitin in his book, "The changing mind":

"My business is right here on earth. Trying to be a better person, trying to do things which make other people happy. That's what it's about. This other stuff doesn't mean anything."

Sonny Rollins jazz legend

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

Anais Nin – French/Cuban American writer

Best wishes

Andy

Gut health – kefir and fibre

The probiotic industry is worth billions and growing. But, in general, forget it. It's a scam.

There is very little robust evidence that these over-the-counter pills are of any benefit. This is a shame because your enteric nervous system (0.5 Billion neurons and containing 100 trillion bacteria - the microbiome) is a pretty important place. For example, 90% of our serotonin is produced in the gut. Serotonin is essential for maintaining a sense of calm and balance. GABA is another vital neurotransmitter which helps us dampen down stress. These are just two of the multitude of neurotransmitters which rely on a healthy diet and a healthy biome.

Eating fibre helps maintain gut health and, therefore, focus on prebiotics rather than probiotics. Reynolds et al., Lancet, (2019)

Prebiotics vs. Probiotics. ... PREBIOTIC FIBER is a non-digestible part of foods such as apples, garlic, asparagus, bananas, mushrooms, honey bananas, onions and garlic, Jerusalem artichoke, the skin of apples, chicory root, beans, and many others. 

With this knowledge, I throw a banana, kale and psyllium husks into a blender for a morning smoothie. Doing this helps feed me the best conditions for enabling my biome to do its thing, i.e. feeding my gut to create the neurotransmitters, to build my brain, allowing me to feel calm, centred and upbeat. 

The other thing I do is drink some kefir yoghurt (fermented milk). In one of the small handful of studies on probiotics, kefir consumption has a positive impact on mood and the brain's emotional centres - K. Tillisch et al, Gastroenterology, (2013)

Meditate on the breath

Every day I spend 20 minutes focussing my attention on my breath. Each time I notice a thought, feeling or sensation, I note the experience and return my attention to the breath point of focus. 

Think of using this technique as a loving survey of yourself. The object is not to be blissfully thought-free or to enjoy a change of conscious experience (although this happens occasionally) but rather to become kinder to yourself and self-accepting of your present experience.

There are many different ways to focus on the breath. For example, focussing your attention on a certain part of your body, such as your abdomen. Whatever you choose to attend to is not the most important thing. What is more important is your relationship with the stories and feelings you experience emerge between you as an observer and your point of focus. 

The benefits of this type of practice are robust. For beginners, even just a few minutes of practice can lead to:

•          Less amygdala reactivity to stress

•          Better ability to focus 

•          Improved working memory

•          Less mind wandering

•          Markers for inflammation lessen 

•          Immune system strengthening

These are state changes in experience, i.e. the benefits accrue when the technique is practised repeatedly. In experienced meditators with 1,000 plus hours of practice, there are trait-like changes which means that they generally become more calm, focussed and balanced in their day-to-day activities.

Great reading - "Altered traits" by Goleman and Davidson 

Move with mindfulness (and when you can in nature)

I practise yoga postures most days and walk the dog every day. 

Yoga includes dynamic movement, making shapes with my body and breathing with awareness as I create these shapes. It also involves balance, for example, standing on one leg and then shifting to the other.

There are multiple benefits of mindful movement, whether it's yoga, tai chi, boxing, ballet, or hiking in nature, including:

Blood pressure, stress levels, balance, body awareness, muscle tension

Complex movement requires the brain to work hard and strengthen the connection between our five senses, body, and brains. As we age, these connections can wither. I experienced this after multiple covid lockdowns; I went on a hike with a friend in North Queensland and noticed that my normal flexibility, balance and confidence was reduced as I walked across boulders. However, within a few hours, my confidence started returning; my brain and body connections were firing again.

A sedentary lifestyle withers our ability to connect with accuracy to the world using our five senses. It's a case of "use it or lose it."  Move around your local environment, take different walks, use your balance and mindfully move your body.

One exercise you can try is balancing on one leg for a minute whilst brushing your teeth and then swap to the other.

Listen to this Michael Mosley podcast to learn more. And for a great read on the science of movement and balance, read "Physical Intelligence" by Scott Grafton. He explores how movement stimulates our creativity and supports our wellbeing.

Exercise for better memory and creativity

Swimming is almost sacred to me. Living in Sydney, I feel blessed to have so many 50m swimming pools close to my home. These include the iconic Icebergs at Bondi to the Harbour Bridge pool.

What's clear from the research is that moderate physical exercise improves memory (1), and creativity (2) and counteracts some age-related memory impairments. And in a large University of Sydney study, people who exercised regularly appeared to undo some of the harmful effects of a poor night's sleep.

What’s also clear is that the exercise doesn’t need to be long and intense. And finding an activity which you do with a friend and your intrinsically motivated to do makes it more likely you will stick to it.

1. P.D. Loprinzi, M. K. Edwards, and E. Frith, “Potential avenues for exercise to activate episodic memory related pathways: A narrative review,” European Journal of Neuroscience 46, no.5 (2017)
2. Y. Kuo and Y. Y. Yeh, Sensorimotor-conceptual integration in free walking enhances divergent thinking for young and older adults,” Frontiers in Psychology7 (2016): 1580
3. S.F. Tsai et al., “Exercise counteracts aging related memory impairment: A potential role for the astrocytic metabolic shuffle,” Frontiers in aging neuroscience 8 (2016): 57

Focus and effectiveness at work 

This newsletter includes some great resources , talks and podcasts on how to improve attention at work.

On our training programs we hear the same thing again and again.

• “I can’t focus properly anymore.”
• “People interrupt me, and I get distracted.”
• “My days are filled up with back-to-back meetings.” 
• “I don’t have time to focus on what’s important.”
• “There’s no time for creativity.”
• “I’ve lost the ability to read to the end of a page without getting distracted.”

On one of these programs I asked the team to self-rate their abilities using Richard Davidson’s emotional style model. The ability to focus was the lowest score.

And yet few workplace training programs include attention training. As the godfather of American psychology, William James noted:

“The faculty of bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will.”

“An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence”  William James 1890

Without presence it’s hard to develop and deploy our emotional abilities at work. And it’s hard to step back and take a moment to reflect on some of our biases and autopilot behaviours which impact wellbeing, collaboration and effectiveness.

Here are some useful resources for improving focus at work.

Books

“Focus – the hidden driver of excellence” by Dan Goleman

This book is an excellent read for any leader or emerging leader who feels swamped with data and unsure how to prioritise tasks.

Goleman is one of the people who made emotional intelligence popular. He built on the foundations of academics, including Mayer, Salovey and Caruso. Their research and applications in workplace settings pointed to emotional intelligence being a series of different, developable abilities.

And with many, if not all of these abilities, there is a clear research link between practising various mindfulness techniques and developing these abilities. For example, the ability to regulate emotions to express things coherently and in a contextually sensitive manner.

In this book, Goleman explores a model of four things that a leader needs to focus on. He also explains the brain science of why these four things sometimes complement each other and sometimes compete. For example, one of the areas we need to focus on is attention to detail: we need to make sure that we are focused on safety, completing a job, working through our tasks and extracting value from the systems we have in place right now. For many people, this is a comfortable place. It’s a place where we tick boxes and strike a line through things on our to-do list. Unfortunately, however, this is a zone of potential intoxication. 

Each time we tick something off our to-do list, we get a little hit of dopamine, which feels good. Dopamine feels good and is a signaller of a future reward – which means we become ever more engrossed in our tasks, potentially at the expense of seeing different ways of doing things and checking our task alignment with our colleagues and organisation. It also means we narrow our focus into detail at the expense of blue sky creative thinking.

The four areas in his model are:

• Extracting value and follow-through (as above)
• Exploring new opportunities, threats, regulatory frameworks
• Connecting with the team – passionate, energetic, listening, collaborating
• Self-awareness and self-care – tuning into our energy levels and understanding the impact of our own physical and mental wellbeing and our ability to learn, communicate, collaborate and lead

He discusses how we need to maintain a balanced portfolio of attention between each of these areas.

Peak Mind by Dr Amishi Jha

I’ve watched Dr Jha’s TED Talk so many times. Every year I show it to our medical students. That short TED is a powerful business case for learning to train our attention and embed mindfulness techniques into our home and work lives.

If your job requires that you:

• absorb and store information;
• come up with novel and creative solutions;
• sustain your attention for long periods;
• shift your attention seamlessly from one task to the next; and
• sift through information and distil what’s important

Then developing mindfulness practises will help you be more effective in your role.

The organized mind by Daniel Levitin

This a great book by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. Written before the pandemic, it’s never been more relevant to consider the impact of data overload, how we store that data and how we can train our attention.

Offline by Imran Rashid and Soren Kenner

This is a great book explaining coherently how big tech hacks into our brain/mind/body/community connections to bring our eyes to a screen, manipulate your choices and ultimately extract value by doing this.

They provide excellent examples of how to curb tech addiction and create healthy screentime.

Podcasts

Ezra Klein interviews Johann Harri about his recent book “Stolen Focus”

The importance of attention - for wellbeing and at work

In this TED Talk neuroscientist Amishi Jha introduces her research. She illustrates how practicing mindfulness techniques not only reduces stress but helps us pick up vital information at critical moments, such as on battlefields, in hospitals and other emergency situations. It illustrates how much we might be missing at home and at work. Mindfulness helps people be more situationally aware, safer and be able to observe, store and recall information more accurately. 

Dr Amish Jha TED

Mindset coaching 

To find out more about mindset coaching with Andy Roberts, contact us today.

Andy Roberts