On Tuesday, Oct. 15, the Frank G. Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University held the third session of its Mindfulness and Meditation workshop, a weekly program that is open to all students and faculty and is designed for de-stressing and stimulating creative thinking.
“Mindfulness and meditation are, to me, practices that help us return to our most natural ways of being, living and working. From these come clearer and more creative thinking, trust in ourselves and our deepest intentions and resilience,” said Charles Smith, the workshop facilitator and professor in the department of management and entrepreneurship at Hofstra University.
Participants are taught practical methods for reshaping the brain to achieve increased productivity, effective stress response, calmness under pressure and overall wellbeing. Such methods include traditionally Buddhist exercises like guided meditation and progressive relaxation.
“It is the gradual, systematic stepping back from everything and the physical relaxation of each part of the body where you must tune into your breathing, letting each thought come and go like clouds,” Smith said while guiding the participants through their meditation.
The Zarb School’s implementation of the program follows a model set by Fortune 500 companies such as Google, Apple, Nike, Goldman Sachs, General Mills and Procter & Gamble.
In 2014, for instance, Google instituted one of the first such mindfulness programs, in which 2,000 Google employees participated in its “Search Inside Yourself” mindfulness course. While there has not been any long-term research done on the effects of the course itself, Chade-Meng Tan, Google’s former head of mindfulness training, says there is anecdotal evidence in participants’ productivity rates and decreased stress.
“Goodness is good for business,” Tan said.
According to Fidelity Investments, the health care costs of companies dropped by a total of 7% after offering mindfulness training, as a highly stressed employee costs a company, on average, an extra $2,000 per year in health care costs. Productivity gains alone were about $3,000 per employee, or an 11 to one return on investment per capita.
In the same way that employees face work-related stress, “Students face increasingly high pressure in their everyday studying. Taking some time to learn how to calm down and relieve themselves can improve their concentration ability, their working efficiency and establish a positive attitude in life,” said Liu Hong, an assistant professor in the finance department.
Similarly, a Forbes study found that mindfulness practices are proven to enhance decision-making faculties, which is something that the workshop also aids with. “It helps us to understand the world with another perspective,” said Lucia Pan, an MBA student in Zarb.
The workshop also presented students and faculty with coping mechanisms, as well as tips and tricks for when they are practicing mindfulness and meditation alone.
“Think to yourself that the best thing [you] can do is nurture this deeper level of awareness and know that the universe is self-organizing and is taking care of the rest of our lives for us without us even realizing,” Smith said.
More information about the Zarb Mindfulness and Mediation workshop is available on their website.
