[fooblat]

I really struggle with the term "mindfulness" as it seems it can mean anything and everything, depending on who you ask. We had some Mindfulness workshops at a previous employer and it was so full of woo and magical thinking that it really turned me off and felt like a huge waste of time.

My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed.

At this point, I don't even know how to react when something related to Mindfulness is announced.

[jdietrich]

You might want to peruse some of the research on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy; there's reasonably good evidence that it outperforms conventional CBT for patients with chronic or recurrent depression or chronic pain. There are also some interesting neuroimaging studies that suggest that regular meditators have increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and reduced activity in the amygdala, which are both associated with psychological wellbeing.

Mindfulness is simply the practice of awareness, which encompasses a wide range of activities. The classic example is awareness of the breath - noticing the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation, noticing the sensation of air passing through your trachea, noticing when your attention wanders away from your breath and noticing how your focus returns to it. A technique often used with pain and anxiety patients is body-scan mindfulness - carefully notice the sensations in the soles of the feet, then the ankles, then the calves etc. You might notice and categorise your subjective experience in real time - this is a thought, this is a memory, this is a physical sensation.

Mindfulness has become a bit of a fad and is often poorly taught by inexperienced bandwagon-jumpers, which is unfortunate for a practice that pre-dates Christianity by several hundred years. If it does interest you, I'd suggest just trying it out, because it's sort of impossible to meaningfully communicate the subjective experience of mindfulness. Read Mindfulness for Beginners by John Kabat-Zinn or Mindfulness: A Practical Guide by Mark Williams, set aside fifteen minutes a day to practice and stick with it for a month.

[lm28469]

> My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed.

I find it extremely weird for companies to offer these things. The only reason they'd do it is to boost their own productivity / margin / whatever. As in "be healthy because we need your ass on that chair and your brain working on our problems".

There is already a thin enough line between personal and professional life.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/mindfu...

[fooblat]

In both cases, it was pitched as a way to be more focused, purposeful, and satisfied at work.

In general, I think it makes sense for companies to promote activities that they believe will help employees to be happy and healthy. Happy workers are generally more productive.

[nulbyte]

I want to be healthy. My employer needs me to be healthy. My employer is willing to pay for some of it. Where's the problem?

[lm28469]

You're free to see it how you like.

I personally see it as one step in the direction of work totalitarianism where everything you do is thoroughly designed for workplace productivity.

I have no doubt that if megacorps started to build bedrooms in their offices (even with bunkbeds) and offered them for free a lot of people would gladly move in there permanently without even thinking about the big picture.

But again, you do you, and you set your own boundaries.

[humanrebar]

A loss of healthy boundaries. My employer is not a parent, and even if it were, I'm beyond the age where that level of input from a parent is healthy.

[spuz]

Sounds like you had a bad workshop the first time round. Mindfulness should be rational, scientific and entirely free of woo or magical thinking.

[collyw]

These days the word is used so frequently that it seems to include everything and is almost meaningless.

[fooblat]

I can only agree with you 100%. However, it seems this is not a universal view.

[yoz-y]

Recently I have been bombarded by ads for some mindfulness app on youtube. All of their ads talk about ancient aliens and crystals, whereas the application presents itself as a yoga and meditation thing. The content has both.

I guess that for some reason the target audiences overlap enough that bundling the woo and meditation makes some economical sense.