The concept of mindfulness emphasizes trying to focus your mind in the present moment, immersing yourself in what’s going on around you. Core principles include suspending immediate judgment of the environment and your own thoughts, and keeping yourself open to what is around you. The benefits of mindfulness can reach beyond reducing stress to include increased creativity, longer spans of attention, reductions in procrastination, and improved performance.

The Procedure Start this exercise individually and then come together into groups of three or four individuals to discuss what you have found. Although full workplace mindfulness interventions can take several weeks, some basic starting exercises can be done in a relatively short period and give you a feeling for what a full course of mindfulness would be like. Here are three simple exercises to try. For all these, everyone needs to put everything away (especially phones, tablets, and computers!) and focus on what is going on in the immediate environment. 

• Mindful breathing: Clear your head of everything except thoughts of your own breaths. Concentrate on how you are inhaling and exhaling. It is sometimes helpful to count how long each breath takes. Try to maintain this mindful breathing for 3 minutes. The group will then take 3 minutes to discuss how this made them feel. 

• Mindful listening: Now clear your head of everything except what is going on in the immediate environment. Try to hear as many sounds around you as you can, without judging or evaluating them. Try to maintain this mindful listening for 3 minutes. The group will then take 3 minutes to discuss some of the details they noticed. 

• Mindful thinking: As with listening, clear your head of everything, but now focus just on your ideas about mindfulness and stress. Do not talk about or write down what you’re thinking (yet); just focus your whole quiet attention on this exercise and what it means. Try to maintain this mindful thinking for 3 minutes. The group will then take 3 minutes to talk about what this experience was like. 

As noted earlier, these are just brief examples of what mindfulness exercises are like. In a full mindfulness program, you would go through several sessions of up to an hour each. Now that you have an idea of what it feels like to do mindfulness work, consider the following questions in your groups: 

Questions

1. Were there any aspects of the mindfulness practice sessions that you found especially pleasant or useful? Were there any aspects of the sessions that you found unpleasant or uncomfortable? 

2. What concerns might you have about implementing a mindfulness intervention in the workplace? What are some of the obstacles you might face in trying to have employees engage in a mindfulness stress reduction program? 

3. Bring the class together and discuss your responses.