Meditation can make workplaces safer
Published in 'The Age' Online: October 26, 2005 - 7:19AM
Just 10 minutes a day of intensive meditation could make workers more productive and workplaces safer, a meditation company says.
Stuart Mackay, managing director of Peace at Work, will be among 100 work safety experts addressing delegates at a three-day safety conference in Sydney on Wednesday.
Along with speakers from NSW's work safety watchdog WorkCover, manufacturing companies and academics, the conference will also hear from those advocating meditation, breathing techniques, cat naps and caffeine to attain a safer workplace.
Mr MacKay says he's been asked by corporations to come into their offices and teach workers a "non-philosophical, non-doctrine approach to inner peace".
"It's open eye meditation done face-to-face across a table or into a mirror and is probably one of the most powerful forms of releasing tension," Mr MacKay says.
Practitioners are encouraged to use the technique in groups away from the office as a way of clearing stress throughout their lives, he says.
But the technique is relevant in an occupational health and safety context too.
"If you can just imagine that if someone is relaxed and focused, they're not going to have accidents," Mr Mackay says.
"Just 10 minutes a day (of meditation) is a preventative medicine in the workplace."
Mr MacKay has been practising his brand of meditation in the workplace for 25 years, but it is only recently that Australian corporations, including Flight Centre, have come on board.
"Then they didn't want to know about it, but now the acceptance levels are just shooting through the roof."
Also presenting a paper at the safety conference will be Diana Killen, an associate with the Macquarie Institute, a private corporate training and development company.
Her company teaches people how to deal with tension at work through a breathing technique that addresses the body's physiological response to stress.
"Stress is something that's really under the radar," Ms Killen said.
"The modern equivalent to the stone age sabre tooth tiger (stress generator) is meetings, emails, changing tasks 100 times a day and not being in control of what we do at work.
"The antidote is to teach people emotional stress management so they have something they can do in the moment to change their physiology and their emotional response."
Delegates at the conference will also hear from Naomi Rogers from the Woolcock Institute for Medical Research at the University of Sydney about ways to manage sleepiness on the job through regular cat naps or caffeine use.