Meditation safety moment

It’s a common practice in the workplace these days to have a short safety moment at the beginning of meetings. This is an excellent mechanism to stop and reflect on something important, but not directly related to the current task. It’s vital for ensuring a thriving safety culture as it promotes discussion and communication on safety matters. The excellent INPO “Traits of a Healthy Nuclear Safety Culture” is a handy reference, specifically this pocket guide.

But I recently tried a different tact as an experiment, to bring in the wider mental aspects of health and safety. I did a safety moment that involved a 2 minute meditation. A brief moment of silence, stillness and reflection.

Mental health and well-being is often overlooked but is so important is today’s “always on” world. In fact, see the graphic below source, 602,000 working people are reported to suffer from work-related stress, depression and anxiety. This results in 12.8 Million working days lost. A vast problem by any measure.

In the business of everyday life how present are you in any given moment? How present are we with our families, or friends; or are we always on our phones, or crunching a work problem in our head at the dinner table, or unable to sleep at night working through something in our minds? What about simply being present with your own company? These days we’ve lost the ability to just be bored. Our phones are always out at the first hint of boredom. There is an Italian saying that is fantastic - *dolce far niente *- the sweetness of doing nothing. Let’s enjoy the feeling of just being.

So back to the safety moment. Two minutes of calm, concentrating on breathing, and mindfulness. That is, noticing the breadth; the rise and fall of the chest, the slight pause between inhalation and exhalation.

The benefit of meditation is a modern world is a moment for stillness, calm and focus. But whether you call it meditation, mindfulness or just a 2 minute silence it doesn’t matter, it’s just a chance to take a pause in everyday bustle.

Meditation offers the chance to be present. To do nothing but breathe, and bring all your focus and awareness to bear of your breadth.

I’m sure my experiment was an interesting experience, even if a little awkward! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! It sparked some interesting discussion, and if later caused others to reflect on mental health and well-being and putting it first, then I’d say a success.

I’m not naively suggesting that meditating cures all stress; but this is a reminder to seek what works for you. To experiment. Other ways that came out of the discussion were exercise and cold water therapy. So, what have you got to lose! I’d love to hear how others use meditation to temper a hectic world.