Maintaining mindfulness and physical health at Skills Matter
-Victoria Blackshaw
As someone who likes to keep their mental wellness in check, piggybacking on the NHS’ Healthy Living Week in September 2017 seemed like a great way to launch a few new mindfulness initiatives at Skills Matter, the tech community I work for in London.
At first, it was a move towards incorporating activities that I saw as important (having just started practicing yoga for the first time that month and I was enjoying the mental and physical benefits) and I’d hoped they might add value to our busy working environment at CodeNode.
We organised a week of healthy living at work; booked an amazing Yoga Teacher (Diamond Dee) for a couple of classes; bought large re-usable bottles for employees to encourage water consumption (instead of coffee and tea) at our desks; freshened up our offices with calming essential oils in our dehumidifier; organised a mindfulness corner; added new books to our library (Rewire your Anxious Brain and Feeling Good — the new mood therapy); and we started to order in some healthy snacks each week to emphasise the link between nutrition and productivity.
It became clear to me — out of our collective yogi water-drinking moments and by sharing a new interpretation of what wellness at work could look like for us here at SM — that we ought to work in greater depth to see what else we could do to support staff on a more permanent basis. To me, this meant more than yoga and a fruit bowl, and in addition, how we could empower staff to take some time back — during a stressful day, on a lunch break, or during an awareness week — to reflect on their own wellbeing.
I know it’s easier said than done, when you’re surrounded by deadlines and meetings, but taking a short step back to evaluate how well you’re performing or what you might need to change or nurture in order to be the best you — at work and at home — can really make a significant impact in your day-to-day life.
While the science of meditation, mindfulness and self-reflection is hard to pin down, there are interesting studies that have taken place, such as those highlighted in this article by Kristyna Zapletal where eight weeks of daily mindfulness meditation resulted in an increase in the brain volume of the hippocampus (memory, spatial awareness, emotional intelligence) and the temporoparietal junction (believed to be responsible for empathy and compassion), while the amygdala (related to fight or flight responses and stress) decreased in size.
As time went on, the more I read about mental health in the workplace, the more I felt encouraged to do more alongside the efforts of our HR department. With this in mind, in October last year we started our first awareness week around Global Mental Health Day, with a range of materials on hand to support our wellness programme — thanks to Time to Change and their fantastic online resources.
We hosted an aromatherapy sleep-spray making workshop, mini Ayurvedic massage sessions, and also had Jay and Mike of WE.DNTPLAY run a challenging Satria Yoga class (based on an ancient Indonesian martial art), to encourage time away from our screens. What’s more, our awesome new HR Manager Amy proposed Wellness Action Plans, or WAP’s (a Mind initiative), to all line managers, and for those of us who choose to fill it out, it’s great to refer to when you’re feeling low and want your line manager to know your triggers and how to listen to your needs.
Moving forward to this year, we’ve started running our two-weekly yoga classes again, and we’ll be making time for mini meditation sessions soon too. At the start of February, I also led our first Time to Talk Day — a campaign set up by Time to Change, to encourage discourse around mental health at work. It was a nerve-racking morning for me, as an anxiety sufferer (when you’re pushing yourself outside your comfort zones to lead and speak in front of people), but I was gratefully reassured when around 14 colleagues turned up, and gave their time to listen or share experiences.
I’m heading on Mental Health First Aid training this week, and I’m happy to see how I can bring back this knowledge and incorporate it into our next wellness session. Overall, I think it’s a very exciting time to be working in a company and industry that prioritises inclusivity, accessibility and recognises neurodiversity, and I’m proud to be part of starting conversations and activities around mental health at work with our fantastic team.
- *Special thanks to Jenny Martin and Amy Phillips for supporting me with these initiatives too.
