Mindfulness and stress management: promoting emotional/mental health and wellbeing

This is the typical structure of the courses I run for corporations on Mindfulness and stress management.

Introducing mindfulness and other powerful techniques that can promote positive mental health and build resilience.  Prevention is better than cure (and much more cost effective). 

Objectives

Help employees:

  • understand what stress is and how to spot signs in oneself and in colleagues early before they become more difficult to manage.
  • Understand how the brain works and how we can help ourselves deal with challenges and problems more efficiently and in a way that promotes strong mental health.
  • Provide simple practical tools and techniques for dealing with day to day challenges and worries.
  • Encourage employees to take personal responsibility for their own mental health and general wellbeing.
  • Encourage employees to build resilience and hardiness. 
  • Encourage a positive approach to discussing anxiety and other mental health problems and embed positive coping strategies into the workplace culture. 

We might start with line managers, and those who can influence others, and then incorporate other working groups within the business.

Mindfulness workshop structure could be a whole day, a morning or a lunch hour.

  • Brief introduction to me and the work I do. 
  • Mindfulness – an explanation of what it is and how it can help (using statistics and the latest research).
  • How the brain works; what is happening when we are stressed/anxious or depressed and what we can we do about it.
  • Introducing some practical and fun mindfulness exercises that could be used in the middle of a busy day.  In addition, further exercises more suited for long-term preparation for keeping ourselves healthy and happy. 
  • Group work: managers discuss what to look out for in terms of mental health problems at work, what challenges they face, how they can help their team, their peers and how they can help themselves. 
  • Examine how mindfulness and other coping strategies can become embedded within the culture of the organisation, from induction through to regular meetings.   
  • Questions and answers.
  • Summary and close.