You will not believe the staggering benefits of corporate meditation.

As experts in corporate meditation classes,

we’ve seen firsthand how meditation can help both companies and employees alike. So, let us count the ways…. 

50+ Corporate Meditation Benefits Part 1: Better Health & Less Sick Days 

There are an incredible number of ways in which meditation improves physical health. And of course this, in turn, reduces sick days according to Reuters Health.

Here are some of the many ways in which meditation improves health. 

1: Meditation lowers the rate at which we consume oxygen  [Harvard Medical School].

2: Healing:  When you meditate, you lower your heart rate, breathe slower, and lower your oxygen consumption rate. This is an ideal state for healing.  

3: Eliminates free radicals. Free radicals are agents that attack your cells from the inside out. Reducing these reduces the risk of illness.

4: Antioxidants: Our bodies naturally produce antioxidants, but stress, toxins, and other factors can make us damage more cells than we produce.  Because meditation promotes relaxation and prevents and treats problems like stress and depression, it slows the rate at which cells are damaged. In turn, this decreases free radicals and slows the ageing process.  [source: Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity from All India Institute of Medical Sciences.]

5: Reduces Risk of Chronic Diseases linked to stress. When you meditate, you reduce stress [VeryWell Mind] and reduce the numerous health quandaries that stress causes. Just twenty minutes of meditation daily will substantially decrease the impacts of stress.

 6: Heart health: Research conducted by the Division of Cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center shows that meditation regulates heart rate and improves blood pressure. 

8: Lower risk of cardiovascular disease: Heart.org tells us that “taking a few minutes to relax each day could lower risk of cardiovascular disease”. 

 9:   Better breathing: Stress leads to shallow breathing, which makes it harder for air to enter the lungs. When you meditate you relax, and when you relax, you improve your breathing.

10: Relieves asthma: In 2000, the Natural Therapies Unity of the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney Australia studied the effect of daily meditation on asthma. Results showed that meditation significantly reduces the sympyoms of anxiety.

11: Strengthens endocrine system: Research via MRI scans shows that people who meditate have more activity in the parts of the brain that regulate the endocrine system [NIH]. This leads to improved mood, slower ageing rate, and better immune system functioning, which of course is a big benefit for the company because it reduces sick days. 

 12: Boosts immune system: Meditation creates a positive environment in which your immune system can thrive.  Researchers investigated a group of biotech workers who meditated for eight weeks. The results showed that after meditation, the workers had substantially enhanced levels of antibodies. As though this wasn’t enough, meditation also improves the functioning of brain areas related to the immune system, namely: the prefrontal cortex, the right anterior insula, and the right hippocampus.

13: Arthritis

Arthritis can be a significant prpblem for older employees working in an office on a computer. Meditation can help. Dr Rosenweig at Drexel University informs us that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction offers efficient treatment for arthritis.

14: Reduces viral activity: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that people who meditate have 76% less sick days from September to May than people who do not meditate, mostly because of reduced viral activity. 

15:  Improves energy levels: Meditation has been determined to raise energy for five reasons:

• It stops stress from sapping at your energy
• It boosts endorphins
• Promotes quality of sleep
• Boosts growth hormone and DHEA (see below)
• Improves brain functioning

And of course all of this helps makes employees more productive, yet another way corporate meditation benefits your company.

16: Reduces headaches and migraines  A study published in the journal Headache states that when you meditate you help prevent and relieve the symptoms of migraines.

17:  Mindfulness reduces our dependency on medical care

Medical care costs employers tens of thousands of dollars every year, but meditation can help. A study in Quebec, Canada, showed that practising mindfulness and meditation leads to reduced cost of physician services because meditators do not need to visit doctors and physicians so frequently.

18:  Better sleep: It’s a well known fact that bad sleep hinders workplace productivity, but meditation can help. Meditation produces a mental state called “restful alertness” that is similar to the state we are in when we are asleep. Hence why meditators don’t need as much sleep.

Benefits of Corporate Meditation Part 2: Mental Health

Mental health conditions cost employers $225.8 billion per year. Indeed, that’s onr reason why so many companies are launching workplace meditation programs. 

There are so many mental health benefits of corporate meditation. Just take a look.

1. Better Brain electricity: A study by the Norwegian Institute of Science And Technology showed that meditation improves electrical activity in the brain.  [Science Daily]

2. Balances serotonin levels: Low serotonin levels are one of the leading causes of depression. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps your brain pass information from one region to another. Meditation raises serotonin development, which leads to a wide variety of psychological health benefits.

 3. Better brain synchronicity: Your brain is divided into two halves, the right or creative side, and the left or rational side. Meditation enhances communication between the two brain hemispheres, which leads to more mental balance and better overall cognitive functioning. 

 4. Increases brain size: Yi-Yuan Tang, PhD, and a group of researchers at the University of Texas discovered that meditators have more white matter in the neurons around the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain responsible for self-regulation.

5. Better reactions: Meditation improves performance on tests and reaction times. Scientists at the Department of Biology at the University of Kentucky tested whether meditation could help people to complete a psychomotor vigilance task. A group of people who were new to meditation spent 40 minutes meditating. They were then tested on the vigilance task. And all test subjects scored significantly higher after meditating. The researchers said that this showed a significant improvement in their reaction times.

 6. Helps with anxiety: Dr. Elizabeth Hoge at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital tells us that meditation is one of the best ways of reducing the symptoms of anxiety.

Read our complete guide to using meditation for anxiety.

 7. Helps with depression: There have been very many studies into the benefits of daily meditation on depression. One, by the University of Exeter, showed that mindfulness is more effective than drugs at treating depression.

 8. Helps with addictions: Researchers at the University of Washington studied 286 people who have successfully completed a drug rehabilitation program. They assigned them either a course of mindfulness meditation, a conventional relapse prevention program or a 12 step program. Results showed the when mindfulness was used in rehab, the chances of success were significantly increased.

100 Benefits of Corporate Meditation Part 3: Cognitive Benefits

Naturally, the better the cognitive performance of emoyees–the quicker and smarter they are–the better the company will perform. Meditation can help. Here’s how.

1. Helps you make smarter decisions:

Virginia Tech Carilion Research Center studied the effect of meditation on decision making. They found that meditators actually use different parts of their brains in decision making compared to non-meditators.The researchers say that meditators make decisions more rationally and less based on emotion than non-meditators.

2. Makes us act with more control and in a more constructive manner: The journal Current Directions in Psychological Science published an article by researcher Rimma Teper at the University of Toronto which proved that when you practice mindfulness you become more aware and more accepting of your emotions and that this, in turn, helps you to act with more self-control.  

3. Improves emotional intelligence: When you meditate, you gain an understanding of your emotions, and this helps you to master them. Edward Morler, Ph.D of Moreler International, tells us that a big part of emotional maturity is being in the now and letting go of the past. Meditation helps with this. When you meditate, you become aware of your thoughts and feelings, and you see them for what they are: unreal. This helps you to focus on the present moment and to make rational decisions not influenced by emotion.

4. Improves motor performance: Princeton student conducted research that shows that meditation has long-term and immediate effects on perceptual-motor performance. Meditators have superior coordination. 

5.  More job satisfaction: Dr Ute Hulsheger and a team of researchers from the Netherlands studied the effect of mindfulness meditation on job satisfaction. The report, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, asked 219 workers at service jobs, like retail and nursing, to write a diary twice a day for five days. They also rated their job satisfaction.  According to their own reports, the people who practised mindfulness had higher job satisfaction and lower levels of emotional exhaustion.

6. Focus and concentration: This is probably the most commonly known cognitive benefit of daily meditation: It helps you focus. Some studies show that this is especially true of Zazen (Zen meditation).

7.   Improves Creative Thinking: Cognitive psychologists Lorena Colato and Dominique Lippelt at Leiden University conducted research and discovered that a brief meditation session could have a profound and lasting effect on the creative brain. However, this is only true for certain meditation techniques. After practising “open” meditation techniques (meditations in which you are receptive to your entire environment and to thoughts and sensations), your creative brain is significantly improved.

8. Helps us to learn and to remember

Whether you’re studying to ace an exam or trying to learn a new skill for work, meditation can help. This is why it is helpful to use meditation to help you focus through distractions.

There are two parts of the brain that are highly active during memory storage and recall: the frontal lobe and the Hippocampus. These two regions are highly activated during meditation. Meditation acts like exercise for these regions of the brain, making them stronger. This in turns, makes you more able to memorise and recall information.

 9. Improves intuition: Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston showed that meditation increases the thickness of the brain’s outer cortex, which is responsible for mental functions, including learning, concentration, and memory.  

10. Mindfulness training improves productivity: One study showed that eight weeks of daily mindfulness training could make employees (in this instance, they were human resource managers) less stressed and more able to focus on their jobs, which increases productivity.

 11. Stops “Monkey Mind”: “Monkey Mind ” is a Buddhist term that refers an always noisy, ever-changing mind. But meditation can stop this. In a study by IONS, PhD student Travy Brandmeyer studied 12 novices and 12 expert meditators and intentionally distracted them to see how their minds wandered. The results showed that experienced meditators suffer considerable less monkey mind than novices.  But the researchers note that further studies are required to substantiate the findings.  

12. Helps with problem-solving: A group of German psychologists asked volunteers to try to complete a complex problem-solving task before and after meditating. Before meditating most of the group struggled. But when they meditated, the researchers say, they were more able to think outside the box to find a solution. The scientists state that meditation helps you to solve problems in creative ways.

13: Meditation increases brain size:  Scientists at the Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that meditation makes your brain bigger (literally). Specifically, it makes your cerebral cortex thicker and increases grey matter mass.

14: Improves brain wave patterns: The Norwegian University of Science And Technology studied the effect of daily meditation on brain waves. The researchers asked a group of participants to practice a type of open technique called Acem. While the group were meditating, the researchers took EEG scans of the participant’s brains. The results showed an increase in brainwaves that are conducive to a relaxed, wakeful state.  

15. Makes us more responsible: Meditation makes you more empathetic, more compassionate, and more in control of your own actions. Hence, it both motivates and enables you to be more responsible. A Harvard study confirmed that people who meditate are more likely to give up their seat for a woman in pain.  Dr Hölzel, who conducted the study, said that people who meditate “may be more willing to help when someone suffers.”

16. Makes us better listeners:  The Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied the effect of meditation on listening skills in 2009. They found that when you meditate, you improve your attention and this, in turn, makes you a better listener. Even more surprising, it turns out that meditation is especially good at making you listen when you’re not interested in what the other person is saying.

 17.  Makes people less angry: The journal Consciousness and Cognition published a study that stated that meditation improves your body’s response to anger. The study highlighted that one twenty-minute meditation session improves your body’s response to anger by reducing breathing rate and heart rate, helping to balance blood pressure, and giving you more self-control. And in fact, people who have been meditating for a long time may exhibit no bodily response to anger at all.

18. Improves relations at work: 

It can be a challenge to maintain healthy and productive workplace relationships for one simple reason. Work is one of the most stressful environments. And when we are stressed, we become less receptive, less emotionally balanced, less empathetic, less compassionate, and less tolerant. That’s precisely why if you have a bad day at work you might end up regretting something you say. But meditation can help.

Meditation helps you to relax at work. Take a 15-minute mindfulness break at some point in the day. It will remove stress, help you to relax, and restore you to your normal, tolerant, patient self. And then you will have positive workplace relationships, and you will be less likely to say something you end up regretting.

Conclusion 

Wow

Over 100 corporate meditation benefits.

Personally, I think we owe it to ourselves to meditate daily. But of course, that is entirely your choice.

I do hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful.

My passion and aim with this is to bring meditation to one million of people. With that in mind, can I ask you a favour, please?

If you found this useful, please will you leave a comment so I know I’m doing the right thing here? It would mean the world to me to hear from you. And if you would like to help me spread meditation, please share this article on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you think people would like to see it. 

Paul Harrison is a passionate meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in meditation and mindfulness. He studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.

“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison