Meditative Practices Promoted in Workplaces

By Kathleen Mellen, Staff Writer, Daily Hampshire Gazette
Copyright GazetteNET.com
Originally published on Monday, February 2, 2004

NORTHAMPTON - Picture this: 90 lawyers, recruited from the nation's top law schools to work at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., take a break from their jobs protecting the nation's consumers, leave unfinished work on their desks, and gather in a conference room - to meditate.

Is this what we want from those charged with ensuring the smooth operation of our free-market system?

Precisely, says Mirabai Bush, founder and executive director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in Northampton, an organization that promotes the use of contemplative practices - like meditation and yoga - in the nation's workplaces.

The center's goal, says Bush, is to teach people in nonreligious, organizational settings how to use the ancient religious-based practices of meditation and yoga to slow down, open their minds and gain new perspective on the jobs they do.

''Meditation brings you to the deepest level of trust,'' said Bush. ''It promotes awareness of emotions and helps people make healthy decisions.''

The practices, Bush said, also enhance creativity and improve the ability to make better decisions in a work setting.

''It enhances tolerance for other people's perspectives and improves the ability to hold conflicting ideas in the mind at the same time,'' Bush said.

Recently, Contemplative Mind staff have worked with the lawyers at the FTC - the same ones responsible for creating the nation's ''do not call list,'' and who are now tackling the problem of computer spam - combining the teaching of contemplative practices with discussions about diversity in FTC hiring practices.

Sound far-fetched? Not so, says Bush. ''Mindfulness enhances tolerance for other people's perspectives ... it makes us better communicators.''

At the FTC, staff from the center met with lawyers in groups of about 25. Sitting in straight-backed chairs, they began their sessions with a period of silence, to bring the participants ''into the present moment in a nonjudgmental way,'' said Bush.

Using a ''talisman'' technique, Bush had asked each lawyer to bring in an item that helped illustrate why they chose to join the FTC staff in the first place. As the lawyers took turns placing their items on a table, they told their personal stories.

''I was stunned,'' said Bush. ''It was very moving ... even though they work together, they had never told each other these things.''

Bush said, as a result of their work with the center, the FTC has already made headway toward their stated goal of increasing diversity by adopting a new policy that addresses ways in which to improve diversity in its recruiting and hiring practices.

 

Center's reach far

Tucked away on the third floor of 199 Main St., staff at the Contemplative Mind in Society seek to combat workplace issues like discrimination, worker burnout and stress-related illnesses, by introducing contemplative practices into the mainstream.

The center's annual operating budget is just over $930,000, with principal funding coming from private foundations, including the Nathan Cummings, Ford, Hana and Hidden Leaf foundations, the Fetzer Institute and the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund at the Peninsula Community Foundation, according to Rene Theberge, director of operations and finance at the center.

Other funds come by way of tax-deductible donations from individuals, special programs and fee-for-service projects, which can range from ''practically nothing'' to as much as $30,000 to $40,000, depending on number of factors, said Theberge, who declined to say how much the FTC paid.

There are a range of ways in which their services can be helpful in organizational settings, said Bush, 64, who remains the guiding force behind the center she founded in 1997 in a cabin behind her Williamsburg house. The group moved to Northampton in 2000.

In general, Bush said, contemplative practices ''allow for a quieting down in a job context.'' As with the FTC lawyers, using the practices helps in evaluating existing problems and in finding creative solutions.

Bush said contemplative practices are especially effective in combating stress, a looming problem among the nation's workers.

As the pace of life in the U.S. becomes increasingly hectic, and stress becomes one of the primary defining factors in our society, staff at the nonprofit center have parlayed their own interest in contemplative practices into a thriving business bent on reducing that stress and its deleterious effects on society. Each of the 10 staff members has a personal contemplative practice.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency responsible for conducting research about work-related illness, stress in the workplace affects nearly every worker.

So widespread is the problem, that nearly one-half of large companies in the United States provide employees with some sort of stress management.

While there are hundreds of such programs across the country, Bush said the use of contemplative practices is one of the most effective ways of combating workplace stress.

''There are well-documented effects of calmness and quiet on reducing stress in the workplace,'' said Bush.

Using the ancient practices in secular settings, Bush and her staff make the benefits ''available to people who might not otherwise look for it - we offer it in a professional context,'' she said.

In fact, Bush said the methods she most often introduces into organizational settings come from the Buddhist tradition. ''There's no dogma attached to Buddhism,'' said Bush. ''You don't have to believe in anything.''

Bush, lively and energetic, exudes conviction in her work. As a successful educator and businesswoman, she says she knows the methods work because she practices what she preaches - and has done so for 30 years.

Before starting the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Bush was a founding member of the Seva Foundation in Berkeley, Calif., an international public health organization. She is co-author, with Ram Dass, of ''Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service,'' published by Random House.

A woman of vast interests, she worked on the Saturn-Apollo moon launches at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The first woman ever to be issued a hard hat and a jumpsuit at Cape Canaveral, Bush wrote manuals on filling the Saturn with liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

More recently, she worked in public health in Cambridge before relocating 12 years ago to western Massachusetts.

Bush said the center allows her to combine her long-held interests in meditation and social activism. And she is certainly not alone in her convictions about the benefits of contemplative practices.

 

Belief in meditation grows

Time magazine, in August 2003, reported that nearly 10 million American adults ''report they practice some form of meditation regularly.''

In his studies on the healing power of meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn found evidence that meditation improves the immune system, helping to fight off everything from flu to psoriasis to breast cancer.

Kabat-Zinn, a member of the center's advisory council, is an associate professor of medicine and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.

Much of the Center for Contemplative Mind's work has not been done locally, although over the years, it has offered a variety of programs and retreats in which local professionals have participated.

Consultant Jennifer Ladd of Northampton helps philanthropic organizations decide where to put their money. For the past several years, she has attended and helped organize several retreats sponsored by the center.

''It's inspiring to come together with others who are trying to integrate contemplative practices with their work,'' said Ladd. ''(The retreats) have been informative and bolstering.''

The center's ongoing projects and programs are far-reaching, focusing on the arts, higher education, philanthropy and youth. A law program was dissolved in December due to a lack of funds, according to research director Maia Duerr.

Through the center's Contemplative Practice Fellowship Program, a collaboration with the American Council of Learned Society and funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Fetzer Institute, the center has awarded 93 fellowships in 70 colleges and universities to encourage the study of contemplative practices in those settings.

Another ongoing project with widespread implications is the Contemplative Net Program, a ''qualitative research study to determine how contemplative practices are already being employed in mainstream American society,'' according to the center's literature.

As funding for nonprofit agencies continues to shrink, competition for that money becomes more acute. The center recently hired its first director of development, Paul Nelson, to search for those elusive funds.

Nelson, who moved to the area three months ago from New Hampshire, acknowledges his job - primarily writing grant proposals - is a tricky one.

''What we are selling is very much an intangible,'' Nelson said. Unlike most nonprofit organizations, the center has no membership base from which to raise money, so must rely almost exclusively on foundation money, Nelson said.

As a professional fund-raiser with experience working in the fields of health and human services, Nelson could probably find an easier job. But, like other staff at the center, he has a longtime contemplative practice and said the job was ''a perfect fit.''

The center ''sits at the forefront and brings the best of religious practices into a secular society that one might say is in desperate need of those methods,'' said Nelson.