Mindfulness

Hello from guest blogger, Lisa Robinson! In this week’s post, I’m sharing details about mindfulness at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (Harvard Pilgrim), a full-service health benefits company serving Massachusetts and other states in the northeast. Based on scientific data showing the benefits of mindfulness meditation, in 2006 Harvard Pilgrim began a pilot “Mindfulness in the Workplace” program that provided a 6-week course on the basics of mindfulness. By learning how to take advantage of body scans, mindful eating, meditation, and mindful listening, participants demonstrated improvement in handling stress, interacting with others, focusing their attention, and in improving their work/life balance. Today, Harvard Pilgrim offers a wide variety of mindfulness programs to employer groups and the community. Here’s a link to find out more: https://ow.ly/BNqwp. Here, you’ll find videos, meditations, and other resources to help you make progress on your mindful path. At the link above, you’ll also find a Frequently Asked Questions list. I noted that under the question, “What if I am a skeptic?” there wasn’t an attempt to discount doubts that an individual might have. Instead, the answer encourages patiently trying mindfulness for a while to see what benefits could result from practicing it over time. Finding the Harvard Pilgrim resources made me think of other businesses that pair making mindfulness an important part of their operations, such as Aetna and Google. There are many others; the list is growing as individuals experience the benefits of mindfulness and