Can Mindfulness Fill Corporate America With Better, Happier Workers?

Pacific Standard:

This simple breathing exercise — you’ve probably tried some version of it at the start of an exercise class or workshop — is at the core of many mindfulness programs. Looking at what various advocates mean by mindfulness, Erik Dane, a Rice University researcher who studies cognition in the workplace, writes that it boils down to a psychological state involving full attention to whatever is happening, both inside and outside a person, right now. While a worker who’s absorbed in a task is focused on a single activity in the present moment, a mindful worker is broadly aware of many more stimuli — a slight tension in her shoulders, a co-worker blowing his nose, an inexplicable sense of sadness, the hum of the air conditioner.

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