Floatation and Mindfulness

Last Sunday, I spent one hour doing nothing.

No screens, no sounds, and no sleeping.

It was a flotation therapy - my body and mind, floating on water in a dark pod.

After I got used to floating, I felt tension around my shoulders.

Then, after a few rounds of body scans, I noticed the tightness in my neck.

Until I felt my body was fully relaxed, I was immersed in thoughts and nothingness.

After the session, I felt refreshed.

Actually, I am not here to sell this therapy.

Instead, the experience reminds me of mindfulness. And I want to share how mindfulness helped me as a manager.

Mindfulness is paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is.

The definition includes three core elements. As a manager, I think all of them apply to work as well:

• Attention: paying attention to what is happening within and around you. As a manager, you need to pay attention, not only to things, but also to people (their emotions and behaviours).

• Altitude: with curiosity and without judgment. As a manager, you need to be open-minded. Don’t judge others or label them. Be curious and do your best to discover their rationales behind.

• Intention: set an intention to pay attention and start again each time your mind wanders, which brings us back to altitude. As a manager, your words, actions and decisions affect others. To lead by example, a manager needs to be intentional.

The most important thing I always kept in mind is, being mindful means exiting our normal auto-piloting mode in life, and opening up our self-awareness.

Mindfulness is different from our normal state of mind, where we're often lost in thought, ruminating, worrying about the future or regretting the past. We spend a large part of our lives unaware of what we're experiencing, missing out on all the sights and sounds and joys we could appreciate.

In 2020, I studied a Coursera course Mindfulness in Integrative Healthcare, taught by instructors Louise Delagran and Alex Haley (University of Minnesota). Highly recommended.