Health Is Wealth
Did you know that in the UK, stress results in 105 million lost workdays each year?
Having worked for big corporations and international advertising agencies, stress and pressure used to be part of my everyday life. This is when my yoga journey started.
In fact many leading companies, such as Google, Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Procter & Gamble and many more, have already started to increase their employees’ wellbeing. For example, Salesforce offers free yoga, cash benefits for wellness and paid time to volunteer. Wegmans, offers on site yoga and zumba classes, nutritional counselling and high blood pressure screenings.
“If you create a culture in which vibrant physicality is an admired thing, you’ve achieved a lot. A healthy workforce is a productive workforce.”Ashley G. Anderson, Promega's Chief Medical Officer
I personally believe we’ve reached the end of an era. Over connectivity, burnout, stress and depression have become worldwide epidemics. Like if being the last one to arrive at work (or the first one to leave) was synonym of laziness and unprofessionalism, and vice versa.
Some of them have increasingly cut sleep hours in order to feel more productive. And according to a Harvard Medical School study, “an astounding 96% of leaders said they felt burned out”.
People still think that their productivity and efficiency is directly linked to the amount of time they spend working. Not only this couldn’t be further from the truth, this is also not sustainable.
Fortunately things are changing and results are now proving we got it wrong so far…
“The relationship between overwork and loss of productivity is consistent regardless of nationality or culture” explains Arianna Huffington in her book Thrive. “According to 2013 numbers from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), among European countries, Greece was number one in hours worked, Poland was second, and Hungary third. Their productivity rankings, however, were 18th, 24th, and 25th (last one). Working the fewest hours were the Dutch, Germans, and Norwegians, who came at 4th, 7th, and 1st in productivity.”
A good example is Aetna, the third largest health insurance provider in the United States. The company has created a wellness program for its 49,000 employees, making yoga, meditation and acupuncture available to them all, and has measured the benefits. It turned out to generate a 7% drop in health care costs and 62 minutes of additional productivity per week for those employees who participated in the wellness program. Stunning, right?
So why not being part of the change and joining the leading companies which are already putting their employees’ wellbeing as a priority?
Learn more about how we can help you take care of your employee’s wellbeing and, at the same time, make your company more competitive and more profitable…
Yoga and Meditation
Yoga is way much more than a type of physical exercise. Not only it helps building strength and increases flexibility in the entire body + mind, but yoga is actually also a form of moving meditation.
Because the breath is at the core of our practice, we are turning inwards in the process and learning to be in our bodies instead than in our minds.
“If you just sit and observe, you’ll see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time, it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things. That’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more that you could see before.”Steve Jobs
Having suffered from depression and a full-blown eating disorder in my twenties, I’ve managed to turn that around. Today I feel better than ever and I am enjoying life to its fullest. I know yoga and meditation have not only played a huge role in my recovery but they are still an important part of my wellbeing today.
This is why I am now teaching what has had such a positive impact on my health and happiness. I want to create a ripple effect and make others benefit from it too.
But this is not only about my personal journey. Mindfulness and meditation are being increasingly adopted by corporations around the world to help their employees stay mindful and focused.
Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at Emory University, found that, after an interruption, the minds of participants who meditated were able to return to what they had been focusing on faster than non-meditators. “The regular practice of meditation may enhance the capacity to limit the influence of distracting thoughts”, he says.
As Arianna Huffington puts it: “Yoga and meditation are no longer seen as some sort of New Age escape from the world. They are increasingly seen for what they are: practices that help us be in the world in a way that is more productive, more engaged, healthier, more focused, and less stressful.”
We have chosen to be part of the change!
That’s why we are offering on-site 60 or 90 minutes high quality yoga and meditation classes to best suit your employees’ schedule, anytime of the day, 5 days a week…
Send us a message to request more details...
Professional Bio
Co-founder of Above The Clouds, Pauline Hanuise is a Holistic Nutrition Coach specializing in Eating Disorder Recovery, a Yoga Instructor, and a Digital Entrepreneur.
After working many years as a digital producer for international companies in Brussels and Sydney, she's graduated from The Institute For Integrative Nutrition in New York in 2012 and has since launched her own coaching practice and programs.
She's practiced yoga all over the world and has been trained by renowned teachers in Australia, Bali and Malta. She has passed her 200hrs Yoga Teacher Training certification with Yoga Alliance and High Vibe Yoga at the famous Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali, in 2013. Since then, she has spread her teachings in person all around Europe, and worldwide via her online programs.
She draws from her experience helping thousands of women improving their health and life, as well as her many travels and expatriations. Her mission is to make a positive impact in the world by empowering people to take control of their health and happiness, based on cutting-edge research.
