Joey Klein, Inner Matrix Systems Founder, on Workplace Inner Training and Mindfulness Techniques

Many major companies, including Nike, Apple, and Aetna, have used inner training/mindfulness techniques in the workforce with positive results. Inner Training/Mindfulness techniques offer many benefits, such as increased focus and reduced stress, impacting the brain on a neural level. Simple inner training/mindfulness techniques can be leveraged during the workday in just a few simple steps. In this article, Inner Matrix Systems CEO, Joey Klein, takes a closer look at inner training/mindfulness techniques and why it has become so popular in the workplace.

Employers, large and small, are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve employee productivity and job satisfaction. Many provide such benefits as flextime, free food, an on-premise gym, and the list goes on. Teaching employees how to utilize mindfulness meditation is gaining popularity around the world. Many well-known companies now offer mindfulness classes and seminars to their employees.

For many people, the workplace is the source of significant stress in their lives. With phone calls, email, text messages, chat tools, and deadlines to meet, there is little time for personal reflection and mindfulness. The benefits of inner training/mindfulness techniques are well documented and include:

• Reduced stress
• Healthy interpersonal relationships
• Lower blood pressure
• More regular sleep
• Improved memory
• Sense of peace and well-being

Employers recognize that healthier and happier employees are more likely to be productive and stay with the company longer. A 2012 Forbes article identified some of the companies that invested in implementing mindfulness meditation programs in the workplace nearly ten years ago. This list includes:

• Apple
• Aetna
• Google
• General Mills
• McKinsey & Company
• Astra Zeneca
• Deutsche Bank
• Procter & Gamble

In 2016, Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health reported that 22% of employers offered mindfulness training programs. While attending company-sponsored mindfulness meditation seminars, employees are encouraged to:

• Begin each day with a contemplative inner training/mindfulness session.
• Pause periodically throughout the day to calm their mind and center their thoughts by taking a few deep breaths and focusing their mind on the outcome they want to create.

A neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Sara Lazar, was one of the first scientists to test the claims about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness using brain scans. To her surprise, she found that inner training/mindfulness can literally change your brain.

It is known that our cortex shrinks as we age – it’s harder to remember things and figure things out. Lazar’s study showed that in the prefrontal cortex, 50-year-olds that regularly engaged in meditation had the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds.

A Scientific American report indicates that mindfulness training alters the brain and how people engage with themselves and others at work. When mindfulness is practiced and applied, brain activity is redirected from ancient, reactionary parts of the brain to the brain’s newest, rational part, the prefrontal cortex.

About Inner Matrix Systems

Inner Matrix Systems, based in Denver, is a personal mastery training system for high achievers. For more than twenty years, IMS has delivered a proprietary methodology that rewires, trains, and aligns the nervous system, emotions, and thought strategies to create real-life results.

CEO, Joey Klein, and IMS have worked with more than 80,000 individuals from around the world through both live and online training programs, as well as one-on-one coaching. Clients have included: Boeing, IBM, Dell, Google, Panda Express, Coca Cola and The World Health Organization. Joey is the author of The Inner Matrix: Leveraging the Art & Science of Personal Mastery to Create Real-Life Results (April 2021).