A.N.D…. B-R-E-A-T-H-E
When the world around us can feel like it’s spinning out of control, wellbeing experts are united when they say we all just need to take a few deep breaths, exhale, release the tension, and try and regulate ourselves.
Data shows that trying to be more ‘in the present’, including starting with some good breathing exercises, can reduce anxiety, lower our heart rates, and bring us to a state of equilibrium.
But in the office?
Isn’t this a relaxation tool that’s definitely best done at home, and ‘before’ we switch into work mode (and our colleagues can see us?)
Well, not according to Sean Clayton, founder of Myosin Marketing.
The former director at Splash Media, and Publicitas (above) has spent most of his career understanding what makes people’s minds tick – from a marketing and consumer spending point of view.
But studying this neuroscience, plus also seeing people coming to meetings ‘not’ in a switched-on way has led him to take a novel approach.
He now – without fail – starts all meetings with his team (and even some with his clients), by going through a series of deep-breathing exercises.
Typically taking 5-10 minutes, he claims the technique he employs is his way of addressing employee anxiety, improving focus, and people helping tune into meetings, the create high frequency, productive events.
The results, he claims, are better synchronicity amongst team members, wildly more collaboration – oh, and not to mention work/meetings being infinitely more enjoyable.
Addressing different energies
“When I started growing my own agency, I could easily see that people were coming to meetings with different energies,” he says, in an exclusive interview with TLNT.
“When you stop to think about it, it stands to reason that everyone is coming in from a different set of circumstance,” he says.
“Maybe someone’s just finished a particularly difficult meeting with someone else; maybe someone’s distracted by things going on at home,” he says. “To suddenly expect people to come together and create instant harmony is a hard ask.”
According to Clayton, most people have a prominence of beta wave brain activity at work – that is, they’re experiencing anxiety and high arousal, which creates an inability to relax (which then causes stress and poor cognition).
“I started doing my own personal neuro-feedback work and deep breathing exercises, and the benefit was so profound for me, that I soon realized this was something I could bring to my team,” he reflects.
“Breathing was getting me into a state of ‘flow’ much quicker. I was more alert; and just more focused on being able to get things done.”
The upshot of this is a technique that involves staff – as a collective (and either in video-calls, or in-person), closing their eyes, and breathing in through their nose, holding this breath, and then exhaling more slowly, and then repeating this numerous times.
“Suddenly, we’re all here together, as a team, and in a much better state of calmness,” he says.
Do staff feel awkward?
Clayton admits that at first, he was unsure about whether he was “courageous enough” to unleash this methodology on staff, but in combination with asking someone to reveal something about them that others don’t know (and which might potentially be holding them back), support for the initiative was pretty much instant.
Says Clayton: “Some might say having traditional chit-chat at the start of a meeting does the same job of relaxing people, and getting them in a position where they can forget the meeting they’ve just come from.
“But this is really just the sort of posturing that I didn’t want to see. It’s often people projecting an image of themselves that they want others to see. With our way, we’re all equal, we don’t need to try and impress anyone, and we’re all breathing together. It 100% sets the right tone.”
Results?
Clayton is convinced the breathing exercises he does puts team members in a fundamentally better mental space to find solutions better, get to the point quicker, and generally be more innovative and productive.
Which sounds like he’s utilizing an extremely potent secret weapon – and which any company could copy. Yes?
“We totally believe this,” he says, arguing that when the breathing and vulnerability sessions are leadership led (he says he’s even opened up about being abused as a child), it gets tremendous buy-in.
But here’s one final question – is it a novelty at first, where the benefits soon wane after it becomes ‘normal’?
“We believe it’s about consistency,” says Clayton. “We know that the impact of good deep breathing continues to be felt. We just find that when we all experience this technique together, we’re all more energized and the world feels like more of an adventurous place.”