Workplace Wellness Insights: A Holiday Guide to Mindfulness, A Healthy Makeover of Your Holiday Recipes and More!

Each month, we send out our RK Healthy Workforce wellness newsletter. In it, we provide health and wellness tips for your work and life. It’s November, and we’re getting into the heart of the holiday season with food, family and festivities. We decided to give a holiday guide to mindfulness, since the holidays can bring both joy and stress. Managing stress in a healthy way is very important. One effective way to do so is to practice mindfulness.

What is mindfulness? It is the process of bringing your full attention to experiences in the present moment. Being mindful means being aware of where you are and what you’re doing, as well as not being reactive or overwhelmed with what’s going on around you. A lot of people achieve mindfulness through meditation and yoga. Mastering meditation can take practice, but getting started is pretty easy and not that time-consuming. In our monthly newsletter, we provide two quick mindful meditation techniques to try out the next time you’re feeling stressed:

• One-minute relaxation breathing — Close your eyes and take a deep breath in for a count of four, and then exhale for a count of eight. Repeat five times.
• Five-minute body scan meditation — Sit or lay down in a comfortable position and take a few moments to find a calm, steady breath. Bring your awareness to sensations in your body, where you will spend several slow breaths on each focal point beginning with the left toes and all the way through the left hip. Repeat on the right side. From there, follow the same process through your torso, arms and up through your head.

Our monthly wellness newsletter also provides healthy recipes, seasonal tips and other valuable resources. For example, in November we also talk about:

• Curbing Your Caffeine Consumption
• Making Over Your Holiday Recipes by Substituting Fats
• A Recipe for Super Stuffed Squash

If you would like to receive this newsletter in your email each month, contact your R&K client manager. Also, check back with us next month for more workplace wellness insights.

Rose & Kiernan, Inc. offers workplace wellness support through our signature platform RKHealthy Workforce. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us here or by calling (800) 242-4433.