What if there was a way to manage all aspects of your well-being, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, occupationally, financially, socially, environmentally, and spiritually?
Join us as we sit down with our insightful guest, Niya Bajaj, a holistic yoga therapist and leadership coach, who enlightens us about the eight dimensions of wellbeing and how these are intertwined in her yoga practice. Beyond the physical stretching, yoga, as Niya elaborates, encompasses practices like asana for physical wellbeing and yamas for social wellbeing. Her unique approach broadens the benefits of yoga, making it a comprehensive tool for holistic self-nourishment.
As we delve deeper in our conversation with Niya, we explore the profound connection between yoga, sustainability, and narrative competence. We also tackle the challenges of setting boundaries and advocating well-being in a work setting. How leaders can mirror wellness, and how cultural change can be fostered through interventions like yoga therapy are also discussed. This is a conversation that unravels the idea of well-being not just as an individual pursuit, but as a collective endeavour that can transform work culture and environments.
I'm sure after listening to this conversation you will see why I am so looking forward to sharing the stage with Niya who will be my co-host at our Toronto Summit on September 26
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
What if there was a way to manage all aspects of your well-being, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, occupationally, financially, socially, environmentally, and spiritually?
Join us as we sit down with our insightful guest, Niya Bajaj, a holistic yoga therapist and leadership coach, who enlightens us about the eight dimensions of wellbeing and how these are intertwined in her yoga practice. Beyond the physical stretching, yoga, as Niya elaborates, encompasses practices like asana for physical wellbeing and yamas for social wellbeing. Her unique approach broadens the benefits of yoga, making it a comprehensive tool for holistic self-nourishment.
As we delve deeper in our conversation with Niya, we explore the profound connection between yoga, sustainability, and narrative competence. We also tackle the challenges of setting boundaries and advocating well-being in a work setting. How leaders can mirror wellness, and how cultural change can be fostered through interventions like yoga therapy are also discussed. This is a conversation that unravels the idea of well-being not just as an individual pursuit, but as a collective endeavour that can transform work culture and environments.
I'm sure after listening to this conversation you will see why I am so looking forward to sharing the stage with Niya who will be my co-host at our Toronto Summit on September 26
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Conversations on Well-Being at Work, the podcast by Well-Being at Work, where we feature discussions with innovative HR leaders, well-being thought leaders and practitioners who are going to be speaking at our conferences coming up, our summits and we have a summit coming up in September here in Toronto and my guest today is Nia Bajaj, who is a holistic yoga therapist and leadership coach and also works with the Leadership Pathways Programme for the Ontario Public Service and she's going to be my co-host for the conference. So delighted to have her here with us today and gets to know her a little bit better. Before we share the stage come September, we'll mention, you know, well-being at Work world. We live up to our name. We do summits all over the world.
Speaker 1:You can find out about them on our website, wellbeingatworkworld. There's also a hub there, a global hub that has a number of members exchanging information and it's got some great resources for well-being leaders as well as a number of. We host a podcast there, as well as a number of webcasts, and also you can access our bespoke division there where we do tailor-made programmes for organisations. So welcome, nia. Welcome to well-being conversations at well-being at work. Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Good to be here. Tom. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better too, as we do this.
Speaker 1:Well, now I'm the mysterious host. I reveal very little about myself on these shows, only occasionally. We're going to be talking about sustainable self-care today, but before we kick that off that conversation, I'd like to ask you, as I do all my guests how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing really well today. I had a great night's sleep. I started my day with short yoga practice. I have a big mug of Ayurvedic tea sitting here to support my digestion through the day so pretty jazzed.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad to hear you'd better than me. I didn't have a good night's sleep. I was having a silent talk about myself. I got woken up at the middle of the night by my dog trying to bury a bone in Meduvae and it's not an easy task, I can tell you. It takes quite a long time and then you can get quite upset when your bone is taken away from you. So she wasn't too happy. But I'm energised at the thought of that conversation and we'll kick off, as I mentioned just in that brief inflection. You are a holistic yoga therapist and we're going to talk first about the eight dimensions of wellbeing and how that relates to your yoga practice. So if you could explain that holistic approach you have, the aspects of wellbeing you address and the yoga map and how those work together.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. And for folks who haven't heard about the eight aspects of wellbeing, though, I think they're becoming more popular. They come out of research from, I believe, rutgers. Dr Margaret Swarbrick identified these eight aspects in her work as an applied psychologist, and they are your physical wellbeing, which is pretty obvious. Mental wellbeing, which is different than mental health and the way that we conceptualize it. Your emotional wellbeing. Your occupational and financial wellbeing, which most people don't think about too often. Social wellbeing, environmental wellbeing and spiritual wellbeing. That makes up the eight, which is pretty comprehensive, and while they are separated out so we can understand them better, they are quite integrated with each other and they map reasonably neatly onto the eight limbs of yoga, which people maybe less familiar with, things like the yamas, which are the ethical practices that you use when you engage in a relationship with other people, because yoga is fundamentally about relationship, and so you can use yamas like ahimsa, which is the practice of non-harming. Most people are familiar with that one.
Speaker 2:it also tends to be a very popular brand name, for some reason but you might use the practice of non-harming in relationship with other people, which can boost your social wellbeing, but you could also use it in relationship to your environment, so not deliberately harming plant life around you, which can be a really positive way of engaging with your environmental wellbeing. So it's a really obvious mapping piece. Most people are familiar with yoga, asana, which is the physical practice of yoga, which has a huge impact on your physical wellbeing. But what most people don't know is the asana practice that you do. The physical movement of practice is really designed to help you sit comfortably in meditation or, for those of us who sit for long periods of time every day in front of a screen, an asana practice can be a really powerful way to help you sit. So you don't, you know, deliver or develop really tight hips for a low back problem. So it might be something to integrate for your physical wellbeing. That way.
Speaker 2:Pratyahara is the practice of discernment, and so you could use it as a way to determine where to devote your energy, as a way to either prevent burnout or, if you are experiencing burnout at any given point, to start to manage those symptoms by deciding where you use your energy and where you maybe pull away from, and then the niyamas, or practices like samtosh or contentedness, which can be a really powerful way of managing your financial wellbeing. Especially if you're sort of dealing with debt and things like that, starting to be content with what you have can be a really powerful practice. So it maps really neatly onto those phases and over time, as you decide where you want to spend, which aspect of wellbeing you want to spend more time on, you can decide which aspects of yoga are most helpful to you.
Speaker 1:So it's more than just stretching, then.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it definitely is more than just stretching, but for many people that's an easy route in, because if you can sit comfortably, then chances are you will feel better.
Speaker 1:Yes, I hate to say, as you listed those sort of eight areas of wellbeing. I know it's one thing you didn't mention, but you then did later on the notion of social wellbeing, and again I find that we tend to think of, or do we tend to? When I think of yoga, I think of a very sort of individual practice, whereas there's a big social I mean my social element. I don't mean sort of cocktail parties, I mean sort of connection with other people, elements of it presumably.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's something that maybe people don't think about when they think about yoga. But fundamentally yoga is a practice of relationship. So the practice of relationship with yourself, which is the one that's most obvious to people, your relationship with your body through your asana practice. Your relationship to your breath through the brahmanian practice, which helps regulate your nervous system really powerfully. Your relationship to your mind through the practice of dharana or meditation, and those are fairly obvious. Most people have seen that in common yoga marketing. But if your nervous system is dysregulated and so you don't have or you're not using a brahmanian practice, we as humans co-regulate with the people around us, so that'll come out in your social relationships. And so the practice of sangha, which is also very common in Buddhism, which is probably where most people are familiar with it. It's really critical to the practice of yoga.
Speaker 2:You don't very rarely would you practice yoga by yourself. You'd practice with a teacher. That is the very classic traditional model in most Western communities. You practice sort of in large group setting, which can be a really powerful way to co-regulate as well. And so, depending on sort of where you choose to practice, there is that sense of community and, for some, the practice of sap sangha, which is the practice of a community engaging in the search for truth. Whatever that truth might be could be philosophical discussions. You might explore a particular text or many.
Speaker 2:It is the Bhagavad Gita which can be a really powerful way of also engaging with your spiritual wellbeing, so it doesn't have to be a solo practice.
Speaker 1:No, and in terms of the workplace, if I can again, I mean, do you get any pushback on any of this in the sense that of sort of it being a little bit sort of removed from the world of the daily grind of work and all the sort of pressures that that puts on people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find, especially in the works places that I tend to be, people live, my teachers like to say, from the neck up, so you're really only existing in this very intellectual space. People forget about their bodies. I know a lot of my colleagues won't take bathroom breaks because they're in back-to-back meetings. People are missing meals, and so this active disconnection from the body is pretty real, and yoga can be a really powerful practice for coming back into it.
Speaker 2:But then it means people will be taking lunch breaks, it will be late to meetings because they're going to the bathroom, which kind of buffs up against this culture of you were always productive and there's not a lot of time for rest. But if you're tuned into yourself, you'll notice when you do need to rest and you might sort of deliberately take the days off that you have instead of working through them or taking a real sick day. So it can really rub up against culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned. Yeah, I was just about to ask a question about rest. I know it's not something that we've discussed before, but there's a couple of things that I find when doing events like working on the wellbeing at work conference, every event I work on, you know you come to it with certain sort of preconceptions about what people should be interested in, and obviously we all know what other people should be interested in, because it's what we're interested in. It's pretty simple and there's always things that crop up that kind of a little surprising or new and, being a conference person, you know you're sort of you're always on the lookout for those. You know what's sort of gonna happen next. And a couple of two things that I'm hearing a lot about, and one is sustainability. So you know we were gonna talk about sustainable health care, the notion of a sustainable workforce, what?
Speaker 1:does that mean and that's who we're getting current currency. And I think hand in hand with that is this notion of rest that you know we are so busy and rest carries with it a, you know, almost a stigma, right? I mean, where's the place of rest in this world that you've painted us of yoga, arms and philosophy and around that? How does rest play into that?
Speaker 2:So rest is the first principle of yoga therapy, actually. So before we do anything else, we explore where the body is at and more often than not people need rest, and whether that's intellectual rest or it's physical rest, all of those things come into play Because if you're not rested then it's difficult to regulate your nervous system. It's difficult to be in good relationship with yourself, because often in the body there tends to be inflammation. The breath tends to be disturbed. When you're tired, you're. If you're like me, you're generally not a very nice person, and that will show up in your relationships with your colleagues. It'll show up in your relationships with your family and all kinds of other places with an impact on how you feel about yourself, and so it becomes this really vicious cycle.
Speaker 2:And so, deliberately pausing, and whether that's, you know, I need a five minute break between this task and the next task for mental clearing, or I need a nap after my workday so I can then, you know, actually find a break, especially for those of us who have been working from home for a while now. There seems to be no break between work life and other life. They just blend into each other. So maybe it's a 15 minute nap to reset. So then you've been engaged in other spaces. That can be really powerful. But it also doesn't have to be sleep as a form of rest. You know I play with my kittens as a way of a mental break. It also keeps me playful. So rest can be many things for many people, but it is important to find places for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and our keynote speaker last year this the Toronto event was a prof out of Aligweil for Jamie Grume, and he wrote a book called Boost and what that was about and he touched a little bit on it on his presentation, although he was speaking about something else was about the need to think about how you spend your.
Speaker 1:He talks more about leisure versus sort of little mini breaks during the day, but you know, if you're a carpenter you don't spend your leisure time building a deck. You know at the back of the house you want to do something that's different to your everyday work, but that but again, that's very much kind of tied up with activity and I think this idea of just that freedom to be to do nothing, you know, can be quite. We have a speaker from a Macy speaker in a Calgary, you know, and she talks about how you know this prejudice or bias well, it's the worst in the bias but about, you know, sort of lazy lazy indigenous people right, you have to overcome those kind of things and rest is actually needed, and it speaks very directly to that notion of sustainability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and creativity. If you're not well rested, it's hard for you to make those new connections. It's hard to be innovative, as we. You know, everyone's a big fan of being innovative but if you don't rest it's harder to see possibilities for different ways that things could be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it just strikes me, as you describe that sort of yoga world, as it were, around sustainability, that it's very accessible to people, isn't it? I mean, it's not something that you know you can, you know, you know you can't. You know I can't play rugby anymore because I'm just too old, right, I mean, which I haven't done for a number of years anyway. But there is that sort of sense that it's sort of nourishing you as a whole, but also it's available to everybody, right? Is that that sense? Would you? Would?
Speaker 2:you push you. Yes, I usually say if you can breathe you can do a yoga practice, and if you can't breathe you need more help than a yoga therapist can provide. Probably, call someone, but it really. You know, most Western yoga is, you know, fancy handstands and hyper flexibility and all this really fun marketing imagery, but that's really not what the practice is.
Speaker 2:It's about using your breath to regulate your nervous system so you can sit comfortably and really connect with who you are. So what your value set is what drives your actions If you're in tense situation. You know why did I act in that way? Instead of the way that I think I would act. It's deepening all of those awareness pieces.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it seems it also connects in that way, I think, in terms of sustainability and it speaks to different aspects of oneself that you know, we hear about, you know that, you know we talk about connection, connecting with other people, and they say, well, you also have to connect with yourself and with your purpose and and you know you have to be act ethically is also kind of important to your, your mental well being and the way all these things link. It does seem as if, as you described it, it you know that's part of being unsustainable is is being out of bounds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of you know occupational well being is very much, you know working in alignment with whatever you feel your purpose is. But if you haven't ever tapped into what that is, it can be really difficult to feel occupationally well.
Speaker 1:So I want to sort of you know, a little thought experiment, as it were, here. So we're sort of immersed in this, in I don't mean yoga world, I don't mean that disrespectfully, but we're immersed in yoga world. You know, we're we're, we're balanced, we're we're, we're, we're well in ourselves, and all these different dimensions. And then we go out into the world and we and we deal with with, you know, with our team members, and you know, particularly about work, and I know you have this idea that you, you sort of run around narrative competence. So perhaps you could, you know, explain that to me?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and I love narrative competence because yoga is a very relationship focus. But a big part of a relationship are the stories we tell about ourselves to other people. And then we also receive other people's stories and the practice of narrative competence. And I'll share a definition with you from Dr Reader Sharon, who runs the narrative medicine program over at Columbia University. It's a master's of science program which one day fingers crossed, I will take. I may take a year off work, move to New York and do it, but she defines it as the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret and then act on the stories that people share with you.
Speaker 2:And there is, you know, the saying that humans are meaning making machines. We tell stories to maybe add some framework to life, which can feel very chaotic as it is happening. Stories are really powerful way to access not only what has happened in the past, so the history of our communities, but also it gives us a space to imagine what a future could be like. And so it gives us this really beautiful sort of beginning, middle and end which can help us make sense of things that in the moment sometimes don't make any sense at all. And the pandemic is a great example of this as it was happening, making any meaning felt virtually impossible.
Speaker 2:But now that maybe I don't know if we're post pandemic, but now that we're a little bit out of it, you can start to knit together the story for some people Some of us, are still in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny, you mentioned being post pandemic and I've been reflecting lately. It's not at all relevant, but I'll throw it in there anyway. Is you know, when you think about other crises that we live through, they sort of have a beginning, they can, they tend to be short lived and dramatic, and then we then there's, but there's a definite end point, and then you start rebuilding. So if we look at what's happening now in you know, we find some things, you know, and these are, these are, these are I'm not minimizing the impact of them because it's very, very significant, but you know the, you know the fire. Eventually, the fire goes out relatively shortly after it starts. That might be, you know, measured in days or weeks, but there's definitely end to it. And then you sort of which we've not had with COVID.
Speaker 1:You know and still don't have, I think, in you know, for many people in many ways. But anyway, that was. I don't know why I went off on that particular time.
Speaker 2:No, it's a valuable point to find sort of the end to a story, because then you can start to use your storytelling skills and your narrative competence skills to you know, identify the key parts of that story and, when someone tells it to you, to listen deeply, not just actively, but deeply, to understand what your storyteller is trying to tell you, but then also to tap into those embodied leadership practices. So as.
Speaker 2:I'm listening, what does this feel like in my body? What emotion comes up for me? And then how do I act on the meaning that you know the storyteller was trying to give me? But also, how do I act on what's happening in my own body? What do I need in order to take that action meaningfully?
Speaker 1:Yes, I kind of like that because there's a lot of emphasis placed on storytelling. Right Again, being in the conference business, the speakers that are most memorable are those that once tell the best stories in the best way. I'm often asked what are you looking for, a speaker? My answer is simply I want a good story, well told. But that ignores the fact that actually, in order to be complete, that story has to be listened to and acted on. So that's the missing piece, I think, for a lot of people around storytelling.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're doing it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's where the competence base comes in. It applies whether you're doing a policy consultation, which a lot of my colleagues do. We ask people to tell us their stories so we can either amend existing policy or design new ones that meet their needs. But it also shows up in stakeholder relationships. It shows up in one-on-one conversations that you might be having with your team members, because they're going to tell you a story about what's happening.
Speaker 2:You can doubt the veracity of the story, depending on other people's stories, but there's still usually an action that they would like you to take, and this is particularly important in spaces where you're talking about equity, you're talking about inclusion, where people are telling you I don't feel like I belong. They're asking you to take action, but the question is what action are you going to take? Are you going to take the action that they're hoping you will take? Are you going to take one that's aligned with what you're feeling in your body, especially if you're feeling reactive? Are you going to take some time, pause, maybe rest and let that settle and then take action?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is very direct link. You can see how and I struggle with the precise connection. I'm not sure which comes first the chicken or the egg kind of issue, but suddenly things that support themselves one another within organisations. I'm thinking particularly about the wellbeing which is where wellbeing at work focus their attention and the culture of the organisation and the diversity issue and that notion of belonging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in my personal observance I found that when people don't feel well within themselves, they have a hard time treating other people well. It comes out if I'm not feeling comfortable in my body, if I'm a headache, I'm going to be short in a meeting. Regardless of how well you perform, I'm not going to give you good feedback. Or if I'm hangry, chances are I'm not going to be a very nice person to you. But if I'm well-regulated in myself, chances are I can hear what you're saying, I can absorb the action that you'd like me to take, I can respond for a place of empathy also because my nervous system is better regulated. So I'm not either in dorsal ventral or I'm completely checked out because I can't actually engage with you, or sitting in that fight-flight, highly reactive, sympathetic stage. It's nice to be in that rest, digest, flow state where you can tap into all of those wonderful things and be a good human with humans as one of my leaders likes to say.
Speaker 1:So it seems like there's a line I think that we didn't end, but we started it which is the notion of rest leading to and that as a antidote to burnout, which is one of the areas which we're going to be talking about at the conference in September. It seems to me that here what we've got is another line that we're drawing from this sense of well-being and creating an atmosphere or environment of psychological safety for people. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean it certainly could go there. It is one of those. Most people are aware of two or three stages of psychological safety. I don't know many organizations have gotten to five where everyone's comfortable in that challenge phase and a lot of that has to do with do you feel regulated in that space? Do you feel like if you will challenge, you can sit in a non-synthetic nervous system activation, you can be calm, you can hear deeply the things that are being said and then take meaningful action.
Speaker 2:That requires a lot of very well-regulated people together, staying regularly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not going to happen, is it? Let's face it.
Speaker 2:I mean it's as yeah, but even if there are moments of it that happen, maybe you can start to build those neural pathways. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean, we live in an imperfect world and we're imperfect beings.
Speaker 1:That makes it fun? Yeah, absolutely, otherwise there'd be no growth. So, from a leadership point of view to the message to leaders is really put I hesitate to say this but to put their own well-being at the center of things first. And I have a certain reluctance around that because I think it's I don't know, something about that doesn't seem right. I don't know, perhaps that's within me, but you know you can't. I mean, as I think you said, you can't lead well unless you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of my former students, craig Dubin, is a leadership coach and he wrote Do Good to Lead Well, based on a lot of really awesome positive psychology pieces. Depending on his work, I personally like to say you have to be well to lead well, because if you are not well, that will show up in your relationship with yourself. It'll be harder for you to take care of you, but it'll also be much harder, if you're in a leadership role, to take care of the other people around you, and whether that's the simple act of co-regulation or if you are not regulated, people won't pick up on that. It'll show up in meetings, it'll show up in conversations, it'll show up in the actions that you take. But also, if you're not looking after you and your team is looking to you to model for them what it looks like it's going to be really hard for them to say oh, I need to rest, because my boss is sending emails at two in the morning and obviously not resting.
Speaker 2:Or I'd like to take a lunch break, but my boss keeps booking meetings over lunch and so I'm not getting the nutrition I need. So my brain doesn't function in the way that I would like it to. As leaders, there is a little bit of a responsibility to sort of walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. It's sometimes to be that first one on the dance floor to say no, it's 4.30. It's the end of my workday. I will respond to you tomorrow morning, as opposed to, I will treat everything like it is a crisis and we will work all of the hours of the day and we will not set any boundaries, which then you have burnt out people, and then you wonder what.
Speaker 1:One of the things we've got and again the event where we chose to make sure we're going to be co-hosting around the four-day week, and that seems to be something that's tapping in, I think, to this even need for rest and also I think it forces sort of a because it highlights the boundaries between work and not work that it kind of makes those kind of pushbacks somewhat easier, and I had a boss once who would absolutely talk a great talk about well-being and then, yeah, you'd get emails eight, nine o'clock at night and so that didn't help. So it's important, like you say, that sort of mockdown because people do look towards their leaders. So just to sort of get an idea of and I think we've touched on a lot of points which are really important. I don't get a sense about, really about your practice when you're working within an organisation.
Speaker 1:What does that? I mean? Who do you work with? What does that look like? Does it mean everyone has to turn up at seven in the morning for a yoga class, or what's the? I mean? You're we're not doing video on this podcast. You're shaking your head quite enthusiastically there. So tell us a little bit about what that looks like in terms of translating some of the things we've talked to into an intervention I can look like many things, depending on the size of the intervention an organisation would like.
Speaker 2:So I happily to do everything from here is a one-hour high-level workshop on some ideas that you could maybe start to implement immediately, and we do a little bit of practice in that for folks who are sort of dipping their toes, they're not quite sure where they want to go with culture change. Or I've, you know, have run series of workshops that I've actually run an eight-week series on sustainable self-care. We would walk through each of the parts of sustainable self-care, talk about some of the yoga practices they can do, and for I recognise yoga is not for everyone. It's the lens through which I see the world, so there's other practices as well for people who, you know, find the yoga stuff a little too out there, which is totally fine, and I also spend a lot of my time coaching people one-on-one.
Speaker 2:So, whether that's, you know, on the yoga therapy side of those things, for folks who are dealing with physical pain and things like that, who want a yoga-based solution, or for folks who just want some coaching, you know, grappling with a problem. I would like to talk to someone about this, and we'll explore a whole bunch of tools that exist in my toolbox, but from the yoga side and the narrative of the competent side and the leadership side. So lots of ways to work with people, and so the change could be as large or as small as people would like it to be Great.
Speaker 1:Are you seeing sort of increased receptivity for these ideas, though, in terms of workplace, seems to me that you're one of the things that has shifted. You know, post again, we can't you know, as we move out of COVID, far greater, I think, recognition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, though it's interesting, I find a lot of organisations have really sort of bought into the mental health aspect of it, and it concerns me a little bit because there's eight other aspects of wellbeing and we keep leaving them out of the conversation, and so that I think I'm curious to see if that eventually starts to shift and people start to think about people as whole people, as opposed to we're only going to address mental health by giving you a 30-minute mindfulness practice every other week. That's nice, but there's a lot more to people than that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yeah, and I think a lot of the I mean, you know I used to do events that were focused on your mental health in the workplace I think a lot of it is quite, is quite siloed. So you know we, you know we, we, you know we have a bucket, we view mental health and then there's a, you know, financial wellbeing, which often just tends to be a financial literacy rather than, rather than wellbeing as such. And then you know, we might do a little physical thing here, and I think that you know, I think you know wellbeing at work world, are very much focused on saying no, this is this, is this is this is this is a way of being in an organization, a way of looking at an organization that is as fundamental, is as fundamental, a lens through which the work you operate as you say diversity and inclusion and belonging, and I mean, I wouldn't, I don't want to get into an argument about which one is more important, but because I think they, both they, they work together right, they compliment, they compliment one another.
Speaker 1:So you, you think that's, that's gaining traction, that view, versus sort of intervention, sort of we'll do, we'll do an hour of yoga here.
Speaker 2:I think it's some places. It is, I think, larger organizations, and it does the nature of large organizations that take longer for these things to happen. But I also feel like there's enough people on the ground now in large organizations who will advocate for these things. There's no the policy piece of. We like to treat our clients like whole people. I think it's time to start treating our employees that way as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, we're. We're sort of technically out of time, so we're going to wrap up a little bit and I always ask you know my guests, you know what's the one, the one thing they do, that that most sustains them in in terms of their wellbeing? It seems a little bit of a redundant question to you at this point, after going through this conversation, but you know, if, if, what's that? You know, if someone said, well, I, I just can only do one thing really, what should, what should I do, what can I do? You know what's the, what's the one thing you recommend?
Speaker 2:One thing I would recommend to everyone, regardless of sort of where you're at, is to really tap into your diaphragm when you breathe. Most of us are either breathing sort of up here in the top of our chests or, if you've been taught, people are breathing sort of into their lower abdomen. Your diaphragm sits right at the bottom of your ribcage and so, as you inhale, if you can explore breathing into that space, it'll help you take a fuller breath, but also it will tone your vagus nerve, which can help regulate your nervous system.
Speaker 2:So if you're you know feeling either really agitated or if you don't have enough energy, you can take even five breaths, just you know, breathing into the bottom of your ribcage and then, as you exhale, really slowly and smoothly, finding that stuff which in theory, you should be able to do anywhere.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, I, yes. Well, hopefully we'll get a chance to put that into practice at the event in September. So with that we'll wrap up. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It's been a you know. I feel I'm looking forward even more to finally meeting you in September and showing the stage, and hopefully you'll get plenty of opportunities to share some, some more insights and some more stuff about your work as we go through that day, navigating, you know, some sessions around quite a wide range of issues related to wellbeing. So thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thank you to all you folk out there listening and we'll be back with another, another compelling wellbeing conversation in a couple of weeks, but hopefully I'll be seeing some of you in, some of your listeners in in September. Thank you, bye.