Wake-up call: Business accountability for employee health |
.jpg) A new study showing a poor night's sleep causes 11.3 days of lost productivity per employee per year should serve as a wake-up call to company managers and HR professionals, according to a corporate wellbeing expert.
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"Businesses have rightly pointed out that an employee's wellbeing is their individual responsibility but that doesn't mean that business should do nothing, " said Dr. Lanthois. "Business need to wake up. Employee low wellbeing is costing Australian business at least $100bn annually."
Dr Lanthois suggested that companies investing in employee wellbeing and lifestyle training can provide huge returns on investment for the companies. "It's common sense really," he said. "Healthier, balanced employees will create healthier balance sheets for business." |
If what is happening and what you think should be happening are different, you experience stress. Don't let your shoulds stress you out.
This comprehensive article explores the field of energy psychology which many people have encountered as EFT or tapping. The author goes in to the history, research, current status but also the deeper questions about what this type of therapy means about who we are as human beings. Well worth the investment to read. Energy Psychology: The Future of Therapy? |
Energy Psychology, though still a nascent field of study and practice in the West, is a core component of this emerging model, and the story below explains why EP is getting more and more difficult to ignore. |
In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy.
—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel laureate in Medicine |
Modern psychotherapy’s enfant terrible, Energy Psychology, has been alternately praised and ridiculed, extolled and rebuked. EP modalities have been called “a major breakthrough,” “the power therapies for the twenty-first century,” and “the most significant development in personal growth since the Buddha taught meditation.” Critics have labeled these modalities a “sham,” “therapeutic snake oil,” and worse. |
The term energy psychology describes a new field of innovative interventions that balance, restore, and enhance human functioning by stimulating the human subtle energy system. These techniques have spread throughout the world—largely via the Internet—and have been observed to catalyze rapid, dramatic, and lasting changes in feelings, beliefs, mental states, and behaviors. |
Energy Psychology has historically focused on psychotherapy. But there are bigger questions and larger issues at play here. |
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What is the nature of health/wholeness and illness/dis-ease? Are these fundamentally physical phenomena, energetic phenomena, field phenomena, or all three?
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A Very Brief History of Energy Psychology |
Research in Energy Psychology |
But How Does Energy Psychology Work? |
Joining the Energy Revolution |
A major issue for all industrialized nations is the rising cost of health care. In an editorial in Energy Psychology Journal, editor Dawson Church wrote: |
“Healthcare costs in the United States are 17 percent of GDP; those in Great Britain are 9 percent and rising rapidly. Among the most common ailments treated are depression, anxiety, pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These conditions also add to medical costs; depression alone can double the per-patient cost of medical service utilization . . . [Energy Psychology] studies showing a level of statistical significance of p < .05 or greater have demonstrated clinically significant symptom reductions. The mean reduction in depressive symptoms in seven EP studies is −59 percent. For nine studies that included an assessment of anxiety, it is –47 percent. Pain levels in three studies showed a −45 percent change. PTSD symptoms declined by −60 percent in seven studies. A projection of these results suggests that the country would save at least $65 billion annually by adopting EP interventions in primary care.27 |
Research on Energy Psychology is still in its infancy, though evidence continues to accumulate for the efficacy of these techniques. Characteristic of any new field, EP modalities are still growing and evolving as new protocols for healing trauma and unleashing human potential are being developed every year. But whether enfant terrible or wunderkind, Energy Psychology is growing up and already changing the conversation, changing how psychotherapy is being practiced and expanding the limits of what we think is possible. |
What’s better, real people or robots? |
Happy employees often means effective employees, and a lot of money is spent by brands and agencies to make their talent feel comfortable, excited by their jobs, and not want to jump ship anytime soon. I once worked at a law firm where the marketing department seemed dedicated to arranging company picnics. A social staff who are communicative and genuinely like each other is a powerful marketing tool for any business. |
Sometimes some cheese and wine isn’t enough, though, and there are some deeper issues that need addressing. Rod Sherwin runs tap4health, an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practice in Melbourne and is now taking his therapy into businesses. |
Rod Sherwin says the therapy can help marketers a lot with daily issues, especially dealing with disappointment. |
“When you’re dealing with a client, you get a brief, you go away, and you might do some work you would consider amazing,” Sherwin explains. “You bring it back and they say ‘that’s all crap’, so there’s this frustration, you’re disheartened. That initial emotional reaction affects the ability to communicate and deal with those emotions with the client. This therapy is not about making us robots, it’s about freeing us up so we can make better decisions. Because under stress we don’t make good decisions, we’re not rational.” |
Sherwin says EFT is all about getting to the underlying cause of the stress, which often isn’t work–related. |
“We’re a whole person, maybe something is going on away from work, maybe you’re moving house and it’s stressful or maybe you’ve got a child who is having an operation,” Sherwin says. “All of these things affect how we turn up each day. If we can shift those emotional levels, if we can change that at a deep enough level. We get changes in thoughts and behaviours and feelings. And it’s not just about positive thinking and telling you to be grateful. You are allowed to be upset, frustrated, disheartened, angry, disappointed. Whatever the feeling is, we deal with that at an emotional level. A good company is trying to think about the whole wellbeing of their employees, and often it’s troubles at home causing them distress, and that’s not the employers fault, but if we deal with that, they’re probably going to turn up as a better employee.” |
Workforce health a priority |
Amidst rising health care costs and a growing concern over the health of their employees, most multinationals see workforce health as a higher priority in next few years. |
A Towers Watson survey found that three out of four companies said workforce health and promoting health and well-being will be more of a priority this year and next, while 87% said it will be a higher priority over the next two to four years. |
When asked to rank the three most important objectives for their health strategy, more than half (54%) of all respondents said it was to demonstrate their continued interest in employee well-being, resiliency and stress management. Read more at www.hcamag.com |
http://www.tap4health.com There are many ways of applying the Emotional Freedom Technique aka EFT Tapping. But when you have a limited amount of time, one of the simplest and most powerful ways is to identify a specific event and tap on it. Watch this EFT session to see the questions I ask and the approach I take to delivery a valueable shift for someone to help with weight issues after a hysterectomy operation.
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Actually experiencing what the lives of the working poor are like shifts the perspective from sympathy to empathy. Teaching Empathy to the ‘Me’ Generation |
A Midwestern university experiments in teaching empathy not merely through classroom curriculum, but by having students live the lives of the working poor. |
“They walked a mile in someone else’s shoes. How much did they learn?” |
The six participating students and their community partners are introduced in turn. Diana Crandall, a first-year psychology major in a smart black jacket and tie, talks about the children she worked with through the Children’s Hunger Alliance. |
“I know that I can’t walk away from this and be the same person I was before.” |
The application asked students to write about a time that they were wrong. “We anticipated that an optimum position to be more empathetic is actually to have realized that presumptions or assumptions that you made were wrong and that you made an effort to correct them,” Bowman says. Empathy, as he describes it, involves continually checking assumptions and trying to better approximate another’s perspective. |
The Empathy Experiment broadens the teaching of empathy from the classroom to the real world. In Changing Lives Through Literature, an alternative sentencing program that has reduced recidivism, would-be inmates participate in directed reading groups, in part to experience other perspectives. Educator Jane Elliott’s Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise leads students in feeling discrimination. And by bringing infants and parents into the classroom for affective lessons, Roots of Empathy has lowered aggression and increased positive social behaviors in schoolchildren. The trend is gathered momentum with June’s TEDxGoldenGateED, which was entirely focused on compassion and education. |
The general hope is that teaching empathy might lead to greater social harmony, altruistic action, social justice, and interpersonal and intercultural understanding. |
As Bracher argues, “If we’re to reverse the increasing disregard for human suffering in this country and around the world, with the growing gap between rich and poor, empathy education — if it could be successful and massive — could make a major difference.” |
Energy Therapy tools assisting businesses and employees |
Rod Sherwin’s Energy Therapy tools are being utilised by an increasing number of business owners and their employees, which enable them to quickly and effectively adapt to today’s challenges. |
Energy Psychology is a set of therapies that work directly on the body to produce psychological change. They bypass the process of talking extensively about past issues and instead make use of visualisation or verbal statements to reframe problems, accompanied by a very specific process of tapping specific points on the face and body that affect the nervous and energy system. |
Case study participation open |
Businesses and individuals are being invited to take part in a case study, which includes one-on-one complimentary Energy Therapy sessions with Rod Sherwin, in the privacy of their own office.
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Participation will allow promotion of your company as a forward thinking, proactive and concerned employer of choice with an invested interest in the health, safety, personal growth, development and well-being of its employees. |
Marcy Neumann interviewed Rod Sherwin about his journey with the Emotional Freedom Techniques or tapping and how it took him from living in his head as a computer programmer to a more balanced self. Mastering the Art of Becoming # 18: Tuning In; Tapping In; Stepping Out! |
EFT could well be described as the newest ‘over the counter’ miracle drug for ‘whatever ails you!’ If Rod Sherwin knows one thing, it is circuitry, and the importance in keeping all pathways open and clear so that info (energy) can move itself through. Listen to how Rod made the transition from IT specialist to EFT specialist and why it all made sense to him! |
These are some thoughtful questions given to healing practitioners and I enjoyed there answers; along with mine. There is a wealth of information in the tapping community. From time to time I ask practitioners I respect their thoughts on tapping, healing, and their work. (I “round up” their opinions.) This happens about once a month. You can read past round-ups.
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