Health / Wellness

Study Shows 8-Week Mindfulness Course Increases Workplace Effectiveness By 6 Percent

This is the first study to ever look at the impact of mindfulness and meditation, specifically for lawyers.

By  
on

Ed. note: This post is by Jeena Cho, a Legal Mindfulness Strategist at Start Here HQ. She is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a book written by lawyers for lawyers that makes mindfulness and meditation accessible and approachable. Jeena offers actionable change strategies for reducing stress anxiety while increasing productivity, joy, and satisfaction through mindfulness practices.

Last year, my co-author Karen Gifford and I had an opportunity to partner with the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) and Seyfarth Shaw LLP to offer an eight-week mindfulness and meditation program. We used our book, The Anxious Lawyer, which conveniently has an eight-week program in it as the guide. As part of the program, participants were asked to take part in a study to measure the impact of mindfulness and meditation for lawyers.

The format of the eight-week program was simple. We offered three one-hour, CLE-qualified webinars and each participant received a weekly email containing a short guided meditation (6 or 12 minutes). Participants were invited to attend all three webinars and meditate daily.

Professor Paul Minda from the University of Western Ontario and his graduate students ran the study and I’m happy to report the findings:

  • Job effectiveness: increased by 6.15%
  • Depression: decreased by 28.84%
  • Anxiety: decreased by 30.29%
  • Stress: decreased by 32.45%.

This is the first study to ever look at the impact of mindfulness and meditation, specifically for lawyers.

Continue reading over at Jeena’s website…

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,