My inbox has been filling with requests from organizations all seeking the same thing -- to help their employees deal with the stress and anxiety that the pandemic has caused. This is what my clients are saying, very consistently: "Our staff have been working so hard, they're stressed out and full of anxiety. They are burning out. We'd like to help our staff learn about mindfulness to help them cope." The main observation I've had in the past two years is that the audiences

Please gift yourself with a moment of stillness for 3 minutes, and experience the present moment. Thank you for being here. This poem reminds us to seek awe and wonder in the present moment. This is a favourite of my mindfulness meditation groups. I hope you enjoy. Either close your eyes & listen, or enjoy the video as you listen. I discovered this script from an unknown author then added modifications, lovingly. Feel free to take the script below. Poem script: The Pre

Mindfulness doesn't aim to make us happy and blissful, but it can help us live life with more awareness and resiliency. Here is a passage that may make you go 'hmm...' Thank you for being here. Warmly, ~Wendy Quan, Founder, The Calm Monkey #mindfulness #meditation #LifeIsAmazing

If you are considering training to become a mindfulness meditation facilitator and learning how to bring mindfulness practices to the workplace or community, it certainly can be confusing to compare programs! The 'best' one for you is one that fits your style of learning, provides you with the outcomes you seek, fits your budget and just feels right. I hope this might help bring clarity for you! Here are some key considerations when you are evaluating which program may be be

Mindfulness is often misunderstood, or maybe better said, it's not understood well enough. Do you think you're clear on what mindfulness is? You might be nodding 'yes', but would you be able to state whether a particular meditation or mindful practice is truly 'mindfulness', something else, or a hybrid of some sort? After many years of running and attending many workshops and teaching mindfulness facilitators, I'd love to share with you my list of the Key Traits of Mindfulnes

Would you know what to mindfully do if you witnessed a racist incident? Maybe you would wonder what the 'right' thing is to do, or if it would be cowardly if you didn't confront the aggressor? I was speaking with one of my certified mindfulness facilitators, who is a civil rights attorney in Chicago, and this sparked us to run a free public session called Bystander Intervention Training. We see how mindfulness really plays a key part in that moment you might be presented wi

What's always been interesting to me is to see heads nodding when I'm speaking to an audience, IRL (in real life), as I mention I'm a 'Type A' personality. There seems to be a lot of us in this world! When I looked up the characteristics for Type A's, I must say that I was a little uncomfortable reading this list: Competitive Impatient Domineering Overly ambitious I think my discomfort comes from feeling that these traits seem negative, because I describe my main Type A tra

We probably all feel some increased well-being when we go for a walk in nature. But what happens when you add mindfulness to your walk? Can it boost the benefits even further? Dr. Kerstin Ensinger generously shared her study (below for download) that was conducted in the Black Forest National Park in Germany. This study aimed to determine if providing mindfulness training for a hike in nature benefited the participants, and whether it made a difference to provide this train

If you didn't know that there are different ways to do a walking meditation, it's time to explore this for yourself and see which way resonates with you. It can be fun to try different techniques. Doing walking meditation simply means being 'present', and placing all your attention on your walking. You use your body's senses to fully experience the movements. Notice what your body is doing when it walks, when it moves. We usually take walking for granted and often don't th

When I started running mindfulness meditation sessions in the workplace in 2011, I felt like a fish out of water. I've witnessed the sea change over the past 10 years of these practices becoming mainstream. When COVID hit us all in March 2020, I went into high gear to help the mindfulness facilitators in my community learn how to transition their sessions from in-person to virtual. They rose to the occasion with grace and continued with vigor to help others. I also wondered

Here are insightful and unique ways to transform performance anxiety into something you can enjoy.

Having people’s quality attention in a meeting results in a much more productive and focused meeting. Whether having an in person or virtual meeting, this is easy to do. These days, it’s not such a rarity to attend a meeting where someone says ‘before we get into this meeting, let’s spend a mindful minute’. If you have ever participated in this, you know how amazing one quick minute can be to bring everyone into full presence and ready to focus on the meeting’s purpose. Th

A video discussion with Luke Irio of IPEC coaching about the reality and struggles of mindfulness, change and life purpose.

How Type A personalities can enjoy meditation. Listen to a 7 minute guided meditation by Marc Lesser "Finding the one who's not busy".

A quick 1 minute read to get more done during your day. UBC's Healthy Newsletter article Digital Addiction: Make a mindful switch to better productivity. 1) Notice your urge. 2) Notice derailment. Warmly, ~Wendy Quan, Founder, The Calm Monkey #digitaladdiction #mindfulness #productivity #workplacemindfulness

Attending and speaking at this conference was a peak experience for me! Here are the key things that stand out from my experience of being there. It was inspirational. Both the speakers and the people who attended exude the same 'fire and their bellies' that mindfulness can really help people improve their lives. The attendees were mostly employees working within organizations who are bringing mindfulness to their workplaces, or, coaches and consultants who want to provide

I'm not going to talk about the benefits of workplace mindfulness. If you haven't seen such articles and research, you may have fallen behind in your reading. I'd like to share something you may not have heard before - an unexpected (and wonderful) result from group mindfulness practice at work. When I began leading mindfulness in my workplace back in 2011, something steadily emerged in addition to the much-talked-about benefits of this practice. A sense of community happened

We all have our internal struggles, and sometimes these conflicts feel like dark clouds that hang above our head. Mindfulness is offered as a way to ‘be present and non-judgmental’. Mindfulness is pretty much a household term these days. It can help us improve our mental well-being. In this post, I would like to go beyond the typical explanation of how mindfulness can become part of your daily life. Here is a creative way to use mindfulness that you may not have heard. A

For most of my life, I wondered if I had a purpose in life. I knew I liked to help people, so took jobs where I felt I could do just that in the corporate world. As a change manager, I helped people and my employer through tough changes, and as a Human Resources Manager, I helped people at work. But it never seemed like enough. It wasn't until I discovered how much mindfulness meditation improved my daily state of being during my cancer journey, and I realized I could help