Exchange rates fluctuate wildly.
Deals done right make millions – if not billions – but lose just as much when they go wrong.
No wonder City types like the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street combated the stress of their working lives with a combination of casual sex, drugs and cocktails with names such as the Flaming Ferrari.
But today’s health-conscious financier is opting for a more NewAge solution: a system of meditation with its roots in Buddhism called mindfulness.
This change of tack is yet another consequence of the credit crunch, according to Professor Stephen Palmer, founder and director of the Centre for Stress Management in London.
“We can blame Lehman Brothers [the massive investment bank that went bust in 2008],” he says.
“When people have their worlds turned upside down like that it offers a chance to reflect on life and ask, ‘What am I doing?'” Sally Boyle, a human resources director at US investment bank Goldman Sachs, goes even further: “In years to come we’ll be talking about mindfulness as we talk about exercise now.”
So what exactly does it involve? Who is using it? And how can it help in our everyday lives?
Meditation brings calm and equanimity, not to be over-elated when times are good or over-depressed when times are bad
Kok-Song Ng
Mindfulness was first developed by US doctors in the 1970s as a meditation technique to combat stress.
Inspired by a form of meditation that has been advocated by Buddhism for 2,500 years it calls on practitioners to “inhabit the moment” rather than relive problems and worry about the future.
At the time it was introduced, meditation had already achieved a level of popularity in the West thanks to Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who imported it from the monasteries of the Far East during the 1960s.
His system of transcendental meditation (TM) was a hit with The Beatles in particular and since the Maharishi died in 2008 the organisation he founded claims that TM has been learned by five million people around the world.
But it was Massachusetts-based professor of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn who first took the practice out of retreat centres and into an American hospital.
Wary of putting people off by calling his centre a “mindfulness clinic”, he called it a stress reduction clinic. It was a resounding success and Kabat-Zinn is credited with bringing mindfulness meditation into the mainstream.
“People came for stress reduction and relaxation to make it very neutral and open and plausible but actually what he was teaching was mindfulness-based stress reduction,” said Professor Mark Williams, director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre at Oxford University in an interview last year.
Today’s treatments often include stretching and breathing exercises as well as meditation.
Supporters believe that as few as 10 minutes a day of breathing exercises for 10 days can bring benefits.
Actress Goldie Hawn claims in her book aimed at parents, 10 Mindful Minutes, that it helps children develop social and emotional intelligence, resulting in greater self-awareness, happiness and empathy and less stress.
When it comes to fighting stressrelated depression among overworked executives mindfulness has helped them to overcome negative thoughts through recognising the small pleasures to be gained from everyday life.
WHO’S USING IT?
Practitioners of mindfulness are not confined to the financial sector.
Apart from City traders, analysts and fund managers etc, its adherents include a wide range of people in stressful situations, from such celebrities as actress Meg Ryan to schoolchildren.
There are reports that the Government is looking at the possibility of introducing classes in mindfulness to help pupils’ wellbeing.
One of the leading proponents of the practice is Kok-Song Ng, the chairman of global investments at GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
He sets aside 25 minutes twice a day for his regime and says: “Meditation brings calm and equanimity, not to be over-elated when times are good or over-depressed when times are bad. I think it gives you greater clarity of mind.”
He is not alone. The CFA Institute for investment professionals is said to be considering the launch of a meditation programme and Goldman Sachs is promoting mindfulness in wellbeing seminars, as are professional services outfit KPMG and consumer goods giant Unilever.
Even the Bank of England – so conservative that it is nicknamed The Old Lady Of Threadneedle Street – has run meditation taster sessions as part of its series of working lives seminars.
In the education sector, as more and more schools axe religious assemblies, many head teachers are looking at lessons in mindfulness to offer children an opportunity for quiet reflection in the course of the day.
Among the leaders of this trend is Wellington College in Berkshire where students take part in a twominute “stillness period” during assemblies, while teenagers in years nine and 10 have a weekly mindfulness session.
Meanwhile an all-party parliamentary group on social mobility earlier this year called for character education, which includes mindfulness, to be part of the curriculum.
Its move was backed by shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt who has called for it to become part of teacher-training courses.
WHAT’S NEXT?
There is no doubting the scale of the problem mindfulness is designed to address.
Anxiety and depression, the two most common mental health issues in Britain, cost businesses £26billion a year in terms of employee absence through sickness.
This epidemic is also a strain on the taxpayer, with the number of prescriptions for antidepressants rising from 33.8 million in 2007 to 50.2 million in 2012.
And since the Health and Social Care Information Centre began collecting figures the number of people being referred for psychological therapy has jumped by eight per cent, a rise of more than 6,500 a month.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) first approved mindfulness as a treatment to prevent people relapsing into depression in 2004.
And Professor Williams of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre says: “When people train in mindfulness what we see is the brain patterns changing. Mindfulness reduces the risk of depression by half in those who are the most recurrent. We know that it is as good as antidepressants.
“If people are not mindful the part of the brain that underlies fight and flight tends to be chronically overactive. During mindfulness practice it tends to dampen that down.
“People are less likely to be constantly stressed or rushed off their feet but also they are less likely to respond to their own negative thinking.”
Thousands of mindfulness sessions are already prescribed to NHS patients every year and that total looks set to rise drastically as awareness of this previously under-exploited therapy grows.
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