Fit Body = Fit Mind = High Billing
If you have been following our tweets and postings recently you’ll notice our focus on a healthy mind and body through our training in the park and yoga sessions here in Soho.
Plato’s Academy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Why? Because it works. The idea of a healthy mind in a healthy body goes back thousands of years. In Plato’s Academy in Athens, students were expected to participate in wrestling and athletics alongside their studies and the great philosopher himself was an accomplished sportsman.
Today, advanced medical technology can tell us exactly why regular exercise is so good for the brain and for professional performance. Firstly, exercise prompts the release of beneficial hormones in the brain. They affect our capacity for attention and responsiveness, so regular exercise can guarantee that you stay alert during long busy days.
Exercise also stimulates the hippocampus, which is the brain centre responsible for learning and memory. Deterioration of the hippocampus is the most common cause of Alzheimer’s disease, but it also impacts on most people in a less extreme way.
From our late twenties onwards cognitive function starts to naturally decline, which means that even Gen Y-ers need to start thinking about how to stay sharp.
Mental activity like crosswords, puzzles, language-learning etc. can strengthen cognitive function, but so does physical activity. In particular, learning new physical skills requires a harmony between mind and body. That’s why we offer free yoga classes in the park for our team and potential candidates.
Yoga is known to strengthen the body and calm the mind, but the very process of learning new postures and training your body to achieve things it previously couldn’t enhances your memory and learning ability.
Crucially, to get the full benefits of exercise it’s also important to get plenty of rest. The body and mind use REM sleep to consolidate information and skills acquired during the day, so following training with an early night is a valuable way to boost your learning capacity.
All of this ensures that you, can boost professional performance. However, we believe that exercise is also holistically important. We hope that our free yoga sessions will help to build a community among our team and with clients.
You can learn a lot about people when, instead of sitting behind desks, they’re trying to learn to stand on their heads. Laughter and shared experience are valuable assets in this business.
Perhaps most importantly, exercise stimulates the release of serotonin, also known as the happy hormone. Anyone who exercises regularly knows that no feeling beats coming home after a good session, feeling completely mentally and physically energised.
Serotonin is also the hormone whose absence signals the onset of depression. Recruitment is a high-stress occupation; constant deadlines, the pressure to achieve high billings and the fact that payment is often contingent on successful placement all contribute to a high risk of professional burnout.
As recruiters, we prioritise creating professional relationships that are effective, but also conducive to happiness and personal satisfaction. Similarly, within our own team we want to minimise stress and provide a positive working atmosphere.
We believe that promoting exercise and physical health is a key to achieving that goal. The fact that it also increases billings is a happy side effect!
‘Till next time,
Cheryl