The at-work Breather Break has become a key ingredient in the new vision of stress relief and innovation at work, and I’m often asked about the origins of the term. For that answer, we need to look back forty years and revisit a most wonderful philosopher and meditation guide named Alan Watts, who was the first person I heard talking about the value of taking breather breaks regularly during the day.

Alan was many things – he was an intellectual near-genius, he was British through and through and yet spent many years in Japan studying zen Buddhism within that culture’s meditative tradition – and then he moved to San Francisco where he became a powerful and much-loved writer, lecturer, and icon of consciousness transformation during the 60s and 70s.

• I met Alan when I was working with Humphrey Osmond MD at the New Jersey Bureau of Research at the NY Neuropsychiatric Institute in 1967. He was on the board of a related NIH mind-research organization and often came by as a consultant. Then, partly through his open welcome, I moved to San Francisco after finishing my studies at Princeton to spend several years completing my doctoral studies at Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union.

in 1971 I arranged for Alan to give what turned out to be one of his final lecture series, at the San Francisco Theological Seminary up in Marin. Each Friday night for 12 weeks Alan talked to a group of over 100 people, sometimes many more, as the lecture series was open to the community and a great many people were interested in Alan’s vision of mind management, emotional healing, and spiritual awakening.

Halfway through each inspired (and often quite funny) lecture on Christian contemplative practice. Zen meditation, the perennial philosophy and so forth, Alan would say,”Let’s pause and take a breather break,” and I’d play some quiet guitar for fifteen minutes of group meditation while Alan took a walk outside.

One of Alan’s cultural visions
was that people everywhere
rather than taking a coffee break
or a smoke break
would take a breather break …
the pause that truly refreshes. 

• Ever since then, the term Breather Break has been a part of my everyday vocabulary, and a foundation of my teaching. We’re now featuring the term formally in our at-work WizeWell Process. Other corporate coaches such as Heidi Hanna and Office Athlete also use the term in their programs, as it’s now a generic term with a basic meaning:

Here’s the process, short and simple – and powerful:

Give yourself permission to pause from whatever you’re doing for a few moments …

Turn your focus inward toward the actual sensation of the air flowing in and out of your nose …

Expand your awareness to include the movements in your chest and belly as you breathe …

And simply ‘be present’ for a few breaths while you experience being fully alert and alive and at peace in the moment … allow your natural inner balancing process to help you regain inner equilibrium, peace, clarity, and compassion …

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