Learning to breathe easy on the job
No needles in berry recall
Mindfulness and deep breathing have helped more than 80 unemployed youth into hospitality work.
Reiki master Lyndon Bowring quotes Buddha and, with a bald head, somewhat resembles the religious icon, but he insists it’s not ‘‘la-de-da’’ thinking that has got these young people into work.
For the young trainees now working in bars, kitchens and restaurants across the capital – many who may have never had a dining experience before – it can be as simple as being in the moment.
Wellington Hospitality Group (WHG) – now part of the Government’s wage subsidy scheme Mana In Mahi – has previously run its own year-long programme for 120 unemployed young people, successfully employing 70 per cent of them.
Bowring, as a support worker, is tasked with maintaining the mental wellbeing of trainees often clouded with stress, uncertainty, and a sometimes chaotic personal life.
‘‘They may have got stressed at a particular question, or event, or exercise that we had to do, and it’s about talking them through the process of that stress. It comes back to care, you spend time with them, you listen.’’
Among the lessons he teaches are mindfulness (‘‘mindfulness means not to forget, that’s it’’), meditative breathing exercises to refocus the mind, and goal setting to keep tasks front of mind.
Bowring also employs reiki, an alternative hands-on energy healing, which he says helps the mind relax and find stability.
‘‘I don’t get too caught up in the ‘la-de-da’ of these sort of things. You’ve got to be able to work with whoever you’re with . . . generally speaking you’re asking the body to be less tight, you’re asking the mind to be less tight.’’
The concept may seem novel – you won’t find a reiki master at Work and Income or in most workplaces – but Bowring says his perspective can be widely applied.
‘‘Since when did you need a degree to care for someone?’’
Steve Gordon, who spent various stints on the dole between jobs, has quickly risen from dish hand to duty manager at one of WHG’s restaurants.
He was among the trainees who were initially resistant to Bowring’s approach. ‘‘You’d have your off days, and Lyndon would notice it before you did. He would pull you aside and say, ‘Is there something I can do?’.
‘‘It’s a strange feeling when it’s not normal, when people aren’t asking you how you are. If you’ve got those caring people at work, it makes you want to come to work.’’ Metal found in some frozen mixed berries has ‘‘nothing to do with needles’’ and is suspected to be from a conveyor belt, the Ministry for Primary Industries says. No deliberate contamination was involved in the recall of a specific batch of Fruzio brand mixed berries from Nelson-based FSL Foods Ltd. The recall comes after needles were found in some Australian strawberries last month in several Australian states, as well as in Auckland. On Friday, MPI said the recall was because ‘‘the product may contain foreign matter [metal]’’. The affected Fruzio berries are sold frozen in 1kg plastic bags with a best-before date of June 22, 2021. A spokesman for FSL Foods said the firm was reviewing all of its processes. The incident was related to a mechanical breakdown that affected one batch of berries. Distribution of the batch had been traced to the North Island only.