Podcast Episode 30 is out: Amy Polly from Mindfulness Rebel

Podcast

By Lukas on 17 Jan 2024

mental health for firefighters and myth-busting mindfulness…

Amy Polly is the self-styled ‘Mindfulness Rebel’. In a world of very serious, very blue, mental health information, she is a welcome shot of pink. She’s the former Strategic Lead for Mental Health & Wellbeing for the Fire Service, and has since worked with organisations like Heineken, Bupa, Sweaty Betty, National Grid and many others. She’s on a mission to make mindfulness more accessible and inclusive and joins us for this conversation where we discuss:

Her grandfather’s addiction to alcohol and how it informed her behaviour to always try and make people smile
The importance of her supportive parents and having a support network
How she’s embraced thinking differently as an adult
How she left a solid, 19 year career in accountancy to start working for herself in mindfulness and wellbeing
The shift she felt working for the Fire Service, contributing to a bigger picture
The extreme challenges of creating wellbeing programmes in the Fire Service
The measures she brought in to support fire fighters
The basics of creating a mentally healthy workforce and how it’s not the things you might think
Her connection to mindfulness and how it became a passion of hers as a proactive measure for wellbeing
Personal days and bringing the human elements to business
How Mindfulness isn’t ‘hippy dippy stuff’, it’s brain training
Some myth busting around Mindfulness
Amy leads Rob through a mindfulness exercise
Rob’s reflections after the exercise
Her advice to leaders for embedding wellbeing in their businesses
How motherhood is the hardest thing she’s ever done and her ‘Mindfulness for Mums’ programme
The loneliness of being a mum and the taboo of talking about birth trauma
Rob shares a rather unfortunate parenting story and how it informed his perspective on parents in business
The ‘return to the office’ push and the potential negative impacts for some of the workforce