Aurora Chamber of Commerce offers program to York Region employees coping with anxiety during pandemic

Shift Your Mind developed by Canadian Mental Health Association, Flow Marketing, Running Room

Thestar.com
Feb. 1, 2022
Lisa Queen

It’s no secret the pandemic has taken a toll on virtually everyone’s mental health.

Now, the Aurora Chamber of Commerce is offering a program to York Region business owners looking to boost their employees’ mental and physical resiliency.

The chamber has partnered with Aurora business Flow Marketing, which, along with the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Running Room, has developed the Shift Your Mind workplace wellness program.

The eight-week group program is run through the chamber’s Accelerate Business Recovery Hub, an online self-help tool designed to assist businesses emerge successfully from the pandemic.

“We heard from local businesses that the mental and physical wellness of their employees was a key part of keeping businesses productive and thriving,” chamber president Sandra Ferri said.

“We saw this as an opportunity through our Accelerated Business Recovery Hub to be able to show businesses a way for them to further support their employees through what has been a very difficult time for most people.”

In Shift Your Mind sessions, employees learn the wisdom behind the tools and habits that lead to resiliency, such as positive self-talk, positive habit formation, exercise, mindfulness, learning from failure and reframing life’s challenges that we all experience.

Launched in 2021, Shift Your Mind has been deployed in Canada, U.S., Europe, India and Japan.

Ted Jarvis is the president of Flow Marketing, which he said built the annual Shoppers Drug Mart Run for Women event supporting mental health programs and was asked by York Regional Police five years ago to develop a cross-Canada high school mental health program called Run For It.

Shift Your Mind is a program that is timely during the pandemic, Jarvis said.

“When the pandemic hit, we saw companies suffering and individuals within companies who are struggling,” he said.

“The pandemic went from, what the statistics would say is one in five people who struggle with mental health to really five in five. Really, all of us have experienced aspects of anxiety, mostly, as it relates to our life. That was trickling into the work environment.”

Shift Your Mind teaches the importance of combining tools promoting resiliency with exercise, Jarvis said.

“What’s interesting about mental health is that all of us can learn some really, really simple tools and strategies to help us build our resilience. You combine these simple teachings in combination with exercise and you can really move the needle.”

Nine in 10 participants said they learned useful tools to help manage their mental health, Jarvis said.

“But what is most interesting is that mental health is a team sport. It’s usually a lonely journey for people who are struggling because of the stigma but when you bring people into a group like we do, the dynamics of people supporting each other, people hearing each other’s stories, it really helps to normalize the reality that we all obviously have to deal with.”

The chamber is funding a pilot project for 30 people, covering two employees per company on a first-come, first-served basis