It’s not every day that a truly major category in The International Business Awards® for 2021 – “Most Valuable Service” in the highly competitive COVID-19 Response categories - has a winner that is a solo entrepreneur and/or practitioner.
After all, you’d expect these “big,” competitive wins to go to bigger companies with lots of resources to combat COVID-19 including novel ways to care for their many employees during these unusually trying times.
Yet, Lisa Langer, Ph.D., solo entrepreneur, and practitioner pulled out that win just as she did yet another one after that – a silver win in the Stevie Awards for Women In Business, also for 2021 – in the category of Most Innovative Woman of the Year – Healthcare. By way of these wins, Dr. Langer inadvertently becomes a perfect role model for so many solo entrepreneurs who also do innovative work and who need that extra push to take a risk and dive into big-time Stevie categories.
During the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control warned of Covid-19's “side effects,” among them feelings of fear, sadness and worry as well as difficulty concentrating and sleeping.
Enter Lisa Langer, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist specializing in life-stress reduction, who, during Covid-19, became the “go-to” person for thousands of individuals in the “healthcare community” – from doctors and nurses to technicians and administrators - who were seeking just that.
Back in 2012, Langer had created a health and wellness center called PRACTICE Mind Body Soul Company, in Roslyn, New York. A disrupter, she did so before “wellness” - including meditation and/or yoga - went mainstream. The center was acquired in 2016 by Northwell Health System, the largest healthcare system in New York, where Dr. Langer
is based, as their first-ever Center for Wellness and Integrative Medicine.
During the pandemic, the many healthcare workers who know Dr. Langer – and many just getting the word - sought her out on Zoom. Sometimes 500-to-a-call, five days a week, they sought her out for the relief they needed as they maintained stiff upper lips on the front lines, no matter their exposure to Covid-19 – or deepfelt concerns about loved ones as well.
In the healthcare community, Lisa Langer was their life raft.
Dr. Langer is trained in MBSR, the “mindfulness stress reduction” technique that is considered among the best by those in the know, which, during Covid, included many healthcare workers based in New York.
To support this work, Dr. Langer wrote a book, introduced during Covid and titled “Deeper Into Mindfulness”, which, yes, was purchased by her following in large numbers. Read the all-five-star Amazon reviews and you’ll see words like “anchor” in “difficult times.”
To reach a wider audience beyond Zoom and to give those on these calls what they needed to practice stress-relief when they were off Zoom, Dr. Langer included QR codes, which, once scanned, showcase videos of Dr. Langer as if she were leading you in meditation right there in your living room. Or, on a short, much-needed break from frontline work.
As one Women In Business judge put it: “Use of QR codes within the book for video links … are truly innovative ideas that helped further increase her reach during the pandemic period and bridge the gap with clients.”
In addition to the Stevie Awards, Dr. Langer’s book was honored as well. In the fall of 2021, it won a Living Now Award, a leading book award in the publishing arena of books that inspire us and improve our quality of life. Dr. Langer won bronze in the category of Relaxation/Mindfulness.
Not ones to normally feature segments on meditation, major media across the U.S. called on Dr. Langer during Covid including many TV stations - from ABC in Scranton, Pennsylvania to CBS in New York, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Cedar Rapids and El Paso in addition to a morning show in Burbank - unheard of in a relatively short period of time even for some celebrities. That desperate were they, the major media, to tell their audiences of millions about meditation and to share its benefits.
Because that’s what we all needed.
And received from Lisa Langer during Covid-19.
For more on the work of Dr. Langer, visit lisalangerphd.com; purchase her book 'Deeper into Mindfulness: Next Steps to Sustain Your Meditation Practice and Find Inner Peace' on Amazon.
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