The Pictou County native says, though, that he quickly grew tired of the lifestyle.
The Pictou County native says, though, that he quickly grew tired of the lifestyle.
“In late 2010 I burnt out completely,” Hecimovich said. “I was tired of being in an airplane. I was always stressed and didn’t have any time for myself.”
So he left his job, put on a backpack and for 14 months travelled the world.
During his travels he went to India where he learned about yoga and mindfulness.
When he came back, he was determined to share what he learned with others. This resulted in his current business, Good+Hec, which he started in mid 2015 and just recently relocated to Pictou County.
Hecimovich says the name basically means ebb and flow. The company has a couple different aspects to it, but primarily offers mindfulness programs to companies interested in helping their employees. As a value added product, they also sell fitness clothing, manufactured at Warewell Garments in Stellarton, and designed by Hecimovich.
“The easiest way to describe mindfulness is bringing awareness to the current moment in the context of your inner experience,” Hecimovich said.
As an example, he said he has personally struggled in the past with road rage. When a person’s in that situation they can get angry or they can be mindful, taking into account how they are feeling and making a conscious decision about how they are going to respond. The same is true in work environments, he said. Life is stressful and bad things happen.
“(Mindfulness) is about learning how to understand our inner experience so we learn to respond to life’s stresses. It’s a very big and complicated subject but it’s simple at the end of the day. “
In a world where people are on their cell phones every spare minute, he said we’ve lost the ability to just be with ourselves. He thinks mindfulness training can help people learn the skills they’ve lost as a result of that.
Hecimovich said he wanted to move the business to Pictou County because it’s home, but also because he believes Nova Scotia has a pulse on mental health in a way that other areas don’t.
“There’ a real negativity of people living here thinking it’s not fantastic, but live in Toronto for a while and you’ll realize what you got,” he said.
He believes a real market exists for this kind of training and compares it to the same movement towards better physical fitness in the 1970s and 1980s. He refers to the efforts as mental or mind fitness.
“This is what companies are spending money on for wellness programs,” he said.
To celebrate moving the business home, Hecimovich will hold a few local events on mindfulness to share what he’s doing.
The first will take place at 2 p.m. on Feb. 5 at Pictou County Yoga in Stellarton. He also has some events planned in Antigonish and Dartmouth. For more information on his company visit www.goodandhec.com.
