Bringing Yoga into the Workplace
Bringing Yoga into the Workplace
Much of this article was inspired by an interview I did with Sujal H. V. Patel who also goes by Sri Sudarshan. He is the director of Skylight Yoga Corporate Health: a company that is bringing yoga into the workplace for its corporate clients.
Why should employees practice yoga?
You can find an extensive list of the benefits of yoga. Regarding the workplace, I talk about the essential benefits below.
“Yoga gives employees a way to understand themselves”, says Sudarshan. Self-awareness is a fundamental concept in yoga. It is the primary benefit of the practice. “Yoga is about you. The incredible gift of yoga is that it teaches you about YOU. It teaches you about how your mind works and the afflictions that cause suffering. It empowers the yogi with self-awareness”, says Sudarshan
Yoga practice gives employees a greater ability to set the stress aside and relax. While this helps improves the life of the worker it also helps improve their success at work. When they are self-aware, and not overstressed they have the ability to balance things that are urgent with things that are important. We need to “Put first things first.”, as author Stephen Covey suggested in his New York Times bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Yoga is an effective technology for fighting stress. While science has agreed, the popularity alone speaks for itself. In the west, you find yoga in every city. Plus, it’s institutionalized and systematized. People access different yoga styles and services through studios, gyms, retreats, workshops, books, youtube videos, and teachers providing private lessons.
Yoga takes care of the body. You can use it to reverse damage from working on a computer. Every yoga practice incorporates elements of bodily awareness. It’s commonly said that physical practices of yoga came about to promote a better meditation practice.
People already work too much. Why spend time on yoga?
Bringing yoga into the workplace takes time and effort. Aren’t people already spending too much time at work? Yes, people should work less. “We can all agree that people are spending too much time at the office and that needs to change, yesterday,” says Sudarshan.
The modern worker needs effective tools to fight stress. Stress isn’t 100% bad. We need a sense of urgency to get work done. Yet, a sense of urgency always comes with at least some stress. We need to make a big deal out of things that are critical, as long as they don’t stress us out ‘too’ much. That means we should have good tools to fight stress, if and when things get out of hand.
Bringing yoga into the workplace
Using yoga as a stress-fighting tool means it needs to be deployed within the workplace. A major reason for this is it needs to be more accessible. This will inevitably introduce it to more employees. “Not everyone at the workplace is going to walk into a yoga studio or ashram”, says Sudarshan.
Another reason it should be deployed in the workplace is that it gives employees a framework to discuss their relationship with work, in a functional way. Yoga brings the worker under the spotlight. It becomes part of the working process, like sweeping the kitchen before the restaurant closes. Tools to deal with stress and understand the mind should be available in the workplace, if not institutionalized.
The initial resistance
There are stigmas and reputations associated with yoga. A few points that Sudarshan brought up are it looks like an elitist activity. It’s very expensive. To some, it appears that only a certain class of people practices it. When you look at the people practicing they’re thinner, flexible, and more in shape. This makes it easy for a non-yogi to look at yoga and think, “That’s not for me.” or “I can’t do that.”
Sudarshan gives more insight. “People make assumptions about what yoga teachers might pressure them to do. “They might think that a yoga teacher is going to try and make them bend their bodies into all kinds of positions that they can’t bend their bodies into. That a teacher might make them sit still for hours or tell a meat-eater that they should be vegan.”
I remember sitting in my first teacher training, worried that the studio offering the classes might make me go vegan. I worried about what my friends might think, and all the unknowns that I could be signing up for.
What to do first?
“As soon as yoga enters the building it is imperative to make people feel comfortable in their own skin. This means accepting people for who they are and where they are without judging them or trying to fix them,” says Sudarshan. It also means making them feel safe and protected. Space must be held by the teacher to assure this, for the entire time of practice and teaching.
What are the most important practices?
The truth is, the benefits of yoga can be realized right away. That is the power of yoga. One single deep breath can provide relaxation and you would be surprised how many people don’t ever do it.
A major goal of asana practice (physical practices and poses) is to promote meditation and its vast benefits. Asana practice enables people to sit in meditation without too much disturbance from the body. How are you going to get into a good mediation? By sitting still. How are you going to sit still? By getting bodies to be comfortable at rest, flexible, lubricated and relaxed.
Here are some great guides on meditation, for beginners:
Aside from promoting meditation, workplace programs should include practices that specifically address issues inherent to the workplace. For most workplaces, this includes undoing the damage done to the body from working at a computer. For super high stressed and high paced workplaces breathwork (also known as pranayama) is an effective tool. When I lived in Venice Beach, CA some of the most popular classes were Sunday night.
Programs need to be adjusted to the workplace. One of the reasons I took so much interest in interviewing Sudarshan was because he told me about a special program he did for a hospital. He designed a 20-minute class that opened up the back hips – common problems for anyone who looks at a screen a lot of the day. He was able to give it to thousands of employees in just a few weeks.
What to expect
The benefits of yoga can be realized right away. It won’t be long before employees remember to take deep breaths on their own when they feel stress comes one. You might find others taking a short break to close their eyes and empty their minds. This means less drama, less frustration, less haste, and more mindfulness.
About the Author
Doug Duchon is taking the 300 hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training at the Doron Yoga & Zen Center in Guatemala. He has spent 4 months of living in Guatemala and working for Doron. Doug’s other training includes 200h Bhakti Vinyasa, 50h Yin and Restorative, and 50 hour kirtan training from Govind Das at Bhakti Yoga Shala in Santa Monica, California.
Doug writes about how yoga can be integrated into the modern workforce and used to achieve a better work-life balance. Before becoming a yoga teacher he spent 10 years working as an engineer in various industries including Aerospace, where he helped build rockets and spacecraft for NASA’s astronautical programs.
Instagram: @updougyoga
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