What does lunchtime look like where you are?
A refreshing walk in the park with your work best-friends?
Maybe you’re juggling the job and family so for you it’s (yet another) quick dash around the supermarket, grabbing everything you need to keep the home life together?
Or is it this… Another uninspiring sandwich, eaten el desko as you plough on with your spreadsheets and emails between bites?
If you work in a small team or you’re a solo operator, pounding the keyboard at home, it’s very easy to prioritise everything but what’s screaming out for your attention.
Can’t hear it? No? Let me ask you this…
Got any niggling aches and pains? Do you find you’re flagging as the day progresses? Reaching for snacks and caffeine to push you through the work?
That’s the screaming. Your body’s screaming ‘Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!’ And probably swearing it’s backside off too.
So, no – another headache pill and another shot of coffee is not the answer. Not when your mind, body and soul needs nourishing.
Yoga: the stress buster supremo
Yoga cuts through stress like a knife through butter and stress costs your business – a lot. Have you considered how many days productivity you’ve lost to stress? And if you’re a solo operator like me then you know how valuable your health is – losing time is one thing, being ill is not going to help our profit margins.
One of the world’s biggest health insurance companies, Aetna Inc, worked with a university to measure employee stress and evaluate a corporate yoga programme they introduced at the company. Employees taking part showed a 33% reduction in stress levels in just 12 weeks. If stress is costing your business; yoga is a great investment, not a luxury.
Yoga: mindset booster
Yogic philosophy has an assortment of highly effective weapons for battling though any day. Like mind martial arts. The art of ‘non attachment’ changes your life like no other when it comes to getting along with coworkers. Once we can separate our emotions from our actions life gets a lot easier.
Yoga: instant energy
Want to change how you feel. With yoga. Right now. In just 2.5 minutes? Try this.
Set your phone timer to let you know when 2 minutes are up.
Stand with your feet apart. Hands on your hips. Chest lifted. A slight smile on your lips.
Close your eyes.
Feel the energy flowing up from the ground. Sense your spine lengthening as the energy surges up.
Imagine your cape, your wonder woman or superman cape, fluttering in the breeze behind you.
Breathe in deep.Breathe out deeper.
When the timer rings, throw your arms up into the air – like you’re celebrating Olympic gold. Hold your arms up there for 10 breaths.
Feel free to shout ‘YES’ if you want to.
How do you feel now? Better? That power posing exercise – viramudra to jayamudra, if you want the yoga terms for that– is a very quick way to shift your psychology through your physiology. Imagine what a weekly class could gift you.
Yoga: the office painkiller
We all know sitting is ‘the new smoking’ and our desk bound lives are doing us no good. At all. But as well as giving you great tips for yoga at your desk, the strength and muscle work developed through a physical yoga practice, together with improved posture, makes our lives more comfortable.
Yoga: the focus sharpener
Mindfulness is an amazing tool for helping us get through all those annoying jobs we purposely ignore in favour of the ones we prefer. Turn the dull jobs into a mindfulness exercise and the joy can start to reveal itself.And, being completely present, you make fewer mistakes. Saving more time. Hurrah.
I could go on, but here’s the bottom line. Yoga saves you money, makes you happy, stronger and more effective, your team more effective and so your profit margins more effective.
All you need is space for a yoga mats, a dance studio space is not required.
I teach corporate yoga in the Eastbourne area of the UK, but every town has one, if not more. What have you got to lose? Except maybe your back ache.