Taking Yoga Off the Mat & Into the Office

Let me start off by saying that this blog is not written just for the yogis out there. If you've never attempted a down dog a day in your life, or maybe you did and you hated it, then this article is for you. Since most white collar professionals will likely never take a deep dive into yogic philosophy, I wanted to share some of the most impactful lessons I've learned through my practice in the context of their professional applications.

If you were asked to close your eyes and create a mental image of yoga, what would it look like? For many people, it's a room full of colorful mats and people in down dog, or maybe it's somebody in a remote landscape with their body twisted into some crazy contortion. Whatever your mental picture may look like, it's not uncommon to focus primarily on the poses - or asanas. While the physical movements are an integral piece of yoga practice, they do not stand alone. The asanas are woven together by teachings of mindfulness and by the power of the breath, both of which can be taken off of the mat and into our daily lives - especially at the office.

Set an Intention

It's very common for instructors to guide students in setting an intention for their practice at the beginning of a yoga class. An intention can be a word - balance, power, courage - or a mantra - "it is coming from me, not at me," "I have time" - whatever you need it to be in that moment. When the mind starts to wander or you're struggling in a particularly difficult pose, you can always come back to your intention. Mind over matter.

We have the ability to set an intention for our workday in the same way - "focus" for a meeting-heavy day, "compassion" when you have to have a difficult conversation with a colleague, or "I am enough" when you talk to your boss about that next promotion.

Recently, my team has started sharing our daily goals with each other every morning - a short to-do list, typically something along the lines of "review this contract, meet with the product team, schedule check-ins with my clients in California." We've seen productivity gains from the added accountability, but I've also been considering how this is, in a sense, like setting an intention for our day.

In sales, it's easy to let one urgent phone call or nasty email derail the entire day. But if, in that moment, I can come back to my to-do list and feel confident that I've accomplished my goals for the day (or am on track to do so), it's easier to stay focused and then revisit anything else that popped up after my top priority items have been completed.

Focus on the breath

We humans have an incredible ability to change our physical state simply by changing our breath. Since breath is something that generally happens without conscious awareness, we struggle to recognize changes in the regular pattern. We hold our breath when we're nervous; we take short, sharp breaths when we're stressed or angry. The resulting change in oxygen flow can have physical effects: shaky hands, sweaty palms, increased heart rate - the symptoms we typically associate with stress or tension.

But we can overcome this natural response by maintaining a conscious awareness on the breath. In your next anxiety-inducing meeting, make an effort to match each inhale to each exhale (inhale for 4 seconds, pause, exhale for 4 seconds, pause, repeat). See how this changes the way you respond to your peers or your overall perception of the meeting. 

If you'd like to witness the power of the breath, try this quick exercise: place your pointer finger in between your two bottom ribs. Exhale completely, and then inhale deeply, picturing yourself directing the air right to where your finger is and feeling your chest expand. Do this 3 times with eyes closed, and notice what feels different. 

"Is it a pen, or is it something to eat?"

In the book How Yoga Works, Michael Roach teaches a lesson that has completely changed the way I perceive conflict. In short, a yoga teacher holds out a reed pen and asks her student what she is holding, he responds "it's a pen." They then walk outside and she holds the reed pen up to a cow and repeats her question. The cow sticks out its neck and eats the reed out of her hand. The teacher turns back to the student and asks whether he or the cow was correct, and he realizes that neither response was right nor wrong, just different based on their individual perception and understanding. 

In the workplace, there will inevitably be decisions made that you would have handled differently had it been your responsibility - in these moments, remember that all you can control is how you respond. My former CEO always taught us to assume positive intentions from our coworkers. He built a culture of "can you help me understand this?" rather than assuming malicious intent behind decisions we don't agree with. Very rarely, if ever, do people do things at work simply for the sake of making someone else's job more difficult. By acknowledging that even the directives you disagree with are generally made with the best of intentions, you can minimize frustration, handle the situation calmly, and maintain a positive outlook.

If you're a manager, it's important for you to communicate your intentions as part of conscious change management. Whether you're implementing new processes, technologies, structures, or rules, you should ensure that your team understands the 'why,' and not just the 'what.'

If I were to show up tomorrow and find that I now have to use 2-factor authentication every single time I unlock my laptop, I would probably see it as an unnecessary waste of time - or for our purposes, a pen. However, the person implementing it may be doing so to protect us from a ransomware attack & potential security breach that they have not yet publicly announced - to them, something to eat. No company will ever be immune to miscommunication, but by practicing mindfulness in the midst of organizational shifts, you can significantly reduce the anguish that tends to accompany them.

Be Here Now

Let's talk about the idea of equanimity. Generally associated with calmness or level-headedness, in yoga, we practice equanimity by focusing entirely on the present moment. Feelings of anxiety generally stem either from past regrets or fear of the future - both of which we are powerless to change. All things that you have already experience are over; all things that you have not yet experienced exist only in your imagination. Our past teaches us lessons that we can draw on when making decisions, and we can take preventative measures to minimize negative outcomes in the future, but ultimately, what's done is done, and it is impossible to expect the unexpected.

Consider your most recent performance review. Did it play out exactly the way you expected it to? Chances are, you were prepared for the worst case scenario and had an arsenal of rehearsed excuses, but then you were met with positive feedback in place of a pink slip. Fear can very easily cloud our judgment, but the best thing we can do to manage our negativity bias is to find peace with that which is outside of our control. The only thing we have complete and total control over is what we are doing right now.

Now, this issue of dwelling on the past or the future isn't limited to just our negative thoughts, but also the positive. As a salesperson, it's natural to celebrate when I close a deal, but I can't let my wins turn into justification to relax. When we live our lives basking in our past successes - think about that person who never outgrew the high school glory days - we stop growing and working for our futures. That $100K deal from last month isn't getting you any closer to this month's quota.

By the same token, becoming consumed with ideas of the future can also have a negative impact on performance. Every accomplishment is the sum of all of the individual actions that have to be taken in order to achieve it. No degree was ever earned by simply deciding to go to college, no promotion received by wanting a new title, no quota attained by calling yourself the best salesperson alive. To reach our goals for our futures, we can't lose focus of what can be done at present to get us closer to them.

What happens off the mat, stays off the mat

When people are faced with depression or anxiety, they’re almost guaranteed to hear “you should try yoga & meditation” at some point. Of course, I’m biased now and think that everybody should try yoga & meditation regardless, but the reality is that people often turn to these practices when they’re experiencing turmoil in their lives. This was certainly true for me. 

I remember the first time I heard a teacher say that what happens off the mat, stays off the mat and thinking “oh you just don’t know what I’m going through,” dismissing it as feel-good zen nonsense. How could I just silence my thoughts? That's not how anxiety works.

But the words stuck with me. In a class a few months later, I realized that everyone in the class with me, regardless of the baggage each of us had showed up with, for that moment, we were all going through the exact same thing. Our surroundings, poses, sounds, smells, they were all a very positive shared experience. There was no threat of danger, no impending deadlines, no aggravation, no sadness - these things only existed in this space if I brought them there with me. That’s when it finally clicked that I wasn’t supposed to just magically rid myself of stressful thoughts, but rather that when I focused entirely on the things I was actually experiencing right there on my mat, then there was no space left for worry. 

We can apply this concept when it comes to work/life balance. People tend to think that they’re doing well if they have both a job and a healthy social or family life, which is certainly true, but I want to challenge you to take it a step further. 

Each of us plays a number of different roles in our lives (friend, boss, parent, spouse, etc.) which we can think of as our proverbial yoga mats. It’s all too easy to let our troubles in one role spill over into the others - rehashing the drama of your personal life over the water cooler, letting a frustrating commute impact your attitude throughout the day, or raising your voice with your kids after a disagreement with your spouse. Just like getting on a yoga mat, it’s important to create boundaries to prevent isolated events from snowballing into avalanches. What happens outside of any given role, stays outside. 

For me, this can look like avoiding conversations about finances or quotas at the dinner table, pausing an argument until after work, or putting my phone in airplane mode during my yoga practice. To clarify, this doesn’t mean pretending your problems don’t exist or neglecting your responsibilities. Creating boundaries means focusing your undivided attention on whichever role you’re actively playing, accepting that which you can and cannot control in a given moment, and recognizing when your emotions, thoughts, or decisions are being influenced by events that happened “off of the mat.” 

As you go about the rest of your week, try to identify the different roles that you play throughout each day, as well as the transitions between them. The goal is to minimize the number of times you jump from one to another - rather than pausing in the middle of writing an email to read a text, wait until lunch to transition from ‘employee’ to ‘friend’. By doing this simple exercise, you can bring conscious awareness to the feelings & attitudes that you might be hanging on to after they no longer serve you, and you can ensure that your energy is focused on your job, family, friends, or self when it comes time to play each role. 

Child's pose is always an option

Yoga is a very personal practice, and often times, a pose that feels great to one person may be too intense or painful for another. Teachers can offer modifications, but they will also remind all students that child's pose is always an option. This asana (which you can see in the photo above) can be taken for relief in between or in place of more difficult poses. It allows us to take a few breaths and recenter when the physical demands of our practice become too great, and I think that we should bring that concept into the office.

Now, unless you work in a yoga studio or from home, I'm not advocating for you to get down on your hands and knees in the middle of a stressful meeting. But when our performance begins to suffer from a seemingly endless to-do list, we must remind ourselves that it is okay to step back for a moment to recenter. Whether this means finding a few minutes alone in a stairwell to take some deep breaths or planning a day off where you don't look at your task list, taking time to care for yourself will allow you to come back to work refreshed, energized and ready to take on your projects with tenacity. 

They say that a pose doesn't truly begin until you're ready to get out of it, and yogis like myself tend to take this as a challenge to push through the discomfort so we don't feel weak. Many of us in the corporate world have this same mentality toward our jobs and can view needing a break as a sign of weakness. However, I'm learning that continuing to work through exhaustion or overwhelm, by itself, is not endurance. Endurance is having the self-awareness to realize when there are diminishing returns on productivity, and having the compassion to give our bodies & minds the rest, care and attention that they need to take us to our limits time and time again.