How yoga in the workplace can help with stresses, strains & injuries ..
Stress has been shown to be one of the factors leading to strains and injuries to your body like musculo-skeletal disorders including back pain, wrist issues / carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder and/or neck tension, eye strain, headaches / migraines. Yoga is an ancient system designed to help you live a healthy and wholesome life. Yoga exercise positions or ‘asana’ are an important part of this ancient system which can reduce stress and relieve muscular strains and injuries.
Practicing yoga at the workplace teaches employees to use relaxation techniques to reduce stress, and risk of injury. Learning new skills in the same place that you are expected to apply them - ‘state dependant learning’ – means workplace yoga is both practical and effective.
In addition to helping reduce stress and physical injury, workplace yoga also helps with the following:
Increases Energy/Reduces Fatigue
Relevant studies have shown that sitting down for long periods of time (3 hours plus) kills productivity and has the same negative health impact as smoking a packet of cigarettes! Workplace yoga encourages staff to be more mindful of their posture and to have a little stretch of stand up to take a call, or whatever. Incorporating simple yoga techniques at these times increases energy and concentration levels.
Boosts morale
If you physically, mentally and emotionally feel great, then your morale will be high. This promotes better communication in the workplace.
Encourages creativity
Yoga works by tapping into the subconscious mind and reprograming our bad habits with good ones. In a similar way, yoga helps open the mind and gets ‘the creative juices flowing’. Yoga brings you closer to yourself. The workplace is often such that our minds are nearly always required to be outside of our bodies. Take driving, for example: when you are behind the wheel of a car you are not conscious of what the body is doing. Instead we concentrate on anything but what the body is doing – we multi-task. We focus on the road looking out for potential dangers, and at the same time we are listing to music and, at the same time, we are worrying about what the boss will say to us when we arrive at work, etc, etc. We are constantly living in the past or planning for the future and the present moment is lost.
The breath is the easiest way to connect with what is going on right here and now. Yoga therefore helps us to focus on the present and be mindful in life.
