7 Ways Yoga Can Increase Your Work Productivity
Yoga in the workplace can be an effective tool for hiking production, quality of work, and work/life morale, though amazingly cost-effective. Not convinced Manmohan Singh looks at the benefits of Yoga in the workplace and how it can help productivity to sky rocket
Yoga in the workplace can be an effective tool for hiking production, quality of work, and work/life morale, though amazingly cost-effective. Read on to know why.
Yoga is just so many things to so many people—a great fitness program, an ethical way of life, and even regarded veritably as therapy for chronic ailments. Today we are looking at over 53% corporate outfits incorporating yoga at workplace in a bid for higher output and value from employees.
Surveys claim incredible fulfilment of workplace goals and a positive shift in general employee attitude with introduction to yoga, be it reduced attrition rate, a friendlier and more compassionate work environment, or soaring quality in performances. Given the vast array of mind-body benefits and the life-affirming philosophy of yoga, this claim certainly holds water.
Here’s why yoga is such an awesome manifold workplace-crisis solution package—
Because Yoga’s a Stressbuster
Stress has attached symbiotically with work life. What’s with deadlines closing in, ever increasing, internally clashing priorities, and never-ending to-do lists, escalating stress is a reality we can’t escape. With yoga, working individuals can find a ‘stress-management’ tool, if not able to crush the stress factor altogether.
Besides, pranayama breathing and meditation which are part of the composite process of yoga can be instant stress-busting hacks in their own rights! The better employees learn to contain their anxieties and self-sustaining mitigate the negativity, more stress-free will be the workplace environment. Instead of venting outbursts of stress on the person sitting next, or binge eating chocolate, employees can actually ‘tackle’ (not repress, mind you!) stress with the tool of yoga.
Yoga Provokes Positive and Efficient Problem-Solving Approach
Yoga sets the default anxiety response from ‘flight or fight’ to comprehensive problem-solving. It takes one to go through a certain training to be able to focus on one thing at a time. That’s the training yoga provides.
More Concentration Yields Better Work
Workplace cubicles are seldom people’s happy place! You will have all sorts of people coming and going around you, multiple windows mandatorily kept open on your browser, and several subtler, tangible and intangible factors to work you up in a bundle of nerves.
Yoga helps employees create an internal mechanism to find concentration and peace that is necessary for value output. It becomes possible to shut off all distractions as well as the continuous chatter of the mind as yoga is practiced. With deepening concentration levels, employees are finally able to make the most of allotted work time, bringing home a stellar performance report.
No Downtime from Frequent Illness
Frequent sick leaves are inevitable in urban corporate sectors. There are a dozen factors to blame for depleting immunity level. Unwholesome dietary habits and lifestyle, pollution, erratic work hours and sleep deprivation, and continuous battle with stress tops the list. While there is a serious need to work on these factors individually, yoga can be resorted to for boosting the body’s natural immune system.
The yogasana exercise and pranayama breath regulation help in massaging visceral organs and wrench out necessary digestive enzymes, hormonal secretions, and lymphatic fluid. This makes the employees seriously hard to crack even in the most challenging phases of life.
Practitioners have also reported how they feel better disposed to a healthier way of life with the introduction of yoga in the workplace. Lesser cravings for unwholesome food, drinking, and smoking happens naturally. There is more scope for discussing and culturing healthier habits together so you can expect a quick meditation break replacing nicotine hiatuses or potluck with healthy dishes instead of ordering fried chicken online.
Longer Productive Hours Because of Energy Boom
It’s evident how 5+ straight work hours is a terrible energy downer. Healthy blood circulation takes a hit in this rigidly sedentary lifestyle and oxygenation to different parts of the body is compromised. That’s somewhat the same as smoking a pack of cigarettes, so no wonder fatigue accompanied with a headache and back pain sets in after midday. Lethargy challenges progress, derailing steady lines of thought into blurry confusion adding up to long hours of presentism in office but zero productivity.
On the other hand, incorporating off-desk time every four hours with simple yoga can keep the oomph meter running high. Simple but invigorating postures as the Downward Dog or the Bridge Pose are great for easing logjams in the brain and get your creative juices flowing. Come back to the desk refreshed and full of ideas!
Challenges Feel Good!
Yoga is not always going to be easy-peasy, nobody said that! Some postures can really set your muscles to hard task and you have to take it. Twisting your way around postures like the King Pigeon and Crow are not going to be a breeze like the Child’s Pose but there is a great delicacy in the challenge which a practitioner eventually learns to enjoy. Also, the super-enduring moments of holding the yoga stances at tricky points naturally become an inspiration for moving through your hefty office worksheet.
The practice of yoga endurance and challenge running sideways with tackling your workload inspires you to take bigger challenges. The day you feel stuck under the stacks of assignments or in the middle of preparing a business report, your body-mind will automatically respond with the endurance co-opted in your working system from your yoga.
Goodbye to Back Pain Etc.
Back pain can be a menace, yet it’s hard to keep out. Instead of taking our spinal health for granted, yoga at work suggests simple chair-bound postures to soothe a revolting achy back. Nobody has to get up, fold out a mat and put up a big show. Just sitting upright and performing the chair yoga versions of the Cat Stretch, Extended Side Angle, and Spinal Twists shall do.
Self-Search and Finding True Passions
The physicality of yoga practice is only the surface story. Besides realignment in the body, balance in mood-altering biochemicals, and deeper mindfulness, yoga in the working life helps the individual to search deeper within self and connect with one’s true passions, and it needs no further elucidation, when an individual is in line with his/her true passions, productivity will maximize quality.
Summing things up, yoga ensures health. Health ensures energy and optimism. Amplified creativity accounts for rising confidence level and in totality, employees become more capable of handling assigned tasks. Breaking for 10-20 minutes yoga within work time or providing guided practice by the company can only be for the interest of its productivity.
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