Yoga is wonderful for stretching the body and calming the mind but did you know that a regular yoga practice for you personally or for your employees can significantly improve productivity! Here are some of the ways it helps!

Relieve stress

Stress is huge reason behind lack of productivity. It freezes us and stops us getting to tasks that feel too overwhelming. Stress is pandemic nowadays and I’ve found a regular yoga practice to be the number one way to reduce stress and overwhelm in my daily life. 

Stress contributes to reduced productivity as well as absenteeism, employee turnover, accidents and medical fees leading to huge losses for company’s as well as to the obvious stress of individuals as well. 

Increase energy

One of the most obvious ways to increase productivity is just to increase the energy we have for our daily tasks and work! Many people rely on coffee for this but it’s not sustainable and often causes us to crash later. Some simple yoga poses, even just standing up from our desks and walking around can improve circulation and boost energy. A desk yoga workshop (maybe put a link here to the corporate yoga page) can be an excellent way for your whole office to learn some basic yoga poses that can be done at the desk so no one person feels weird doing it! Adding a bit of movement at intervals into a long day sitting at a desk helps to avoid fatigue and helps you get more done with the time you have! 

Improve concentration and focus

It is very easy for us to get distracted, especially nowadays when the internet and social media has trained us to always be looking for the next thing to grab our attention. This can really hinder us when we need to put some dedicated time into a given project. Yoga is full of breathing and meditation practices that help us to rebuild our concentration and focus, helping us to silence the noise, meet those deadlines and get sh*t done!

“Done is better than perfect”

Whether you’re self employed or want to excel in your career, it is likely that procrastination is getting in your way in some shape or form! I know for me, working for myself has come with many challenges but the biggest among them has had to have been procrastination. Procrastination comes in many shapes and forms but for me it usually stems from perfectionism. Nothing was ever good enough so it never got done. 

However Yoga has taught me that perfection is not the goal, that is why we call yoga a practice. The perfect yoga pose is whatever yoga pose feels good in your body, it is whatever yoga you do on a daily or weekly basis! It is not how good you look in a photo on Instagram or how good someone else judges your posture to be. This has been a huge learning curve for me as I’ve begun to grow my yoga and wellness business and I’m grateful to yoga for teaching me that done is better than perfect!

Yoga is meditation and meditation is yoga 

Everything I’ve said above also goes for meditation. Meditation is after all a big part of yoga, which is so much more than just the physical practice of asanas, or yoga postures. Sitting still in meditation, or going for a mindful walk, also counts as yoga in its own way and contributes to the above benefits! 

“If you don’t have time to meditate for an hour everyday, you should meditate for two hours.” 

I have heard this quote attributed to Buddha himself, others refer to it as a Zen proverb. But either way I like it! If your life, or your work day, has become so busy that you can not take time out to mediate, to practice yoga, to focus on some self care, then you are likely wasting time elsewhere. Take a step back, reevaluate where you are spending your time and see where you can reshuffle things! I promise that by adding a yoga class to your company’s wellness programme once a week will significantly improve your productivity.

If you’re ready to reduce procrastination in your daily life or among your workforce get in touch and we can arrange group both private sessions and corporate sessions designed to your very specific needs.