Who founded the first office yoga startup?
In the spring of 2015, at just 30 years old, I founded YOGIST-Bien au Bureau to bring yoga into the corporate world. Yet I never imagined I would start my own company, let alone one in the yoga industry…
After studying philosophy and then business at HEC Paris and in Denmark, I spent six years working as the director of a strategy consulting firm serving the executive management teams of major French and international corporations, and later at a large web-based company. It was there that I became aware of the emergence of a new paradigm that is now indispensable: that of quality of life at work.
What about yoga?
I came here more out of necessity than for fun… I’ve always hated sports, in all their forms. In 2005, while I was leading a student humanitarian organization in northern Benin, I was struck by a police officer on a motorcycle. Seriously injured in my right leg, I was repatriated to France, where I spent more than six months in the hospital and underwent eight surgeries. A victim of multiple hospital-acquired infections, I narrowly avoided amputation and spent many long months in a wheelchair. My right knee was badly damaged, and the doctors had warned me that I might never walk properly again. A cheerful prospect when you’re 20!
My physical therapy sessions were extremely painful, and the massive amounts of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and painkillers had severely weakened my immune system: I was constantly sick, tired… or depressed!
One day in 2008, a coworker—who taught yoga in her spare time—offered to introduce me to yoga. “It can’t hurt!” she told me. I was immediately impressed by the therapeutic effectiveness of this practice: in yoga, I was more active than during my physical therapy sessions, all while staying within my pain threshold. Instead of passively letting a physical therapist bend my knee—in tears and on painkillers—I gradually regained control of my sensations and learned to compensate, using the rest of my body, for the disability of one of its limbs.
I quickly became hooked on yoga, trying out every class in Paris and traveling to India, Thailand, and Bali to meet new teachers and discover new styles of yoga. During my seven trips to India and throughout Asia, I learned about the lifestyle and philosophy that go hand in hand with yoga: taking care of your body as a whole, letting go and stepping back, managing your emotions, meditating and communicating constructively, eating mindfully with pure and healthy foods, and daring to change your life…
As an intellectual with an aversion to sports, I gradually came to understand the importance of connecting body and mind and adopting a healthy lifestyle. I was discovering a philosophy of happiness that I had sought in vain in Western systems of thought during my studies.
Little by little, I started doing yoga every day, early in the morning, cutting meat and processed foods out of my diet, and using spices and essential oils to treat myself… while still maintaining a social life, don’t worry!
For eight years, I’ve been rehabilitating myself through yoga: my right leg still won’t bend past 90 degrees (I’ll never suggest the lotus position to you, since I’m unable to do it! But I can walk without limping and, thanks to the exercises, breathing, and meditation, relieve my arthritis pain.)
My passion for yoga gradually evolved into a career. Starting in 2012, I wanted to share this discovery with my friends and family: I began giving small classes to my friends every Tuesday evening in a cooking studio, to show them the basic poses and the movements that feel good when you spend your days sitting at a desk.
In my work as a consultant, I began sharing my knowledge with my clients, offering them a few breathing exercises before they spoke in public, for example. To my surprise, they were far more grateful for that than for all the presentations I had written for them!
In 2014, I joined a major web company as a project manager. In this extremely fast-paced company, where the average age was under thirty and where teams spent most of their day in front of a screen, several colleagues came to me for advice on how to relieve their stress or back pain, quit smoking, or get back to sleeping well. They had heard about yoga, thought it might help them, but had no idea where to start! That’s when I realized that employees lack simple, immediate solutions to relieve stress and pain related to working at a computer screen.
There was no longer any doubt: my unique value lay in bringing yoga into the corporate world—two worlds I knew well but which were, as far as each was concerned, strangers to one another.
In the spring of 2015, I left everything behind to spend two months traveling alone in India and earn my yoga teacher certification: a 250-hour training program in Mysore, one of the birthplaces of yoga, under an Indian teacher specializing in therapeutic yoga. Every day, from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., we learned traditional yoga postures, their meanings in Sanskrit, their benefits and contraindications, the philosophy and anatomy of yoga… I also took the opportunity to study Ayurvedic nutrition and medicine, the traditional Indian medicine linked to the yogis’ way of life.
Back in Paris, I launched YOGIST-Bien au Bureau (www.yogist.fr), the first corporate yoga startup. The goal: to create a method tailored to the mindset and needs of working professionals—whether they’re freelancers or employees at large corporations, SMEs, or startups… in short, anyone who works sitting in front of a screen!
The challenge was also to overcome certain preconceptions (the cliché of the hippie yogi with dreadlocks constantly talking about chakras is still going strong!) and to strip yoga of its esoteric aspects so it could be introduced into the workplace without scaring off the more rational-minded. This is how the Yogist method was born, which I developed with the endorsement of an osteopath and an occupational health psycho-ergonomist: a method for preventing pain and stress at work that is practiced in a chair, right at your desk. I have trained a team of talented instructors who work with companies, and today I lead numerous seminars, conferences, and internal team-building events. Through the Yogist method, I aim to share yoga principles adapted to modern life—accessible regardless of your age or physical condition (if I can do it with my stiff leg, so can you!).
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