Yoga: 8 Steps to Well-Being at Work
Yoga is an ancient discipline that originated in India. It is estimated to have originated around 900 B.C., but some researchers trace its origins back to around 2500 B.C. in the Indus Valley. The word “yoga” is derived from a Sanskrit root meaning “union” (of breath and movement, of body and mind…).
Yoga refers to a path leading from suffering (whether physical, emotional, or mental) to liberation, through exercises designed to master the body and the fluctuations of the mind. In short, a healthy mind in a healthy body!
There are many different schools and definitions of yoga. Let’s focus on three that are rooted in ancient yoga texts but are highly relevant to our modern lives and work:
- “Yoga is the control of the mind’s activity” and the cessation of the fluctuations of thought: yoga helps us stop constantly overthinking and allows us to remain steady amid the whirlwind of life.
- “Yoga is equanimity,” meaning it teaches us to remain calm and composed, to step back from events, and to accept them with calm and serenity.
- “Yoga is skill in action”: through specific physical exercises, it helps discipline the mind to respond effectively in everyday life. So there’s no need to retreat to a cave deep in the Himalayas to meditate; on the contrary, we should act every day—in the small moments of daily life—as best and as mindfully as possible.
Yoga isn't always smooth sailing
You don’t become a yogist overnight. Yoga is a long journey, often physically and mentally challenging, that unfolds in eight stages. It confronts us with the limits of our bodies, our impatience, and our thought patterns, and helps us grow. It begins with physical exercises—working through the body, in other words—to influence the mind. It also offers principles for finding harmony in the world, among others, and with oneself.
Step 1: Get along well with others
Yoga offers ethical principles for social conduct. It advocates nonviolence toward all human beings (which is one of the foundations of a vegetarian diet), sincerity, and the rejection of falsehood. It prohibits theft and calls for austerity (as opposed to the endless accumulation of wealth and new desires) as well as self-control.
Step 2: Be comfortable with yourself
Yoga requires a significant amount of self-work. It advocates purity—in what we eat, but also in how we care for our bodies—and teaches us to appreciate who we are and what we have (instead of always wanting something bigger, more expensive, or better…). It teaches self-discipline (practicing yoga and breathing exercises every day, with the same rigor as a martial art), self-awareness (studying our reactions to better anticipate and control them), and devotion (to a cause greater than ourselves or to a philosophical system, for example—which does not, however, make yoga a religion).
Step 3: Work on your body
Yoga is often reduced to just one of its components: physical postures. However, it is these exercises that strengthen and stretch the body, promoting long-term health and enabling one to sit in meditation with a straight, still back for more than five minutes.
Step 4: Breathe
Breathing exercises help you control your thoughts, emotions, and the flow of energy in your body. A wonderful tool for managing stress at work, breathing can also warm you up, wake you up, and re-energize you when you need it, as well as help you sleep.
Step 5: Get into your zone
The first step in meditation is “withdrawing the senses.” This means that when the world is moving too fast and you need some peace and quiet, you need to be able to tune out the noise and surrounding stimuli so you can refocus on yourself and your sensations. Not letting yourself be disturbed by your external environment and not reacting to every distraction is a challenging but extremely rewarding process—you’ll see!
Step 6: Focus
Yoga teaches you to focus your attention on a single thing at a time, whether it’s your work or the exact position of your right foot in a particular pose. In a fast-paced world where you’re constantly multitasking—talking, listening, and messaging ten people at once—you’ll learn to clear your mind and not get carried away by the thoughts jostling for attention in your head. As my Indian teacher used to say, the goal is to stop “letting our mind wander from thought to thought like a drunken monkey.”
Step 7: Meditate
There’s a lot of talk about meditation these days; there are thousands of different schools of thought and techniques. In yoga, meditation involves focusing deeply and intensely for a long time, until you’re thinking of nothing but a single object for an extended period, without interruption.
Step 8: The Final Step
If you learn to master these first seven stages (which can sometimes take a lifetime, with no guarantee of success), you will then achieve complete absorption of consciousness in the object of meditation: you no longer think of anything. A stage that very few ever reach…
That’s quite a task, isn’t it? We’d better get started right away if we hope to make even a few steps along this long road!
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