“Quiet your mind,” the instructor said, in an eerily calm voice, as she dimmed the lights.
Thinking this meant the yoga class was over, I started packing up my stuff.
“Are you ok?” she asked as I got up to leave.
“Yeah, I’m fine. We’re done, right?” I asked, with the typical impatience of an East Coaster.
“No, not yet,” she whispered, guiding me back to my mat. “We’re finished with the active poses, but we end the class with shavasana.”
“Right,” I said, kicking myself for not thinking of a good excuse to leave.
Apparently, it was nap time. While everyone else in the class got into the spirit of things, drifting off to a Zen state, I stayed right there in New Jersey, rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of the situation.
To me, exercise had always been about burning calories; it wasn’t about being told to breathe and find my center. As a yoga newbie (and, let’s face it, skeptic), I had no idea that shavasana — a “pose” that involves lying on your back in a state of relaxation — is perhaps the most important part of yoga practice. It is intended to rejuvenate the body, mind, and spirit by giving the body a chance to “regroup and reset itself” (Wikipedia). This is critical, because after being challenged during a yoga practice, shavasana enables the muscles to “let go and shed their regular habits, if only for a few minutes.”
But my muscles — and my brain, for that matter — weren’t ready to let go. I used the 10 minutes to decide what I was making for dinner and mentally reorganize my Netflix queue.
I had missed the point completely.
I didn’t realize this until quite some time later, when I decided to give yoga another shot at the recommendation of a friend who touted its benefits in achieving mindfulness. It’s the kind of thing I would have ridiculed in the past, but, like many working parents, I realized that I needed to find a way to reduce stress, and so I put my judgments aside. I did some research and found that mindfulness training has been showed to improve focus, unlock productivity, and better manage emotions. So I tried yoga again, and this time I went in with a different mindset, realizing that the reason I wasn’t getting much out of yoga the first time around was because I wasn’t putting much into it.
And as I’ve found, I’m not the only one that’s been hit with the enlightenment bug. There’s a growing trend in corporate America to leverage the benefits of mindfulness training, yoga, and meditation to bolster health and creativity. “The effects of stress reduction techniques are equally dramatic on our productivity, creativity, energy and performance,” wrote Arianna Huffington in a recent piece. “And that’s because these tools change the way we think so dramatically that they can be measured biologically.”
In his research, Dr. Richard Davidson, a psychiatry professor at the University of Wisconsin, has found that mindfulness can be the antidote to burnout and can help relieve the anxiety that can cause people to overreact to situations.
Still not convinced? A CNN Money article reported that those who meditate exhibit an elevated capacity to concentrate and to manage emotions,” and a NY Times piece looked at the positive effects mindfulness can have on stressed-out physicians.
Not surprisingly, they’ve embraced the corporate zen culture in Silicon Valley, where “quiet contemplation is seen as the new caffeine, the fuel that allegedly unlocks productivity and creative bursts” (Wired). Google has brought in gurus to teach classes in mindfulness and even hold regular in-office meditation sessions. Leaders at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are doing the same, and they’re taking steps to help employees work these sessions into their schedules — not because it’s trendy, but because it’s producing positive results.
Healthier, more focused employees do better work. Plain and simple.
The evidence out there is enough to make us stop rolling our eyes and open our minds to the possibility that inserting a little Zen into our day isn’t such a ridiculous concept. I’m on board — but don’t worry, I haven’t gone completely new age. I still yell at the Giants during games as if I were the coach, and I still prefer the old-fashioned caffeine found in coffee. But during shavasana, the only thoughts in my head (for the most part, at least) are to breathe in, and breathe out.
And I encourage you all to do the same.
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