Personal development and yoga in organizations

In my holistic wellbeing and sustainable performance coaching work with professionals in organizations, I like to incorporate varying practices rooted in the yoga tradition. This is often a foreign concept to people and especially in the organizational context. There are many factors that have resulted in this which could be explored in great depth. For the purpose of this post, I'll keep it short.

Knowledge workers and learning workers are primarily valued for their mind and their ability to produce. In this view, both businesses and individuals tend towards relegating the body primarily to a vessel to carry around a mind. The needs of the body such as needing to rest may be experienced as getting in the way of accomplishing things. This trend is embedded in a much larger historical context of splitting body and mind that arguably began with Cartesian dualism.

One result is that it feels quite foreign to discuss the body in organizational contexts much less to involve it in our personal development efforts. Much of personal development tends to be approached via a primarily mind-based pathway such as trying to think oneself into new ways of behaving. Unfortunately, this neglects the reality that the body plays a critical role in the development of behaviour including our automatic habits. There is a growing body of research that supports this view.

On the other side, the body is often treated as an asset - such as a nice car. It is supposed to look good, bring pleasure and help one get ahead in life. As a result, the approach to body health is often focused on aesthetic results and ensuring it doesn't interfere with getting what we want in life. 

This split can lead to a view of health as primarily body-focused and personal development as primarily mind-focused. Further, the tendency is to view performance and health as unrelated until health creates limits that stand out. We can be far more effective in our efforts by viewing body, mind, health and performance as an integrated ecosystem in which each part is related to and impacts the others. I'll save exploring this further as it relates to health, for another post.

With that as a brief foundation, let's look anecdotally at one way that the use of yoga and personal development relate to each other. The yogic tradition tends to view the body and mind as deeply interconnected and works with the body to work with the mind. 

Many yoga practitioners will attest to discovering that who they are and how they react in daily life shows up quite clearly in their yoga practice. Consider the following examples:

• A driven leader who is constantly striving to attain the next goal may discover that they bring this same energy into their practice of yoga through perhaps looking to find the most intense sensations, try the most advanced postures and feel antsy when trying slower calmer practices.

• A cautious analytical leader who looks to clearly understand everything and minimize risk may practice yoga in a similar way gravitating towards needing to understand the reasons behind each practice and may spend much of the practice analyzing how and why they are doing things rather than feeling what's happening in their body.

• A perfectionist in daily life may discover that they are very concerned with getting each pose "right", comparing themselves to others and trying to do exactly what the teacher says. They may find it difficult to relax or find softness in their practice and they might discover that they stop breathing when trying to "get it right".

For those who are willing to become curious, yoga increases self-awareness, offering an opportunity to become more familiar with the automatic reactions that show up in daily life. With some intentionality, you might begin to discover answers to questions like: When do you find yourself striving too much or not enough? How do you take care of yourself? How do you handle the perceived shortcomings of yourself or others? What do you do when reality isn't matching your expectations? When do you check out or stay present? What is failure or success? How do you handle not knowing the unknown?

Self-awareness is the beginning but in and of itself it doesn’t guarantee change. There’s a further intentionality needed. Self-awareness extends an invitation to explore the impact of what we have discovered. Once an automatic reaction is spotted in action, we can ask the question of how useful it is to us today. Is it aligned with our values and espoused ethics? Is it functional for the setting you currently find yourself in? Will it contribute to sustainable performance or will it undermine it?

To return to the prior example, perhaps the perfectionist is able to see that the energy expenditure trying to show up perfectly is preventing them from being able to relax and creating unneeded pressure that cripples them when making decisions. They may also discover that perfectionism leads them to be critical of themself and others which hinders their relationship with colleagues or direct reports. They may see that this pattern has been very functional in achieving professional success and getting them where they are today but is also creating difficulties in performance or health. 

Once a pattern has been spotted along with its negative impact, the option emerges to choose a new way of being in daily life. The perfectionist may decide that they want to learn to bring more ease and play into their daily life and work to improve their own enjoyment and support them in increasing productive relationship building.

Yoga practitioners will often report that what they practice "on the mat" begins to show up in other areas of life. Whether we realize it or not, in our daily life, we are always practicing something. What we practice becomes integrated over time into "who we are" and how we behave. Yoga offers a playground for trying out new approaches and ways of being. Sticking with our example, the person we have been discussing might begin to focus on bringing their attention out of their head and into their body relaxing muscular tension in difficult poses, or rather than allow their inner critic to control their striving, they might begin to recognize its voice, greet it and then re-affirm their intention to find ease in their practice. I've witnessed this process in my own life and development as well as in other yoga practitioners. 

There's a misconception that yoga is only for a particular type of person. Stereotypical imagery often involves young, fit, very flexible, white women in exotic locations. In the organization I also run into the notion that yoga is "fluffy", "woo woo" or esoteric. Many people will also say yoga isn't for them because... they aren't flexible enough or their wife does it or they aren't comfortable in a yoga class or they aren't "skinny enough". I firmly believe that yoga is available and accessible to anyone. The problem is that it is not represented this way in much of culture and not all teachers teach it in this way. 

So, should you go to a public yoga class? Well, it depends on what you are looking for. People start yoga for all kinds of reasons such as stress management, getting fit, increasing range of motion, or exploring their sense of meaning. If you are looking for targeted personal development, randomly going to a public yoga class is like going to the gym and picking random exercises instead of working with a personal trainer to reach your goals. 

Supporting others in creating change that supports specific areas of wellbeing or performance through yoga and other tools is a critical facet of my work as a holistic somatic coach. In doing so, I work towards clients feeling able to apply the tools they learn on their own so they aren't dependent on me. 

So what can you do? You could consider working with a somatic coach or yoga therapist in a more targeted fashion. If you already practice yoga, you could also consider using a particular personal growth goal as your intention in your practice. For example, if you’re getting feedback that you need to listen more at work, how about working with an intention to listen in your practice. Listen to what? Perhaps to your body, your heart, the instructor, the sounds in the room. Explore and practice and before you know it, you might see changes rippling out into other areas of your life.