Get to know yourself and your peers with yoga, combining wellness with cost-effective team building.
The benefits of team building and regular wellness habits are numerous, so why not combine the two? Corporate yoga could be a great change of pace for your employees or team and whether you have in-house sessions, or you put on a YouTube video for staff at lunchtimes, the practice can be endlessly eneficial to office culture and boosting team morale, creating divisions between work and rest. There are very few people who can say they have no qualms about dividing themselves between their work and personal life, it’s a balance which needs constant effort and mindful attention to keep it steady. Corporate yoga can help this balance by making a clear transition between work and rest time for the body and mind. By moving your body and focusing on your breath participants are actively shifting their focus away from work and onto themselves.
Encouraging constructive thinking
Irritations can hold us back at work tremendously, for many this can start as early in your day as the morning commute. Though irritations are completely normal and are the minds way of defending itself, they can cause us to be closed-minded, hostile with our peers, and restricted in our attitudes to self-care. A yoga practice shifts your attention from the outside world inward, to how you can look after yourself and be non-judgemental of your thoughts and feelings.
Develop a creative mindset
Many mindfulness practices encourage creative thinking through their ability to develop what is known as your cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility happens when you are able to increase ideas by inspecting thoughts from a stance of awareness and non-judgement. If you can practice inspecting ideas without attaching them to feelings of stress, self-doubt, or failure you are more likely to have a more positive attitude to brainstorming sessions and thus more creative ideas. So why not exercise your cognitive flexibility and physical flexibility at the same time to see benefits in your creative pitches and problem-solving meetings.
Inclusive for all employees
Many team building exercises can be excluding of certain individuals, but yoga is a self-directed activity which can be done companionably in groups, introverted team members can receive the same enjoyment out of the activity as their extroverted peers and everyone, however healthy can take part, a good teacher will be able to suggest amendments to postures for those who range from beginner to advanced in ability or for those who require specific needs due to pain and injury – no one is left behind!
Introduce an everlasting experience
It’s not everyday that you can introduce your team to a team building activity which they may wish to continue in their daily lives. Whether you decide to do a regular yoga practice with your team or just a one-off session, yoga can become a vital component of work life to many, providing them with the downtime they need to perform better at work.