Yoga for Business
Professionals Turn to Yoga - for health and business
Jacksonville Business Journal - by Kimberly Morrison
Ken Jacobs wasn’t looking for a ticket to nirvana when he embarked on a journey into the ancient spiritual tradition of yoga.
As a partner at Gray Robinson PA, long hours and high stress had begun to take a toll on his body. He took to running for relief from tension in his neck, shoulders and back, but instead ended up with knee pain and shin splints.
Like a good attorney, he switched strategies and headed for a yoga class at his gym. Three years later, he and a dozen other attorneys at his firm were practicing yoga together on a hotel lawn to get focused before an intense year-end law firm meeting.
Among the 16 million Americans practicing yoga, they represent a new class of yogis. They are neither the obnoxious yoga yuppie breed sporting $98 Lululemon yogawear, nor the incense-burning, Maharishi-loving hippie in search of enlightenment. These overworked corporate types are finding a practical application for yoga in their work life: balance.
“It’s absolutely the opposite of what I do all day long,” said Daniel Miller, agency owner of Brightway Insurance, who has been practicing yoga for almost three years. “But it’s what keeps me sane.”
Miller, a former wrestler, never thought he’d be a “yoga person.” But after a shoulder injury left him unable to lift weights, a friend recommended power yoga, an athletic form practiced in a heated room. He tried it and became instantly hooked.
The incarnation of yoga in the past decade from warm and fuzzy to extreme styles like power yoga, a generic name for Bikram, Baptiste and otherwise “hot yoga” styles, has attracted a legion of new converts. These days, it’s all about stress relief.
In the do-more-with-less, multitasking, never-ending-inbox, work-yourself-into-an-early-grave culture of corporate America, achieving work-life balance can be akin to discovering the Holy Grail. But working stiffs are finding that the monotask of yoga serves as their corporate antidote, gently forcing them to be still, quiet and clear their mental chatter while at the same time getting a serious workout.
“We like to call ourselves professional worriers,” Jacobs said. “With all that expectation and stress, you need something to avoid burnout, get your mind focused and centered. Yoga teaches that your mind is always occupied by worries about the future or regrets about the past, and if you can witness that, you can focus on now.”
Jacobs is fresh off a week at Kripalu, a 160,000-square-foot yoga retreat center in Stockbridge, Mass., founded by a yoga master in the 1960s. The center immerses yogis in an organic-only, cell phone-less, silent-breakfast, no-locks-on-the-doors experience meant to embody the yoga life. For Jacobs, it’s just what the doctor ordered.
“I’m a managing partner, but also have a full caseload, kids’ activities, I coach my son’s baseball team and have a daughter in theater, so I’m busy,” Jacobs said. “You have to make it a priority to make time for yourself.”
It can be an awkward first step for some, but often leaps from a practice to a lifestyle.
Miller has recently added a period of silence to his daily routine as a sort of premeditation prep. Josh DeRienzis, vice president of legal affairs for Jacksonville-based PSS World Medical Inc. and a longtime yogi, is a fan of DJ yoga parties where a usually serious and silent practice gets a nightlife makeover. And Jacobs has attended multiple retreats to get deeper into his practice.
“Yoga is no longer simply a singular pursuit but a lifestyle choice and an established part of our health and cultural landscape,” said Bill Harper, publisher of Yoga Journal. The publication’s 2008 market study found that consumption of yoga classes and products, clothing, vacations and media to achieve a yoga life were the driving force behind a $5.7 billion industry, up 87 percent from the magazine’s 2004 study.
Mark White is a yoga teacher, life coach and owner of MBody Yoga. But five years ago, he was a consume-at-all-costs, workaholic information technology architect going through a divorce. Yoga transformed his life.
“I was working 80-plus hours a week, and the way I was dealing with that was running and lifting weights,” White said. “But when it came to dealing with a major life event, those tools weren’t working. I went away for a week of yoga boot camp and I was amazed at how much it helped people transform their lives.”
A year later, he was a certified yoga teacher and was about to open his own studio. Now with two yoga studios, MBody Yoga draws in about 2,000 people a month, more than double the attendance rate a year ago.
Yoga practitioners tend to talk about yoga almost like a miracle drug: “Yoga cured my back!” But those claims are starting to gain scientific support. Most recently, the Boston University School of Medicine found that yoga boosted levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in the brain, which causes a person to feel relaxed without drowsiness while boosting mental alertness.
“I always feel a lot more invigorated when I’m done than when I came in,” said DeRienzis, also a triathlete and an 8-year yoga practitioner. “You come in from a hard day at work and you are fatigued with a million things on your mind, and surprisingly when I come out of there, I always feel energized and refreshed.”
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