In my spare time I practice yoga. I by no means claim that I’m an expert at it. I certainly can’t stick my foot behind my head or anything like that (I’ve only ever seen pictures of people doing that). I don’t think you can ever be an expert at yoga. The philosophy of yoga is the continual practice, like life really, we’re continually practicing, learning and making adjustments.
For me, yoga is about taking time out of a busy life to just focus. I’ve done more conventional forms of yoga before, but these days I practice Bikram yoga. That’s the one that you get all hot and sweaty in a room with like 20+ other people. When I tell people I do this they ask me if I’m mad. Why would you want to go into a room that hot for 90 minutes and sweat? Isn’t that really unpleasant?
Some parts of life are unpleasant too. But what Bikram teaches is that if you can survive and focus in the yoga room for 90 minutes, anything outside of the room is a piece of cake (and you burn enough kilojoules that you can have a piece of cake without guilt – a pleasant side effect). For me that 90 minutes is both a challenge and a relaxation. Yoga is not just about the postures.
I’m reading a book at the moment that is written by a yoga practitioner, Donna Farhi. The book is called ‘Bringing Yoga to Life’. It’s not airy-fairy, which I like. I think the whole book has lessons that can be translated into the workplace, but I’ll discuss one chapter from it for now. Chapter 5 talks about slowing down, “when we overwork, when we try and fit too many things into an already congested schedule, when we rush from place to place, we lose track of what is important”.
Now I’m guilty of trying to shove too much into a busy life, but I’m practicing. But I also, and often, hear from managers who tell me they have no time to do things, they don’t have time to do their job, no time to talk to their staff, no time to read a book or stop and think. You don’t need to be a yogi (or even a wannabe yogi) to practice slowing down. Will slowing down mean you get less done? Maybe. But taking regular time to reflect gives you opportunities to consider what is important. It’s basic time management really, focus on what is most important and gets the most results – you need time to think about what these are.
I often talk to managers about taking time out to reflect as part of their leadership development. There is a great book on this called ‘The Mindful Leader’ by Michael Carroll that draws on Buddhist principles in a leadership development context. Like yoga, leadership is all about practice, self-awareness and reflection. I do an exercise with leaders on self-reflection, which, the first time I did it, I thought they were all going to tell me I was barmy. But they went along. They simply sat, with their eyes closed on a pillow for 5 minutes while listening to some peaceful music. The first time I did this one of the participants jumped up at the end of the 5 minutes and starting writing things down – ideas had just come to her in that quiet space. The second time I did it most of the participants said they wished it was longer – they didn’t usually get time to sit quietly and it was nice.
It is easy to say we don’t have time to sit quietly, to relax, to meditate, to think, but it’s important, we just need to practice. We may never become experts at slowing down, but the simple act of considering what is important in our lives and our work is the first step, we just need to keep practicing, learning and making adjustments. Because the focus that comes as a result is worth it.
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