MyLifeYoga

Yoga at work is an idea whose time has come. Here is why:

1. Better decisions: Yoga and Meditation have been shown to reshape the brain. The size of the amygdala is reduced. This is the region that controls stress. It means that in as few as six weeks participants who regularly practice yoga will begin to feel less stressed. In addition areas in the brain associated with decision-making are expanded. Participants also report better sleep and waking up well rested. All this translates to less drama at work, a calmer and less emotional decision-making environment, and better decisions. Most companies have to live and die by the choices made by its employees, and improved decisions translate directly to improvements in the bottom-line.

2. Less absenteeism: Two big reasons for absenteeism are both related to stress. Employees feel stress and pressure at work and choose to stay absent. The other reason is that due to stress employees fall ill frequently. By reducing stress levels and reshaping the brain to better cope with stress, yoga addresses these and helps reduce absenteeism.
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Bruce Lee was advised complete bed rest as a result of injury. To use up his boundless energy Bruce Lee began reading. This is when he came across the teaching of J Krishnamurthy, and his life changed forever. He felt liberated from the constraints of styles and dogmas and instead he started relying on learning from his own self-discovery. He encapsulated this idea as “no way as way”. This did not mean that you follow no way or method. It meant that after reaching a certain very high level of skill, it makes sense not to be bound by a given way. Instead we should allow the creative forces to channel our energies into wholly new unexplored areas.

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Maja And Winter

On a recent morning in Clearwater, Florida, Maja Kazazic peered down into a 73,000-gallon aquarium. For two years, she’d been watching the injured bottlenose dolphin named Winter swim around the tank. From a distance, the dolphin seemed approachable enough. Still, as Kazazic prepared to take the plunge, a little panic crept into her excitement.

The young woman eased herself into the pool. Despite her fear, she felt strong wearing her new leg. She was ready to make good on a pledge from long ago.

In second grade in Mostar, Yugoslavia (now part of Bosnia and Her­zegovina), Kazazic lost her five-year-old cousin, Jasmina, to leukemia. After Jasmina’s death, Kazazic vowed she would honor the little girl by swimming with a dolphin, an animal that both girls adored. “Jasmina never got the chance [to do it],” says Kazazic, 32, “so I decided that someday I’d do it for her.”

In high school, sports—soccer, basketball, tennis—were Kazazic’s passion. She planned to become a professional athlete. Then in 1993, during the Bosnian civil war, a mortar shell fired by Croat separatists exploded in the courtyard of her building. The six friends she’d been chatting with were killed; 16-year-old Kazazic was badly injured. Shrapnel riddled her left arm and both of her legs.

At a makeshift hospital, her left leg was deemed beyond repair and amputated just below the knee. “There was no anesthesia,” she recalls. “They tied me down and put a piece of rubber in my mouth to bite on. I could feel everything.” Her leg wound became infected; without antibiotics, she drifted in and out of consciousness. For weeks, her parents kept vigil by her bed. British activist Sally Becker, who evacuated many children during the war, arranged to bring Kazazic to the United States for treatment.
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