Your body hurts when you have been slouching for eight hours or more at your desk: tight hips and elbows, a creaky neck, and a sore back. It may not be possible to leave the office for an actual workout, but you can minimize pain, alleviate stress, increase vitality and clear your mind with a little yoga, all in a day’s work.
And before you ask if it is possible to get your ‘om on in business casual, realize that each of these poses is work-friendly, ensuring that for a short stretch at any time to feel happier and healthier, you can integrate them into your everyday routine.
Here’s everything you need to know about office yoga!
Table of Contents
What Is Office Yoga?
Office yoga is a yoga that is intended to be practiced in an office when working. Office yoga postures aim to relieve common issues that people encounter from sitting all day at a desk, including bad posture, tight neck, sore backs, and tight hips.
Office yoga requires meditation, which can be performed during the day in a single session or several mini sessions. The asanas are not as rigorous as a typical yoga class, which respects the professional atmosphere and the yogi’s appearance.
To alleviate tightness and discomfort in the neck, shoulders, back, and hips, office yoga involves breath practice, meditation, and asana.
Benefits Of Office Yoga
Anything in our body moves less when we sit down: blood flow and fluid circulation slows down in our joints, spine, and brain.
Multiple functions, such as transferring oxygen and nutrients across our bodies, eliminating waste, and circulating hormones and chemicals, are responsible for these fluids.
The main side effect of sitting at a desk for long periods, and sometimes under-appreciated, is that brain activity appears to slow.
Office Yoga Makes Sitting Healthy
Asana, or physical yoga poses, is intended to help monks sit comfortably and meditate for more extended periods with concentration and the perfect system of movement for today’s office worker.
Work psychologists have recognized that creativity and innovation are correlated with the environments (and therefore, traveling around).
You clear your mind and undo a lot of the harm from sitting by taking a brief break throughout the day to move into a new room to practice movement and meditation.
Office Yoga Poses You Can Do
Seated Crescent Moon Pose
When hunched over a monitor, the side body appears to crash, leading to pain in the neck and shoulder. With a taller spine, a smoother head, and sharper emphasis, Seated Crescent Moon fixes that so that you can return to your seat.
Overhead, lift your arms and spread your fingers wide. Lean to the right, 2 to 3 deep breaths taken. For a further 2 to 3 deep breaths, repeat on the left side.
Wrist And Finger Stretches
Desk work builds up tension in the fingertips, palms, and wrists in the muscles and tendons, so increased blood flow to these areas is often appreciated. Every 2 hours, try these stretches.
Extend your arms to the sides and overhead and draw inward and outward through the wrists with 5 to 10 circles. Then, stretch your fingers quickly, close your fists and repeat this 5 to 10 times to shake off any excess tension.
Place one hand on your desk, palms facing up and fingertips toward you, applying gentle pressure on the wrist and forearm to counter-stretch.
Alternatively, you can reach out each arm and bend the wrist inward and outward with your other hand, counter-stretching. Keep 5 to 10 breaths on both sides.
Chair Pigeon Pose
Crossing your legs while sitting can cause imbalances in the hips and lower spine, mainly if done more on one side than on the other. Restore equilibrium with the Chair Pigeon.
Cross the right leg over the left at a 90-degree angle when sitting in your chair, both feet flat on the floor, holding the foot flexed so as not to put pressure on the knee.
When remaining in an upright seated position, retain equal weight distributed among the sitting bones. You can experience a gentle to moderate stretch on the outermost portion of the right thigh until switching sides, keeping 5 to 10 breaths.
Desk Upward Dog Pose
Opening the chest and shoulders after the above pose is a must! The advantages of ironing out the rounded upper back posture seen in those who spend much of our time sitting on a computer screen will also be reaped.
Set up the same way as you did above for Chaturanga here. Lower your hips toward the desk with your arms straight, refraining from falling into the lower back by using the force in your legs.
Stretch the chest between your shoulders while slipping the shoulder blades down the back and gently raise the head upward.
Conclusion
Office yoga is built to make things less difficult for your body and your mind to sit at your desk and get through the workday. While the yogi is seated at their desk, most office yoga postures can be performed.
They will usually resolve common areas of the body that become exhausted when a yogi is sitting for an extended period at a desk.