Yoga Benefits For The Businessman

The Advantages of Yoga for Professionals and Entrepreneurs

The Advantages That Yoga Holds For The Working Professional

The lot of a modern businessman is a stressful one and there is always so much to do.

It would take a pretty compelling set of reasons to convince a successful businessman (or even an unsuccessful one) to add something else to an already packed schedule, so why would he even think about regular yoga classes?

In this article we examine the three main benefits of yoga and how they apply to the busy businessperson.

Physical Health

Isn’t it? All businessmen’s ultimate goal is to become wealthy. Have you ever heard the saying that your health is your wealth?

Believe me, it is true. No matter how much money you have, you cannot benefit from it if you are dead, and personal health is often neglected in today’s busy corporate world.

But the question is not whether one can afford the time for exercise to become healthy; it is whether they can afford not to.

Health is a shifting scale—you are not either healthy or dead. It’s important to think about how much your level of health affects your work.

A healthy body will allow you to concentrate more, work harder and increase the amount of time you spend productively.

Businessmen find that yoga is the perfect way to look after their physical wellbeing. Because the exercises are so incredibly low-impact, they can be performed even by the most out-of-shape person, and the more regularly they are performed, the better that person’s health will become.

Yoga is a very efficient method of releasing tension and stress. During a workday, certain blockages develop around the body and many of our vital organs do not get the full amount of oxygen and nutrients that they need to function at peak efficiency.

Yoga stretches different muscle groups in certain ways that will lead to these blockages being released and the blood flow bringing the body organs all the oxygen and nutrients they need.

Yoga’s health benefits are both immediate and long-term. In the short term, blood flow is increased and the body functions better because it is achieving the nutrients it requires.

Tension is also released from muscles, and the body’s lymphatic system is able to more effectively deal with waste products.

In the long run, these benefits will continue, and the digestive system will work better, which has a lot of health benefits. The general balance, coordination, and flexibility will also be greatly enhanced.

Mental Health

Have you ever considered the importance of a breath? We know that when someone stops breathing, they die, and even this simplistic understanding should tell us how important it is to breath.

But breathing properly is often ignored. It is important not only because it is good for our health but also because it makes us smarter.

Yoga sessions will usually begin with a standing, breathing exercise. Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly is a very calming action.

It is also the basis of breathing exercises, which are an important part of the Yoga discipline.

The key to this breathing is that it draws our attention to the one simple action of breathing.

We become very aware of the life-giving benefit of a deep and controlled breathing cycle and are able to achieve a level of calmness that we often don’t seek out in our everyday lives. That calmness itself is a stepping stone to achieving focus.

Focusing is probably the most important basic skill to have in a work environment. There is always so much going on around us and so much that needs to be done that it is difficult to focus on the single task we are doing because of the multitude of things “in the back of our mind.”

When we do yoga regularly, we learn ways to quickly clear our minds of all these other things that can get in the way so we can focus on a single task.

It is also a great provider of personal discipline. One of the best things about yoga is that it helps people learn self-discipline by making them focus on their bodies and take charge of themselves.

Happiness

Happiness is a goal that is often sacrificed in the short term in exchange for some mystical point in the future when everything will come together and be okay.

Yoga doesn’t move you any closer to that mystical time, but because you develop such a strong sense of self and connection with yourself, it is common to become more content with your current situation.

You will find that the more you practice yoga, the more you will be comfortable spending time alone as well as amongst other people.

Your sense of self-worth will increase, and you will perform better in social situations. This is perhaps the most important gift that yoga will give to you.

Importance Yoga Has For Office Workers

Yoga and office workers don’t usually mix, but they should. When you work in an office, you will usually spend a lot of time hunched over a keyboard and sitting on a seat.

It can also be an environment that is prone to producing a whole heap of stress and very few outlets to release it. In this article we examine how these things are bad for your general health and how yoga can help.

Let’s start with a little bit about what yoga is. At its simplest level, it is a very effective form of exercise.

It involves flexing the body into static poses and holding them, which is a fantastic method of increasing blood flow and circulation through various choke points in the body.

Yoga also puts a lot of emphasis on the correct patterns of breathing, which allows your body to get the most benefit from each breath of air you take.

Expanding from this, we take care to un-clutter our thoughts when we are performing yoga, and the more advancement someone makes with the discipline, the more focused and calm they will become.

Have you ever told someone to take a breath to calm him or her down? With Yoga, it is the same principle.

So How Does This All Help Our Office Worker?

An office environment is usually neither a calm nor a healthy place. Most office workers will spend the majority of their day stuck in a chair and often staring at a computer screen, hunched over paperwork or a keyboard.

This causes a lot of tension to build up, particularly in the back and shoulders. The legs are also often denied a supply of fresh blood by the long hours spent sitting down.

Yoga forces the body to move in ways it would not usually do in an office environment. This can be a very effective way to clear choke points and get the blood flowing again as it should.

The blood takes valuable supplies of oxygen and nutrients with it wherever it goes, and without these supplies, the organs cannot operate properly.

The more starved the organs become, the sicker we will become, so clearly restoring blood flow to the areas that are being deprived of it is an important health priority.

Did you know that most diseases are directly caused or antagonized by stress? It’s true, and it’s a much more serious problem than most people ever know.

In an office environment, this is even more so. The stress of having to meet deadlines, being busy all the time, and having to be on the go all the time are all major causes of rising stress levels.

Imagine, for a moment, stopping. Forget about all the things that you need to get done in the next week. Forget about the rent payment and the assignment you have to finish.

Forget about your boss and your family and concentrate on one thing.

Breathing. Yoga is as much a mental discipline as it is a physical one, and it will teach you to clear your thoughts and focus on the activity at hand.

While you will certainly benefit from the health benefits of yoga, the mental benefits can be truly life-changing.

People who learn yoga usually deal with stress better and are able to calm and center themselves when there is turmoil all around them.

If you think these benefits would make your life easier, then you owe it to yourself to start learning yoga as soon as possible.