Leadership Yoga Workshop
Audio Version
Today, I’ll share the story of the origin and purpose of the original Leadership Yoga workshop and a bit of information about yoga itself. Today’s meditation is a poem for challenging times.
I had been teaching undergraduate courses in leadership for several years when I enrolled in a yoga teacher training program. As I learned more about yoga and more about teaching a physical skill, I began to realize I was using some of the same words in both types of classes. We talked about strength. We talked about finding our balance and the need for flexibility, practice, and self-awareness.
In her wonderful book on leadership, Finding Your Voice: Learning to Lead… Anywhere You Want to Make a Difference, Larraine Matusak talks about another leadership skill – risk-taking. She says, “[r]isk-taking is definitely something that can be learned…. In fact the process is quite simple. Try new things. Be creative. Put yourself in situations that are slightly uncomfortable – stretch.” In the Leadership Yoga Workshop, we put this idea into practice as participants try new postures, stretch their muscles, and experience trying something that can be a bit uncomfortable.
We also explore the ways in which the practices of yoga and leadership are different and often complementary. For example, leadership is a relationship with others, a partnership with the rest of your team. In leadership, we work to be aware of the others around us and the people with whom we are interacting.
Conversely, yoga is a practice for developing a relationship with oneself. In yoga practice, the only person you pay attention to is yourself. You do what you can do, stop when you need to, learn to stretch and grow by paying attention to yourself, not by paying attention or comparing yourself to the people around you.
Bringing the two practices together creates an interesting juxtaposition and I believe my own leadership has benefited from the combination. For readers who haven’t done much – or any – yoga here’s a tiny bit of information.
A Bit About Yoga
The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit –Yuj meaning “to yoke, join or concentrate” and came to mean a discipline or practice that goes far beyond a series of spine-twisting moves.
Yoga began in India with an oral tradition that is thought to be 5,000 years old. About 2,000 years ago, the Indian sage Patanjali gathered this oral tradition and wrote The Yoga Sutras – a sort of philosophical guidebook for coping with the challenges of being human. Yoga can be practiced as a physical practice for health, as a mental discipline and as a spiritual discipline. Over time, it can become all three.
Yoga is not a religion in and of itself. In many ways, it is an ancient science and means for understanding the ways in which the body, mind, and spirit are intertwined.
And in my experience, finding ways to keep body, mind, and spirit healthy and connected have played an important part in my leadership and in the longevity of my career.
I hope you’ll join me in this exploration of this ancient practice and what it has to teach us about ourselves and our leadership.