Yoga
Stretching to the Future
One of my all-time favorite courses was a graduate course that I took as part of my doctoral work. “Leadership, Literature, and the Individual” was taught by Dr. Floyd Brandt in the business school. We studied leadership by reading novels. I loved it! The premise of the course was this: “This course begins with the postulate that…
Read MoreStretching and Contracting
For some of us right now, the world has contracted around us. As we learn to limit our movements and our in-person contacts with others, our physical world gets more confined. For some of us that world is crowded with people, which can make the space seem even smaller. And of course, each of is…
Read MoreWhat it takes to stretch ourselves
I suspect when most people think about yoga they think about yogis standing on their heads or seated in Lotus while meditating. People who say they can’t do yoga are thinking that they aren’t flexible enough, that they are unable to move their bodies in the ways needed to achieve the various postures. The reality…
Read MoreHabits – Mind and Body
A habit is a behavior that takes little or no conscious thought and therefore frees up the mind to do other things. It’s not unusual to have habits that have been with us for so long, and are so ingrained, that we don’t even recognize that it’s a habit. But I didn’t understand how many…
Read MoreStretch
At the beginning of most versions of the Leadership Yoga Workshop, I begin with a short explanation of how the idea came to be. As part of that I reference, as I have before in my newsletter, Larraine Matusak’s book, Finding Your Voice: Learning to Lead… Anywhere You Want to Make a Difference. Matusak’s book…
Read MoreBalanced Partnerships
In the full Leadership Yoga workshop, I usually try to spend some time taking participants through a few poses with a partner. Each pose is one that can be done on one’s own, but working with a partner can add depth to each pose. Partner yoga also gives us a chance to explore the idea…
Read MoreFalling Forward
Apparently, all walking is merely falling forward and catching ourselves again and again. (Which means dancing is falling with rhythm, though that’s a different essay.) But truly that’s what we are doing when we are walking. If you Google ‘walking is falling’ there are numerous articles available of varying levels of complexity from all kinds…
Read MoreLessons from a Tree
Vrksasana, Tree Pose, may be one of the yoga poses most familiar to people who don’t practice yoga. Stand on one leg, bring the foot of the other leg up on the inside thigh of the standing leg, hands raised overhead, palms pressed together – Tree Pose. Balance, strength, centering, are just a few of the…
Read MorePushing and Pulling
Yoga begins with an exploration and understanding of the importance of breath in all we do. And our breathing plays a critical role in maintaining balance. One of the reasons the binary equation of work and life doesn’t help us achieve balance is that it is too rigid a frame of analysis. During my yoga…
Read MoreBalance
As you might have guessed from past newsletters, I’m a word nerd. I’m fascinated with their history and the multiple uses in our language. While I don’t actually read the dictionary, I clearly turn to it as a starting point often. Today when I looked up balance, I found that it has two primary definitions as a…
Read More