Flexibility breaks: stay limber and reduce stress throughout your day with these quick yoga moves for the office

Men's Fitness, March, 2003 by Robert McGarvey

A recent telephone call left me so mad I could have ripped the receiver in two. A key customer had chewed me out, so my body was full of nervous, angry energy. That's when I reached for Office Yoga, a little book by Darrin Zeer, a Hawaiian yogi. I flipped to page 85, the "breathing meditation" and put a hand on my belly as I sucked in air. I felt my hand rise and fall with each breath, I let my shoulders drop, and I mentally zeroed in on the simple act of breathing. In just 90 seconds I was over the rage.

An hour later, a cranky e-mail hit my inbox. So I followed a tip from Oakland-based Rodney Yee, the star of a dozen top-selling yoga videos, including Power Yoga. I pressed my back against my chair's backrest, extended my arms over my head and reached--and kept reaching--backward. I felt the tension slide out of my hands. I forgot the e-mail, my head cleared, my innards calmed down.

And those are just two of the powerful yoga tools in my arsenal. Quick yoga breaks like these are sweeping the workplace. Here's why:

* Yoga can relieve your stress, improve your flexibility and get you more focused. "Do yoga and you'll feel more relaxed and have greater mental clarity," says Rosemarie Augoustatos, a New York City yoga instructor who counts among her students a range of businesspeople.

* "Yoga is great for cross training," says Yee. "It increases your flexibility and range of motion. Anybody who is into fitness should add in yoga because it's at the root of all exercise."

* You can do the moves quickly and quietly. "If you have a minute to do yoga at your desk, you'll see benefits," says Zeer. "This doesn't have to be a big deal." And nobody--not even the guy in the cubicle next door--needs to know. "There are just tons of things you can do sitting in your chair in an office to relieve tension," says Yee. "You can do yoga anywhere, anytime, in any clothes. You can do it at your desk, in an elevator, in an airplane seat."

Sure, some yoga teachers lard their spiels with layers of Hindu spirituality, and further complicate matters by referring to yoga moves as "asanas," which invariably have tongue-fracturing Sanskrit names such as Ardha-Chandrasana. But that's all hooey, say new-style teachers such as Zeer. Yoga, he says, can provide quick stress relief without forcing you to master ancient Asian linguistics.

And don't worry about whether or not you're adequately flexible to try this stuff in the first place. Maybe you can't bend backward far enough so that your head scrapes the floor, but everybody has sufficient flexibility to do some yoga. An important rule: "If pain, no gain," says Zeer. No yoga move should be done to the point where it hurts.

How can you put yoga to work on the job? Zeer and Yee offer up a medley of positions that will leave you feeling more energetic, more relaxed and more productive. Zeer says, "These yoga moments are minibreaks that you can give yourself throughout the day."

1 LOGGING ON Instead of becoming exasperated while logging on to a slow computer network or sluggish Web site, Zeer recommends filling that otherwise wasted time with a simple little yoga exercise.

How to do it: Interlock your fingers behind your head, relax, breathe, and stretch your elbows back. You'll feel the tension melt away.

1 How your body will benefit: You'll loosen your shoulders, biceps and triceps.

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2 VOICE-MAIL HELL The next time you're forced to suffer through endless voice-mail instructions or are kept in a telephonic holding pattern, try this antidote from Yee.

How to do it: While seated in a chair, rotate your shoulders forward, up, backward, and then down. Keep at it until you get off the phone. This won't make the voice-mail menus go faster, but at least you'll be feeling good throughout the ordeal.

2 How your body will benefit: Shoulder and neck tension will disappear.

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3 FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS

It's midafternoon, that early-morning session at the gym is catching up to you, and now your post-lunch lethargy is more like a post-lunch coma. How to get your focus back? Zeer recommends a quiet regimen that yogis have used for centuries.

How to do it: Put your right thumb against your right nostril. Suck in air through your left nostril--breathe deeply, in and then out. Use your right index finger to press against your left nostril. Breathe deeply in and out through your right nostril. If you have the time, keep going back and forth for a couple of minutes, but 60 seconds will do.

3 How your body will benefit: Deep breathing refocuses your thoughts, giving your brain new energy to zero in on problems that are cluttering your day.

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4 TUNE-UP Ringing cell phones, pagers, traffic, meetings, loud coworkers--it's a cacophonic symphony that's fast becoming the soundtrack of the 21st century. No wonder you're tense. Here's a way to de-stress.

How to do it: Unwind, says Yee, by sitting quietly and mentally scanning your body from the crown of your head down. Work slowly. Laser in on your neck, then shoulders, then arms, and so on. At every stop, concentrate on your breathing. "Ask yourself, where is your breath moving easily, where is it not moving easily," says Yee. Find a place where you seem stuck--where tensions are hiding out--and redouble your efforts.