Leaders need a break. Your coaching clients need a break. You need a break.
In order to get off the hamster-wheel of business (i.e., busy-ness), leaders can learn a few key mindfulness strategies that will help them to create space and breath in their otherwise uber-overwhelmed day. Below are a few excerpts from the new book for leaders called Yoga of Leadership: The Secret to Sanity in Insane Times by Suzi Pomerantz and Linda Lang.
Presence of mind, peace, balance, strength,
confidence, space, freedom ~ what leader couldn’t use more of
these? The principles and lessons of yoga have a direct and
profound impact on how leaders create and operate their
organizations and themselves, even if those leaders never take
up the physical practice of yoga.
Yoga of Leadership gives you insight and practices for how
to manage your own mind and energy to be most effective as a
leader regardless of circumstances in which you find yourself.
It’s crucial to your success in leadership, whether you are
leading a company, your career, a family, a team, or a
community. Think of it as a holistic guidebook that takes you to
an integrated approach to leadership. Most education for
leaders is outside of ourselves. We go to university and graduate
school, we read books, we attend trainings and webinars, watch
TED talks or attend conferences — it’s all external information
coming in from other sources. We have knowledge and wisdom
internally that we don’t always access or even know how to
access in any given situation. That’s what this book is about. It’s
about how to play your inner game of leadership. This book is
written for anyone who finds the competing demands of life
difficult to balance. It’s for people who aspire to leadership and
have questions. It’s for people who wake up in leadership roles
and wonder, “what now?” It’s for people who are entrenched in
their leadership role and questioning the demands and perks in
search of meaning. It’s for people who want success without
sacrificing inner peace.
We explore what yoga and leadership have to do with each
other. Principles of yoga create harmony, balance, strength,
confidence, flexibility, awareness and joy. The tool of awareness
is the secret to the way we impact others. Everything comes from
it: motivation, leading others, mastering yourself, making a
difference, getting results. Yoga of Leadership is access to that
awareness of yourself as a leader.
Anxiety, malaise and even depression often run rampant
among leaders, who have little or no time for reflection and
processing. Our leaders experience the same ‘burn-out’ many
of their too-pressed employees complain about. How do today’s
executive leaders re-charge, calm busy minds, protect time and space
for reflection and meditation– not to mention creative thought? Does
leadership take more ‘down time’? Doesn’t creating vision and
strategy, a leader’s main job — require space? We see that there
are significant ways of approaching time, thought, the mind and
