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.
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
body connections that can be ultimately valuable to the
practice of leadership provided by yoga whether a leader takes
it on as a practice or not. Yoga is access to creating more space.
leadership or yoga book. First of all, it’s shorter. We intended it
to be concise and therefore appealing to the busy leaders for
whom it’s written. Second of all, we’ve bottom-lined it for
you…we’ve stripped it of the usual anecdotes and stories and
real life examples. This is intentional. Instead of stories, we
give you practices and metaphors. You will author your own
narrative as you ponder and apply the concepts we share here.
Our examples are not relevant, for you will create your own, or
you will recognize yourself and others you know as we
describe the intersection of leadership and yoga. Therefore, this
is not a business book, not a leadership book, not a yoga book,
rather it is more a roadmap and guidebook, providing you
with a framework upon which to build your own design. In it,
you’ll find concepts to ponder as well as actions you can take,
so you can navigate in whatever manner suits you best.
When leaders in this current Culture of Stress, bred from
enhanced technologies, global competition and unpredictable
market conditions, learn to embody practices from yogic
traditions, there can be an immediate shift in awareness that
leads to an enhanced sense of well-being.
Take breathing, for example.
Breathing is a fundamental of all yogic practice, and as such is
tied to every action: a forward bend is associated with an
exhalation, just as a strong standing position or back-bend is
driven and inspired by the inhalation.
But more to our point, your ability to take a full breath is
imperative for emotional stability and physiological balance,
homeostasis and physical health, as well as alert mental
functioning for problem solving, creativity and clear
communication between your self and others.
This is EASY: Breathe in through the nose, out through the
nose. Begin to feel the breath moving through your nostrils and
throat, feel the chest expand. Breathe into the lower lungs, then
let the breath rise toward the collar bones. Relax your belly and
let it become round as you breathe in, and feel it contract when
you breathe out.
This WILL take practice, and you WILL GET THIS and it will
make all the difference in how you feel and what you do:
Breath creates the space for keen awareness.
It makes it possible for us to respond in the moment, rather than react based on past experience.
It IS the difference between reacting and responding.
THIS, is yoga.
