Be ready to Experience Yoga at your desk

by Shrutee K/DNS

The most important part of yoga is focusing on your breath. Yogis like to call it a ‘moving meditation’. This is why yoga at your desk can be as simple as taking a few moments to focus on you and to take a few concentrated inhalations and exhalations. Breathing comes so naturally to us, thank goodness, that we often don’t give it a second thought. But when we do and we concentrate on nice, deep, full inhalations and exhalations, it’s pretty amazing how much our body instantly relaxes, our mind instantly calms and stressful situations or problems seem to become much more manageable. 

Along with forgetting to breathe, we often find ourselves hunched over a keyboard or our phones and sitting at our desk for long periods of time without even moving anything but our fingers. It’s important for blood circulation, energy levels and overall mental health to insert some movement periodically throughout the day. That said, here’s a quick and easy guide to Yoga at Your Desk...Namaste!      

Focus on Your Breath  Sit in your chair so that you can lengthen and straighten your back, sitting up tall.  Shoulders should be out of the ears and down the back (to get here you can first shrug the shoulders to the ears and then relax them down the back).  Your feet should be flat on the ground, legs at a 90 degree angle.  Close your eyes and take a deep, steady breathe in, imagining a wave of air filling up your stomach then lungs. Now exhale all of that air out of the stomach then the lungs. Repeat 3-5x at your own pace.