Work From Home: 10 Tips to Practice Yoga to Reduce Stress if You Are Working Remotely
Healthful Vitality | 06/02/2021 | 10 Tips to Practice Yoga to Reduce Stress if You Are Working Remotely
The work from home or remote work number has been overgrowing in the United States and Europe, and worldwide. The trend seems to continue as several corporates plan to work remotely and considerably cut down their office spaces. Working remotely can increase stress, especially when you have to commit to this work mode for an uncertain time. While it may have many varied effects on individuals, the main problems involve physical health and relationship problems with stressed environments.
Can work remotely increase performance and productivity?
Several studies suggest that work remotely can increase performance and productivity. For example, a survey of 16,000 employees unveils that working from home increases productivity by 13 % [1]. Besides, another study shows that work-from-home increases work performance and employee satisfaction [2]. Though they could be right in their context, loads of content gets added to the internet day by day that discusses the benefits of work remotely, overlooking the other side.
Antithetical to certain assumptions that unsettle the results of working from home would reduce stress, a growing number of recent studies reveal that working from home can be more stressful than ever before. For example, a recent survey conducted on 2,000 Americans for CBDistillery displayed that working from home during the COVID-19 outbreak increased work pressure and stress.
From various studies, it appears the stress aspects of working remotely include:
- Technical issues remote workers face
- Longer working hours than ever before
- Employer discouragement from taking time off
- Lack of backup resources available
- Change requires in their routines
- Lack of opportunity to talk about and share innovative ideas and thinking with co-workers
- Struggle to keep up a healthy work-life balance that lacks physical exercise and motivation for doing it
- Interference from family and visitors
- Isolation – lack of colleague support
- The impact of social connectedness (outside of work)
Notwithstanding several studies have been conducted on how to increase or maximize productivity and performance while working remotely, including many of them have offered pointers on wherewith can enhance productivity and performance, this article introduces ten easy tips that can be practiced easily at home to improve mental, physical, and spiritual health.
The Bright Side
The bright side is that, in this situation, there are specific ways that by practicing yoga, we can alleviate the consequences that working from home comes with. Admittedly, the health benefits of yoga include stress reduction, improved fitness, management of chronic conditions, and overall helps in achieving the right balance [3].
These tips are essential because, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, the evolving external competitive global environment demands higher productivity and employee performance for businesses to survive, which puts added stress and burden on employees, whether they work from office or work remotely.
Why is Yoga Important for Employees Working Remotely?
Yoga is a technique that focuses on bringing harmony to mind, body, and soul. We can say yoga is great for improving all three – mental health, physical health, and spiritual health. Employees working from home have a hard time defining the line between their working hours and free hours. This is true as they are expected to perform from their homes at all times. There is no set boundary when it comes to dividing the tasks. For example, you are expected to pick calls while you are spending quality time with your family. It could also be the fact that you have a distraction from your guests while you are doing an online meeting with your fellows.
The added stress and untimely working schedule can lead to your family believing you might not be spending time with them the way you need to [4]. Also, as you remain in a sedentary mode all day, your health might get affected – you may get more fat in the abdomen, or lose your stamina to perform strenuous activities. Whatever might be the case, yoga seems to address these problems well. Firstly, it helps your mind unwind and get more productive, saves you a lot of time at work. When you perform efficiently, you are able to wind up your work on time and spend time with your family. Also, your body gets more flexible and toned up.
Top 10 Tips to Practice Yoga to Reduce Stress if You Are Working Remotely
Here are the top 10 yoga-practicing tips for working remotely.
1. Set the alarm for Yoga
Working hours can get quite long, especially when you are working from home. You don’t have to go anywhere, nor do you need to go back home, so setting boundaries in that matter is important. For this reason, you can set the alarm for yoga. The best practice is to set the alarm right in between the middle of your working hours. This will help you release a lot of stress that you got from the working load. You can refer to the Pomodoro technique for that reason [5].
2. Find a Comfortable Space
It is always recommended to create a separate working space when you are working from home. If you have that space, you can practice in the same place. Otherwise, you can go for better alternatives, such as your terrace, or anywhere nice and quiet, where you can easily focus on the meditation part of the yoga.
3. Get Mental Health-Friendly Notes
You can get mental health-friendly notes for your work with you. In those notes, you can highlight how yoga can help relieve your stress. Use them as a motivation for your yoga regime. For example, you can have a side note sticking around your laptop reminding you about doing yoga. This “motivational objective” from psychology will help you stay consistent with your desire to practice yoga [6].
4. Avoid Too Much Caffeine
It is very likely for us to consume more caffeine than usual as we work from home. This is significantly true as it is quite easy to reach for a cup of coffee at home. Simply make it when you want and drink it. This is when we start consuming too much caffeine. According to science, consuming too much caffeine will increase our stress levels in the body indirectly. This will not be helpful for us when we want to perform yoga – our heart rate might increase, and we may find difficulty in going into the meditation state.
5. Wear Breathable Clothing
When we are working from home, it could be possible that we try wearing clothes that are available for us. However, ideally, it is important to wear fabric that is breathable and comfortable. This becomes even more convenient when we are trying to practice yoga. Yoga requires a lot of stretching and twisting. Even if you are having a break of 10 minutes, it is important your body is performing in the right way. For that, breathable clothing is an excellent choice.
6. Set Specific Timings
You can practice yoga while doing work from home more efficiently when you set some specific timing of your work hours. This is true because your body will get more used to a specific time of doing yoga. If you keep working all day with no set boundaries, your mind will easily go into a fatigued state. It is, therefore, important to have good discipline.
7. Divide and Conquer
If you think you cannot do the whole warmup, stretching, and the yoga poses all in one go, it is best to follow the rule of divide and conquer. Practice some stretching before you start with your work. Make one pose at a specific time instead of doing it all in one go. It will also save you time.
8. Learn Proper Breathing
Before you start doing yoga, it is best first to learn the basics. Proper breathing is one of them. When you know how you can properly breathe and what rhythm you are trying to find in yoga, you better understand how your body works and how you can better reduce stress from it.
9. Take a Sunshine Break
Go out in the sun for your yoga break and perform the poses you want to perform. This will help you get a good input of Vitamin D, which is essential for your health. It is also important to note that yoga done in nature, such as under the sun or on the grass is one of the best ways one can improve their yoga [7].
10. Follow As You Go
Do the steps as described by a reputable yoga instructor from a video. Instead of learning it all, it is more convenient to follow a video and perform all the steps taught by the instructor. This will also alleviate your stress as you gain more confidence in yourself by doing that.
Science shows a lot of benefits of yoga for physical as well as mental health. Combining some yoga in our working schedule will not only give us a lot of advantages but also helps us to tackle the issues we face as a result of working for long hours while we are at our home.
Conclusion
Yoga comes with a lot of fruitful benefits. Working from home can be quite stressful, but yoga can help employees get a better hang of their health and personal life as they include some yoga in their life. This includes creating harmony between the body and the mind, improving productivity, achieving a healthier mindset, and getting the job done more effectively, to name a few.
References
1. Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment. https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/wfh.pdf
2. Revealing the Effect of Work-From-Home on Job Performance during the Covid-19 Crisis. The Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government 2020 Volume 26, Number 1, pp 23 – 40.
3. Mayoclinic.org. Healthy Lifestyle. Stress management. Yoga: Fight stress and find serenity. Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/yoga/art-20044733.
4. Chong, Cecilia S. M.; Tsunaka, Megumi; Tsang, Hector W. H. Effects of Yoga on Stress Management in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review. Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine. 2011. Vol. 17 Issue 1, p32-38. 7p.
5. Xiaofeng Wang, Federico Gobbo, Michael Lane. Turning Time from Enemy into an Ally Using the Pomodoro Technique. Agility Across Time and Space. 2010. pp 149-166
6. Deci, Edward L. Ryan, Richard M. The importance of universal psychological needs for understanding motivation in the workplace. American Psychological Association. 2014. Available from: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-24108-002
7. Ritesh Netam, Raj Kumar Yadav, Rajesh Khadgawat. Interleukin-6, vitamin D & diabetes risk factors modified by short-term yoga-based lifestyle intervention in overweight/obese individuals. Indian J Med Res. 2015 Jun; 141(6): 775–782. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525402/
(Related Article: Health Benefits of Yoga to Boost Immunity)