Yoga For Office: Office Chair & Standing Desk Yoga Poses For IT

With the consistent rise of ‘Hustle Culture’, working citizens often find themselves feeling burnt out and unproductive. This has proven to be a workplace pandemic of sorts, with the rates of employee sick leaves, resignations, and accidents increasing with every year. 

Hence, companies have started taking new initiatives to promote wellness and a healthy work culture amongst their employees. 

Today, Yoga has proven to be one of the most effective ways to reduce stress levels, boost energy, and general mental and physical wellness. 

Implementing some simple Asanas that employees can perform from the comfort of their desks is a proven way to help keep them engaged, energetic, and ready to work.

Yoga For Office: Why Is It Important ?

Any physical activity, including basic stretching and mobility exercises, have been proven to increase blood circulation and facilitate increased energy production. 

The dynamic movements of Yoga Asanas increase blood flow throughout the body and aid in fatigue reduction. 

Furthermore, simple yoga exercises and stretches can be done at work for short periods of time to reap the benefits of yoga.

One of the major factors that decrease productivity and employee satisfaction and health is stress. Companies must bear significant monetary losses as a consequence of poor employee well-being. 

Increased employee sick leaves, workplace accidents, nervous breakdowns, and decreased productivity are constantly rising today in the workplace.

 This is why it is especially important for both employers and employees to add various stress-reduction strategies in the workplace. 

Yoga is one of the most effective ways to combat stress and its negative effects. Cortisol, the stress hormone, has been shown to be reduced by practising a few simple Yoga Asanas everyday.

Office Chair Yoga Poses

1. Chair Pigeon

The Chair Kapotasana or the Chair Pigeon is a simple variation of the Sucirandhrasana Asana. It has positive effects on your gluteus, hip flexors, hamstrings, and hip, foot, and ankle joints.

Begin in a sitting position. Position your right ankle to rest on your left thigh, keeping your knee as parallel to your ankle as possible. Take three to five deep breaths into this chair pigeon.

This will help stretch your muscles and improve blood circulation. 

2. Sit and Stand Chair Pose

Begin by positioning your feet flat on the floor and your knees at a 90-degree angle. 

Follow this by standing and pressing down with your heels and only using your legs and glutes. 

Sit back upright and use only your leg muscles without moving your hips from side to side. 

This pose can help to rejuvenate hamstring and glute muscles weakened and sore as a result of sitting for long hours in a desk chair.

3. Seated Twist

Cross your legs, one in front of the other, and keep your back straight. 

Position your left hand on your right knee and place your right fingertips behind you on the mat. 

Inhale, sit upright, and stretch your spine. Exhale and twist to the right from the base of your spine.

This position helps to relieve a sore back, stiff neck, and promotes blood circulation, thereby reducing stress and increasing energy.

4. Eagle Arms

Place your hands on your hips and press your pelvis down to ground yourself and feel connected to the earth.

Feel the lift up through the crown of your head and a lengthening of your spine as you ground down. 

Bend both knees, lift your right foot, and gradually wrap your right thigh around your left. Then, hook your right foot behind your left calf.

This position is especially useful in releasing tension in your muscles, posture, and mental awareness.

Standing Desk Yoga Poses

1. Desk yoga Chaturanga

This stance necessitates complete stillness. Hands should be shoulder width apart, facing each other, and resting on a firm desk’s edge. 

Inhale as you lower into Chaturanga and, after your elbows have bent to a 90-degree angle, hug them to your ribs. 

Exhale as you return to the starting posture. Repeat 8–12 times to help your arm muscles wake up while helping your neck muscles relax.

2. Desk yoga upward dog

This position begins similarly to the Chaturanga desk yoga pose. 

As you tilt your hips towards the desk, keep your arms straight and your chest open. Keep your legs engaged to avoid drooping in your lower back. 

For 5-10 breaths, stay in this position. Maintain your core engagement and exhale while folding your hips into a 90-degree angle to release.

3. Wrist stretches

Working at a desk restricts blood flow and can lead to various aches and pains, thus wrist stretches are essential when working for long periods of time. 

Begin by raising your arms over your head and drawing 5-10 circles with your wrists inwards and outwards. To relieve tension one must quickly spread and shut the fingers and fists. After that , extend your arms in front of you, palms facing upwards. 

Gently press down on each palm to stretch the wrists on either side. Turn the hands downward for a forearm counter-stretch. Hold each stretch for five to ten breaths.

4. Standing pigeon

This is a pose that involves deeply stretching the hips. It helps to strengthen the hips, increase mobility, detoxifying the body and more. 

Raise your hips to the sky by pressing into your hands and feet, extending your legs, and squeezing into your hands and feet. Your entire body will be turned upside down.

 Then, with your right shin parallel to the front of your mat, spin it. Keep your left leg straight when it reaches the ground as you bring your right leg to the mat. 

Take a deep breath and, as you exhale, descend your torso over your right leg, stretching your arms straight in front of you, slightly bent.

Discussion With  Yoga curious Team Regarding Yoga Poses For IT Professionals

I have been working as an online marketing manager since last 6 years and most of my friends are belong to IT field. Being an information technology guy, usually we have to seat up to 12 hours a day in-front of computer. Every day, I found few of my friends complaining about back pain, neck pain, headache, etc… This is not new for the people working in IT field but it is not small thing. At the age of 26-30 years, when you start facing such problem, this is red alarm for us and we really need to think on how to recover from this pain (permanently).

Yoga is my hobby and I am practicing few poses since last couple of years. This is why I started this group discussion at Linkedin entitled: Kindly share best yoga pose for the people working in IT field.

I am very happy to receive overwhelming response from yoga teachers, yoga coach and yoga experts who not only shared their views but also send email explaining various yoga poses that can really help people to recover from back pain, neck pain etc.

Here I have cited few suggestions from that discussion: 

Janis Goad from Vancouver, Canada is an energy worker, writer and teacher suggest…

I am really thankful to Leo Peppas for such a detailed explanation and recommendation about various yoga poses. You can find his suggestion here:

I received email from Veena Grover,RYT from orange county California. Who is certified ananda yoga instructor. Here is her message:

Jignesh,Mountain pose in my opinion is great,simple & beneficial for shoulders, back,neck & calves.Pressing your feet don & lifting your upper body up & shoulders away from the ears.
Triangle Pose is great for opening the hips,heart & stretching the whole body. Blessings Jignesh. Good Luck. Veena

At last, I just want to say that professional life is very important for us but we should also take care of our health. I strongly recommend to all my friends working in IT field for reviewing this discussion and practice recommended yoga poses at least few minutes a day or on weekend.

Live healthy with Yoga !!

Updates: 8th Nov 2012

I really thankful to all linkedin members sharing wonderful tips and yoga poses for IT professionals. Recently i found this useful tips by Mr. Gulshan Kumar – Who earned masters of science degree in Yoga. He said…

Seating in front of computer for 8-10 hours a day in same posture leads to

(i) disuse of major body organs/ parts
(ii) overuse of eye muscles, tendons / ligaments/ small muscles of hands and cervical region of the spine as well as shoulder region,

which in turn leads to pains / spasms, due to the above imbalance.

Curative Measure:
Yogic Sukshma Vyayamaa is a unique system of exercises which can derive extremely tangible benefits. It is the only system of exercises which covers each and every part of the body with a specific type of breathing in a specific type of position with a specific point of mental concentration is prescribed. This system was designed by Swami Dhirendra Brahmachaari. Reference: Dhirendra Brahmachari Sukshma Vyayama Subtle Yoga

There is no need to do all the exercises in a one class. We can break up these 48 exercises into 3-4 sets which can be alternated on alternative days with different set(s). I have seen wonderful results of these exercises in my clients.

Preventive Measures:
Correct sitting posture
Correct Gait/ Body Language
Correct sitting Chair without support for back of neck.
Intermittent walk after a break of 45 minute with mouth and eye wash with fresh water to prevent eyes fatigue.
* times Eyes Palming for relaxation / progressive relaxation one time a day even while sitting in front of PC.

I think the above points shall be of some clue to help you in this regard.

FAQs

1. Can I Do Yoga in my office? 

Yes, you can do Yoga in your office. There are a number of Yoga Asanas that can be done from the comfort of your desk and chair. 

There are many wrist and hand Asanas that you can also do on your desk to relieve tension. Only a few minutes and repetitions are required for each Asana and hence, can be done from the comfort of your desk. 

2. Does Yoga Remove Laziness?

Often, Laziness and low productivity is caused by stress and a lack of energy. One of the first steps to become more productive is to boost your energy levels and reduce your stress levels.

Yoga is especially useful in promoting healthy blood circulation and relief from muscle tension. There are plenty of easy to perform Asanas that can be done from your desk that help to do this. 

Hence, practising Yoga Asanas can help reduce laziness.

3. Does Chair Yoga Work?

Chair Yoga is one of the best movements for an employee who does not have a yoga mat and space to practice Yoga. They have been proven to be useful to relieve muscle tension, soreness, stress, and various aches and pains.

Simple Chair Yoga can also boost your blood circulation and calm your nerves, which directly improves your productivity. 

If you’re stressed out and feeling lazy at work, Yoga Asanas can save your day! Practicing a few simple Asanas every day at work is a one-way ticket to achieving a healthy, balanced work life that has you brimming with energy every day, helping you to live your life to its fullest potential.

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