The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Here are the Benefits of Yoga for Project Managers | PPP #105

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Sharing a brief history of Yoga, how I've incorporated it into my regular exercise routine and my thoughts on the practical application of Yoga for Project Managers.

True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed. Yoga is to be lived. Yoga doesn't care about what you have been. Yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied. Ideal Palkivala, fire of love. Welcome everybody to

People Process Progress, episode 105, a brief history of yoga and the benefits for project managers. On this episode, we'll review a very brief history of yoga, the benefits millions, probably billions of people have reaped, and talk about the benefits that project managers can get from starting their own yoga practice. But first, it's time to lace up, chalk up, get logged in, and get locked on as we put people first, share our processes, and help each other make progress on the People, Process, Progress podcast with Kevin Pinnell. Hello again, welcome back to episode 105, history and benefits of yoga for project managers. So for me, yoga is a regular part of my exercise program. I am a 48 year old garage gym athlete, Brazilian jujitsu blue belt, um, project manager myself. So I sit, stand,

all that kind of stuff. And I need something to keep me limber, strengthen my supportive muscles, ligaments, tendons, and help focus my mind. I have found that yoga fits the bill to a T. So we're going to jump into this history. And again, really, I'm going to provide a super brief history because there are yoga experts, yogis, historians that will do way more justice. But I at least have some references to give folks who've never practiced it, maybe heard of it. I think yoga is pretty well known across the world. But something as old as yoga, to me, it has its history.

I've told that many, many times. So I am going to keep this brief. So I found sources that state yoga is 5,000 years old. Again, I'll link these on the website. Or 7,000 to 10,000 years old. That's pretty legit, time-tested. Needless to say, yoga has been around for a while. So what is yoga? So the term yoga comes from ancient Sanskrit, which is an old Indo-Aryan classical language of South Asia and the primary sacred language of Hinduism. So the word yoga itself comes from the root y root use y u j which means to

yoke so now this is no longer a word that's commonplace in english so you might not catch its meaning at first glance which i did not until i read through this a little bit more and maybe you still don't get it so let me keep going with my scripted definition here yoking was a practice used to connect and harness two animals, right? So now get yoked is like get jacked. But they would be yoked together, right? Typically at their necks and then able to perform tasks such as plowing a field. So essentially to yoke is to create a union. And this is typically how we hear yoga defined today.

That is from yogiapproved.com, origin of yoga, history of yoga. And that seemed pretty legit to me. Would be interested to hear, check, you know, connect with me, pupilprocessprogress at gmail.com. If you have other feedback about that definition or that part of the definition, because I've got a little more history here, then we'll get into some benefits for project managers like myself and really anybody else. But so what union does yoga create? Breath and body, mind and body, mind, body, spirit, soul, you know, whatever the union of the practitioner feels or the yogi feels. To me, the union is more between my breath and my mind, controlling the breath in stressful situations like a project go live or altercation or jujitsu or almost got in an accident, right? It's very

important. It can calm your mind. When you hold some yoga poses and your muscles start to burn, your legs and arms are shaken, it becomes hard to breathe and focus. And so this makes the mind question the position, right? And whether we can make it. And that's true with any hardship. And that's why I've talked about on this podcast and many other folks have, but I'm a big proponent. We got to put ourselves in some hardship. Yoga is hard and it's worth it. So this is where the mind can help drive that body to go further, right? So imagine you got up in the morning, you did a hard yoga, you're shaky, but you feel good afterwards.

And then you're going to go to a meeting. You're going to go to a kickoff meeting or a status meeting or something like that for a project. That meeting is not as hard as what you just did, right? It's awesome. And if you add in breath control, and there's tons of breath control techniques in yoga and jujitsu, but you can now better regulate your mind that wants to stop and tells the body to keep going. And that's true whether you're, you know, on your yoga mat in your living room in a yoga studio, or you're in the office, which less of us are these days, or at home on a call or something, you step away, take those breaths. It's really good. And

I'm going to get into a list from Johns Hopkins medicine, which is pretty legit on some benefits of yoga. And so they give nine that are shared. And so what I did was use their list and think about me as a project manager and how I have used these and how these apply or how they could apply to you, the listener, if you're a project manager or you're someone that works in an office or a station or something like that. So let's get into this list of nine. And again, I'll link these on the peopleprocessprogress.com website. Go there, check out. I always do at least a little bit of a write-up for every episode so you can get some background or some more legit references. There's also building the foundation page.

So starting there with that foundational five concept we've talked about here. And you can reach out to me. So if you have interest in being on the show, think I should have somebody on the show, check out that form. All right, so you've got five and a half minutes in before I gave you the sales pitch stuff for the website.

Now I'll go back to the list. All right, the first thing is improve strength, balance, and flexibility, which increases blood flow and strengthens muscles. Pretty straightforward. We feel it. What's the project management application manager application I think is think about when you've had to roll up your sleeves and go put stuff together. I did that a few months ago when we're shorthanded, it's all hands on deck. You're getting ready to support a long hour of a go live, right? Say you're walking, I'm in healthcare, the halls of the hospital or the office building or whatever scenario, the construction site, if you're a construction PM, whatever it is, if you

have better strength, balance and flexibility and your blood flow is good, you're going to be able to benefit the team and get in there with boots on the ground when you need to. And even if you're not doing boots on the ground assembly stuff, when you're working a go live, it pays to be healthier. There's just no getting around it. It pays to have a little more endurance. Your knees are going to get sore. Your feet are going to get sore. You know, we don't typically get to walk on nice cushioned mats or something when we're in an office space. Floor's pretty hard. So again, balance flexibility, increased blood flow is good for go lives. And if you got to get in there and put stuff together. Number two, back pain relief,

stretching and mobility, reduced pain, particularly the cat cow movement. So that's when you're on all fours and you either push your back and your belly down toward the ground or you arch it like cat. That's in almost every practice I think I've done. And I've done a lot of yoga lately. So stretching and back pain relief, back pain, right? Posture from sitting in a chair is probably a tried and true project manager issue. When you're typing those meeting minutes, when you're creating scope documents or you're getting lost in PowerPoint land, you're sitting there for a while, right? You got to work at your desk, sitting down. A caveat to this that's not yoga, but what I highly recommend is a standing desk or an adjustable one where you can put it up and down.

I have one of those. It's great. Also, get yourself a standing pad. That's huge. But if you have a stronger back, you can sit there a little bit longer with better posture and just help your overall less neck pain because you're not hunched over, all those kind of things. But get up. Use an adjustable desk. But again, if you're going to sit for a while, you got to have a strong core and a strong back.

So take advantage of the second benefit that Johns Hopkins identified and relieve back pain with a little yoga. Their third thing they have is ease arthritis symptoms, ease tender swollen joints, carpal tunnel, right? Mouse and keyboard all day long. And it's not just your hands and your elbows and things like that. But again, that sitting, sitting as humans is not good to do all the time. Typing using mice, I'm sure evolution wasn't designed for that, even though it's gotten us things like this podcast and other technology things. But again, a lot of practices I've done also have really good hand and forearm stretches. So you're, you know, you put your hands on the floor and you kind of put your weight on and reflect your wrist,

you turn them backwards, and there's really good things you can do standing up too. So this, you know, arthritis ease from us using our hands on keyboards and mice, or again, if you're a little more hands-on project manager using tools and things like that, really good benefit. Number four, improved heart health. Near and dear. A family member just had a quadruple bypass, and I have a history of heart issues, so that's why I try and stay in shape.

But that heart health reduces stress levels and body-wide inflammation. Well, if you can better manage risks and respond to issues and accept escalations because you're not as stressed out and your heart is pumping blood to your brain and you can think better in your lungs and your breathing from what we talked about earlier. That's going to help just overall your job, how you are as a project manager, your presence, how you portray yourself. Are you the one getting mad on calls? Are you able to manage that because

you got good stress relief because you did a good yoga practice? It really does relate. It really does make a difference. Number five, relaxation and better sleep before bed gets mind right and improve sleep. Who doesn't like sleep? Also, that to me for PM application is just better overall mental and physical health, right? Sometimes we were burnt out, we're tired. It's Groundhog Day, maybe status meeting after status meeting after whatever kind of thing. But if we're sleeping a little better, if our mind is right, when we go to sleep, if we've stretched a little, there's am and pm yoga. So you do a quick pm yoga 10 minutes, and you stretch and you sleep better

because your back's not all tight and your hamstrings are tight from sitting being out there all day. It's going to help you in the next day like a champ, but I guarantee it. Number six, more energy and brighter moves, a boost in alertness and enthusiasm from regular yoga routines. This one sounds super flowery and happy, but yoga is kind of happy like that. My PM application, again, is better focus for the day and more energy to work through project tasks. The lifestyle I changed and got back into regular fitness five years ago-ish, I definitely have more energy each day if I've done my morning routine, whether it's a hard yoga thing or recovery day yoga thing. And that's part of this whole deal too. And I'll mention this when

I talk about some of the resources is there's yoga routines where your shaky muscles, it's built for strength. And then there's ones that are 10 or 15 minutes that's built for recovery days for just stretching out for stress management. That's super easy. And if you're starting yoga, start with beginner yoga. And again, I'll touch on some of those. But again, this number six, more energy, better focus for the day is huge. You'll hear a theme with number seven here, manage stress, the NIH, National Institutes of Health studies show evidence that yoga supports stress management mental health mindfulness healthy eating and weight loss and so we've talked about stress management mental health a bit I think healthy

eating and weight loss to me is a big thing for your so for me the PM application is a mix of those but the improved diet and weight loss right if? If you really get into it, if you get on the path of better health and incorporating yoga and better diet, we as project managers know typically the snacks that we have out or that are in the vending machines, right? Snacks we have out for teams during kickoffs or go lives are usually not super healthy. The stuff in the machines, some places try and make them a little better, right? Maybe there's a granola bar that's not as bad as the Snickers. And then the meals we get for projects, you know, yummy, I gotta love Panera and a bunch of other companies and no knock on them because their stuff's delicious. But if we eat that all the time, it's not awesome verse, maybe we get some healthier alternatives, right? So that's a trend. I think we as project managers,

we as leaders of project facilitators, everyone involved could do is be mindful of that and getting some healthier eating. And you'll notice if you get on the path to healthier eating and regular exercise as a project manager, that your overall feeling will be better. Certainly, if you have health issues, get that checked out before you jump into a program or a practice. But it could also help those kind of things, right? So, again, maybe as part of you starting yoga, when those snacks are out there, when those Oreo little snack packs or the Snickers are there, don't have them or cut back on them if you have them a lot. Number eight is a really good one, I think. It's to connect with others. And this is something

working at home that I don't do enough, unless I go to the office or I'm at an event, maybe with my wife or business in the area. Ease loneliness and join in person or virtual yoga communities. Now, in this day and age, these past couple of years, loneliness, depression, and a whole bunch of other bad mental health things are rampant. So for us that work remote all the time, it is vital to connect to other folks in person. It's a huge thing for me with jiu-jitsu. When you go and have a struggle with somebody and you're just there with other people and you all learn and then you're smiling and you could have got your butt kicked, literally, but you're going through it together.

Similar with yoga. So you go to a yoga class or you do a virtual class together with someone, or you just do it yourself in your living room. You feel better because you put the work in, you went through struggle with yourself or with other folks, but a way to connect with non-project management types, right? And to share the common bond of a mental and physical challenge, or say your company has a yoga program there. That's another way to even bond further, depending on talking about an icebreaker is doing yoga with your teammates, your, your project management office teammates,

right? And not everybody's going to be comfortable with that, but that's also, I think part of us as humans is we need to accept who we are, what stage we're at, and that we're getting on the path whenever we get on it. And we're not going to look the same whether we're doing this yoga or not. But I think that'd be a really cool thing to connect with PM types, even in your team. And you're going through some hardship and you benefit from it, it creates a different bond. But again, this number eight out of nine, this connection with others doing yoga in groups, great idea. And I think it's something project managers could really benefit from, especially if you want to get away from project management and just go where everybody knows your name is what I had thought of from a famous show. But really to connect with folks and not talk about Gantt charts and this and that and just get there, get a good stretch in, get a little shaky in your muscles and really benefit from sweat and mental care there.

Number nine is better self-care. The yoga community is often more conscientious or conscious of their diet and regular activity. To me, similar to number eight, as far as, you know, connecting with others, but also number seven with the diet and things is project managers, we need to consider healthier options when we order the box lunches, when we take our own snacks, when we set stuff out for our teams and key meetings or go lives. And for us, we should, I highly believe, be regularly exercising, eat as well as we can. And we can eat pretty well these days. We use these delivery food services at home and they're really good. And the food's really good. You make stuff from scratch with menus and things. And it's in the food episode. I'll probably do one of those in the future. But

overall, right, the thing is, if you start doing yoga practice, right, in this episode that we're talking about regularly, you're going to want to eat better because you're wanting to see your, you really would want to and should see the benefits of being healthier, right? Because if you keep eating Big Macs or Chick-fil-A, and gosh, I love some Chick-fil-A, all the time while you're doing yoga, you won't see it as much. But if you choose maybe the salad, a meal or two, or you get it, right? You don't know what I'm saying. It's a tried and true formula, more activity, better diet, better health. So that better self care. So that was the ninth one. And kind of my application. And I guess, I don't know, evangelical take as a project manager and exercise enthusiasts on how we can benefit from yoga and how we should benefit from it.

Highly recommend mixing it in. There's, like I mentioned, anything from beginner to short AM to short PM to super hard kind of stuff. And a great thing in these resources that I'll give here in a second, the yoga instructor, even if they're doing some crazy move that you can't do, which happens to me all the time, they'll say, or if you can't do this, here's this alternative or that alternative. Basically, they're the advanced one, or here's an intermediate one. Here's a beginner one. So really good stuff. Here's some more, a couple more statements kind of from this Johns Hopkins. And this, this is big just to kind of bring everything together is numerous studies show yoga's benefits in arthritis,

osteopenia, balance issues, oncology, women's health, chronic pain, and other specialties. So the gist of it is yoga makes you healthier, right? But combine that with a little better diet, better sleep, all this stuff we talked about earlier. And again, I'll put this list on the website when I post for this episode. but whether you're to me, waking up with tight hamstrings from sitting in that office chair, you're sore from a rough workout or jujitsu class. Um, I'll talk about jujitsu for project managers, maybe a little more in a future episode, um, from the day before, or you want to just better manage your stress and sleep. Sleep yoga is a long, has a long, long track record of providing positive benefits for his practitioners. I highly recommend mixing yoga into if you're already regularly exercising, putting in there,

especially as you get older and your joints like me, don't overdo it. Sometimes I've stretched too much and I'm sore or it makes my joints hurt. And that's the funky balance, right? But again, instructors, when you're doing these programs, tell you that too. So what are these resources I'm talking about? Most of the yoga that I've done, I think I've bought one yoga DVD, which dates me, which was great from Gaia Yoga, but everything else I get from YouTube or Amazon Prime. So either free or Amazon Prime is not too expensive. And the things I remember i recommend are guyam yoga g-a-i-a-g-a-i-a-m uh sarah bath yoga yoga with adrian uh breathe and flow yoga for bjj and bjj is brazilian jiu-jitsu and fight master yoga so those last three because i'm a jiu-jitsu practitioner and we like to talk about that

every conversation every one of those instructors do jujitsu. Um, but the first three pretty pure yoga and they're all yoga, uh, and they all have benefit, right? So, um, again, I'll link to these. I highly recommend doing a search for those, get yoga into your project plan. It is in scope. It is on budget with these free or cheap, um, ways to get programs that thousands and some millions in some cases have viewed. And it will be on schedule because you'll start doing it in the morning or maybe you do it at the end of the day. So hit all the triple constraints with some yoga for you as a project manager.

Thank you so much for coming to the People Process Progress podcast. Go to the website Process Progress podcast. Go to the website, peopleprocessprogress.com. Reach out to me, peopleprocessprogress, at gmail.com or follow me on the Twitters and the Instagrams at hookysquid, H-O-K-I-E-S-Q-U-I-D. Thank you so much for all you're doing out there. Stay safe, wash those hands, and Godspeed.