Practical Ways To Ease Stress In Your Workday

We’ll start by settling in—literally. It’s common to feel untethered, scattered, and as if you’re swirling around in your head in the midst of workday demands. We’ll explore simple ways you can tap into your breath, your posture, gentle movements, and visualization to ease yourself back down to earth any time you need to.

Whether you’re faced with nonstop meetings or a flood of incoming information, modern workdays challenge our need to be focused, clear, and committed to what really matters. In session two, you’ll experiment with steadying your gaze, balancing your breath, and moving in a way that brings your body back to center. We’ll also practice a visualization you can use to release what’s extraneous and focus on what’s most important to you.

All the physical symptoms of nervousness—racing heart, sweaty palms, dry mouth, forgetting what you’re supposed to say—are classic fight, flight, or freeze responses that were wired into humans eons ago. Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between being chased by a saber-tooth tiger and having to give a presentation or manage a new project at work. In today’s session, we’ll recognize that difference, so you don’t have the added stressor of being nervous about being nervous. Then, we’ll embody some classic breathing and movement practices that help bring your system out of frazzled and frayed and into healthy homeostasis.

These days, more than ever, we’re all spending lots of time with our heads thrusting forward toward a device. As you try to take in, track, and multitask all that’s happening in the mental rather than the physical world, it can feel as if your body exists just to carry your head around, with the brunt of that burden falling on the seven little vertebrae of your neck. No wonder this region can feel tense and strained. We’ll spend day four tending to this channel between your brain and the rest of your body, with practices that free your neck from stress and help it feel more spacious and strong.

At any given moment in your workday, you’re likely to find your shoulders hunched forward and up toward your ears, carrying the weight of the world. In response, your breath typically becomes short, shallow, and strained. We’ll use day five to dive into practices that unravel those patterns, physically and metaphorically releasing what you’re holding, so you can feel more open and at ease.

Modern scientists are quantifying what ancient yogis seemed to understand about the belly, reporting that it contains some 100 million neurons and the second highest concentration of neurotransmitters in the body. This makes your belly a vital part of your nervous system, a “second brain” that responds to life on an intuitive, instinctual, non-verbal level. It's easier to tap into these gut feelings when we get quiet, calm down, let go of top-down control, and listen. Day six focuses on breathing, movement, and a guided meditation to relieve belly tension and tune into the deep wisdom of your gut instinct.

Your low back represents deep support on both a physical and energetic level. At the same time, you can overtax your low back, especially if it’s not feeling strong. And nothing weakens this area like long hours of sitting at a desk. The result can range from a chronic low-grade ache to more acute pain. This session will focus on accessible ways to both soothe and strengthen your low back—simple, little yoga snacks you can tap into every day.

The habit of holding tension in our hips is deeply wired into our biological systems. Tens of thousands of years ago, if you had to crouch and freeze or prepare to run from danger, you’d initiate the action by gripping or tensing your hips. As we’ve evolved, many of us have carried that response pattern into modern life, unconsciously clenching our hips if a meeting gets tense, a conversation heated, or a deadline fast-tracked. Session eight offers you ways to breathe, move, and visualize melting tension of all kinds in your hips.

​​So much workday attention is localized in your head and face, where the prefrontal cortex of your brain, along with your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, are all processing data, decoding patterns, and working hard to manage the stimulation coming at you every minute. And then, to send information back out, your hands and wrists often go into overdrive. Session nine gives you practical, work-break practices you can use to soothe stress patterns in these parts of your body that are on the frontline of interacting with the world.

On our final day, we explore metta meditation, an ancient practice for cultivating connection, belonging, and a shared desire for well-being—some of the most important ingredients for reducing stress, in both the workplace and in life. We’ll engage with this gentle yet powerful practice as a way to integrate all we’ve explored in this course and to prepare to take the lessons out into the world.