Posts Tagged ‘yoga’
3 New Leadership Lessons from Yoga April 19 2012 6 responses
So, for those keeping score at home, over the past year and a half I think I’ve become a yogi. Am I on the verge of releasing my own instructional yoga videos? Fortunately for you and the rest of the world, I’m not that kind of yogi. Nah, I’m just a guy who’s showing up for class consistently and learning lots of little things bit by bit. As I’ve written before, it turns out that with hours of practice (still far away from the 10,000 that Malcolm Gladwell recommends) and good instruction, you can change the way you show up.
Apart from the physical and mental health benefits (and learning a few fun party tricks), one of the things I like about yoga is the opportunity it provides for making connections to the rest of the world. As a leadership coach, I’m big into encouraging my clients to practice self-observation so they form and practice the habits that best serve their goals. With that principle in mind, here are three things I’ve observed through yoga over the past several months that I think apply to leadership and the rest of life:
3 Things Injured Yogis and Injured Leaders Might Have in Common January 13 2012 7 responses
For the last two weeks, an article called How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body has been one of the top 10 most e-mailed articles on the New York Times website. When I checked this morning there were 734 comments on the article on the Times’ website. With approximately 20 million yogis in the U.S., the article has definitely struck a nerve (pun somewhat intended).
As many of the commenters point out, there are flaws in the way the article was reported. At the same time, as the article illustrates, you can get injured doing yoga. (This just in, you can also get injured running, lifting weights, doing Jazzercise or just about any other form of exercise.)
As I’ve written here before, I’ve been a regular yoga student for a little over a year now. Happy to report that I haven’t injured myself. To the contrary, I feel a lot better than I did before I started. Still, I can see how you could injure yourself doing yoga. Interestingly enough, some of the root causes of yoga injuries are the same ways you can injure yourself “doing leadership.”
Here are three things that can get you into trouble both on the yoga mat and in your leadership role:
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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