conclusion
FINDING YOUR WAY
Be gentle with yourself.
This is a long and difficult journey.
Swami Rama
As I hunched over my laptop at Fair Trade Coffee, a local café and hangout near our downtown condo, from the corner of my eye I saw Howard approaching. I felt frantic about meeting the looming book deadline. What if he was in the mood for a chat? Not now. My time is valuable. I had important things to do.
Howard is a regular at the coffee house. He was usually there when I arrived, and he was still there when I left. When I worked in the café over several weeks, we had become friendly. Most of what I know of him—and it is not much—has been gleaned from overheard conversations. Like me, he takes the light rail to get to the coffee shop. Unlike me, he spends most of his day just sitting in a chair. Being.
In his eighth decade, Howard sports a shock of white hair, has piercing blue eyes and a negligible chin. He suffered a stroke a few years ago and leans heavily on a copper cane when he walks. As I watched him shuffle toward me, I didn’t have to worry about making eye contact. Because of the stroke, he cannot hold his head upright. When he talks, he swivels his torso and peers up from a slightly bent position.
And then he was there, next to my table. I like Howard. I didn’t want to be rude. Putting on a smile, I looked at him.
He gently put his rough hand on my shoulder. “Take a break,” he said, and then immediately executed a slow pivot, returning to the ratty, black upholstered armchair that is unofficially his. I looked at the words beaming out from my computer screen and sighed. And then laughed.
Howard was right.
I got up and did a few yoga stretches.
Our original pitch to the publisher for this book was to write something that tied yoga to organizational development. We thought a book about creating work policies, rules, and regulations by using yoga principles would create stronger and more humane organizations. Our intention was to present a business case to the powerful and the influential. But our wise, wise editors suggested we write a more personal book, geared to individuals. At the conclusion of writing this, we see clearly it is a more logical, beneficial, and potentially transformational approach.
This was underscored by something our friend and colleague Margaret Wheatley said at a gathering to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the publishing company we share, Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Meg is a prolific author whose books are filled with keen insights. She wrote a beautiful foreword for our first book, Authentic Conversations. As part of an authors’ panel during the celebration, she asked questions that flew into our hearts: “How do I be in my work, regardless of whether it turns the world around? How do I be in my work with full conviction that it is the right work, no matter what happens?” She made it clear that she did not have answers—maybe there are no answers. We could only hold the questions together.
Meg concluded her remarks like this: “I want to be on this journey together. I want to be with other people who are similarly conscious. And I want to let go of needing to be the one who is responsible for changing the world.”
And it struck me—that is one of the beautiful things about yoga. It does not command that we change the world. It only asks us to find ourselves. It gives us the means to do so. In that discovery, the world is changed.
THE PROMISE OF ENDLESS EXPANSION
During our conversation with Maureen Dolan, she emphasized how encouraged she is to see yoga taking hold among workers and in many of the country’s workplaces. “There are hundreds of thousands of individuals who practice yoga,” Dolan says. “They bring their values and their practices to the workplace and influence their workmates. This will make a difference.” She incorporated yoga into her work while teaching adults at DePaul University because she knows people are hungry for what yoga offers. Most of these adult students are workers returning to the university to get an undergraduate degree. Many come to class directly from their jobs, feeling stressed about work and family responsibilities.
“I was using a few moments at the beginning of each class to teach just a stretch or two, or a deep breathing technique, and a time of silent reflection. Many students approached me afterward and said I should design a course where people could learn yoga philosophy and go more deeply into these practices.”
And so she did. More than 700 people have been through those classes, and they fill up every term. “In a particularly striking feedback loop, the system of a few moments of yoga in each class led to students inspiring me to create a course on yoga’s transformative qualities.” Expansion.
Laura Karet, the CEO at Giant Eagle, says the term namasté informs every aspect of her leadership philosophy, and she looks for ways to bake this concept into her organization. “One of the ways we do it is by emphasizing the importance of being ‘title blind.’ We do not accept that your title makes you superior, or smarter, or better than anyone else. Whether you are a cashier, a janitor, the CEO, or a manager, what you think and what you have to contribute to this company is equally important. That is a formal way of practicing namasté without using the word.”
She tells a story about her father’s longtime habit of chatting with tollbooth workers. He began the practice after hearing a story while studying with his rabbi about the importance of thanking those often considered “lowly” for their service. It was a practice that made her cringe as a kid, watching from the backseat as her father exchanged pleasantries with the workers while cars lined up behind them, honking.
Fast forward to a recent opening of a new grocery store. A woman approached her father and said, “Hello, Mr. Shapira.” Karet watched her father’s brow furrow as he asked the patron to remind him where they had met before. “You wouldn’t remember me,” the woman said, “but I worked in the tollbooth on the turnpike you used to drive through all the time.”
But wait, Karet says. It gets better.
A few weeks later, she was driving on the turnpike and, following her father’s example, said hello to the tollbooth worker and asked how she was doing. The worker said, “Do you happen to work at Giant Eagle?” Surprised, Karet replied that, yes, she did. But how did the woman in the tollbooth know? “Oh, the people who work at Giant Eagle always say hi to me,” she replied.
Even though her father doesn’t have a formal yoga practice, Karet says this is just one of the ways he lives out namasté every day. Through example, he has influenced others to do the same. Paramahansa Yogananda makes a similar observation in his book, Autobiography of a Yogi: “There are a number of great [people] … who though they may never have heard the words yogi or swami, are yet true exemplars of those terms.”
YOUR LIGHT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE
As we did research for this book, Jamie and I were delighted to discover how many companies are incorporating yoga practices into the work day. We hope they will be inspired to expand those practices through an exploration of the richness of all eight limbs. These principles have much to contribute toward creating ethical, humane organizations and productive workplaces, where worth is measured as much by value created as by dollars earned.
And yet, it is the individual who will make the difference. You will make the difference. We wrote this book for you.
My friend Barclay Hudson asserts that when talk turns to the search for better “work/life balance” it is a signal that we have already given up. “We have conceded that work is a drain of energy and spirit and nourishment, and that satisfactions have to be found elsewhere, from things provided by the paycheck. We’ve conceded that work is a cost, a liability, a negative, while the benefits come from life on the outside.” Integrating yoga practices into your life is a way to revolutionize thinking about work. It can lead to redefining “a good life as one that includes good, meaningful work as a core element, and a major purpose for living,” he says.
Work is just another venue for practicing yoga. It is accessible to anyone. We echo the words of Pandit Rajmani Tigunait: “Other travelers can point the way according to their knowledge and experience, but ultimately we must walk the path.”
We hope you will find this book a useful guide as you walk the path. As Meg said so eloquently, we would like to be on the journey with you. We want to travel with people who are similarly conscious.