By Kaitlin Merkel
Murphy News Service
The 9 to 5 stress of the workplace can at times be overwhelming for employees, bosses and CEOs.
Incorporate Yoga seeks to lower this stress by inviting companies to hold yoga classes in the workplace. The Twin Cities company is owned by Poppy Villavicencio and was founded in April 2014.
Villavicencio previously worked as a computer engineer and conceived the idea for the business after seeing co-workers stressed out, busy and making poor health choices. She believes yoga classes can reduce the effects of tension in the workplace.
“When they [employees] leave a yoga class, they end up feeling really refreshed. They feel calm and they have more focus,” Villavicencio said. “From there, people can start making different, positive choices … It starts integrating positive steps where some people can take it to a further degree.”
Yoga can help reduce back pain and stress, lower heart rate and blood pressure, relieve anxiety, depression and insomnia and improve flexibility and function, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
Incorporate Yoga offers classes on-site before, after or during the workday. The most popular option is a one-hour class over the lunch hour, Villavicencio said. The classes also incorporate ten minutes of mediation and 50 minutes of physical activity. Incorporate Yoga provides the yoga mats and also brings calming essential oils, LED candles and yoga music.
“We’re trying to create this feeling of a yoga studio, but in the middle of the office building. We can kind of make it happen wherever,” Villavicencio said.
Incorporate Yoga instructor Alpa Goswami said she enjoys teaching in the workplace because it allows her to experience a “more personal kind of view” into her student’s lives, as she’s in their environment with their coworkers.
Five contracted instructors lead the classes, which Villavicencio said are “conducive to a business environment” and “not super specialized.”
“It’s effective, but we don’t try to get people sweaty,” she said, “I like to make the classes so that a 20-year-old could go in there and a 60-year-old could go in there and they could both get something out of it.”
Incorporate Yoga currently contracts with FIS Global in Woodbury and Clario Analytics in Eden Prairie.
Megan Pavot, a senior statistical analyst at Clario Analytics, said the class is “accessible for everyone” and that about 10 employees attend weekly late afternoon classes, a high percentage of the company’s small workforce.
“It kind of brings us all together and builds a sense of community,” Pavot said, “Employees really look forward to it and it’s an opportunity to connect with people in different departments.”
Goswami also endorsed yoga in the workplace as a community-building exercise that “takes ego out of the work” and said companies will see the difference in employees.
“The kind of work they’re [companies] going to get is going to be higher quality and there’s going to be a better camaraderie,” Goswami said. “It makes you more collaborative and it builds a community.”
Villavicencio said her goals for Incorporate Yoga cannot be measured in numbers, “What I would like to do is just get yoga to more people because I find the tool to be really transformational on so many different levels,” she said. “As grandiose of an idea as it may be, I feel like I can go in and help change the world by helping people be able to see who they are and make better choices.”
Reporter Kaitlin Merkel is studying journalism and Spanish at the University of Minnesota.