Yoga and Productivity
Yoga & Meditation:
Increase your productivity and decision-making!
Office Yoga® and meditation practices are being linked to heightened productivity and decision-making abilities. These skills are crucial to success in both our personal lives and our workplace environments. Office Yoga® and meditation can change not only subjective attitudes and life skills, but can actually change the physical structure of the brain. Let’s see how mindfulness practices can affect our brains and their important executive functions.
Physical Changes to the Brain’s Decision-Making Centers
Recent studies show that yoga and meditation have the capacity to actually alter the the brain’s physical structure. A 2012 study conducted at Duke University found that yoga meditation practitioners exhibited greater gray matter volume in key brain regions. This increase in gray matter volume was also accompanied by significantly fewer cognitive failures during various cognitive tests. Results from this study therefore suggest that yoga meditation practices may be associated with beneficial neuroplastic changes in executive brain function, such as increased decision-making, attention, and overall cognitive ability. 
Office Yoga® and meditation practices can also alter the structure of the cerebral cortex, which is the part of the brain associated with higher brain function, such as thought and action. In a recent study, MRI imaging showed that cortical brain regions associated with attention, interception, and sensory processing were significantly thicker in experienced meditators. More specifically, the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in planning and decision-making, was markedly thicker. These results show that meditation physically alters brain regions involved in planning and decision-making, which could be implicated in beneficial therapeutic changes.
Increased Workplace Productivity
Numerous studies also show that yoga and meditation can positively affect productivity, especially in the workplace. Mindfulness meditation, for example, significantly improves neuropsychological measures of working memory and decision-making, which are key to both short-term and long-term success in the workplace. One such study examined the effects of meditation on multiple measures of workplace stress and employee development. Results show that meditation leads to decreased anxiety, job tension, fatigue and insomnia, and substance abuse; and increased general health, quality of work & personal relationships, job satisfaction, and overall productivity and performance.
Mindfulness practices have been shown to alter both physical structure and overall cognitive abilities of the brain, with particularly significant improvements in decision-making and productivity. Thus yoga and meditation practices are increasingly being recognized as beneficial not only in people’s personal lives, but in the workplace setting as well. So if you want to want to increase your decision-making skills and overall productivity, Office Yoga® suggest taking up a mindfulness practice at work or on your own!
Interested in offering Office Yoga® sessions at your workplace? Contact us at info@officeyoga.com for class options and scheduling!