Yoga for Corporate Retreats

Perhaps you’re in charge of coordinating your company’s next corporate retreat. You’ve found a good date, location and overall agenda, but you’re still looking for something extra and unusual to make it more memorable and inspiring.

That “something extra” could be a yoga or meditation session!

Let Chakra 5 partner with you to offer yoga as a part of your corporate retreat. This is one of our favorite ways to collaborate with clients. Here’s how it works:

  1. We do an initial phone consultation to understand more about your company, your team, your specific challenges and goals. Together, we develop a custom theme for the yoga/mediation experience to fit into your agenda for the retreat.
  2. We develop a custom class sequence which the retreat coordinator can review and approve prior to the retreat. This sequence is a free printed handout to all participants, and usually accompanied by a few additional informative articles.
  3. We can provide yoga mats and other accessories (blocks, straps, etc) if requested.
  4. We can book a practice space close by your retreat if there’s not one available onsite. However, if you’re in a warm weather area, take advantage of being outdoors at a nearby park or beach. Nothing gets people inspired and thinking creatively like getting out of an indoor, fluorescent light environment and out into nature!

Recently, during a corporate retreat, we did a creative exercise with the participants, asking them at the beginning of class to meditate on a “work mantra”. A “work mantra” is a single word that comes into your mind when you think about what is it that you or your team needs to perform better. Below we share some examples that came up in our last retreat, and how we used yogic poses and principles for positive reinforcement of these concepts.

“CONFIDENCE”:

A great confidence-building pose is Half Moon, which can also be done against a wall for support.

http://www.yogajournal.com/pose/half-moon-pose/

 

“FOCUS”:

A great move for creating laser focus is Tree Pose. You won’t find your mind wandering in this one!

http://www.yogajournal.com/pose/tree-pose/

 

“POWER”:

A yoga pose that builds power quite literally in your legs/hips and also in attitude is almost any warrior pose. Humble Warrior requires considerable balance/strength while humbling yourself to/acknowledging great challenge.

http://www.doyouyoga.com/how-to-do-humble-warrior-pose-80759/

 

“COLLABORATION”:

For a concept like this, a “partner yoga” pose could be ideal.  Some teachers define us as two students coming together to form a single pose, but in this particular application I’m talking about students acting as “props” to support each other in a pose…for example, standing behind someone in half-moon pose as a “wall” to help support them and get them extra confidence.

 

“TEAM”:

As instructors, we see everyone in the group as “a team” in a temporary sense. The way an instructor has to assess the collective energy of the group (as well as the experiences/abilities of individuals) is analogous to the view a team leader needs to have on a daily basis. As we help certain people adjust and evolve into a pose more correctly, we often see a shift in the rest of the group to deepen their experience in the pose more as well. How does one individual shift the energy of the group? How can the collective energy of the team influence one person?