Computer yoga is an office worker’s and a writer’s answer to staying positive throughout the day. Practicing computer yoga in the office will help you stay and maintain a positive sense within you throughout the whole day routine.
Computer yoga will help you to resolve and solve all the tensions that you have built up throughout the whole day. It will calm and make your mind peaceful through meditation and self-questioning.
First of all, the constant use of computers can cause repetitive stress injuries to the human body. This can apply not only for computer users but also for people who constantly use their phones to text messages and other things.
Second of all, even though you know that you do not have any symptoms relating to repetitive stress injury, it does not hurt to take preventive measures for the body. This is where the use of computer yoga comes.
Balancing Yoga with Computer Timetable:
The first step in alleviating the physical and mental stress of computer activity is to pause for certain intervals to give the body some rest. The rest includes breathing, stretching and alternatively using the keyboard and mouse with the required counter-movements to give the muscles some relaxation.
These exercises can be done throughout the day to help in alleviating stress from the body. Moreover, these exercises are compact and can be done almost everywhere, this includes when you are working at home or when surrounded by people in the office. Hence, these exercises can be practiced in really small spaces.
Working in a cubicle or an open floor can be stressful as it is constraining your space and privacy. The best method for doing such exercises is to find a room with the required serenity and calmness.
For example: An empty conference room can help you to relax your body and your mind. Another option for incorporating yoga effectively with the work schedule is to arrange an hour or so with your workmates and try to do these exercises collectively or as a group. More and more people means more motivation and encouragement for the people taking part in such activity.
10 Steps to do Computer Yoga in the Office:
Computer yoga is a good method to be relaxed and have a calm composure at the workplace. It helps in providing relief to tensed muscles and aching and painful back and neck.
Steps:
- The first step is to move your head and recite the ‘om’ mantra. While moving your head, try to move it forward, backward and on both sides. This will help you to loosen up the muscles of the neck and the associated parts such as the back and the shoulders.
- The next step to do in computer yoga is to move your shoulders. Try moving your shoulders backward and forward while also moving your elbows. Try to recite ‘om’ when you are doing so. Relaxing and stretching the shoulder muscles helps in refreshing the body and the arms. When done in equal intervals during work hours, this makes the body more rejuvenated.
- After the shoulders, next is the spine. Try to move your spine sideways while reciting the ‘om’ mantra. This will prevent any stress occurring on your back due to bad posture and stress and also will help you maintain a good sitting posture. Hence, this will help the neck muscles quite a lot and that means less aching.
- After the shoulders, try to move your feet on the ground. Move them at a constant circular momentum and recite the word “om” in your mind and try to focus on the calmness and concentration that it brings to you while doing this exercise. Feel the rhythm of the mantra in your head and try to focus on the serenity that it brings to you.
- The next step is to massage your whole body from your head to your toe. To do this keep your hands above your head and try to rub them together. While doing so try to recite the ‘om’ mantra.
- Now rub your palms together. While doing so try to think about all the stresses that you have in life and think about how you could solve them one by one. This helps in maintaining a calm composure within you even if the situations around you are not in your favor.
- The next step is to put your hands on your belly or legs and try to keep a blank mind. Try to be as concentrated as possible. While doing so try to think of the ‘om’ mantra in your head and concentrate on that word within you.
- After doing all these exercises, try to stop thinking anything just for a minute.
- Simply sit and do not think about anything at all. Try to relieve yourself from the present situations. Such as tensions, stress and other situations that cause you discomfort.
- The final step is to try to enjoy your work and work hard towards your goal.
Other Variations of Computer Yoga in the Office:
Normally yoga is done to make the body relaxed and try to be more rejuvenated so that the individual can keep up with the day to day life activities. Usually, people used to do yoga early in the morning by doing exercises such as Surya namaskar and body stretching.
These days due to the busy lifestyle and hectic schedule of many working individuals nobody has the time to do such exercises early in the morning. Doing traditional yoga requires a lot of discipline and strength of the mind.
Moreover, since people have to stay in front of a computer more than a few hours in a day, it will lead to stress related injuries to the hands, wrists, fingers, and neck often causing muscle related diseases such as rheumatism, spondylitis or arthritis. These diseases can be more harmful to the individual in the future.
Rather than trying to cure such diseases, the best method is to prevent them from happening. This can achieve by using such yoga which will prevent the wear and tear of muscles in the long run. These types of yoga are almost indispensable for individuals working in the IT field.
Steps:
1. Yoga for Headache:
If you have a constant headache while working, then doing yoga can help to relieve the pain to an extent. To relieve and reduce the pain, just sit straight and think the mantra ‘om’ in your head a few times. This is done to make your mind empty and blank. This will helps you concentrate on the surroundings and helps you forget about the tensions that you’ve in your life.
After concentrating for a few minutes, try to rotate your head in all directions – forward, backward, and sideways. This will help you relieve the build-up stress that you have formed in the muscles. This is one of the easiest ways to get rid of a headache.
2. Yoga for hunched shoulders:
Constantly sitting in one place and looking at a computer screen can cause hunched shoulders and a hunched posture within the employees. This can cause a large amount of stress to the shoulder muscles and also a sprain to the neck muscles.
If most of the parts are aching, try to move your shoulders in all directions along with the elbow and try to recite the word “om” in your mind for a few minutes. Close your eyes for a while and try to concentrate on the surroundings.
3. Yoga for Lower Back:
After long hours of constant sitting and focused on the computer, it can cause an accumulation of stress and pressure on the lower parts of the back along with the spine and its associated muscles.
Try to rotate the spine along with the head and constantly recite the word ‘om’ in your mind. Try to move the body in both directions to get maximum relief. Just make sure that stretching should not be overdone, as this can cause more harm than advantage.
4. Yoga for Feet:
To relieve the stress built up in your feet try to shake your feet and let the stress go. For jobs that require a lot of standing and applying pressure to the soles of the foot, try to use an exercise ball, this will help you to spread the pressure applied along the surface of the ball.
While doing handy exercise, try to make it as fun as possible. This will help you to shift your concentration from your work for a while. This helps you to change the focus onto something easier and less stressful.
5. Yoga for Head:
Try to massage the top of your head with your fingers. While doing so, visualize something pleasing to you.
For example the sky. While concentrating on such things try to recite the mantra ‘om’ in your mind and try to bring happy and pleasing thoughts in your mind. After massaging the top of your head, try to massage your face, ears, and your eyes. Try to massage the palm of your hands to relieve the pressure.
6. Yoga for Palms:
Rub your palms for a good five minutes. While doing so try to think about all the happy thoughts that you have and try to concentrate on the happiness that you have received in your life. Ask a few questions about you and try to answer those.
Try to think about the tasks and goals that you have achieved in your life. This will help you reach a level of spiritual satisfaction within yourself and you will feel more confident and positive in doing your daily tasks.
7. Yoga for Tension:
If you tens mentally about your life and all the work that you are doing in the office, close your eyes and think about the various prospects of your life. This includes the goals and aspirations that you have and what all goals that you have achieved in this period. Positive thinking can help you refresh your mind and increase the concentration power of the individual. Just sit simply and think about this.
Necessary Steps and Changes for Improving Health:
These kinds of problems happen every day in our life. This is because the human body was designed to jump around, run, and hunt and not sit in front of the computer continuously for long periods. Furthermore, the evolution of our life has not been in par or with sync with the rapid changes in technology. This means that the human body is not equipped with the daily requirements of life.
Sometimes as a form of livelihood, we have forced to seat in front of the computer and wok tediously and continuously for a long amount of time. This has taken a heavy toll on the health for most of us. This is seen in the form of shoulder and neck pains, the upper back and lower back tension.
Constant sitting in the same posture can lead to more disastrous diseases such as repetitive stress injury which includes carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. It is likely for each lifestyle change that we have followed due to technological advancements, we have brought an evolutionary change to the development in the human body. This is one thing that we cannot turn back.
Instead of trying to reverse the effects, try to find ways that help such evolution in a good manner. Hence, yoga-based remedies can act as a lifesaver in such situations and these can easily apply in our daily lives.
Although, following yoga and its associated techniques can help you to prevent RSI (repetitive stress injury) and aches to an extent, to have the best result try to follow them regularly. As mentioned before, yoga needs practice and concentration to make it effective.
If you are working in front of the computer for more than eight hours a day then, a mere half an hour yoga will not help you to counter the discomfort. Instead, take regular intervals and try to do such exercises. Consistency is the key to doing such exercises.
