Josh Schuster is sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat with his eyes closed and his hands placed gently on his knees.
Ever so slowly, the 30-year-old Greenwich Village resident takes a deep breath, rises and contorts himself into a downward dog position.
But Josh isn’t at a chichi yoga studio — he’s in the Chelsea office of his real estate company, DHA Capital, where he is the president. And he’s with three of his employees.
Allow us to explain. Josh is taking a yoga class at his office through Work From Om, a New York City-based corporate-mindfulness business that launched in February.
Work From Om offers individual and group yoga sessions to employees at their location of choice — usually their offices.
Although the cost of each session varies, an average group session will set you back $195, while smaller classes cost $95 to $160.
Work From Om’s two co-founders, Sarah Vaynerman, 29, and Ashley Mancuso, 25, are both certified yoga instructors.
They also have other jobs — Vaynerman is a digital marketing consultant, Mancuso a corporate financial analyst — though they’re transitioning toward making Work From Om a full-time gig.
Vaynerman and Mancuso met in October 2013 during a yoga teacher training program and quickly bonded over the realization the practice helped them improve their work-life balances and find their professional centers.
But how does getting your zen on help you thrive at work?
“We firmly believe all of the philosophical lessons you learn in yoga — like mindfulness, focus and balance — are applicable in the workplace, too,” explains Vaynerman.
In other words, if you’re working on a half-moon pose and having a hard time, that struggle can help you at work later on.
“Half-moon pose only takes about 10 seconds, but those 10 seconds can feel like an eternity, because you have to focus so much — and that focus translates to so many other things at work,” says Mancuso. “If your boss hands you a tough assignment, and you don’t think you can do it, you’re better able to stick with it because doing yoga has trained your subconscious to be more patient over time.”
Work From Om is far from the only business capitalizing on the mindfulness metaphor.
Lots of big-brand companies nationwide are hopping on the so-called “emotional fitness” train, too. Google, for instance, offers a free mindfulness training program, and Twitter offers free yoga and Pilates classes.
So why the paradigm shift?
“Yoga and mindfulness used to be fluffy to some people, but it’s starting to unveil itself as a true science now,” explains Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., author of “The Now Effect” and designer of the Mindfulness at Work program, which trains employees to feel more aware and conscious on the job. “People are seeing positive results about its impact in the workplace, and those results are influencing them to try it themselves.”
Case in point: There’s evidence that practicing yoga on the job helps you relax at the office.
A 2012 study from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that employees who participated in both yoga and mindfulness programs at work reported feeling less stressed during their 9-to-5 hours by the study’s end than those who didn’t participate in the programs.
But practicing physical yoga doesn’t make you feel calmer right away — it helps you shift your way of thinking over time.
“It’s not like you do yoga, and all of a sudden, boom — your mind improves,” Vaynerman explains. “Rather, the effect is more gradual. Once you do yoga, things start to slow down. You start to see things that before were just one big ball of stress.”
In turn, that clarity helps you realize you’re in control of your reactions — i.e., you don’t curse that faulty printer when it breaks right before your meeting.
“Practicing yoga and meditation helps you realize you have control over the stressors in your environment — you can ask yourself how you want to relate to the aggravations that pop up. And that sense of control helps you reduce your stress,” explains Goldstein.
And when you feel relaxed at work, you’re more productive. In the 2012 Journal of Occupational Health Psychology study about yoga and mindfulness, researchers also found employees who went through Goldstein’s Mindfulness at Work program reported productivity increased by an average of 69 minutes per week.
Schuster can certainly get behind that logic. His Work From Om yoga sessions have increased his productivity in a big way.
“Typically, my workdays are about 13 hours. But if I do an hour of yoga during that time, my output soars, and I accomplish about 20 hours’ worth of work in that same amount of time,” he says. “I become so much more focused if I’m not stressed, because I can zero in on what really matters to me.”
Kelly Bryant also says doing yoga at work has increased her productivity.
The Kew Gardens resident is the marketing manager at Noom, a weight-loss app company that offers free weekly one-hour yoga classes.
But she attributes her productivity to a different reason: her company’s overall emphasis on wellness.
“It’s easy to get strapped to your desk and never leave, especially in New York,” says the 25-year-old.
“But just knowing that my company values wellness enough to instill a free yoga class reminds me that they care about my overall health and wouldn’t want me to be sitting at my desk wasting time. That knowledge alone inspires me to be more efficient, which in turn makes me more productive,” she says.
Every company in New York, are you listening?