A work and yoga studio come together
At 12:15 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, about 20 people settled into reclined positions on their yoga mats, leaning against bolsters. With their knees open, soles of their feet pressed together and hands resting on their stomachs, the group took some deep breaths before moving into such poses as cat-cow and downward-facing dog designed to counter the tightness in their necks, shoulders, hips and backs from hunching over a desk.
Forty-five minutes later, they went back to work — most of them upstairs in a yoga studio turned shared workspace.
They’re members of WorkFlow, a month-old program at Flow Yoga Center in Washington, D.C., that provides an alternative work environment from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, including standing desks, reclining workstations and scheduled meditation and yoga breaks. And Wi-Fi. A monthly membership costs US$90, or US$70 if you have a class pass.
The meditations are guided and vary in type — mindful meditation, breath work and yoga nidra, or yogic sleep, for instance — based on what the group needs that day. “The other day, we subbed out our meditation break for a handstand break instead because inversions are better than coffee. Sometimes you just need to do upside down, shake up your perspective and then get back to work,” said Catherine Zack, the centre’s wellness director.
Initially, Flow co-founder Debra Mishalove hesitated to use the space for work. “It’s really important for us to create a space for people to let go of that and do yoga,” she said. But the building was sitting vacant all day.
“We had this beautiful building here on P Street, next to the Whole Foods and Logan Circle, that’s like Grand Central Station in the early morning, evening and weekends but during the day wasn’t getting utilized,” Zack said. “We thought the answer is probably not more yoga classes. What are people doing during the hours of 9 to 5? They’re working.”
And now they can work in pretty much any spot they want at the studio. In a second-floor room that can hold 20 workers, about 10 sat or stood, the only sound coming from the clickety-clack of their fingers on their keyboards.
One of those workers was David Zlotnick, a lawyer and training coordinator at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. His telework agreement lets him make use of WorkFlow frequently. He finds working outside the office more productive. “It’s a yoga studio. It has a very calming, peaceful, mindful vibe,” Zlotnick said. WorkFlow comes as federal telework policies and flexible work schedules across business sectors have created a market for shared workspaces — and changed what a workspace looks like.
“There are many different definitions of workplaces,” said Ron Goetzel, senior scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Now “some of the factors that are as important as the physical space are climate, the culture of the organization, whether people enjoy being there ... Work is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. You really have to be there for a long period of time, and to do that, you have to take care of yourself.”
Work is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.