As conversations around workplace wellbeing become more urgent, many organisations are looking beyond traditional interventions and turning to ancient practices like yoga for sustainable support.
More than just a physical activity, yoga offers tools for self-regulation, stress management, and emotional resilience; qualities increasingly vital in high-pressure professional environments.
Dr Amrita Sen Mukherjee, a trailblazer in the realm of positive transformation and posttraumatic growth, believes that yoga can be a powerful component of occupational health strategies. A TEDx speaker, Positive Psychology Practitioner and Coach, Portfolio GP, and Disability Advocate, Dr Sen Mukherjee draws from research and lived experience to advocate for integrative approaches to wellbeing.
In this interview with Asian Voice, she explains how yoga can be embedded into workplace culture, adapted for demanding schedules, and used as a tool for long-term personal and professional resilience.
How do you see the connection between yoga and occupational well-being? Do you think there's potential for integration?
I believe yoga is highly effective in reducing workplace stress and anxiety. It’s not just about physical movement, it’s a powerful tool for enhancing self-awareness and emotional regulation. This isn’t just anecdotal; it’s backed by extensive research and studies.
In the face of rising stress levels, anxiety, and burnout in professional settings, yoga offers a much-needed anchor. Practices such as breathwork (Pranayama), meditation, and adherence to ethical principles encourage us to slow down. When incorporated as a daily habit or ritual, they help us gain greater control over our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
These practical tools are especially valuable in calming our overactive, hyper-productive minds. They foster self-regulation and help us reconnect the mind and body—an essential relationship. When stress levels rise, the sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing the release of adrenaline and cortisol. This, in turn, can disrupt our clarity of thought and emotional balance.
Regulating this physiological response through mindful practices is therefore crucial—not only for individual well-being but also for overall workplace health.
How can yoga be integrated into our daily lives to support personal well-being, especially for employees with long or unsustainable working hours?
Daily practice is incredibly important, but it’s essential to recognise that everyone is different. Finding a time that works for you is key. For example, telling a busy parent who’s getting their kids ready, getting them to school, heading to work, and juggling countless responsibilities to wake up half an hour early for yoga might not be the most helpful suggestion.
Whether it’s in the evening or the morning, establishing a routine is what truly matters. When something becomes routine, it turns into a habit and maintaining that habit is what helps integrate it into your lifestyle. So creating a system that works for your schedule is crucial.
It’s about intentionality over intensity. You don’t need a full 30-minute session. You could start with micro-practices, like a 2-minute guided breathing pause before a team meeting. Taking just a few moments for yourself during your prep can be surprisingly effective.
A short 10-minute mindfulness session in the morning can also have a big impact. If you’re commuting via public transport, putting on noise-cancelling headphones and creating a quiet moment for yourself is one way to reclaim time. On-demand resources are great reflective tools that staff can access whenever it suits them.
Finding small pockets of time throughout the day is important for building a sustainable practice. Equally vital is cultivating a workplace culture that allows for safe or protected spaces, even just 5 to 10 minutes, for mindfulness. These simple steps can go a long way in supporting mental wellness.
How can organisations more effectively integrate practices like yoga into the workplace to support employee well-being at an organisational level?
Creating meaningful change requires a complete cultural shift. We need to begin at the grassroots level by fostering positive leadership, awareness, acceptance, intention, and education. These elements must be embedded into the very framework of an organisation in order to allow practices like yoga, meditation, and mindfulness to genuinely take root and flourish.
Chair-based yoga, for example, can be a simple yet effective option. Employees don’t even need to leave their desks; they can engage in gentle stretches and breathing exercises right where they are.
However, the key is sustained investment in people. When organisations invest in their employees, they must do so with a deep understanding of what supports mental fitness and overall well-being. These should be recognised not just as perks, but as core professional values, essential inputs that contribute directly to personal and organisational success.
For high-stress work environments like the NHS, what aspect of yoga would you recommend they focus on?
Breathwork is essential, whether before a ward round, the arrival of your next patient in the NHS, or an important meeting. Techniques like box breathing and alternate nostril breathing can quickly downregulate the stress response by activating the parasympathetic nervous system and enhancing the vagal response.
Mindfulness, or mindful awareness, is equally important: recognising the present moment, being fully engaged, and maintaining presence. Such focus practices can help prevent burnout.
It's also vital to understand the principles behind yoga, not just the physical aspects, but also the components of self-regulation and self-awareness. Integrating ideas like balance and non-striving supports a healthier internal narrative.
These pathways to regulation and clarity are especially critical when the mind and body are under intense pressure.
Many beginners struggle with wanting quick results and comparing themselves to others, which often leads them to give up. What tips would you give to help them stay consistent and embrace a slower, more mindful approach?
I’d refer to the old proverb: “Slow and steady wins the race.” It was the tortoise, not the hare who won. These age-old sayings carry a lot of wisdom and truth.
It’s about going back to basics. Think of it like riding a bike, when you first start, you can’t jump straight into a triathlon. You have to take it slow and steady. But because yoga doesn’t involve external equipment, we assume we should naturally be good at it. After all, it’s just our body. That’s a misconception.
Recognising that any skill or practice takes time, patience, care, and consistency is crucial. Here are a few tips to help people stick with yoga:
- Break it down – Don’t take on too much too soon.
- Be kind to yourself – Care for your body if you want it to care for you, especially at the beginning.
- Build a healthy ritual – The more consistent your practice, the more likely it will become a habit and eventually, a lifestyle.
Do you think formally incorporating mindful practices like yoga into government and workplace policies would be a more effective step toward integrating them into occupational health?
There are significant benefits to the practice of yoga and mindfulness. While the two aren’t synonymous, each offers valuable advantages as distinct practices.
However, embedding these practices directly into government policy risks enforcing a cultural shift rather than cultivating one. It becomes about mandating a way of life, rather than involving the activators and enablers who can genuinely inspire and sustain change. Approaching it this way is unlikely to lead to meaningful or lasting transformation.
There’s an important distinction between fostering a workplace culture that embraces and encourages these practices versus imposing them through policy. While the benefits of yoga are well established, it’s counterproductive to force it on individuals—especially those who aren’t open to it, not necessarily because they’re not ready, but because they simply choose not to engage with it.
Watch Amrita's TEDx Talk entitled “Invisible disability: Challenging bias to enable change” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3SbU95qwc
You can Book a time to connect with her here - https://calendly.com/yourwellbeingdoctor
