Healthier and happier employees!

Envision increased productivity and efficiency, a decrease in sick leave, better teamwork, and better performance on the job…. Offering yoga classes for your employees will help them release tension and anxiety, avoid carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries, decrease back pain, have better mental focus, enable them to handle stressful situations, make better decisions and make them more energized and happy. Many, many companies have instituted regular yoga classes for precisely these reasons!

Here is how yoga can benefit people:

• Help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. Stress is stored in our musculature and other body tissues (i.e. irritable bowel) and reducing muscle tension reduces feelings of stress, something we can take advantage of!

• Help lose weight and prevent the mid-life bulge. One study has shown that people who do yoga in their 50’s lose weight as opposed to their non-yoga counterparts who gain weight. It’s both the calories you burn and the stress reduction that will help people shed pounds.

• Increase mobility in shoulders, hips and other joints. Your range of motion tends to decrease, as you get older. It’s: use it or lose it. You’ll be surprised at how much easier everyday activities like walking or sitting at your desk can become when you increase the range of motion in your joints. 

• Improve energy levels. You have to expend energy to gain more energy overall. But some types of exercise can get you feeling more energized immediately and this is one of them!

• Strengthen, lengthen and tone your muscles. Yoga creates long, strong and lean muscles, from head to toe, because we are working all of them simultaneously.

• Increase mental clarity, focus and concentration. Yoga’s focus on precise muscle control and working on the edge of our individual abilities translates into calmer, more focused minds outside of class.

Marleen, a Registered Yoga Teacher ® who has been teaching since 2002, will bring yoga to your workplace to help maximize your employees’ potential! Contact me to receive a proposal specifically tailored to your company’s wants and needs.

To receive an accurate proposal you will need to provide me with the following information:

Classes in Benicia or Vallejo are considered local, locations further afield will be charged extra for mileage and travel time.

Group Size

I recommend working with groups of 15 people or less. My experience as a teacher has shown that when groups get bigger than 12 – 15 people, the instruction won’t reach every student at a completely satisfactory level. My first concern of course is to keep everyone safe and avoid injuries. Then I can be fully dedicated to making every student reach their full potential in each pose, so they will experience a sense of accomplishment and leave the class charged with positive energy. This means that I need to see and interact with every student and this gets harder (and eventually impossible) when group sizes increase. I am committed to deliver quality instruction, so I charge increasingly more per student over the limit of 15 and I will not teach any groups over 25. Keep in mind that the space you will want to hold the classes in will need to be big enough to accommodate the desired group size. I recommend at least 30 square feet of empty floor space per person, preferably more.

Your employees (and subsequently your company) will reap the greatest benefits when they do classes frequently. Daily classes would be ideal, of course, but for the sake of practicality two or three classes a week are strongly recommended. This will keep people’s joints and muscles strong and flexible and their stress levels low. You will get a discount when scheduling two classes or more a week. When scheduling classes for more than one group within the same company, consecutive classes on the same day will cost less than classes on different days of the week.

Length of class

Classes can be 60, 75 or 90 minutes long. The longer class times are recommended if the main purpose of the class is stress relief. Tension releasing stretches need to be held for a minimum amount of time to be effective, so are more time consuming. Many people enjoy the combination of one or two shorter, more vigorous classes and one longer, gentler class per week.

Time of Day

Generally, classes can be scheduled between 9 am and 1 pm or starting at 3.30, 4, or 4.30 pm. Yoga shouldn’t be done on a full stomach, so directly after lunch is not an option. When people start class around 9 am they will like being able to come to work in their workout clothes and then change after class. Around lunchtime is popular in many companies, because employees can do the class (partially) in their own time. At the end of the workday, the need for yoga is great, but there are other demands on everyone’s time. There is an extra charge for End-of-Day classes.

Equipment

We will need yoga mats, blocks, straps, blankets and eye pillows (with pillowcases) for our class. Your company can purchase and store these, and just pay for the initial costs ($800 - $1000 for 15 students) and regular cleaning fees. I can assist with the purchase, if needed. It is also possible to rent the equipment from me, for $2 per student per class (no extra rental fee for consecutive classes). A combination of partial purchase and partial rent can also be arranged (if choosing this option, please indicate how much you’re willing to budget for the initial purchase, and I will recommend what to buy and what to rent).