corporate yoga class | St. Louis Corporate Yoga

What To Eat After Your Corporate Yoga Class?

Our onsite yoga classes utilize the lunch break usually. So this question comes up frequently: “what to eat before and after the class?”

In a previous blogpost we gave you a few smart ideas around what to eat before the yoga class. Fresh or dried fruit, veggies sticks with dips, an apple with peanut butter or natural yoghurt with added fruit – all delicious and healthy choices! Here is the link to the article: https://stlouiscorporateyoga.com/what-to-eat-before-a-corporate-yoga-class/

After your corporate yoga class you will feel purified and clean, empty of negative emotions, relaxed and ready to face the second half of the day. And most probably you will feel hungry at least a bit.

Before getting back to your desk take some time to fill up your stomach with some healthy food to give you energy during the afternoon.

Do you feel very hungry and your stomach is grumbling loud? Eating a big meal is not your best choice if you don’t want to get into a major energy slump by 3 pm. Are you craving a real lunch not just a light meal? Either bring your own home-made lunch to the office or search for a few lunch options near your office. A nice fresh salad with turkey, tuna or eggs is a filling but healthy choice.

Bring your lunch

Use your leftovers to make a filling lunch:
Leftover soup from the evening before
Fresh salad plus meat/fish from last evening
Prepare an extra smoothie for the office
A bag of vegetable sticks and a home-made dip
A vegetable burger
A sandwich filled with leftover meat, cheese and lots of green salad – just look in your fridge and improvise!
A selection of fruits: bananas are a clear favorite plus any seasonal fruit you can get your hands on. And lots of berries!

You will be thirsty!

Always have water with you so you can quench your thirst after a yoga class. We believe in drinking lots of spa water, lots of flavor and no extra calories! Here is a website with lots of different spa water recipes for every taste:

You can try lemon water or mixing unsweetened apple juice with water (1 part apple juice and 9 parts water).

The most important thing is to pay attention to your body: when do you crave something to eat? Already during class? In this case you could try to eat a bit more before class. You might not be hungry at all right after class – but wait 30 minutes and you are starving.

Have a healthy dark chocolate or protein bar around as emergency food when the big hunger hits. Dried fruit and nuts mixes are a great choice, too. It is always better to have your own emergency food around – at least this way you will not succumb to buying all junk you can get your hands on because you are starving.

Enjoy your on-site yoga class and don’t forget to ask your yoga instructor about her favorite after yoga meal!

Find the Courage to Shine at the Workplace

We are more than physical beings getting caught up, we are metaphysical beings transcending our environment. Yoga helps us connect with our energy. We experience our life force energy– stronger, faster, and more powerful than any of our thought systems. From here, we access the courage necessary to be ourselves. Yoga postures wake up space in the body, clear out garbage in our tissues, allow the flowing of waters to move in and around, purifying our being and illuminating our light.

The Buddha’s teaching is one of empowerment. The balance and wellness of our planet depends on our own individual ability to be disciplined. Like two wings on a bird, we must be both: aware and equanimous. A lack of compassion or equanimity may produce bad feelings. For example, if we feel guilty for noticing our own frailties or weakness, then we become self-indulgent and reproduce more of the same. However, if we can see fear as frozen, engage a new neural pathway in our brain, we illicit greater compassion and then begin to thaw the ice.

We can redirect our attention to possibility of new growth, when we neutralize judgment and fear. Each one of us are unique, with different backgrounds, needing something that is particular to us. My friend Rampersad once said, we are each complicated beings, and may look for short cuts and project unfinished work onto others in hopes of finding something everlasting.

We are not born in perfect alignment and we came here to find that alignment, so the best we may hope for is to bring some guidance and support to the other. When we assist the other person in our workplace or our friendships or family life to be successful, then the universe will in turn help to facilitate our own growth and development.

The discipline of the practice is making the time every day to connect with a soft, gentle yielding peace which lends itself to finding an internal resource and empowered state. The old school of exercise tells us to keep pounding and pushing but the body never allows time to recover. Yoga gives us time to replenish and articulate the unique needs coming from the inside resulting in expanding the power within.

When we work with vitality and feeling great, there is no need to get caught in our negativity. We work with energy first, let go of the fear based model: emptiness, neediness, laziness and being an ostrich and instead turn our attention to soul. We let go of the desire to manipulate and control, and go with a dynamic, fluid, changing, sharing compassionate energy for real support.

St. Louis Corporate Yoga currently offers 11 weekly yoga classes throughout St. Louis. If you are interested or know someone who may enjoy a nice weekly yoga class during lunch or before work contact us for a free phone consultation today. To start a corporate yoga class at your business ask for Michelle Maue at 314-630-1677 or contact us at info@claytonyoga.com

Health Is Your Wealth

How many times do you hear about health being your most important asset? In all honestly: Are you really taking care of your health?

Being ill costs a lot of money. If you ever had to deal with a chronic condition, you know exactly that financing the cost of healing can be a huge burden on any budget. An accident can throw your finances out of balance in seconds. Not to mention that some illnesses have a direct impact on your employment future. Getting ill is not a good “business move”.

How can you keep your body, mind and soul vibrant and strong? Let’s begin with nutrition!

It is true – you are what you eat. Now looking at what you ate today what are you building? A strong healthy body? Or a second-hand, run-down organism?

Eating healthy can be a challenge especially if you expect your eating habits to change from one day to another.

On the other hand, all those small healthier choices add up. What small changes could you integrate into your workdays to experience more vitality and health?

Eat less processed food! Eliminating all processed food from your diet might be not realistic for you. But you can start with small steps!

Try to eat clean! Avoid artificial ingredients in food. The best is to eat closest to its natural form. Snacking on raw veggies is easy to add to your day.

Drink more water! Most of us don’t drink enough water. Start measuring how much you drink per day. Are you drinking at least 6-8 glasses of water per day? If not, the easiest solution is to train yourself to carry a water bottle with you and drink every hour even if you don’t feel thirsty.

Drink less soda! Yes, diet soda counts, too! Cut back on your consumption of those beverages and you serve your body well. You consume less empty calories and sugar. High sugar consumption leads to many health issues – but of course you know this already.

Did you know that March is National Nutritional Month? We put together a few suggestions for easy and light meals for your corporate yoga class days. These delicious meals can be prepared at home. Just take them with you to work.

Veggie Sticks with different dips: Carrots, celery, cucumbers are great for dipping – add your favorite veggies to the mix. The different dips will turn the boring veggie pieces into a tasty meal. Prepare a quick avocado dip at home or take some organic hummus. Here is my avocado dip recipe: Clean the avocado, remove the seed then mash it up with a fork. Add a healthy portion of lemon juice, sprinkle with Himalayan or sea salt plus some pepper and you are ready to go.

Fruit Yoghurt: mix organic Greek yoghurt with your favorite fresh fruit mix. Frozen fruit will do too! Cut up the fruit at home then mix the Greek yoghurt with the pieces at the office. You don’t need any added sugar to make this a yummy treat.

Apple-carrot salad: Clean an apple plus a carrot, grate them, mix them. Add some lemon juice so the salad doesn’t turn brown and enjoy. You can add some honey if you would like. If you decide to do that, take Manuka Honey which has great health benefits.

Try these easy meal options on days when you have a corporate yoga class. Enjoy!

What To Eat Before a Corporate Yoga Class?

To eat or not to eat – this a question. Should you eat anything at all before a class? And if yes, what are the best choices for a light snack?

The jury is still out there on if it is a good choice to eat before a yoga class. We suggest our students that they do not eat a full meal before a class.

On the other hand if you are at work all day and your yoga class is in the lunch break…. You absolutely need to get something to eat to keep you going!

We gathered a few light snack ideas that you can eat before or after your in-house yoga class:

An apple plus a spoonful of peanut butter. Why don’t you try different nut butters, too? We absolutely love cashew butter. Almond butter is also a fantastic choice.

A handful of your favorite nuts (natural not salted). Cashews, almonds and walnuts are full with natural goodness. Have a bag of assorted nuts in the office so you never go hungry during the day.

Mix natural yoghurt with fresh fruit pieces – heavenly. You can prepare this snack at home and take it with you to the office. Don’t just take a fruit yoghurt from the supermarket shelf – those are usually full of sugar and/or sweeteners and contain practically no fruit at all. Best choice to get some organic yoghurt and the fruits of the season and mix your own! If you have no fresh fruit on hand, you can mix some organic jam with the yoghurt.

A few pieces of dried fruit. Just like nuts, dried fruit is very portable and easy to store in the office. Apricots, mangoes, dates, raisins, even prunes (just 1 or 2 pieces) are great energy boosters before your class.

Fresh fruit. Bananas, apples, pears, berries are easy to transport and excellent options for a light but energizing snack. If you have some extra time at home, you can even prepare a fruit salad with a few drops of lemon juice drizzled on it – so good and so healthy!

Veggie sticks with avocado dip – a perfect light meal after yoga. Mash one pitted and peeled avocado with a fork, add lemon or lime juice plus yoghurt and mix well. Add Himalayan or sea salt and pepper to taste and it is ready to go with your favorite veggies sticks: carrots, cucumbers, capsicum, and celery. Enjoy!

One small piece of organic dark chocolate will sweeten your life on a busy day.

Best advice from St. Louis Corporate Yoga: listen to your body and you will know if eating a light snack makes you feel good before yoga or better wait and eat after the class! Follow your body’s advice!

Stay Cool In The Office

Summer has finally arrived. As much as we can’t wait for summertime to come, this time of year might challenge our productivity at work.

A few easy tips for hot summer days in the office:

Drink, drink, drink! The best choice is water, of course. If you crave a different taste, prepare spa water! It is so easy to prepare this even at the office. Just take sliced fruit with you from home, fill up a big jug with water, and let it chill for 2 hours so the fruit flavors infuse the water. Invite your co-workers to enjoy a refreshing glass of spa water with you!

Here is a Pinterest board with lots of different spa water recipes for every taste: http://pinterest.com/spawaterrecipes/spa-water-recipes/

Quick cool down

You are dreaming of a cool shower after being outside in your lunch break? Run cold water on your wrists for a minute. Splash your face with cold water, too. If you don’t want to ruin your make-up, simply use a facecloth soaked in cold water. Yes, this is the same method your Mom used when you had a fever as a kid. It works wonders on hot days, too!

Difficult to get some much needed sleep during hot summer nights?

There is nothing that will influence your productivity as being dog tired as a result of a sleepless night. Try to cool down your bed. The way you would use a hot bottle to warm your bed in the winter, use a “cold bottle” to cool it down in summertime. Just fill up the hot bottle you use in the winter with chilled water.

An extreme method is to pack your sheets in the freezer for an hour before going to bed. If all else fails, this might bring you a sweet cool down experience! Put the sheets in a plastic bag before you put them into the freezer.

Your beautiful office shoes killing your feet in hot weather

Especially if you have problems with water retention during the hot summer months, soaking your feet in cold water will help a lot. It will cool you down, too. The best time for this is in the evening. It is so easy to include this into your evening routine. Have your feet in a bucket filled with cool water while watching your favorite shows or checking your emails.

Two yoga postures that help to cool down during summer:

There are some excellent yoga postures to practice to keep cool in the coming hot months ahead. Try Downward Dog with your legs hip distance or more apart and your knees bent. Place the hands closer together with the thumbs touching. Bend your knees and allow the blood to flow to the head.

Try Uttanansa, too! A great summer time cool off posture. Walk your feet from Downdog to your hands and bend the knees. Simply hang in this forward fold and allow your back to relax and soften. Keep your feet firmly planted and your legs strong. Remember legs active, spine passive. Breathe!!

Ask your yoga instructor for more tips during your corporate yoga class!