The interview
How yoga can help you prepare for the big day. By Victoria Jackson
I had a job interview recently. My yoga teacher could tell I was getting stressed about it and gave me some advice: first find your sit bones and breathe, only then open your mouth and speak. Good, simple advice. Best of all it works especially well when the interview is online and you can work the nervousness out with some ostentatious wriggling and extravagant sighing before turning the camera and microphone on. If you’re wondering, after all this, yes — I did get the job!
And now that I’m learning the ropes of my new role, I find that lessons from yoga practice are useful all the time. I haven’t tried to impress my new colleagues with my ability to balance on my hands or quote from the Bhagavad Gita and and I certainly don’t wear lycra to the office, yet yoga is still always in the background. I might seem strange to apply the physical challenge of asana practice in a sedentary office job, but how you do yoga is how you do everything. Yes, yoga really is that important!
I’m such a perfectionist that my usual style in everything is trying to run before I can walk and I want to be amazing from day one. But in my new job I’m taking care to remind myself that I don’t need to know everything and be an instant expert: understanding builds up through experience over time.
“My yoga teacher could tell I was getting stressed about it and gave me some advice: first find your sit bones and breathe, only then open your mouth and speak. Good, simple advice”
I’ve found myself turning to the idea of ‘vinyasa krama’ as it’s been taught to me — how to make the sequential steps that contribute towards each asana without trying to rush there all at once. Before every meeting I still take that moment to pause and feel my sit bones on the chair, instead of giving in to my tendency to rush forward with dizzying speed, desperate to make progress. So far I haven’t fallen over — which is perhaps where the similarity with yoga ends!
In fact, I’ve just had some feedback from a couple of the company bigwigs on how I’m doing as a newbie. Their verdict: I’m calm and unflappable even when there’s a lot going on. Proof that yoga works — even in the office. Now that meetings are more often in-person than online I just have to remember to keep the preparatory wriggling and sighing to a minimum.
Victoria Jackson lives and teaches yoga in Oxford. Visit: victoriajacksonyoga.com or find her on Instagram @victoriajacksonyoga
Om Magazine
First published in November 2009, OM Yoga magazine has become the most popular yoga title in the UK. Available from all major supermarkets, independents and newsstands across the UK. Also available on all digital platforms.
