For its latest episode of Elevating The Conversation, the Journal sat down with  Natalie Gauvin, a corporate wellness coach and yoga instructor, to discuss wellness in the workplace.

The Elevating The Conversation podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, and elsewhere. Search for it on any of those platforms or the Journal's website to hear the entire conversation, but for now, here are five takeaways — edited for space and clarity — from the episode.

1. Practicing positive stress is beneficial at work and beyond.

 I teach mostly asana, one of the eight limbs of yoga. Asana just simply means pose. It's a physical practice. It's what most people think of when they think of yoga.

Another limb of yoga, or aspect of the yoga practice, is pranayama, which is breathing. I'm very big in the breathing side of yoga. And I say often that your breath is half the exercise.

If you're doing something hard, and you're starting to pant and it's getting more and more challenging, your breath has a tendency to just kind of run away with itself and we get stressed. So, if we can get control of our breath when we're doing something really challenging, that's where the practice is.

And that's where it comes back in the corporate world too; practicing stress. The word stress is a neutral term. There's positive stress and negative stress. If you put yourself under stress — positive stress, hopefully not negative — hopefully it's not painful, it's just simply challenging. Those are very different feelings in the body as well.

Run away from pain, run towards challenge, and if you can put your body under these elements of positive stress and breathe through it, then you will soar in everything that you do.

2. Prioritizing wellness has become more widely accepted over the years.

 Google was probably one of the first major corporations that really put a lot of money into their employees in terms of wellness. A lot of these corporations are really keyed into wellness as a factor for employee retention. Google has yoga rooms, they have pods you can go lay in and relax, meditation pods. They've got meditation hammocks, some of them. 

If your employees aren't well, they're not happy, then they're not productive. It's that simple. It's not anything that we have to think or do anything more about. You just offer what works.

When you're feeling good in your body, then you're ready to go and you want to be a part of a community. It also helps grow community. That's one of the things about yoga that I think is most powerful in everybody that does practice. You're amongst strangers, you're sweating out of every pore in your body, and you're breathing heavy. You're often in a darkened room and you feel a commiseration in suffering that ends in bliss.

3. The increased focus on wellness has changed how buildings, work spaces are built.

 I'm in real estate as well. What we're starting to see is that we're approaching building buildings differently.

In real estate and new builds, a lot of people want a home office. A lot of people want multigenerational housing. We want grandma or grandpa nearby, but not with us. So, a separate entrance for grandmother but built into our same footprint.

Corporations, they're starting to build with a gym central in mind, or with a cafe central in mind if it's a big enough company.

I had a health and wellness restaurant from 2016 to 2020. I was asked during that time from Steve Schmautz, who owns several corporate buildings including a big one in the Valley which housed (Etailz Inc.) at the time and Stay Alfred, and he asked me to add a small micro Well cafe (based on the restaurant's wellness concept).

I ended up not doing it but, the point is that more and more corporations are starting to think that way.

4. Noticeably improved employee well-being appears differently for some.

In the tech industry, you're dealing with a lot of tech engineers who don't have that heart-soul balance with body and mind. They tend to be all brain, brain, brain and focus, focus, which is great. We need all types of people in all aspects.

I've been at F5 for 2 1/2 years or so. This is the tech industry, they're not gonna be mushy. They're not going to come up to me and say, “Oh my God, my life has changed and it's so much better,” and this and that. 

They're gonna talk about, “You know? Yeah. I feel a little bit better when I play soccer,” or, “Yeah. I'm doing fine. I got a standing desk now versus sitting all day.” Because it just doesn't occur to you. Consciousness is a constantly shifting thing. 

The more we can shift the consciousness into normalizing taking a deep breath. Start a corporate group meeting with five deep breaths. Or reach your arms up overhead, inhale for five seconds, or for three seconds, and exhale.

 I am always going to go back to that shift of consciousness. Just normalizing it so they don't feel weird.

5. There’s still more work to do.

I always think that more employers should be prioritizing wellness. I understand also that business is business and that priority list is probably multifaceted.

It's not just bottom line first, second is whatever, third is whatever, and then fourth is yoga. I think all of those things should be listed as number one. And then from there you kind of have to microprioritize. 

So, more and more (companies are prioritizing wellness), and more and more should, but (do) what's practical too.