What a difference a year makes

Do you ever come home with tight shoulders, headaches or feel a bit grumpy? Well I’ve been there. I was working long hours, putting myself under huge pressure to exceed targets, then studying and extra voluntary work as well. I had pains in my neck, shoulders and wrists from sitting at the computer all day and was not in a good mood. Meanwhile, I was having one lovely calm hour a week in a yoga class which made me feel brilliant, but only for a little while. And I didn’t connect the two. Until, someone suggested to me moving more at work. Ding – an idea - I Googled ‘Office Yoga’ and found out it really was a thing.

You know that feeling when you know exactly what you want, but can’t find it anywhere. At work, I happened to have a small budget on a team organising fun stress-busting events in the Office and thought this would be a great opportunity to bring in some office yoga classes. Only, I couldn’t find anyone who taught office yoga anywhere. I was enjoying the benefits of practicing myself – just easy stretches that can be done at a desk throughout the working day. These simple things were making a massive difference. I knew this was something I wanted to help others with and I consequently trained as a yoga teacher.  Sometimes, as they say, if you want something doing, you need to do it yourself.

​Meanwhile, I had been doing counselling as a hobby outside of work and was becoming fascinated by the places that counselling and yoga overlap. I was also learning how improving mindset and practicing mindfulness can have a huge impact on everyday life. The idea of Office Om was born – a fusion of all of these things.

​This idea lived in my head for years before I began to manifest it into real life, putting it on pause whilst I became a mother. Then, after the birth of my third child, it seemed totally the right time to bring my fourth baby, Office Om, into the world too. I ran my first workshop this time last year and this blog post is to celebrate. Since then, I’ve run workshops for various organisations, such as The Intellectual Property Office, Cardiff University, Admiral and Natwest Bank. I’ve had loads of positive feedback with 100% of participants to date saying they’d recommend Office Om to colleagues.

​I was also lucky enough to achieve a place in Entrepreneurial Spark, a brilliant business accelerator.  Through them, I’ve been encouraged to take part in some customer discovery - actually speaking to customers - hello! Through this, I’ve been re-shaping what Office Om offers. For example, I now offer shorter workshops of just 30-45 minutes which staff can do on their lunchbreaks and these are proving really popular. I’m also starting to offer services to individuals with Office Om’s first workshop for individuals running in Pen-y-lan in Cardiff in December (click here for details).

​It’s exciting to see the power of wellbeing interventions to reduce stress and help people thrive, particularly at a time when so many people and organisations are investing in their own wellbeing. I’ve got so many ideas of how I’d like Office Om to grow and I’m really excited for the next stage of the journey. And yes, I still get tight shoulders, headaches and get a bit grumpy sometimes, but now I have a whole toolkit of things that help.

​If you’d like to see where Office Om goes next, please click on this link to join the mailing list and follow Office Om on Twitter (@OfficeOm) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/officeom).  Thanks so much for being with me at this stage of the adventure.