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Welcome to YoPO!
Find answers to general questions here.
If you’d like to discuss YoPO for your employees please fill in the Contact Form here.
What can YoPO do for me?
YoPO provides quick, easy and accessible movement, mindfulness and lifestyle practices to support your wellbeing if you are busy, don’t move much during your working day and don’t have much time to look after yourself. Much of our content is yoga inspired, but it doesn’t require any yoga experience or any interest in the spiritual aspects of yoga.
Short movement and mindfulness sessions, even as little as one minute can, with repeated practice, produce meaningful physical and mental benefits, increase your comfort in daily life and improve your physical condition for other activities.
We recommend that you start by trying something that appeals, focus on it for a short time and see whether it changes the way that you feel. Over time you will build up a resource bank of options to draw on in different circumstances.
What benefits I should expect?
Physical health and wellbeing:
Reduction in aches, pains and niggles – particularly neck, back and shoulder issues that can cause problems for people who sit still for a lot of their working day.
Improvement in flexibility – stretching exercises help to reduce the risk of injury when running, playing sports or being active in daily life and twisting exercises help to keep the back mobile
Improvement in general fitness – the more active exercises act as a mini workout, building heat, increasing the heart rate and improving muscle tone
Improvement to posture – exercises focusing on the back and the core increase focus on body alignment and can improve habitual ways of standing and sitting
Building muscle strength – weight bearing poses help to build strength in a similar way to working with weights in the gym
Improvement to balance – balancing exercises have multiple health benefits including strengthening the core and improving muscular reaction time, which reduce the risk of injury by falling
Mental health and wellbeing:
Improvement in your mood – you may feel happier, more optimistic, and more motivated after some simple movement or after following one of our lifestyle tips
Improvement in energy levels – short breaks for movement or a wellbeing practice can increase energy and give added zest for life
Better focus and concentration – mindful movement or other mindfulness practices can help you to stay in the moment
Reduced stress – mindfulness practices including breathing practices encourage slowing down the breath and calming the mind. Moving and stretching can reduce physical tension.
Improvement in sleep – especially when building relaxing practices into your daily routine
How do I decide what to do?
Our content can be used in different ways to best suit your circumstances and your physical and mental needs. Each type of content can be filtered to help you to find what will suit you best:
- Our poses can be filtered by Body Focus (physical benefit) or Feeling focus (mental benefit) and if applicable by body area. Each will take a minute or less. Bookmark your favourites so you can come back to them
- Our practices include sequences combining a number of poses and sometimes lifestyle recommendations, short videos that can be used for guided practices, plus resources for breathwork and eye exercises.
- Our lifestyle content includes ideas for short actions or activities that you can fit into a short break to help improve your wellbeing
- Our courses provide structured content relating to different wellbeing themes to allow you to explore practices to support particular needs in more depth
How should I get prepared?
All of our poses and practices can be practised wherever is convenient, without any special equipment and wearing normal clothing. Some activities may invite you to briefly step outside.
How can I get into good habits to support my wellbeing?
We recommend that you take some time experimenting with different practices to work out which benefit you most and where you would like to focus your attention.
We recommend that where possible you adapt your daily routines to include the practices that you want to do regularly for instance:
- Stretch your body before sitting down at the desk
- Sprinkle simple movements and/or mindfulness moments into your working day eg while waiting for a document to load, after completing a task or before a meeting
- Get moving during your lunch break, even if only for 5 minutes, making sure that you use your legs if you’ve been sitting down
- Build in a slot to move the body and calm the mind after work to create a transition between work and home activities – particularly if you are working from home
- Build in a short breathing/meditation practice at times when you have a little slot of quiet time at home or work
Remember – every minute that you spend taking care of yourself helps, so get started today!
Pricing and charging options
Access to YoPO content for your employees can be provided via monthly or annual subscriptions.
For further details, please send us your enquiry using this form:
How do I decide what to do?
The poses, exercises and videos that we offer can collectively help to build strength, increase flexibility, calm the mind and reduce stress and fatigue.
Our content can be used in a range of different ways to best suit your circumstances, your physical and mental condition and the amount of time that you have available. You could start with:
- Our pose library can be filtered by focus and, if applicable, area of the body so that you can easily pick what you need – all can be done in a minute or less. Bookmark your favourites so you can come back to them
- Our practice library, includes sequences combining a number of poses and short videos provided by expert yoga teachers that can be used for guided practices
- Our courses provide structured content relating to different themes. These will work well if you want to explore practices to support your wellbeing around a theme that resonates with you.
What space do I need?
All of our content is designed to be usable in minimal space – at or near your desk, in the kitchen or in a workplace breakout area.
Do I need any special equipment?
Nothing special. In some cases you may use a chair back or desktop/tabletop as support, in others you may need blankets, pillows or cushions. See explanatory text and illustrations for guidance.
What do I need to wear?
Our content is designed so that you can come as you are, as long as you are wearing clothing that does not restrict your range of motion.
Much of the content can be done in shoes, particularly if your shoes have flexible soles but in some cases you may prefer to be in socks or bare feet. If bare feet are necessary this is noted in the explanatory text.
What are the health benefits of yoga and Pilates?
Yoga can provide many benefits to your physical and mental wellbeing depending on your needs. Here are some examples:
Physical health:
- Improves flexibility – stretching exercises help to reduce the risk of injury when running, playing sports or being active in daily life
- Improves general fitness – the more active exercises act as a mini workout, building heat and increasing the heart rate
- Improves posture – exercises focusing on the back and the core increase focus on body alignment and can improve habitual ways of standing and sitting
- Builds muscle strength – weight bearing poses help to build strength in a similar way to working with weight in the gym
- Improves balance – balancing exercises have multiple health benefits including strengthening the core and improving muscular reaction time, which reduce the risk of injury by falling
Mental health and wellbeing:
- Improves your mood – after practicing yoga many people report feeling happier, more optimistic, and more motivated
- Improves energy levels – practicing yoga can increase energy and give added zest for life
- Helps focus and concentration – practicing yoga keeps you in the moment and you may find that your focus and concentration improves after taking a yoga break
- Reduces stress – yoga encourages a slowing of breath and a calming of the mind
- Improves sleep – especially when practicing restorative poses
Can very short movement/mindfulness sessions really help?
Short movement and mindfulness sessions, even as little as one minute interspersed into a busy day can, with repeated practice, produce meaningful physical and mental benefits, increase your comfort in daily life and improve your physical condition for other activities. Any movement counts, especially if you have a sedentary lifestyle and the more that you can sprinkle through your day the better.
With some of the exercises you may be able to multitask, for example by taking a stretch while watching a video. We recommend however that most of the time you try to engage with the short practices with your full concentration, focusing on the breath and noticing all physical sensations and any shifts in mental state or mood.
Are short practices worth doing if I go to a regular yoga class?
We believe that developing a home (or at work) yoga practice is beneficial, even if you are a regular yoga class participant.
The short exercises and practices that we offer are designed to be sprinkled through the day, helping you to make your own yoga practice an intrinsic part of your life.
If you are an experienced yoga practitioner you may prefer other versions of some of the practices offered and you can of course substitute these into your YoPo practice framework as you wish.
