#010 Steven Heyman | Yoga and enabling change through mindfulness

Steven Heyman, guest · [06:22]The first, I was always really interested in traveling and expanding my horizon, let's say, and I thought the best way to expand my horizon was through traveling, and not just little trips and then you come back and settle back into normal life. I wanted to explore a little bit more, and one of the options I had chosen in my studies was international management, and I then set off looking for a job that allowed me to move abroad, maybe not immediately, but after a while, and to travel a lot. And I found this job, an international training company based in Antwerp, and I first worked for about a year in the head office in Antwerp, to be trained in the logistics and the trading and the economical aspects. And after that year, I said, okay, I'm ready. Please send me somewhere. And they said, which country are you interested in? I said, Brazil, immediately Brazil, because I spoke Portuguese and I'm just really keen. And they said, sorry, we don't need anybody there, but we're looking for, somebody in the Africa department. And I said, okay, no problem. And they said, would you like to go to Nigeria to live in Lagos for a couple of years? And I said, yes, this is no problem, I'll go there. So I moved to Nigeria in, I think it was 2003 to 2006, about two and a half years. I lived there, I started up new business, I visited the port, I traveled all around Nigeria, and I was twenty-four, I think, so I didn't know anything about anything. I thought I did, but I didn't. And then, of course, Nigeria is not the easiest country to live in. It is a rather, busy and challenging place. And after a while, I thought, this is really not easy. I would like something a little bit where I have a bit more freedom, let's say, to explore by myself and to go out whenever I want to. And I came on a holiday to South Africa, to Cape Town, the Garden Route, all beautiful places here. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. This is also Africa, actually. I had no idea. I thought the whole of Africa is maybe more like Lagos. But luckily it is not. And then I asked to be transferred to Johannesburg, and the answer was yes, they needed somebody to take over the local office in Joburg, and then I moved here, and I've never left. This is twelve years ago now.

Steven Heyman, guest · [11:00]I guess I had a few really tough years. I became the managing director in the end of the local office, and it grew and grew, and our turnover was close to a billion rand, I think, when I left. And, we had about fifty people reporting to me in the end in some way in three different offices. At the same time, I was responsible for the whole Southern Africa region, not just the SADC countries, but all the way to DRC, Kenya, and Uganda. So I traveled a lot and visited all those places and managed all those locations and people and managers. And I was having a tough time because a lot of things Were, I guess, out of my control, and I was also doing more and more of the things I didn't really enjoy. I enjoyed the traveling and the social aspect and developing new projects and business, but I didn't enjoy meeting with lawyers and banks and dealing with HR issues, which is, of course, part of the managing director's job. And then the last straw I remember that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was we had an office in Rosebank and a warehouse in Boxburg, and the head office had decided we had to move the office to join with the warehouse in Boxburg. I lived really close to the office, so now suddenly instead of traveling for fifteen minutes, I had to travel for more than an hour to sit in this dusty office. I remember there was this layer of chemicals on my, keyboard when I finished working, and first I was resisting, no, I don't want to move there, and in the end I just said, forget it, let's go. And I did this for a month, and then I resigned. I had no idea what I wanted to do instead, I resigned. At the same time, in that same year, I had been studying to become a yoga teacher. So I did my first 200-hour teacher training. The idea was not to quit my job or to become a yoga teacher, really. I just wanted to develop my own yoga practice. So this happened exactly at the same time, and one more thing happened. I had my first baby exactly at the same time. So about a week after I did my exam for teacher training and after we had moved to that warehouse office, my first baby was born. And I think in that flash instant, when she was born, I suddenly realized what was important and what was not. And I made the decision, I can't be traveling all over and being really stressed and stuck in traffic and not taking care of me and of course then also the other people around me, so I quit.

Steven Heyman, guest · [14:00]I'm not sure, but I guess what happened is I was now without a job, but I was still a little bit in that sort of drive mode and needing to start projects and make money, and this hadn't gone away, so I thought, While I figure out what I'm really going to do, I'm going to teach a bit of yoga, because now I have the certificate, and it allows me to be quite flexible, manage my own time. So I did this, and then I loved it, actually. At first I thought I'm going to teach more corporate classes because that's where the environment I came from, I was more familiar with this, but more and more I started to enjoy the events, like the outdoor yoga and going to an unusual location and just popping up, bringing my yoga mats, inviting some people there, and that actually took off, became really successful. Sometimes I taught classes for a hundred people, two hundred people at a time, and I'm not sure what drew people to it. I guess I was just doing what I really wanted to do, but apparently I wasn't the only one who liked this kind of activity. Basically, I wanted to take yoga out of, out of studios, out of gyms, and offer it everywhere to even a lot of people who wouldn't do yoga otherwise, who would never step into a gym or a studio. That was the intention.

Petro du Pisani, host · [20:58]How do your mindfulness workshops work? What sort of courses do you do, and what does a typical day look like, and what does it feel like to do one of these?

Steven Heyman, guest · [21:06]most courses are about an hour and a half to two hours. In length, in a workshop form, and the most popular one, we actually come back for seven weeks. Because if you do one session and you go back to your desk, let's say, or into, you rush into the next meeting, then it has no real effect. But if you keep coming back at a certain time, you really have a chance to, well, install a new habit or at least get inspired to make some changes in your daily routine. So we focus on a subject which has to do with work performance, but of course, work is not separate from life. Let's say you improve your communication skills, you need this for a meeting and with your boss and with your customer, but you need it with your wife and your kids as well. Or if you, say, develop your focus, if you're focused in traffic, you're going to cause less accidents. So I don't think of it as separate from sort of work and the rest of your life. I think the two need to be integrated. And then we explore focus points or themes like focus, resilience, emotional intelligence. It's compassion, it's leadership, it's communication practices. Yes, it's all really interesting, and they all revolve around mindfulness. It's just a look at mindfulness from a different angle that could be used for your daily life.

Petro du Pisani, host · [22:24]So how do you know at the end of a workshop or a session that you've had with people that you've been successful, how do you know that your message has sort of sunk in?

Steven Heyman, guest · [22:34]I usually know after I practice because I try not to talk too much. If people listen to me for an hour, they won't become more mindful, more focused, or more resilient. They have to practice themselves. And I can only convey this because I practice these things in my own practice, and I have been very stressed before, so I know exactly what it feels like to have 400 emails waiting in your inbox every morning, for example. And I know that I've been successful because after, let's say, a breathing practice, we just take a few couple of breaths, I instruct the people to breathe. We can try it together if you want. And there's this silence afterwards. I don't have to say anything. I don't have to teach people to be mindful because they just take a deep breath and they tune into this capacity that is already there. We overrule it because of our busyness, of course. Now you rush there and you make more money and you get in your car, but just taking a deep breath, that's magic.

Petro du Pisani, host · [25:44]How do you think that being more mindful at work can help employees to prevent burnout?

Steven Heyman, guest · [25:50]Can help because burnout is nothing more than a sustained period of stress. Stress, you could say, is a demand on your body. Might be physical stress, say you always run five kilometers and now you sign up for a marathon, that's stressful. Or it might be mental stress, suddenly your boss dumps double the amount on your desk, or he wants it done in half the time, for example. So both are stressful, and we can deal with short periods of stress, but if it keeps at the same level, the same extra demand, then your body and your mind can no longer cope. So we need a mechanism to sort of build our resilience to return to healthier stress levels, and this is exactly what yoga and mindfulness is doing. It builds a capacity in your body to become stronger, more flexible, a bit more balanced, and in your mind to also become stronger, more flexible, and more balanced.

Petro du Pisani, host · [26:42]And maybe to recognize the signs, so you can recognize, oh, these things are triggering me in a specific way, which means, so you're mindful to the things that might potentially lead to stress and burnout in the future, and you can actually have like a early System.

Steven Heyman, guest · [26:56]You're very right. Because actually for years I walked around with high stress levels, enormous tension in my body, the slightest thing would just set me off and I would start shouting or reacting in another very skillful way, let's say. And I was not aware that this was a problem. I just thought, this is how I am. I have this temper or this short fuse, you could say. But more and more, as you become more aware of what's happening in your body, your mind, you become aware of the earliest signs. They're like, this is not really seating. I need to just step outside and go for a walk in the park, for example.

Steven Heyman, guest · [33:07]So I'll invite you to do this with me. If you can just, wherever you're sitting, make sure you're comfortable and close your eyes. Just close your eyes. And then for a moment, just scan through your body and notice how everything is changing in your body. There's an itch here and a little bit of tension there, and maybe you're moving something or you feel the urge to move a part of your body. And then you can also feel the breath moving in and out. It's a process that continues when you no longer pay attention to it. But you can also notice this inhale right now and this exhale right now. And then for a moment, observe any sounds that arrive In your experience, notice how all the sounds keep changing, they come and they go. And then lastly, bring your awareness to your thoughts. And that's probably the busiest part of all, is endless thoughts passing through your mind. Some stay a little longer, some just pop up and go away. And you can become aware of this stream, almost like you're sitting by a river, and the river flows by with all these thoughts and ideas and plans, and then take a few deeper breaths. And when you're ready, open your eyes.