Movement in the workplace: specific moves for specific needs

​​A friend told me yesterday that she and her colleagues has insisted that their boss pay for a yoga session for them at work. Everyone was really happy to participate, including the boss; they found a meeting room where they could fit their yoga mats and after the lesson everyone commented on the feeling of relaxation and well-being it brought them. However, an hour later she said that she found her mind wandering, couldn't concentrate and had lost the will to work... not exactly what the boss ordered, one thinks!

We are all aware how much immobility in the workplace is harming our physical and mental health, but unfortunate experiments like this one can put employers off finding a long-term solution.

We can't hope to import to the workplace the same types of exercise that we do in our free time: our professional and personal lives are very different by the people we frequent, the type of environment we're in, the clothes we wear and the activities programmed before and after the sporting sessions. We have to plan our physical activity according to our objectives and in the workplace these are obviously focussed on our professional activity. If we do this we can put ourselves into a win-win situation where each participant profits from better physical and mental health and the business from better financial health!

Fortunately, there is a scientific solution based on two recent lines of research. Firstly, a better knowledge of the hundreds of messengers liberated by contracting muscle groups means we can prescribe the movements best adapted to ensure our hormonal balance, and that these movements do not need to make us sweat or suffer to have an effect. All of the main functions of the body and the brain; respiration, circulation, reproduction, digestion, metabolism, sleep, immune system...depend on the liberation of myokines (messengers from muscle tissue) when we move. The second exciting line of research concerns the role of the cerebellum. Until recently it was principally known for its role in movement coordination, but for about twenty years now we've started to discover its essential role passing on the influence of movement to cognitive and emotional networks in the brain. This knowledge has opened a highway for the use of movement in the control of stress, in stimulating creativity, in focussing attention and in helping memory, for instance.

But adapting exercise for the workplace goes further than just the choice of movements to carry out; the program also has to be adapted to the type of interaction it brings about between colleagues. One potential advantage of rhythmic group movements is their power to promote social adhesion through hormonal processes, something that's particularly useful in an environment that forces us into contact with people that are often far removed from our usual social and family circles.

Moodmoves ™ Ltd has been working for the last 3 years with psychologists, neurobiologists, physiotherapists and dancers to put together a program that respects all of these criteria. They are applicable to groups of 2 up to the whole personnel in a given site or even over several sites. The effects on mood are immediate and the significant effects on well-being, team spirit and productivity have been seen in previous experiments.

PEDERSEN, B. K. & FEBBRAIO, M. A. 2008. Muscle as an endocrine organ: focus on muscle-derived interleukin-6. Physiol Rev, 88, 1379-406.

KARSTOFT, K. & PEDERSEN, B. K. 2016. Skeletal muscle as a gene regulatory endocrine organ. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care, 19, 270-5.

SCHMAHMANN, J. D. 1996. From movement to thought: anatomic substrates of the cerebellar contribution to cognitive processing. Hum Brain Mapp, 4, 174-98.