By Tevis Gale

IF you've ever caught yourself fantasising about chucking your job in favour of working the food line at a retreat center or ashram, you are not alone. Indicating widespread workplace ennui, Gallup studies found that less than 27 per cent of employees report being "truly engaged" in their work.

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Additional research shows that among the new corporate breed in MBA programs around the country, what really matters in our work experience isn't so much compensation (48 per cent) or even work/life balance (45 per cent) but that there are "challenging responsibilities" (64 per cent) in what we do everyday.

If ever there was a relationship worth healing, this may just be the one that deserves some TLC. I know from firsthand experience. From early days slinging fast food to later years conducting business development for major Fortune 500s, my relationship with work ranged from the celebratory "Yippee! I got assigned the great new [project, position, geography]" in one moment to the tearful wondering "Ohmigod, there MUST be more to life than office politics" in another.

Moments of meaning, flow, or union, I found, fluctuate as much in work life as they do in any other situation. Vrittis, or fluctuations, don’t sort themselves along work versus life lines. In matters of love or how we pay the rent, the mind sorts experiences depending on where our growth feels blocked on a scale of "I like" to "I don’t like," rather than trusting that the blocks ARE the invitation to growth.

What’s more, these fluctuations aren’t the only constant -- we often scrutinise our situations with "grass is greener" suspicion, thinking that somehow if we had just chosen more wisely, we would be happier or more successful, that obstacles would not appear.

Such scrutiny easily prevents us from seeing the gold to be mined from our every moment. From a yogic perspective, this is not news. Our relationship with work is one of the primary challenges examined by mystics from many traditions, including yoga.

Corporate veteran and yoga teacher Tevis Gale is founder of Balance Integration, a global provider of yoga-based tools to corporations. You can catch her speaking on yoga, work life, and employee engagement as well as training others to teach in corporations at Omega Institute and studios around the country. balanceintegration.com

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