Yoga.calm

Harried Internet execs are finding relaxation and inner peace through yoga.

By Dimity McDowell

When the internet boom first started, it seemed as if all you needed was to slap a ".com" behind a novel idea and you'd instantly make millions. Faster than you can say "Amazon.com," that dream disappeared. Today, newspaper headlines regularly announce a dot-com's layoffs, a three-month-old Web site's shutdown, or a stock tanking because the company was unable to raise its next round of venture capital. "Nothing is as you think in the Internet world," says Marilyn Tam, president of Fasturn, Inc., a two-year-old business-to-business e-commerce site. "You have to constantly adjust." Tam compares working in today's dot-com world with kayaking Class V rapids. "You have to look for the next rock and avoid it, then get around the next curve and be ready to negotiate what lies beyond it, even though you're not sure what that is," she says. "You know you're going to get wet, but the most important thing is to get your head back above water."

Just about the only constant is the breathless, I-needed-that-yesterday pace; regardless of whether or not the Internet is booming, its execs move faster than the speed of a T3 line—constantly. "You've got to stay centered, otherwise you'll spin out," Tam says. Now, many dot-commers are turning to the centuries-old practice of yoga to keep afloat in the virtual Brave New World. "You can easily dry up from the inside out," observes Tam. "You can see it happening in people—too much coffee and junk food, too many flights and late nights. Yoga can reverse that process." Which is something Tam and fellow dot-com executives Liz Sickler and Kendall Lockhart all know: Because they have successfully integrated yoga into their hectic professional lives, when things seem out of control, they're able to draw regularly on their spiritual centers—something infinitely more valuable than any dot-com could offer.

Liz Sickler

Tight hamstrings and double mocha lattes are what originally led Liz Sickler to yoga. At the time she was vice president of new business development at Starbucks and a runner whose legs weren't getting the proper stretching they deserved after her workout. So, at the suggestion of a friend, she enrolled in the company's thrice-weekly yoga class. "My whole body felt so good after the class. I was much more peaceful," she remembers. Enamored with her reaction to yoga, she promised herself that if she were ever to start a company, she'd make Downward-Facing Dogs and Sun Salutations part of the company culture.

Fast forward one year to April 2000, when Sickler, 35, was hired by TripHub.com, a Seattle-based student travel site. Even though the company wasn't her own, she approached cofounder and CEO Mike Fridgen, 25, and CFO Andy Farsje, 27, with the idea of bringing Om to the workforce. Not only did they green-light the corporate yoga class, they joined in. In fact all of TripHub.com's 28 employees, with varying levels of physical fitness, trekked over to Seattle's Samadhi Yoga every Tuesday and Thursday to practice with Michelle Gantz, the woman who originally taught Sickler's Starbucks class. Gantz would lead them through one hour of Ashtanga Yoga, followed by half an hour of meditation and breathing practices. "When you see your coworkers upside-down, it quickly develops the feeling that everybody is part of one team," says Sickler.

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