Teal and Yoga, a perfect match?
What the heck has stretching to do with Teal? Or what in the world is Teal, I never heard that in my yoga practice? Or you know.
Teal and Yoga are like a party on the mountain and a way to scale the mountain to be able to throw the party. Let’s start from the beginning and get on the same page for the meaning of yoga, teal and the string of how they are related.
Yoga is an ancient practice of the “east” with raising popularity in the “west”. If you are living in the western world, you will have seen a yoga studio in your town and maybe even visited it. In the west, it is often seen as a flexibility exercise, while truly being a spiritual practice. A spiritual practice is important to distinguish from a religion. The core of spiritual practice is to help on the path of awakening to nirvana, eternal love, emptiness, pure enlightenment, and becoming a mystic, Yogi, Buddha, Jesus. In neuroscience terminology, it is called, conscious state development.
Teal is a stage-concept within the evolution of organisations popularised by the work Reinventing organisation by Fredric Laloux. Laloux looks at the historical development of organisation and puts them into a context of human consciousness development. The historical outlook comes with a view into the future by finding organisation leading and working from the next major conscious development stage, the integral stage coloured in “teal”.
A key assumption made by Laloux is that the organisation development level is dependent on the conscious development of its people and particular its leaders. In other words, the conscious level of the people part of the organisation precedes and limits the conscious development of the whole and with that its possible development level in Laloux’s model. Hence to develop operating from a more holistic and developed stance the conscious levels, states and structures of the people and leaders in the organisation have to develop.
Yoga is a practice designed for growing the individual’s consciousness. It focuses mainly on the states of consciousness, however it helps developing the structure meanwhile as well and definitely enables quicker comprehension after receiving proper growing up guidance. Growing up, in this case, is defined by transcending the structural conscious structural stages, enabling a different paradigm and world view.
Growing up has its root in western science of the last 100 or so years and kudos to the whole community of mapping out the deterministic stages in different disciplines which we humans seem to grow through. An example would be Maslow’s pyramid of needs or different children stage developments and if you want to have a more holistic view, I recommend you starting with Ken Wilbers work.
Practicing yoga, supported by growing up maps of western science are helping you to grow your consciousness states and structures. This evolved consciousness enables you to live and lead from a different place, in a different state, with a different structural view. According to my understanding from Laloux, for leading your organisation into a teal organisation, you will need to at least transcend to the “integral”, teal-consciousness level. From my personal experience I am very positive on the opinion that you also need to develop your conscious state to be able to act from a loving, free stance in order to walk a better, more loving, empowering and holistic way.
Yoga and Teal are a wonderful match, as Yoga is definitely one path, one practice for the people within an organisation to create the space and consciousness for a Teal organisation to emerge. A Teal organisation would create space and time for its employees and stakeholders to practice Yoga or another path, very frequently themselves, together and integrate it into its working rhythm. The organisation would consciously seek conscious growth and expansion, invite global practitioners, teachers for re-occurring deep collective immersion. The ability to listen within, is the very foundation for listening without in order to hear the call of the world, serve it rightly and create a sustainable impact.
How serious are you about your attempt to create a more successful, engaged, effective, efficient, strong, safe, profitable, purposeful, value driven, customer focused organisation? Are you serious enough and picked up yoga or another spiritual practice? Or have you found another way to scale the mountain?
Looking forward hearing your reflections, story and insights. Namaste.
