Summary

Don’t you just hate it when you wake up in the morning with a paralyzing numbing pain in your neck and shoulders? Then you have to spend the rest of your day sitting at the office in pain, resentful of all the smiling faces around you. Unable to move right or left, you just stay there staring at your computer screen wishing this day would finally end.

I went through in the market in search of an Android remedy…and voilà!: Office Yoga to the rescue! I’ve always admired and been fascinated with yoga as a form of exercise and relaxation.

Find out if bringing some yoga into your mundane life could spell relief to all your work-induced stress and muscle pain.

Office Yoga is an app that guides you through exercises and techniques in yoga with the help of detailed instructions, audio commentary and visual aides.

In addition, you can check out all the beneficial effects of yoga on your body in the Functions section of this app.

To set the right mood for your workout, you can choose your own background music.

The different visual illustrations aren’t meant to give you an exact idea of how to do each exercise. The woman in the pictures is only shown from the front, which makes things a bit confusing for yoga newbies.

That’s why I would recommend going through the pictures carefully one by one before starting with the actual exercise. This way you won’t have to interrupt your exercise by starting at the pictures in confusion.

You can listen to the audio instructions by pressing the Play button available with every exercise. It repeats the same information as it is listed in the written description. The female narrator voice speaks clearly and slowly, which gives you the time to follow through with the exercise.

The written descriptions are concise and to the point. If you didn’t understand the audio recording, you can also just read through the text on your own.

The effects of yoga on your body depend on the type of exercises you are doing. In general, the Office Yoga’s purpose is to:

• relax your muscles
• stimulate your organs
• reduce stress
• support your immune system
• help and diminish pain
• improve your breathing
• help with your blood circulation

Like any yoga course, this app promises to do a whole lot. The only way you can start accomplishing these goals is if you do the exercises correctly.

To help you out with that, the app includes a Tips section where you can learn more about breathing and stretching techniques that will help you improve your workouts.
Unlike a real yoga class, there isn’t anybody to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Therefore it’s important for you to be honest with yourself and try to see where you can improve. Otherwise you’ll be doing all this training for nothing. Bad technique could even worsen some of your back and neck pain.

I didn’t really like the background music because it wasn’t particularly relaxing. So I would recommend adding your own favorite tunes. Every exercise can be done sitting on an office chair – no additional training accessories are needed.

Contrary to my expectations, it’s actually possible to do these yoga exercises in the office without hitting your desk or colleagues.

In that sense, the app lives up to its name. Just open the app and get started!

None of the nine exercise last longer than a couple of minutes. You can repeat them as often as you like. You also don’t have to do all of the exercise to get a full workout. Make sure to adjust your training rhythm to your needs and limitations. I didn’t have a hard time understanding any of the exercises. Unfortunately, this app made me realize how inflexible my body really is. Some of the yoga movements were really painful because my body was just too stiff.

Bottom Line:

The app really does what it was designed to do: help you keep in shape without leaving your office desk.

Office Yoga has a nice layout without any superfluous stuff. The graphics, however, need a little pimpin’ up, in my opinion. It’s just a bit too kitschy for my taste. The controls are also really intuitive and simple to use.

At first, I didn’t experience any problems with reliability and speed. But then the music just wouldn’t shut off even after I had closed the app. You need to go to menu and exit in order to get the darn thing to be quiet!

No major problems with Office Yoga otherwise, though.

Office Yoga can be downloaded for free from the Android Market. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find an ad banner. In comparison to other yoga apps, Office Yoga lets you learn the techniques with the help of different visual and audio instructions. The written descriptions and useful tips round up the app very nicely. Instead of having to read through pages and pages of information, this app makes yoga accessible and fun. Enjoy!