The Yoga Mat Illusion: When Wellness Becomes Corporate Gaslighting
The notification chimed – a familiar, sickly-sweet tone. HR, again. ‘Feeling stressed? Join our lunchtime yoga session!’ It landed with a thud in an inbox already overflowing, an inbox I’d been tending since 5:00 AM, having finally collapsed into bed at 2:00 AM after chasing an impossible deadline. Another impossible deadline. The irony wasn’t just palpable; it was a physical weight, pressing down like an ill-fitting suit on a suffocating body. Here I was, staring at a screen for 74 hours that week – already – and the corporate solution wasn’t a reduction in workload, a reassessment of expectations, or a conversation with my manager about sustainable pace. No, it was downward dog.
It’s easy to dismiss these emails as well-intentioned but misguided. But that’s too generous, too simplistic. It’s far more insidious. This isn’t just a band-aid; it’s a performative act of care designed to obscure a deeper wound. It’s a carefully constructed narrative that whispers, ‘Your stress is *your* problem. Your inability to cope with our demands is a personal failing in resilience, not an organizational failing in design.’ It’s gaslighting on an industrial scale, painting individual employees as fragile while the corporate machine grinds relentlessly, oblivious to the human cost, or worse, actively benefiting from it.



























