On Topic: Breathe, relax — wait, what …?

In the inverted V position, slowly straighten your knees. Slowly …

.

Staring down at the basement floor, I can't directly see the yoga instructor on the DVD. But I've done this a few times by now, and I get the idea: Relax. Stretch.

Resist the urge to let the mind wander.

I wonder when this carpet was cleaned last …

?

Breathe.

I'd been considering taking up yoga for some time, after reading over the years how it's the poster-child solution for work-related stress. Life at a fair-sized newspaper, as you might imagine, is packed with reading, writing, some arithmetic, cajoling and, usually, a few instances of brinkmanship each day.

So, some stress.

Breathe. Relax. Minor adjustments to my position, which DVD explains is called, somewhat unflatteringly, 'downward-facing dog.”

After watching Liz Zabel's graceful video on something called antigravity yoga, which accompanied reporter Chelsea Keenan's story in The Gazette last month, I checked on various yoga classes in the Corridor. But then I wondered, should I take a beginner class? From what I'd seen, most of the stretches look much like stuff I've done before, - and I have been accused of having long-term attention issues ….

Hence the DVD. Go at my own speed, right?

At first I joked that the yoga instructor's tranquil, sonorous voice-over was so calming - 'Feel your head centered over your chest. Sway slightly to your left. Now, sway slightly to your right …

” - that I didn't actually need to perform the exercises to relax.

And that's when it finally occurred to me, as I remained bent over like a safety pin in downward-facing dog pose and my sinuses were beginning to congest, that I'd not heard that sedating voice of the DVD instructor telling me what to do next in, umm, how long?

I looked up to see that the screen was dark, that the lamp on the desk was off and, in fact, that all the power in the house had gone out.

Oh.

I then went upstairs while enough daylight remained to find my way, and sat on the bed to eat a sandwich and stare at my smartphone - the only thing still glowing.

I know I'm not alone in trying to work through the imbalances stress can drag to our doorsteps. Coping with it has long been among management-book best-sellers.

Every so often, though, contrarian voices proclaim that stress, indeed, is good. In the just-out 'The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You (and How to Get Good at It),” Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford University psychology lecturer, contends the sudden elevated blood pressure, the tumbling-around deep in the stomach - that rush - are signs of the body girding itself for a challenge.

It all sounds very Beowulf to me and, as I said, these days I'm aiming for less stress, not more. But as the author told the London Telegraph, 'If you embrace stress, you can transform fear into courage, isolation into connection and suffering into meaning.”

Eric Schmidt of Google was right when he said in a 2010 McKinsey Quarterly interview that the best solutions come to us not in the midst of crisis, but by sitting in a quiet room and thinking. Quietly.

And, yeah, McGonigal and her like-minded pro-stress thinkers also are correct - we cannot always control events, in life or at work. Stuff happens, and more often than otherwise, it's stuff we don't see coming.

So maybe it's worthwhile to stake out those placid stretches of time, where and when we can.

In an interview with the BBC just ahead of last weekend's Le Mans - in which drivers race for a 24-hour stretch of physical and machine endurance covering more than 3,110 miles - Mark Webber mentioned how in a previous race he'd taken a break during a pit stop and SLEPT for about 40 minutes.

To repeat: He SLEPT during his race at Le Mans.

Now there, most certainly, is a fellow who's figured out how to cope with stress.

I wonder if he does yoga?

Namaste.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michael.castranova@thegazette.com