“A Yoga and KM connection: who knew?”, November 2025
Ancient wisdom is timeless:
Even Yogic Principles seem to align with modern Knowledge Management
November 2025
In June of 2024, I attended the Knowledge Summit in Dublin (KSD) where I first met experienced and long-time KM practitioner, Ron Young. Before meeting in Dublin, I had already known Ron because his company had applied to work with my former organization as a consultant.
Being well-reputed in the community, I had known Ron to be a seasoned expert in the field. But when I met him for the first time in-person in Dublin, I was fascinated to learn that he was not only a KM practitioner, but also a certified yoga teacher and practitioner like me, and practicing for almost 40 years! What really caught my attention with Ron was that his journey was different from mine in that he had learned yoga and meditation first, instead of the other way around. In particular, yoga led him to the principles of Knowledge (Jnana Yoga) and this got him interested in KM. My case, on the other hand, had been the opposite. I had been doing KM work first, then decided to lean heavily into yogic philosophy and practice (Kundalini Yoga) as a stress-reduction mechanism due to the frustration and slow progress that KM work often entailed.
In my former life as internal KM Officer, I was always looking for ways to manage the stress, resistance, and emotional challenges that came with implementing KM initiatives in the organization. I quickly observed that KM work was a very energy consuming activity for me, so much so, that I turned to yoga as my personal coping mechanism. I used it as a shield against the pushback I often encountered when explaining KM processes. Yoga helped me maintain focus and clarity. It helped me know how to better co-regulate with colleagues thus, effectively navigating my own emotional responses and staying centered when dealing with the complex and often difficult dynamics of a large organization.
Ron, on the other hand, had gotten into KM because he had discovered it to have a connection with yogic principles relating to Knowledge. Through Ron, I was able to discover that there was such a thing as Jnana Yoga which he explained to me as essentially “representing the intellectual and contemplative approach to spiritual development through the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.” This intrigued me because while I used yoga to protect myself from KM challenges, Ron found that yoga principles enhanced his approach to Knowledge Management. This connection of Yoga with KM was new to me. I was curious to understand how ancient yogic wisdom already had their own principles of knowledge and which we still apply to modern organizational knowledge work.
As a result, we started speaking monthly to explore the connections - how yoga, mindfulness, and ancient wisdom could improve KM practices. Because of our common passions, we decided to put our recorded conversations in a YouTube channel which we created and called, “The Yoga of Knowledge”. We didn’t really have any particular idea on what we wanted to do with this YouTube Channel. But it was certainly a common place to put our recorded conversations in a centralized place. And it was a way to share our conversations to other KM Yogis in the community in case there was interest.
What I learned from this and why this was important to my understanding
From our conversations, I learned from Ron how many modern KM concepts actually had ancient roots and were indirectly reflected in texts like the Vedas, Vedanta, Upanishads and particularly, the Bhagavad Gita. For example, the fundamental KM principle, “Knowledge resides in people’s heads”, he mentioned, could be found or reflected in the ancient Vedas. The concept that trust is essential for knowledge transfer were also reflected in the ancient texts, as well as understanding when to compete, when to collaborate, and when to engage in “competitive collaboration”. The Vedas apparently also highlighted what is called “Shravana” or attentive listening as a means to acquire true knowledge. Truthful and purposeful speech were also integral to communication. Like in the old times, knowledge was not considered static but living and evolving over time. Also, ancient texts reflected the belief that human relationships, trust, and ethical conduct are core to knowledge sharing.
What was most interesting, moreoever, was when Ron compared ancient wisdom principles with modern management concepts, and noticed strong parallels. He explained to me how academics from his past lectures on this couldn't easily distinguish between ancient and modern sources. I was encouraged to see how his examples, comparisons and references of modern KM principles could be reflected in ancient Indian Philosophy texts. And to hear that these still apply today is so uncanny. This reflects how these Knowledge principles we know of today are quite timeless, and are still true about how knowledge works in human organizations.
This also gave me reassurance that my applying yoga techniques to stay grounded while doing knowledge work didn’t seem so strange. Apparently, similar principles were found in other wisdom traditions like Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. And since these practices were time-tested wisdom traditions, using yoga in KM, and not just as a personal coping mechanism, became more justified to me.
I also understood from our conversations how Jnana Yoga's "living meditation" concept applies to staying present, curious and reflective in KM work. In particular, taking the time to pause and ask "why" before implementing initiatives is important. This, I painfully learned when I implemented a weekly lunchtime learning initiative during one of my first major knowledge-sharing projects. We ran the series for almost 2 months. At the time, it didn’t occur to me to take the time to ask feedback from colleagues about the pace of the sessions. But by chance, we eventually heard from participants that they actually would have appreciated time to “process” what they learned each week. And it was only because one person in my team had thought of asking them. Later on, I learned from a course that science-backed evidence actually recommends taking short breaks, even for a few minutes, in order for our brains to encode and engrain what we learn (NeuroMinfulness Coach Practitioner Course, 2024). So, in short, the learning from this lunchtime series would have been better for our participants, had I decided to stop, take a pause, ask for feedback, and then space our events out more.
I also learned from our conversations how Jnana Yoga's alludes to Principles of Leadership. For one, it recognizes self-knowledge as a foundation to Leadership. I think this is directly relevant particularly when leading KM initiatives. This also aligns with the importance I give to Personal Leadership given that one must be able to "navigate his/her world first before they navigate others’".
Some ancient text also reflect that curiosity (rather than reactivity) and inquiry (rather than advocacy) help deal with fear and resistance which are often felt in the workplace. Being curious about people’s reactions to change is more effective than overreacting. This is important because successful implementation and fostering a knowledge sharing culture by the KM practitioner requires leadership skills, especially curiosity, keeping the ego in check, active listening skills and the ability to understand multiple perspectives.
So what?
In summary, it was very surprising to learn that modern management principles seemed to have been already present from ancient wisdom. My discussions with Ron show these to be timeless principles that don't change unlike rapidly changing technology. Naturally, this got me interested in showing this connection to next generation KM practitioners, and where we can also justify using yoga and meditation to support knowledge work. How these principles and teachings still relate to KM work today also makes me feel better in my belief that using yoga as a supporting mechanism made sense. Most importantly, I realized that it would be good to emphasize this insight more to the KM Community. In particular, integrating mindfulness techniques into our KM practice and KM leadership to better manage our stress, foster collaboration and complex relationships make us more efficient and successful Knowledge Workers.
As a result of this conversation, we decided to do a virtual KM Community session during Global Knowledge Week in October 2025 called the “Yoga of Knowledge” where Ron presented his old slides from many years ago. In the session, he presented 10 management quotes and tested participants if they could distinguish those taken from ancient text or from modern management. As we had suspected, they were very surprised to see how many knowledge principles had roots in the ancient civilizations. And because of the success of our Yoga of Knowledge session in Global Knowledge Week, we decided to start our virtual series, “Meditation for the KM Worker” in January 2026.
In conclusion, my conversations with Ron Young started with an in-person meeting in a KM conference that got me curious and deepened my appreciation for the philosophical foundations of Knowledge and KM practice. These parallels encouraged me to share these insights with the broader KM community, with the hope that event organizers might consider and further advocate how mindfulness can support the well-being and effectiveness of knowledge workers.
Related posts:
“International Day of Yoga”, LinkedIn post, June 2026
”The Yoga of Knoweldge”, LinkedIn page
”Meditation for the Knowledge Worker”