“Yoga helps me to cope with stress and also enables me to gain strength”

In our NORMAPeople series, our employees around the world talk about their day-to-day work, how they came to the company, and what they like about their jobs.

Meliha Morgil works as a Sales Coordinator at the NORMA Group site in Istanbul. In this interview, she talks about current projects, her great passion, yoga, and how this form of exercise helps her.

Meliha, what exactly is your job at NORMA Group?

NORMA Turkey is a rather small unit compared to the company’s other sites. For this reason, Account Managers here are also responsible for the task of customer coordination. That’s how my title came about: Sales Manager combined with Customer Coordinator results in Sales Coordinator. I’m in contact with customers and my colleagues all day long.

What do you like best about your job?

We work in a technology-related business, there is no room for monotony. I have to constantly keep an eye on the market and innovations, and also be aware of new or older projects. Sometimes I work on a project together with colleagues from the Americas, APAC or EMEA regions. I really like these global and challenging opportunities of my job.

What are you working on at the moment?

Our customers send us new and different inquiries every day. Answering them is part of my daily work. I also work in Customer Relationship Management and am part of a cross-regional sales team that specializes in moving products from one location to another. Our job is to create a plan for the transfer. This includes, among other things, the topics of logistics and timing.

There is already a blog post about you. At the time, it was about your passion for dance. In the meantime, you are also a yoga teacher. How did that come about and how did you discover your passion for yoga?

I used to think that yoga was an unnecessary fad that didn’t fit my lifestyle. I thought you just had to stay in one position for a while – that seemed very boring and not very varied. But then I started getting neck and back pain from sitting at a desk all day. I told a yoga teacher friend of mine about my situation. She suggested that I try yoga. I declined her invitation a few times, but the pain got progressively worse, so I decided to give yoga a chance after all. My pain disappeared very quickly. So I started doing yoga regularly – I took classes with my friend for close to a year.

The class always took a break in the summer, however. To further improve my health, I wanted to do yoga in the summer as well, so I took a 200-hour teacher training course to be able to practice yoga on my own. I don’t teach other people, but sometimes practice with my friends. For example, during the pandemic-related lockdown, I practiced yoga online with them. In 2019, I also held a practice session with my colleagues from NORMA Group.

How often do you do yoga?

I used to do yoga on a daily basis. But after being infected with COVID-19 in April, I am not yet able to muster the motivation for my daily yoga exercises again.

What effects does yoga have on your physical and mental health?

My posture has improved, my back and neck pain has disappeared completely and I feel energized. Most yoga exercises might look simple and easy from a spectator’s point of view, but they make you gain strength and flexibility. At the same time, being flexible is not a prerequisite for practicing yoga – rather, flexibility builds over time. Today, I am much more flexible and can do yoga exercises that I could not even dream of doing a few years ago.

Mentally, I can see a positive change in my reactions to situations and their effects. Especially after I completed the philosophical part of my training. I know that I can remain calm even under high stress and am able to find solutions to problems.

Does yoga also help you in your work at NORMA Group? For example, when stressful situations arise?

Absolutely! I’ve learned not to get stressed about things I can’t change such as lead times or completion timings of Planview projects.

Finally, what do you wish for the future?

In the short term, I would like to be able to do my exercises every day again. In the long term, I might want to offer weekly online yoga classes for my colleagues at NORMA Group.