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Quitting Morgan Stanley to Salute the Sun

Published: Aug 12, 2009

 Finance       
As a firm believer in the power of stretching the body's muscles, tendons and ligaments in order to relieve stress and other psychological ailments, I thought this Bloomberg piece was extremely enlightening.  It focuses on an ex-Morgan Stanley currency saleswoman who quit the high pressure life of a banker to live the life of a teacher schooling those still in the high pressure game of banking in the ancient ways of physical posturing, a.k.a. yoga.

Lauren Imparato, a graduate of Princeton who worked in investment banking for seven years, now teaches yoga to bankers, traders, brokers and others (all are welcome, not just the financially-inclined) out of her loft in Lower Manhattan, and she was recently hired by her former boss, Morgan Stanley, to "host a morale-boosting session" for the firm's bankers.

Bloomberg also points out that posture practicing has caught on with others in the financial services industry, noting that several hedge funds offer on-site yoga classes and that investment giant Pimco's co-founder Bill Gross "has said that he gets some of his best investment ideas while standing on his head."

Imparato's decision to leave banking is indicative of the types of leaps that folks have been making in light of economic hard times—I know of another ex-banker who recently opened a high-end hair salon in Manhattan after he was laid off—and it's also, of course, inspiring to those considering similar, severe career switches.

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