Restoring Balance and Flow in Burnout

I want to talk about burnout – those times when we burn through our attention, energy, physical capacity, and emotional labor faster than our systems can replenish these finite resources.  One of my clients calls this “feeling crispy,” which illustrates perfectly how burnout can leave us feeling like withered, ashen shells of our formerly energetic and vibrant selves.

When I feel burned out, I feel a sort of dead, numb flatness, as though my body has shut down its normal operations to in order to deal with crisis mode.  My rhythms feel out of whack, the things that normally give me energy feel lifeless and inaccessible, and my creativity, art, and spiritual practice lose their vibrancy (actually, they probably don’t, but in my state of burnout, I just can’t access it in the same way).

Burnout can show up in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons, but in the end, it all comes down to giving, spending, and burning past the point of regenerative flow, balanced wellness, and baseline okayness.

And this is hard. Because often, we simply do not have enough energy to do all the things we want or need to do (or that others around us want or expect us to do). We have finite resources, and there are all sorts of factors that determine what we’re starting with in terms of energy and fuel.

And because we have limits and because life sometimes feels more like a flash-fire of frenetic fury than a peaceful stroll in the park, it can be useful to have a safety-wellness plan at the ready to address the hazards and realities of being an active, busy, engaged human in the world with limited stores of energy.

So here are some practices - through the lens of the four elements - that have been helpful for me in managing burnout and restoring my energy, groundedness, and vitality in active and fiery times.

1) Welcome watery flow (both literally and figuratively).  Water has a calming, soothing quality. Drinking water, relaxing in or near water, watching the waves, rapids, and rain, or sharing space with the vastness of the ocean can all bring this energy into our lives and alleviate some of the rigid, arid, crispy feelings that come with burnout. Allowing the watery flow of our emotions is also a supportive practice. How might you welcome whatever is flowing through you? How might you make space for feelings of frustration, annoyance, grief, and confusion? How might you invite fluidity and flow into your being? In a space of burnout, it can be super helpful to keep our life force moving and flowing however we can.  Sometimes this means resting, crying, free writing, taking a walk, or talking it out with a friend - anything to stay connected with the aliveness happening inside us through our emotions, movements, and energies.

2) Get earthy. Part of what burnout does is disconnect us from the slower rhythms of our earthy, embodied selves.  Engaging and tending to our bodies through movement, meditation, stillness, or nourishment are all ways to bring the earth element back into balance.  Other practices might include walking or sitting in nature, planting a garden, doing yoga, talking to the trees, or spending some time with your dog, cat, or houseplants.  

3) Embrace empty space.  One way to invite the air element is to create spaces of openness and emptiness where things are allowed to be unformed, unstructured, and unsettled.  Open, empty space in our schedules, our homes, our minds, and our lives allows us to rest, restore ourselves, and welcome a new possibility. Here are some ideas: look up at the sky, feel your presence in the vastness of the Universe, schedule times to do nothing.  How might you give yourself space, clear out the clutter, and let yourself rest in the open, empty mystery?

4. Engage fire in a sustainable way.  If you’re struggling with burnout, you may feel ready to be done with fire (and all things hot and burning) altogether, but fire is an elemental quality that offers essential energies for a balanced life.  So how might you burn the fires of your passion, creativity, effort, and movement in safe and supportive ways? (also being mindful of the fuel you need to support it.) What sparks of interest, adventure, and curiosity want to become more and are worthy investments of your energy?  

So I would encourage you to check-in with yourself.  Which of these elemental frequencies would be most supportive for restoring balance and flow in the midst of burnout?  How might you make space for what you need in times when you feel depleted?

To support this process, I created a meditative visualization to guide you through welcoming each of the 4 elements (with a bonus element too) as a way to discern what would be most supportive to you right now, which you can find here.

Lessons from 5 Years Meditating

I remembered this week that it’s been over 5 years since I started meditating!

Meditation was something that intrigued me long before I made it a habit, but I couldnever carve out the time or summon the patience to make it happen. Until one day, I just decided it was time. And today, meditation is one of my non-negotiable daily practices.

Meditation sounds fancy (or at least, it sounded super fancy to me before I was doing it). But it’s not. It’s simple and ordinary and grounding and frustrating. It often feels like a waste of time.

My approach to meditation has changed a lot in the past 5 years, along with my reasons for doing it, but overall, this is what it gives me: an experience of my own humanness.

That experience is sometimes transcendent, sometimes boring, sometimes painful – but it’s always real, and it’s always grounding.

Because nothing gets me in touch with my raw, empty humanity as much as sitting in silence trying to settle my energy and get grounded in my body.

Looking at it now, meditation is really just a practice of pausing, noticing, experiencing, and checking in with myself (and learning not to be afraid of what I’ll find there).

And the reason I keep doing it, the reason it’s been so worthwhile, is because it deepens my capacity to be with emptiness, discomfort, and uncertainty – and helps me see and remember the truth of about myself: that I have a body, a mind, and wild collection of emotions, that I’m immensely powerful and creative; that I’m going to die (and that’s okay), and that there’s more to the nothingness and emptiness than we think.

So I’m celebrating 5 years of devotion to this practice that works for me! And I wish everyone success in finding, maintaining, and deepening into practices that give you life, joy, and goodness.

Meditation, Heart, and Self-Trust

About a year ago, I was halfway through my first Vipassana meditation retreat.  Nine days of 4 a.m. wakeup calls and repetitive stretches of motionless perching atop my rotund biscuit of a meditation cushion.  This was basically how all the days went: Oh, let’s see what’s next on the schedule…surprise! More meditation!  Literally the exact same thing I just finished doing!  Also, there was no talking, no reading, no writing (I admit I cheated on this one), no running, no phones, no communication with the outside world.

And it was pretty good actually.

I quickly realized there were infinite layers to the quiet stillness – endless depths of dark intensity and mesmerizing mystery to sink into and explore.  It was quite mystical really, and I was never bored.

But nine days was a lot.

There was also the butt numbness (lord, the butt numbness!)  I couldn’t even look at my meditation cushion for months after, and it took several weeks for full sensation to return to my tailbone-pelvis region.

But through the good and the painful, there were lessons to be had, and this is a brief story of the one that was most impactful:

There was a day, mid-week, when I was doing my daily 30-ish minutes of walking meditation outside and feeling an internal struggle about that. Because even though, yes, this was technically meditation, it was also in violation of the rules. We were supposed to meditate seated and indoors only. And my desire to be a good student and follow the instructions exactly right was beginning to haunt me. But…these blessed minutes outside and moving were one of the few things keeping me tethered to my sanity at that point.

So I had a decision to make: How was I going to do this?  Bend the rules and do what I wanted, or adhere to the clearly outlined authoritative directives?

The answer came in a flash (all that meditation must have opened a portal or something). I remembered that I was in convenient possession of an internal guidance system, and I could find my answers by reading my body.

Basically, my heart is a trustworthy barometer.

And when I thought about it, I saw there was no way around this.  Generally speaking, there are too many voices competing for my allegiance and too much noise demanding my attention to discern the answers from external sources alone.

It was a defining moment, not just for my meditation practice, but also for my understanding of my place in the larger collective moment.  This was November 2016.  The election had just happened, and I spent a lot of the week sitting (literally) with my fear, shock, and uncertainty, feeling flooded and overwhelmed.  There would be so many causes to support and issues to confront, infinite things to say or not say, do or not do, in the months and years ahead.  And I felt completely ill-equipped, lost and unsure how to be in this world that always existed but that I was now seeing for the first time.

So I decided this was what I would take back with me into the noise, commotion, and conflict: a steadfast trust in my own self.

This doesn’t mean I can do it alone.  I need other people – their wisdom, their voice, the truth of their experience.  But rather than conceding to another’s perspective uncritically, I take it in, hold it in my being, filter it through my center, and allow it to change me.  Reliably, good things come through this process of integration and alchemy.

In the case of my meditation conundrum, I kept walking.  It was a beautiful, sort-of warm day (the last one of the year), and my heart knew: that was reason enough.