3 Ways to Start Taking Charge of Your Burnout Recovery Journey
- Mar 27
- 7 min read
Mina Kristensen is a Wellness Coach and Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500). Through holistic healing, she helps women reduce stress and recover from burnout in order to create a more balanced and sustainable lifestyle.
Burnout is at an all-time high, and it is slightly more common in women than men. Maybe you feel like you don´t even know where to start, and that it would be easier if it just faded away by itself. But burnout does not work like that. Burnout is not classified as a disease, but it is a result of having gone over your own capacity over a long time. You have given too much of yourself, without getting much meaningful in return. Does this sound familiar?
At first glance, it is easy to think that it is only a result of work, but when we look deeper underneath the surface, there are several other factors at play. This includes your ability to set healthy boundaries, self-care and your relationship with yourself, to mention a few. And ultimately, burnout steals your energy, zest for life, and physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
But burnout can also be a great projector to heal, grow, and an experience where you learn to understand yourself better through your burnout recovery journey. So that you can start living in greater alignment with your own values and where you truly honour and value yourself.
In this article, we explore the importance of healing the nervous system and start balancing your energy levels, so you can create better alignment and start to heal burnout from the inside out.
What is going on underneath the surface when it comes to burnout
When life becomes only work and chores, burnout occurs. This happens over time, and it can be silent. It might not be seen by the outer world, but internally, you constantly feel stretched thin. Burnout happens when you have gone over your own capacity for a long time, without much of a chance to top up your own cup. You have given a lot but have not had much that feels meaningful in return. And maybe at the end of the day, you feel exhausted, and there is not much left to give to yourself.
Work stress is for sure a major factor that impacts burnout. In our modern life, we have less clear boundaries between work and our private lives. We are always available, also after we have left work for the day. We are available via email, and maybe you also take your work with you home and work until late evening.
We all love to do well in our work and in life in general. But self-care and rest are rarely displayed to us as important in our work-life balance. And many high achievers chase one achievement after another.
And if you have in the past, or are currently experiencing burnout, you will know that when you try to fit in time for rest, it can feel like a challenge to connect to deep rest. This is because the nervous system is overstimulated and stuck in a survival mode.
Understanding the role of the nervous system in burnout
When it comes to burnout, the nervous system has been put under pressure over a long period of time. And it can be stuck in survival mode, where it is constantly on high alert. This can give various physical and mental symptoms, and it is also normal that our self-esteem takes a hit when we go through burnout.
Within the context of burnout recovery, we are interested in the autonomic nervous system. This is the part of the nervous system that is in control of blood pressure, heart rate and digestion. These are processes we cannot really control ourselves. The autonomic nervous system can be divided into the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for action, which we will refer to as fight & flight mode. Normally, this part of the nervous system should only be activated when you are in real danger. But if you are dealing with a lot of stress over a long period of time, or burnout, you can also be stuck in this part of the nervous system. This is chronic stress.
The parasympathetic nervous system is the state where we feel relaxed and at ease, and the nervous system signals to the body to relax and rejuvenate. We call this rest & digest mode. And this is where you would like to be most of the time, this is your healthy state. And, when it comes to your burnout recovery journey, we would like to prioritise nervous system regulation.
3 ways to start your journey back to balance
1. Balancing the nervous system with restorative yoga
When it comes to your burnout recovery journey, bringing the nervous system back to balance is key. You want to allow the body to become familiar with, and over time, be more in the rest & digest state on a daily basis. Instead of being stuck in fight & flight mode.
But how do you start to create these changes in the nervous system, impacting the involuntary parts of the nervous system? There are many practices available, including specific yoga practices and breathwork. I focus on Restorative Yoga. It is what I used myself for my burnout recovery journey, when my physical yoga practice just left me feeling even more exhausted.
Restorative yoga is deep rest with the help of props. You allow the body to be held and supported in comfortable yoga poses, where it is all about being, instead of doing. It is practiced in silence, and it is encouraged to also use an eye cover. It is a practice where you can just be you. There is nothing to do, but rather all about just being. And as the body starts to relax and let go, tension and stress start to melt away, and the nervous system will go into rest & digest state. Restorative Yoga therefore has the power to help balance the nervous system back to health by letting go of stress, both on a physical, emotional and mental level.
2. Protecting your energy by setting healthy boundaries
In addition to starting to balance the nervous system back into rest & digest, you also want to start looking at how you can start to protect your own energy. And when we talk about protecting your own energy, we want to get very clear on learning to set healthy boundaries.
Look at where in your life you can start practicing saying no to what does not light you up, or people or events that you know drain your energy? This can feel uncomfortable in the beginning. Especially if you fall into the people-pleaser category, or if you have never had these types of boundaries displayed by, for example, your caregivers growing up.
But when you do start saying no to what no longer serves you, you start saying yes to you! You say yes to what lights you up and feels good to you. This will give you a positive energy boost instead of draining your energy. And it will allow you to create more space for rest, self-care, maybe creating a new healthy habit, and maybe even taking up a hobby. And setting these types of boundaries not only protects your energy but can also serve as a foundation for greater self-care!
3. Learn to balance your energy levels
In addition to creating healthy boundaries to protect your own energy. You can also learn to balance your own energy levels, so that you can rest when needed instead of running yourself to the ground and collapsing out of exhaustion.
Start by paying attention to what your energy levels are like throughout the day. Do you have more energy in the morning, midday, afternoon, or evening? When you see this, you might want to structure your work or tasks so you do most of it during your higher peak energy time of the day. This will make your work feel easier, as you will be more in a flow state during these hours, instead of trying to work hard when you have less energy. For example, for me, this looks like the following: I have most of my creative energy in the morning and around midday. So I do my biggest work tasks around this time, especially those that require my creative energy. In the afternoon, I have way less energy, so this time works better for more admin work, rest, and slowing down into the evening.
It is also worth noting that for women, the natural feminine energy is softer than men´s masculine energy. Women´s natural energy is more about being and being more intuitive. This can create a challenge over time for women when trying to fit into a world that is run mainly on masculine energy, which is focused on drive, performance, and being more competitive. This is a factor that can impact high-achieving women and lead to burnout, because we try to fit into this when it is not necessarily natural for them to be so much in their masculine energy. Both women and men have both feminine and masculine energy, but for women going through their burnout recovery journey, it can be a beautiful practice in itself to come back to being more in their natural feminine energy.
Creating alignment
Your burnout recovery journey is all about coming back to inner alignment, with a balanced nervous system, healthy boundaries in place, and feeling connected to who you truly are. It might take some time, but this inner work is always worth it. It is worth working on creating a lifestyle and a work-life balance that feels in alignment with your true values. It is worth creating healthy habits and making self-care a priority. Because it is a foundation on which you can continue to grow and flourish. And when you recover from the physical part of burnout, it will be much easier to explore creating mindset shifts that can continue to support you on your own personal growth and wellness journey.
An invitation
After reading this, if you would like to explore how you can start your tailor-made burnout recovery journey through 1-to-1 wellness coaching, I encourage you to visit my website. What is unique about the way I work with my clients is that we work holistically, mind-body-soul, which means we both work on balancing the nervous system and also on creating the foundation for self-care on a deep level so that you can find your unique balance.
Read more from Mina Kristensen
Mina Kristensen, Wellness Coach & Yoga Teacher
Mina Kristensen is a Wellness Coach and Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) who helps high-achieving women restore balance, vitality, and inner resilience through nervous system regulation and holistic healing.
After experiencing burnout in her mid-30s following a successful career in investment banking, Mina transformed her own wellbeing through intentional lifestyle changes and embodied healing practices.
She is passionate about guiding women to reduce stress, recover from burnout, and create sustainable balance from the inside out, laying the foundation for a life where they feel grounded, nourished, and fully supported.
