Creating Balance and Wellness While Beating Burnout – An Interview with Coach Mina Kristensen
- Feb 27
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Mina Kristensen, a former investment banker turned yoga teacher, offers a unique approach to wellness by blending restorative yoga, mindfulness, and self-love practices. Through her program, high-achieving women learn to manage stress, recover from burnout, and embrace a balanced, nourished life.
Mina Kristensen, Wellness Coach & Yoga Teacher
Who is Mina Kristensen?
I am an ex-Investment banker turned Yoga Teacher and Wellness Coach. After going through burnout early on in my career, I decided to choose slow living and softness over pushing and forcing. I am highly creative, both in my work and in my hobbies. I love my morning Ashtanga Yoga practice, which sets the tone for the day. And nature walks and Restorative Yoga for calming down in the afternoons. I love to make my home feel like a calm sanctuary to come home to. These days I also love a calm and scandi-infused fashion with natural fibers, which also includes my own knitted items. My business is all about supporting high-achieving women create a better balance in daily life and recover from burnout, from the inside-out.
What inspired you to create Yoga With Mina and focus on holistic wellness?
I was never meant to become a yoga teacher to start with. When I first started yoga, it became an important element in healing my relationship to food and to start nourishing myself fully (instead of controlling what I ate). And I experienced how transformational yoga can really be, in enhancing the relationship we have with ourselves and the world around us. We live in a world where life wants to move fast, but we need to slow down and feel connected to ourselves, to also enjoy life, not just exist in it. So, my business is an invitation to come into a space where you get to focus on you, reducing stress, recovering from burnout, and creating a life where you are self-nourished and resilient.
Who do you most love helping, and what challenges do they usually come to you with?
I love supporting high-achieving women, reducing stress, recovering from burnout, and truly coming home to themselves. The most usual challenges they come to me with are overwhelming stress, feeling stretched-thin, and just wanting to feel calmer and to feel better in themselves.
How would you describe your approach to yoga and wellness in your own words?
My approach to yoga: It is a practice, not another arena for you to achieve and perform. It is also a healing practice that brings us into a greater connection with ourselves and the world around us. A dynamic yoga practice is a great way to start the day, and it doesn’t have to be a long practice; 15 minutes can work wonders! Restorative yoga is an amazing practice to help recover from burnout, reduce stress, and harmonise the nervous system. For everything with yoga, I believe consistency is key. Even if you practice yoga only once per week, it is the consistent practice every week that will give you the long-term benefits.
Wellness: Wellness is more than just a drop-in yoga class and a green juice. It is about the daily habits we create to support ourselves in daily life, so we are resilient, deeply connected to ourselves, and nourish ourselves. It is about having practices and rituals that are intentional; it can be yoga, journaling, or meditation. It is about topping up your own cup, having healthy boundaries in place so you are not constantly feeling drained out, and a work-life balance that supports you, and good quality sleep and time spent in nature. It is about preparing a healthy dinner, instead of choosing the easy option. Cooking healthy food can also be a source of creativity and self-love.
What makes your work different from a typical yoga class or online program?
When it comes to my Wellness Coaching and online courses and programs, I combine various avenues, including Restorative yoga, self-love, mindset work, understanding feminine energy, with a small dose of spirituality. Body-mind-spirit connection.
I teach Restorative yoga as a way to reduce stress from the busyness of everyday life and come into a greater alignment internally, which also reflects in the external reality.
Ashtanga Yoga I teach as a practice you learn, and can take with you, and practice by yourself. You don’t just take a class or a course; you learn a practice you can take with you.
How do you help clients reconnect with their bodies and reduce stress in everyday life?
We create together a practice that we believe will support the client. This is never «another thing on the to-do list», but rather an experiment to start with to see what is working, where everything is flexible and can be adjusted. We often use Restorative Yoga, grounding through visualisation, and tailor-made reflections. So that we can create a balance with who we are, our values, work, and how we live our lives. Overwhelming stress and burnout are not only a result of work, but also how we do life, and we want to bring the nervous system away from fight & flight mode, and into rest & digest.
What results or transformations do your clients often experience after working with you?
They feel more connected to themselves, feeling calmer and better in themselves. And everyday life is less stressful. It is a relief for them. And they now have these tools and practices that they can use to check in with themselves, and to treat themselves with more love and compassion.
How do mindfulness, breath, and movement work together in your sessions?
We go out of the head and into the body, through the breath. Allowing for being present in the body. When we go into the body we can start to soften, and to become more present, and allow the wisdom of the body to come through. As an example, intuition lives in our body, not in our mind. And if we feel stressed, it is hard to connect to our intuition, because we are not connected to our body. And for women, we would like to be more connected to the body, where our natural feminine energy and inner wisdom live.
What role does consistency play in creating long-term well-being?
To me, consistency is key. And it is so important to remember that it does not have to be 2-hour + long routines. But instead allowing it to be flexible. So, on the days when there is not so much time, maybe it is 10 minutes of journaling, or 15 minutes of yoga. And if you were to fall out of your practices and rituals, just come back to them, with no self-judgements. You can start as many times as you need to; nothing is a mistake or `not good enough`. Because you are winning, because you keep showing up for yourself, in small and big ways, and that´s all that matters.
Can your work support people who feel overwhelmed, burnt out, or disconnected from themselves?
Yes absolutely. We work on creating a better balance within the nervous system, moving away from stress and more into rest & digest. And at the same time, we also work through the mental stressors, so we can also work on reframing an unsupportive belief system and creating rituals that truly support the client´s wellbeing.
What does living in balance mean to you, personally and professionally?
Personally, I can feel calm and connected within myself, also when it gets busy, and still embrace slow living. I am resilient and allow my morning practices to set the tone for the rest of the day. And that I don’t allow my days to be so fully booked that there is no time for me, or for slowing down in the evening and cooking a healthy dinner.
For someone curious about starting their wellness journey with you, what would you invite them to do next?
I would invite you to head to my website and check out my free resources. And if you feel in your heart that you are curious about how we can work together, go ahead and book a free discovery call so we can get to know each other better!
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