Is This the Life I Choose? On Burnout, Leaving New York, and Learning to Tend My Body
Body Dialogue, founded by Janice Stieber-Rous and expanded with Madelyn Ilana and Mandie Jones, evolves the work of F.M. Alexander, Carl Stough, and C.G. Jung into a living somatic practice, blending movement, breath, and awareness to support embodied growth, creativity, and deeper connection to inner guidance.
There was a hole in my tank, and I was leaking gas. I didn’t know it for years. I was too busy filling, pouring, giving, performing. I had a family. I had a thriving somatic body therapy practice for twenty-five years in New York City. I had clients who returned season after season. From the outside, it looked like a life. From the inside, it felt like being chased by an invisible ghost I could never outrun.
Every September, I started over. Two months off in the summer to be with my family, then the rebuilding. The phone calls. The outreach. The slow gathering of momentum that would carry me through winter and spring, only to scatter again when June came. My rhythm was the rhythm of the school year, and every fall I ran the same race from the start.
I loved my work. I still love my work. I love watching someone's breath change, watching their shoulders drop, watching them remember what their body has been trying to tell them. But loving the work didn't stop the leak. I was giving more than I was receiving. I was teaching people how to listen to their bodies while ignoring the exhaustion pooling in my own.
That's the cruel joke of being a healer. You can see everyone's patterns but your own. I was fifty-four years old when I finally stopped running.
I left New York City. I left my established practice, my network, my reputation. I moved to Florida to ask myself a question I had been avoiding, "What do I actually need?"
The first thing Florida did was erase me. In New York, people understood what I did. They had language for it. Somatic work, breathwork, Alexander Technique. In Florida, wellness meant a gym membership and a doctor's appointment. Nobody was looking for what I offered. Nobody knew they needed it.
I had to learn how to breathe in a place that didn't know my name. Twenty years later, I am still educating people about what my work is. Some days that feels like planting seeds in concrete. Other days, something breaks through. A client arrives who is ready. Space I never had in New York suddenly appears, and I realize the emptiness was also an invitation.
I didn't move to Florida to escape burnout. I moved to stop creating it. There is a difference. Escaping means running from the fire. Stopping means looking at your own hands and realizing you've been holding the match.
In New York, I was so identified with my work that I couldn't see where I ended and the giving began. I thought my value was in my output. I thought rest had to be earned. I thought the hole in my tank was just the price of a meaningful life. But the hole wasn't the price. The hole was the problem. What fills it, I've learned, is not more doing. It's tending.
I think of my life now as a garden. Not a performance. Not a practice to build. A garden. Something that needs water and light and attention. Something that grows slowly. Something that dies if you neglect it and flourishes if you show up with care instead of ambition.
The practices I teach are body-based. They live in the breath, in the tissue, in the space between exhale and inhale. But they are also practices of attention. Of asking, every day, "What does this garden need?" Not what does the world need from me. What do I need to stay alive?
Burnout is not a badge of honor. It is not proof that you care. Burnout is what happens when you stop listening. When you let the leak go unrepaired. When you keep performing long after there is no gas in the tank. The only one who can repair it is you.
Every choice you make determines the texture of your energy. Where you put your attention shapes the quality of your life. This is not a weekend workshop. This is a lifelong commitment. But ultimately, it comes down to one question, "Is this the life I choose?"
I ask myself that now. Not once, at some dramatic crossroads, but daily. When I notice I'm holding my breath. When I feel the old ghost start to chase. When I catch myself pouring from a tank I haven't checked in days. Is this the life I choose?
The answer isn't always yes. Sometimes the answer is, not this part. Not this pattern. Not this way of giving that leaves me empty. Then I tend the garden. I water what needs water. I rest in the sun like a woman who finally knows she is allowed to stop.
Your breath knows if you're living that life. Your body knows. The question is whether you're willing to ask.
Read more from Janice Stieber-Rous
Janice Stieber-Rous, Somatic Healing & Holistic Wellness Educator
Body Dialogue is a somatic healing practice founded by Janice Stieber-Rous and developed with Madelyn Ilana and Mandie Jones. Rooted in the Alexander Technique, Breathing Coordination, and mindful movement, the practices taught in Body Dialogue help release stress, tension, and heal habitual patterns. Using practical tools for body, mind, and breath, they guide participants to reconnect with the body’s innate intelligence and inner guidance.
