Why Restorative Yoga is a Powerful Tool in Burnout Recovery
- Jun 23
- 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.
Maybe you think that burnout has happened to you. But maybe it has actually happened for you, as a way for you to find a better balance for yourself, instead of just keeping on going, even when you feel exhausted, day after day.
If you are going through burnout, you are not alone. Taking responsibility for your burnout recovery journey is one of the best things you can do for yourself, because burnout affects all areas of your life. As you heal, it transforms pain into power, and when you recover, you become a version of yourself that has way more energy than you ever had, with rock-solid boundaries that protect your energy.
Yoga in general allows you to connect more deeply with yourself, so you start to live in alignment with your true values. In this article, we will specifically explore the power of restorative yoga as a tool to help heal your burnout and bring your overstimulated nervous system back to balance.
What is restorative yoga?
You may not have heard about restorative yoga, but it is a very gentle form of yoga that many people can do. You just need to be able to come down to the floor and get up again. You don’t need any form of previous yoga experience to draw the benefits from restorative yoga.
Restorative yoga uses various props, such as bolsters, blankets, and blocks, to create supportive poses that you rest into. The poses are typically held for longer periods of time, anywhere from 3 minutes to 20 minutes or longer. This allows the body to relax into the props and begin to let go of stress and tension on a physical, mental, and emotional level.
And if we look on an even deeper level, restorative yoga is all about being, instead of doing. It is a place where less is more, and where you get a break from your never-ending mental to-do list.
Because we need time just to be. We spend a lot of time being active, working, taking care of our family, spending time with friends, cooking, working out, and sleeping. But in addition, we also need time to just be, to rest, to do nothing, and to feel good about doing nothing.
Deep rest through restorative yoga is not the same as sleep. The way the body is invited into deep relaxation in restorative yoga comes with a deeper intention for rest than the way you relax at home. Relaxing at home, for many, will still often, in an unconscious way, involve using a small screen, a bigger screen, or even both at the same time. This means you are still being externally stimulated by what you consume from the screen.
In restorative yoga, there is very little external stimulation because it is a practice done in silence, and you can also choose to cover your eyes. Silence and darkness in restorative yoga allow your senses to relax.
When the body rests in the supported poses in restorative yoga, it is an invitation for the body to relax and let go. As you start to relax on a deeper level, the nervous system can start to move away from stress and more into the rest and digest state. This releases stress and tension, and your own energy starts to flow back to you. Your own energy is no longer going out; it is coming back to you for self-nourishment.
Make restorative yoga the first step of your burnout recovery journey
When it comes to healing your burnout, restorative yoga is a great place to start. Very likely, you are feeling exhausted, and your nervous system could also be stuck in fight or flight mode, possibly even constantly.
It is hard to make good decisions and changes for yourself from an unregulated place. This is why restorative yoga is a great place to start, because it will be easier to work on upgrading boundaries and your belief system once you feel physically better, and no longer feel constantly exhausted or overwhelmed. Making significant changes and decisions for ourselves is best done from a calm place, where we feel connected to ourselves and our intuition.
Restorative yoga allows you to start to top up your own cup, and your overstimulated nervous system can move away from stress and allow you to connect to the rest and digest state of the nervous system, and to be increasingly grounded in this state. This releases physical and mental tension and improves the quality of your sleep.
Three benefits of restorative yoga
1. It is an act of self-love
Practicing restorative yoga is an act of self-love and self-respect. Because you consciously choose to allow yourself to rest, in a world that is highly focused on us being productive with our time, achieving our goals, and being efficient. This is also creating a boundary to that part of life, and you make yourself a priority by choosing you and your own well-being over your never-ending to-do list.
In other styles of yoga, you might push yourself hard to get into challenging yoga poses, but in restorative yoga, the focus is on allowing yourself to be held and supported by the props, which means you rest into feeling unconditionally held and supported.
Restorative yoga also allows you time to just be with yourself, to become more alive to your own inner world, as stress and tension start to melt away, and your own energy starts to come back to you, instead of all your energy going out.
2. Balances the nervous system
Restorative yoga helps to move the nervous system away from stress and into the rest and digest state. There is very little external stimulation in restorative yoga; rather, it invites introspection.
And when it comes to burnout, the nervous system has been overstimulated for a long period of time and can be stuck in the sympathetic nervous system. This part of the nervous system is designed to activate when you need to respond to stress or 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.
Through the practice of restorative yoga, the autonomic nervous system can start to stabilise more into the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the state where we feel relaxed and at ease, and the nervous system signals to the body to relax and rejuvenate. This is the rest and digest mode. Through restorative yoga, you allow your nervous system to get to know this state more, and this is also the state where the nervous system heals by coming back into balance. This means that as you heal, you will become less and less reactive or triggered by stress, and instead become more resilient.
3. Can support healing from chronic stress
Chronic stress is common when it comes to burnout, because the nervous system is stuck in fight or flight mode. Chronic stress can show up in many forms and is also very individual. For example, you might not be able to relax, even when you have planned to have a relaxing evening at home. Or when you finally take the holiday you have craved, you are still not able to relax. You might suffer from panic attacks, poor sleep, or other symptoms from an overstimulated nervous system. This means the body, and maybe the mind too, has a hard time relaxing fully, because your nervous system is constantly gripping and scanning for any kind of danger. You are not connected to feeling safe in your body, able to trust yourself, or able to feel grounded and connected to yourself on a deeper level.
Restorative yoga can support this as the nervous system starts to come more and more into the rest and digest state. The body starts to shed and let go of chronic stress that is stuck in the body.
Where to start
Restorative yoga is a practice that many people can do. It can be done at home by using the props you have, or you can take a class at a studio. You don’t need any kind of previous yoga experience to get the benefits from restorative yoga.
In my own burnout recovery journey, restorative yoga was my foundation. I was already practicing yoga at that time, but not much restorative yoga. My physical yoga practice left me feeling even more exhausted, instead of rejuvenated, and I did not understand why. But I listened to my body and what it was craving, and I knew it was the deep rest that restorative yoga offered. I went to every restorative yoga class at my studio and just allowed myself to be held and supported.
Experiencing burnout often highlights that it is time to make some changes, support ourselves, and live life in a better way. But making changes and big decisions is best done from a regulated place. That means with a nervous system that is in balance. Restorative yoga is the perfect place to start topping up your own cup and bringing your nervous system into balance. Mental clarity and making decisions that feel good for you will follow, as you also get more in tune with your own intuition.
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 and restorative yoga, I encourage you to visit my website, Yogawithmina, and book a 15-minute discovery call. What is unique about the way I work with my clients is that we work holistically, with mind, body, and soul. This means we work on both balancing the nervous system and 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.
