Antidotes to Burnout and Exhaustion: Mindful Movement and Meditation

Somehow and very often in the dominant culture we receive a message that the body must perform at maximum capacity in order to be worthy. From a very young age, we’re taught we must give 100% of ourselves over to whatever task is at hand in order to have value.

In the yoga and wellness world, this can translate to feeling a subtle or overt pressure to “perform” rather than embody poses or sequences. As a result, we may drive the body as if it were something outside of ourselves, pushing it to extreme or perfect expressions of the asanas or movements.

This belief of course is the source of so much suffering. It’s often a kind of self abandonment, even a forced disembodiment. Losing intimacy and trust with one’s own body has corrosive impact in our physical, mental, and social health. Restoring body agency is a deeply political act. It is an act of reclamation and resistance.

These are challenging times we’re living through, and the body carries so much of the difficulty whether we’re aware of it or not. We’re seeing epidemic levels of anxiety, depression, burnout and loneliness. Chronic pain and inflammation are commonplace.

My work in somatic arts aims to build more body trust or body agency by building intimacy with one’s own body. Let’s start with the core belief that your body is precious and valuable just as it is. And there are things we can do to support the body, restore the body, and inhabit the body more authentically.

Embodiment is a basic right of all sentient beings. There are ways to recover the awareness, power, and presence of the body that are life changing. The radical science of embodiment can drastically improve our wellbeing and help maintain a healthier self-to-body relationship.

Take the first step with me. My Mindful Movement and Meditation sessions begin this week. There are new sessions every month. To register just click here