Yin Yoga and Burnout - a Healing Practice

Yin Yoga is a healing practice that brings balance to the body and mind through slow and steady, meditative sequences of Yoga asanas combined with the principles of Chinese medicine. Burnout is a state of extreme imbalance within the body and mind. As Psychology Today puts it quite succinctly, Burnout is; ‘a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, care-taking, or romantic relationships.’

My own experience of Burnout is long and complex, and truly the basis for another essay - more likely, a whole series of essays. To summarise, in my case years of gradually building stress, a continuous state of anxiety and regular bouts of depression, finally reached boiling point following a period of three years of very high pressure and prolonged, chronic stress, toxic environments and relationships, physical and emotional exhaustion and gaslighting and a lack of support, ultimately, led to a complete emotional and physical shut down. My Burnout was so extreme that it forced me to hit pause on life as I knew it, step away from everything, and start again from the very beginning. After thirty two years of life designed to a set template, delivered at a set pace, with clear expectations and markers for success, this was a daunting task.

Along with medication, meditation, clinical psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy, there was Yoga. Specifically, Yin Yoga. Yoga itself had been in my life for a long time - it was Rocket, Power Yoga, Bikram, and when living in New York it was hours and hours of sweating out stress and burying crippling anxieties and fears in a dark room lit only by flickering candlelight, to a soundtrack of Hip Hop music and a barrage of motivational quotes, in Bryant Park’s Y7 90℉ studio. At the time, I thought that was all the Yoga I needed. Sweating and stretching were my main goals. Until I burned out, I had never even heard of Yin - my life was only Yang. And therein lay the problem.

I attended my first Yin Yoga class in winter of 2019, at the Yoga House in Catford, South London. I walked into a converted warehouse, filled with hanging plants, salt lamps, flickering candles and incense. Mats were laid out, along with a whole manner of props I had never seen before in a Yoga class. Squishy, sausage shaped bolster cushions, round meditation cushions, eye pillows and so many blankets. At this point, just before I burned out, I was existing in a physically exhausted, emotionally numb and apathetic daze, but even through the haze I could see that I’d stumbled across something potentially life changing.

From then on, Wednesday evening Candlelit Yin at the Yoga House became the one and only highlight of my week. It was the one hour that I found I could finally breathe, that my mind could quiet, and afterwards I would even manage to sleep. I often find myself wondering now, what might have been different if I had discovered Yin years ago. If I could have used Yin as a preventative, rather than a treatment after the fact. It’s these wonderings that have led me to train and learn and teach, sharing my own experience with others I know are at risk of the same kind of fall that I had.

So why is Yin such an antidote for Burnout? It’s all about balance. People who burn out are often cut from a very similar mould. It’s important to note that each person’s experience and conditions of Burnout are and should be viewed as unique, but in my experience there are patterns and similarities worth noting. They are usually; highly motivated, passionate high achievers, who strive for perfection, fear failure, work themselves to the point of exhaustion and keep going, usually with some level of high functioning anxiety. These kinds of people often find themselves in similar kinds of work environments - moving quickly up a ladder of progression, taking more and more upon themselves, fighting for validation and offering themselves up as human sacrifices to be taken advantage of, all with a desperate smile on their faces. They don’t sleep enough, they don’t eat enough - or they don’t eat well enough, they drink far too much of what they shouldn’t, they don’t rest and they don’t take care of themselves. They are so far out of balance that they are upside down and back to front and they don’t even notice, because they are so focussed on pleasing others, looking like they have it all together, and fitting into an expectation they have fabricated in their minds based on impossible ideals. The worst of it is, Burnout is a cycle. Without significant change, when a person burns out, they just begin the cycle again, and again, and again.

When a person is burned out, they often struggle with anxiety, exhaustion and fatigue, and sometimes digestive issues, like IBS, constipation and sickness. An imbalance of the stomach and spleen! They are chronically stressed, living in a constant state of fear and powerless to do anything about it. They can’t begin to figure out a way out of their predicament. The urinary bladder! The kidneys! Their hormones are often far off kilter - in my experience, my menstrual cycle screeched to an unnatural halt, and this is not uncommon. The gall bladder! They don’t get enough sleep - often they can’t. Insomnia strikes, and leads to days filled with brain fog, headaches and dizziness. The liver! And when it comes to the upper body meridian lines, they lose their joy, their passion, their drive. The heart aches, and numbness, apathy and depression takes over. When a person truly burns out, to the point that they can’t possibly burn any more, I believe that every meridian line, every organ, and in turn, due to the fascial network that connects every part of us, every single part of the body, mind and soul, is drained to the point that the only way to heal is by resetting entirely. Like a glitching, virus ridden computer, the body needs to stop, sleep, switch off and start again. 

Yin alone is not a magic fix, but it’s part of a pretty magical formula. Rest, Awareness, Allowing, Forgiveness, Kindness, Boundaries, Food, Achievable Goals, Meditation and Gentle Exercise - these are the elements we need to begin a journey to heal Burnout. A regular Yin practice weaves in with pretty much every element of this healing journey. We move slowly, carefully, in a way that is kind to our body. We listen to our body, and don’t push ourselves too far. We settle at the first edge and stay there, in meditative stillness. We rest. We breathe. We give ourselves time. And if we work with teachers who incorporate knowledge of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) into their classes, we can be guided in what to eat, how to eat it, and how to allow the seasonal shifts of the world around us to help, not hinder, our recovery.

In conclusion, Burnout is the result of a constant, ongoing, chronic state of Yang. To bring balance to the body and mind, we must turn toward the Yin. Only once we do that, and counter the negative effects of what can often have been years of chronic stress, emotional and physical exhaustion, apathy, anxiety and depression, can we finally begin to work toward a state of balance, happiness and peace.

Mx