Breaking Burnout: Top 5 recovery skills
Transcript
I was 25 when I broke my first bone. I was participating in a martial arts demonstration on a rainy summer day in North Carolina. And after doing some beautiful forms and kicks with the rest of my school I stepped to the front of the stage along with a few other adult students and took our positions behind stacks of boards supported by a couple of cinder blocks.
We were set to break all four boards with a hammer strike. That’s where you make a fist and then swing straight down on the boards and they all break. At least that's the idea anyway.
Up until this point I had only broken single boards with my feet, but there was nothing in my mind that day telling me that I couldn’t do this. So I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t even worried about being in front of the crowd. I actually like those kinds of butterflies.
So I stepped up to the tune of the mortal combat soundtrack and took a strong front deep stance, raised my arm high, and with a ferocious yell dropped all my body weight down through my fist onto a stack of 4 boards.
Time kind of slowed down and I didn't really feel anything right away. My hand caught the edge of the top board I think. And in that moment it felt like the world sort of tilted on its axis. As it came back, I was disappointed to find that the bottom board was broken but the top 3 were still hanging in there.
Someone swooped in and removed that one and reset the rest so I could try again. Because of course we always try again. Except something was wrong. I was hearing a weird sound in my ears and I felt a little woozy and nauseous for some reason. But never one to let anything stand in my way I reset myself and tried it one more time.
OK time out here. Rewind - remember when I said it was a rainy day? Well, damp, wet wood isn’t the same as dry wood. It doesn’t like to break at all. You know what doesn’t care about the weather, bones.
I wiggled my fingers and made a fist raised it high and I brought it down hardl. As my hand made contact with the board, my fierce lion roar came out like a whimper and my whole body collapsed. No broken boards for me It was enough. I had to let it go.
I took my spot at the back of the line for a few more forms but something was really really wrong. I couldn’t remember the steps. I couldn’t breathe right. I was nauseous. I was desperate to get off that stage but luckily we were almost finished.
I knew it was bad but I didn’t think it was broken because I could wiggle my fingers. It was just when I moved it certain ways that I felt like passing out.
It took me 3 days to go to the doctor who confirmed that yes I had actually broken my hand and gave me a proper cast. 3 days of suffering before I asked for help to get what I needed to recover and repair an injury from something that I Love to DO!
I tell this story because when we’re doing something we love doesn’t mean you can’t hurt yourself doing it. And if you want to keep doing what you love for a really long time and doing it well you need to let yourself recover. You need to give yourself the same grace you give to your clients. You need to offer yourself the same empathy you give them.
One of the strongest mind states that came out of my time in martial arts is the idea that I should hold myself to a higher standard and give everyone elses the benefit of the doubt. And at first that sounded right to me. It sounded kind. It was kind. To everyone but me.
I think in hindsight it got pretty twisted up for me. My standard of success and performance trapped me in a state of hypervigilance for long enough to do so serious damage to my nervous system and because I couldn’t let myself back off I lost the ability to recover. I lost the ability to move easily into challenges and back into rest. I lost that connection to true resilience. I thought resting was a weakness. And I lost perspective about what was really important.
I don’t care who you are, what you do, a lot of people depend on you to be at your best. But at the same time none of them, no matter how much they love you, are going to be able to do anything to keep you at your best. You’re the only one who knows what that even means. What it feels like, what it looks like, to be the best version of you, for yourself and for them. If you don’t take care of yourself, who else will?
If you don’t have time to recharge and refill your well of energy now, when will you have the time for the inevitable crash and burn that happens even when we’re doing something we absolutely love?
So today I want to talk about something that Dr. Kate Steiner shared in episode 47. She explained the importance of defining your recovery formula. That’s simply a list of things that you can use that will help you recover and rest from the predicted and unpredictable burn events that we all come across in our day to day lives.
In that episode Dr. Kate describes something called a comfort list. And we talked about some things that might be on it. Fundamentally a comfort list is a very very personal list of anything that brings you comfort. Some people call this self care and we discussed self care in detail with last weeks guest, Jo Bregnard, from the selfcare sanctuary. but I think of them as skills - recovery skills.
Remember, opposites create balance so it makes sense that we need comfort to counteract stress activation. We need something opposite to create balance for the nervous system. The action of deliberately moving out of that stress and tension reorganizes the brain and gives it new ways to react to build resilience. This is exactly what we want to do for our clients but it is critical that we know how to do it for ourselves first.
So what does a recovery skill look like?
I’m going to share a list of my top 5 recovery skills that I use both for myself and in my classes.
Physiologic sigh - or - Lions Breath - depending on where you are in class or car or office. 2 quick inhales and longer exhale. Lions roar face and exhale with loud whisper.
Shedding energy - Take a hold of each finger pull and slide the energy off. Repeat several times on each finger and do both hands.
Tapping - just tapping the collar bone you can check out episode 37 with Melanie Yates for more on the full version of EFT Tapping
Eye pillow - or if you don’t have one you can twist a hand towel and lay it over your eyes as you rest on the floor, flat, knees bent or my favorite - legs up the wall.
Activate the trauma release tremor. Either on the floor or up against the wall. Let the tremor do the work and shake off the tension and stress. Check out Feb 22 TRE with Donna Phillips for details. If you don’t know how to access the easy subconscious tremor just shake your arms and legs out on purpose.
In my conversation with Dr Kate we talked about using a particular food to recover. And there are definitely some foods out there that fall under the category of comfort foods. No judgment here but I would just caution you against making food any kind of go to stress reliever. Because processed sugar and simple carbohydrates can overwhelm the pain pleasure dopamine balance and actually make us feel worse. And then it can push us into all kinds of other health issues including food addiction and chronic disease which just adds more fuel to the burnout fire.
All of the things that I listed above are deliberate intentional actions that you have complete control over that will help the parasympathetic side of the nervous system come back online. They are all things you can pretty much do anywhere, in or out of class. There are infinite possibilities that you could include as a recovery skill. But the most important thing is that it be something that brings comfort to you, something that makes you feel better and that you’re comfortable doing it.
One of the things that characterizes burnout for many of us is a loss of joy in our work. So part of our recovery can be finding things that reintroduce us to that feeling of joy. If it isn’t in your work anymore, where else can you find it?
A new hobby or an old hobby that you miss? For me, creativity of any kind really brings me joy. It feels like play to me. I like making jewelry, repurposing antiques and I’ve always loved to decorate cakes and do sugar work. Like poured sugar glass and piping. I look at it like an art form. My favorite is to make a beautiful cake and give it away. I have sold them in the past but honestly that kind of steals some of the joy. So I just do it for myself and my friends as a gift. And my husband doesn’t mind doing the quality control either!
So what does recovery look like to you these days? Do you let yourself play anymore?
Sometimes just taking time off isn’t enough. I know for me sometimes a vacation is just as hard to pull off as staying home. Sometimes we need a little help to let ourselves really recover. Maybe it’s time for a coach or a counselor (before we need the emergency room) to help you see a little more clearly what you might be too close to see. Maybe we need to reimagine our schedule a bit so we can include some of those recovery skills everyday. It doesn’t have to be big or complex. Mostly we are just looking for a shift in mindset to get us back on track. Maybe setting some creative boundaries around how we use our energy.
I’ve created a simple guide to help you get started holding space for yourself and your classes and you can get free at my website elementalkinetics.com. Sign up, download the guide and then get access to weekly mentorship and support through my free newsletter as well as first looks for upcoming offers.
And if you’re interested in going deeper with one on one mentorship or being part of a new master class program that I have in development for fitness professionals to set themselves apart in the fitness industry bringing trauma sensitive class design to every format go to elementalkinetics.com/inquiry and schedule a free discovery call.
That’s it for today’s work IN. What will you choose to bring you comfort today? I’d love to know! Drop me a note of Facebook @elementalkineticsmovewell or instagram @elementalkinetics
See you next time!
Hey Rockstar!
Thanks for checking out The Work IN! I’m Ericka you highly caffeinated host and resilience coach!
I spent half my life building my body brand in the fitness industry and now I want to help other fit pros avoid the mistakes I made and burnout proof their careers with integrated trauma sensitive class design so that you can be stay confident, creative and compassionate in your scope and format.
Curious how? Click the button to schedule a discovery call today!