Honoring the Threshold of Fall: Burnout, Rest & Renewal

Ayurveda teaches that the space between seasons is a tender doorway — a time to release what has built up from the last season and prepare body and mind for what’s ahead.

In Ayurveda this doorway is called ṛtucharyā — the practice of living in rhythm with the seasons. The seasons don’t switch all at once; they overlap and shift gradually. It’s in these in-between times, when one season is loosening its grip and the next hasn’t fully arrived, that we are most vulnerable to imbalance. By softening into these thresholds and adjusting how we eat, move, and care for ourselves, we can create steadiness in the midst of change.

I’ve been noticing the signs of this shift in my own body: a belly that feels a little unsettled, skin that drinks up oil more quickly, and a deep craving for rest I can’t ignore. For me, these are also the early whispers of burnout.

Like so many of us, I move through seasons of overextension. Right now, I’m seeing over 150 clients a week, facilitating 20 yoga therapy groups, and doing increasingly more bodywork and in-person sessions. I love this work deeply, but I also know what it costs when I don’t pause to replenish. To hold space in all these ways, I’ve had to step up my own self-care — tending to my body and mind so I can meet others from a place of grounded clarity. Burnout isn’t just exhaustion — it’s disconnection from joy, creativity, and the ability to feel nourished by life.

This is why Ayurveda places such care on seasonal transitions. As summer’s fire (pitta) gives way to fall’s cool, dry winds (vāta), we may feel restless yet depleted, overheated yet ungrounded. Anxiety, digestive changes, irritability, and fatigue often rise in this time — not as personal flaws, but as reflections of the natural world moving through us.

Each fall, I honor this shift with an at-home panchakarma, a gentle Ayurvedic cleanse guided by my practitioner. It’s a way to clear out the excess of summer, steady my digestion, and prepare my mind and body for the months ahead.

Alongside this deeper reset, I lean on simple, nourishing rituals:

🥣 Warm, cooked meals I can easily make in my Instant Pot.
💆 Oil massage (abhyanga) with seasonal herbal oils to calm my nervous system.
🌿 Herbal teas that ground and soothe.
🚶 Walks outside and movement that feels nourishing instead of depleting.
🌙 Yoga Nidra to soften into rest at the end of the day.

Some days I still resist slowing down — it’s far from perfect. But I’m learning to listen, to make space for the rhythms that help me feel steady and alive. These practices aren’t luxuries; they’re relationships. They remind me that my body is part of the same rhythm as the trees, the wind, and the turning of the seasons.

This is also one of the most supportive times of year to receive care: Ayurvedic bodywork, seasonal consultations, and community workshops all help us cross this threshold with steadiness.

🌙 Reflection for the Season

• What signs of burnout or imbalance have you been noticing in your own body?

• What would it feel like to honor your own threshold into fall?

• What rhythms or rituals might support you in showing up nourished this season?

✨ Seasonal Support

If you’re craving steadiness in this transition, I’d love to support you:

• 1:1 Ayurvedic consultations for personalized seasonal care.

• Ayurvedic bodywork at Soulage with seasonal herbal oils.

• A Fall Ayurveda Workshop on October 18th — learn and practice in community.

Let’s honor this transition — and our need for rest — not rush it. 🌙

Why I Don’t Use Box Breathing (And What I Offer Instead)

Over the past few years, I’ve lost count of how many clients have said something like this:

“I was told to do box breathing… but it made me feel worse.”
“Breathwork makes me panic.”
“I try to do what the app says, but I feel like I can’t breathe right.”

If this sounds familiar—you’re not alone.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Breathwork

Box breathing (inhale, hold, exhale, hold—for equal counts) has become one of the most commonly recommended techniques for stress and anxiety. Therapists, apps, coaches—it seems like everyone is suggesting it.

But here’s the problem: it doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, for many people—especially those navigating trauma, anxiety, or burnout—it can make things worse.

From a physiological and Polyvagal perspective, holding the breath after an inhale can mimic a stress response. It can activate the sympathetic nervous system, causing the body to feel like it’s bracing for danger. For a nervous system already on high alert, this kind of breath can feel threatening, not regulating.

Resistance Isn’t a Problem. It’s Wisdom.

When a client tells me a breath practice feels uncomfortable or even unbearable, I don’t see that as resistance—I see it as information. The nervous system is speaking. My job is to listen.

As a yoga therapist trained in the tradition of Krishnamacharya, I was taught to approach every breath practice through the lens of krama—a step-by-step progression rooted in respect for the individual’s capacity, state, and lived experience. We never impose a breath technique simply because it’s trendy or common. We assess. We adapt. We honor the body’s readiness.

What I Offer Instead

In my work—both in private practice and in clinical mental health settings with clients in crisis—I’ve seen how impactful it is to slow down and meet people where they are. That means not just swapping out techniques, but creating space for inquiry, education, and choice.

Here’s what that might look like:

• 🌬️ Extending the exhale to support parasympathetic activation

• 🫁 Diaphragmatic (belly) breathing to support grounding

• 🌀 Rocking or gentle movement to regulate without overwhelm

• 🎵 Humming or sounding to tone the vagus nerve

• 💡 Education about the nervous system to build understanding and agency

• 🪞 Compassionate inquiry into what breath has felt like before

• 🫶 Choice, always. No pressure. No pushing.

Yes, there are times when breath holds are therapeutic. But only when offered with preparation, safety, and relationship.

Breath Can Be a Resource—But Only If It’s Personalized

Breath is powerful medicine. But like any medicine, it must be given in the right dose, at the right time, and with the right intention.

If breathwork hasn’t felt safe or helpful for you, it’s not because you’re doing it wrong. It’s because the practice you were given wasn’t the right fit. You deserve something different—something that honors your body’s wisdom, your nervous system’s needs, and your lived experience.

That’s what I’m here to offer.

Want to explore breath practices that actually feel good?
I offer 1:1 yoga therapy sessions, group programs, and body-based support designed to help you reconnect with your breath and your body—on your terms.

Learn more about working with me or reach out with any questions.

Carrying Grief, Returning to Breath

Before I became a yoga therapist and Ayurvedic counselor, I spent five years teaching in Oakland Public Schools —
working as a classroom teacher and a restorative justice facilitator.

I loved my students fiercely. I loved our community fiercely.
And like so many educators, caregivers, and space-holders, I carried more grief than my heart and body sometimes knew how to hold.

During my years in Oakland, loss was not an isolated event — it was a constant current.
I lost a close friend to gun violence.

Several of my students were shot or incarcerated.
I visited hospitals where students had to register under fake names for protection.
I worked alongside gang interventionists — some of whom were later killed.

Even after leaving the classroom, I found myself checking homicide reports daily, trying to hold onto those I loved.

Among all these losses, one stands out with particular sharpness:
a brilliant, creative 15-year-old student — an artist, a leader, a light in our community — who was shot and killed.

Teachers are not trained — and truly can never be fully prepared — for the pain of losing a student.
There is no guidebook for how to grieve while still holding space for others.

I remember coming to school the day after her death, standing at the desk where she always sat, carefully gathering her things, trying to feel her presence in the corner of the classroom that had become her space.
I remember how our classroom — her siblings, her friends, our wider community — came together to build and tend an altar in her honor.
Long after the immediate mourning faded, her friends continued to care for her memory — bringing offerings, telling stories, tending the space where she lived in their hearts.

This is part of the truth too:
The violence was real, but so was the love.
The grief was real, but so was the community.
The loss was devastating, but so was the collective refusal to forget.

At the time, I didn’t have the tools I needed to care for myself in the wake of that much loss.
Like so many caregivers living inside systems of violence and scarcity, I turned to substances to numb the grief I didn’t know how to process.
I coped in the only ways I knew how — ways that allowed me to keep showing up, but slowly pulled me away from myself.

Looking back, I know that if I had been given more support — more tools for navigating my own grief, pain, and heartbreak —
I could have sustained myself longer.
I could have stayed more rooted — for myself and for the communities I loved.

I share this not to center my own suffering, but to say this:
I understand the weight of vicarious trauma.
I understand burnout doesn't just come from exhaustion — but from heartbreak, from chronic grief, from loving more deeply than one heart can sometimes bear.

It took me years to find my way back to my breath, my body, my center.
And it is from that lived place — from both the wound and the love — that I offer spaces for healing today.

Why This Work Is Needed Now

Today, as we move through a world where violence, racism, and systemic harm are again escalating —
where collective grief is mounting in the wake of rising fascism and political violence —
the need for spaces of healing, resilience, and remembrance is not a luxury.
It is a necessity.

The work of resistance — whether in classrooms, clinics, courtrooms, community centers, or streets — demands more than our labor.
It demands our breath. Our embodiment. Our resilience.

I know what it’s like to pour yourself into the work of care and justice, only to find yourself exhausted, grieving, and disconnected from your own center.
I know the cost of carrying too much without a place to set it down.

This is why I do the work I do now.

The spaces I offer — retreats, circles, somatic practices, collective care rituals — are not just about individual healing.
They are about restoring the breath of the movement.
Tending the hearts of those who resist.
Building inner resilience so that we can sustain the work of outer change.