Photo by Jai Langoju on Unsplash
One of the big potential traps in modern day society is to lose that spark.
It’s particularly visible in a city like Brussels. So many people come here with big hopes and expectations. The reality of the clunking system can be pretty soul crushing if we’re not careful.
It’s also very visible. When we look people in the eyes, we can see if there is a spark behind it or not. Once someone has lost their spark, it feels like their soul has been tuned down to power-save mode.
Whilst burnout is often assumed to be about overwork, it can just as well be a loss of hope. That was certainly the case for me. Day by day, I had my desires ever increasingly compromised. By the end, I had little will to leave my bed.
But as time has gone on, I find my veins slowly warming up. It is as if my soul is, slowly but surely, waking up to the idea that challenge and ambition are attractive things again.
This is the reflection of my internal flame. Once extinguished, it is now rebuilding.
The time we spend in our formative years allows us to slowly kindle our internal flame. Such a fire takes many moons to build. It also only happens in a healthy environment. A child who is neglected will be too fearful to have desire, whilst a child who is coddled will have no reason for ambition as they have already got what they want without trying. But a child who is safe and given space to try things is one who can learn to dream.
If we grow up as healthy adults, our fire is lit, and it simmers fairly constantly. But if the fire within us is extinguished, it will take a notably long time to ignite it once again. Like most things in life, maintenance is far easier than reconstruction. It makes sense when we realise how long it took to build the first fire inside of us.
In Ayurveda, Pitta is one of the three doshas (or energies) which make up our constitutions. Pitta is the mix of fire and water. This constant battle between the two elements is what governs these behaviours, as well as how well our body digests.
For me, my burnout has been more an extinguishing of flame. The constant sense of difficulty and frustration in my life meant that I slowly lost my fire. I regularly had digestion problems, as my internal system was unable to start the furnace within my stomach.
The embers of my soul were so extinguished that I lacked desire to do anything really. For many months, my existence was little more than basic survival. And with my digestion so weak, my energy was also very low too.
For a large part of this time, I ate pretty basic meals – essentially whatever I could stick in the oven. Over time, I also started becoming reliant on energy drinks to give me an energetic kick.
Whilst these allowed me to survive, they were not particularly helpful for my longer term recovery. These foods often increased my vata energy, which is the mix of wind and space. Oven cooked foods meant things were generally dried out, whilst energy drinks also increased my frenetic energy. These drinks are also cold, which further cooled my internal fire.
I’ve now been eating food that is more warming, in the literal sense. I’ve gone back to using more grounding and activating spices to balance my meals, with hot, stew-like textures. I also am having warmer drinks too. I now try to have warm water as my drink of choice, sometimes adding a bit of ghee.
This has helped balance my energy, and i t’s also done a lot to improve my digestion. This has meant that more parts of my body are coming back online too, which is also a sign of recovery.
I am of a kapha constitution, which is the mix of earth and water. This means my tendency is to be generally slower moving, and prefer calmer surroundings. I do have a tendency of using a lot of vata energy – I like bouncing around with ideas and sometimes enjoy spontaneous action.
But pitta doesn’t really come naturally. I am not particularly motivated by fire-type behaviours. I rarely have much interest in competition, nor a fiery desire to win. I prefer being much more calm and measured, rather than hot and passionate.
Some live with a very fiery temperament. For them, these things come very naturally. But that also means that their challenge is likely the opposite. This, I think, is where the more traditional idea of burnout comes in. Someone who is so passionate about their work that they do not know how to stop. They are probably lacking stability, and would benefit from grounding foods like homecooked meals. Cooler foods may also help to temper their internal flame too. On a practical level, they need more time to rest and recuperate.
The key point is balance. A fire too hot can burn down the foundations, whilst a fire too cool will fail to keep the engine running.
Understanding our bodies will help us immeasurably with the challenges we face in life. It is often the first signs when something is in imbalance.
The more that we learn to be in tune with ourselves, the easier we can remedy the issue, before it becomes a bigger problem.