It’s not God.

It’s Creativity—the right hemisphere given voice through the left’s language.

I’m not a psychologist.

I’m not a neuroscientist.

I’m someone who once let my left side run the show somewhere along the way. And not long ago, the show-runner got tired.

On left-dominance

I’m becoming increasingly convinced the more research I do that spiritual experience is just right hemisphere activity in a left hemisphere dominant society.

What surprised me is that I’m not the first person to posit this.

British psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist spent 600 pages arguing in The Master and His Emissary that Western culture has been systematically tilting toward left hemisphere dominance since the Renaissance through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and into now. Each era a little more analytical. A little more literal. A little more suspicious of exactly the kind of experience the mystics were pointing at.

I haven’t read it yet. I’m about to.

On “exiting left”

The topic of lateralization has been on my mind since I wrote a post a few weeks ago about perception and neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s “stroke of insight” which completely altered how she perceived her sense of self as she lost functionality in her left hemisphere.

Just yesterday, I was reading about how to actually activate the right hemisphere. One method is to read, decode, or write highly ambiguous, poetic, or unfamiliar metaphors. Unlike literal language or common clichés—which the left hemisphere handles automatically—processing novel metaphors requires the broad associative networks of the right.

What’s interesting is this would explain why spiritual and religious texts are written the way they are. Koans. Paradox. Symbolism. Poetry. Why the “Truth” is always described as ineffable:

The mystics, saints, and prophets weren’t being cryptic for the sake of it. Whether or not they were aware of it, they were engineering a left hemisphere bypass. The ambiguity was the whole point, a recurring pattern across traditions.

But engaging with esoteric texts isn’t the only method to activate the right hemisphere.

You have two names

Last night I felt myself being called to put down Everything before collecting the missing 2% of things in the game (as the completionist in me wanted) to go sit at my cushion.

Based on my research of ways to quiet the left hemisphere and activate the right, I decided to stack several methods simultaneously: open monitoring meditation, blocking the right nostril for left-nostril breathing only, and whispering one word rapidly on repeat the entire time.

This is what happened:

My eyes rolled up into my head on their own and I had a realization: [My name] is the name of the left hemisphere. “I Am” is the name of the right.1 — Field Note, March 3, 2026

The experiencer has a name. You just forgot it.

My experience

Somewhere along the line, my right hemisphere skills atrophied.

I stopped making art before college. I became increasingly analytical as a coping mechanism—compensating for the shock of actual difficulty when computer science, engineering, and calculus hit me all at once. I pushed deeper into the left side until I became alienated from who I even was and what I wanted outside of my career.

Then I burned out.

And since then? I’ve been unwittingly reconnecting with the alienated half.

Through meditation.

Through imagination.

Through repetition.

Through poetry.

Through stories.

And now—this Substack.

I have a sabbatical coming up where I intend to test this hypothesis directly: that starving the left while feeding the right will produce more of what the traditions called mystical experience. I’ll be doing a 10-day silent retreat followed immediately by a 10-day dark retreat at Hridaya Yoga in two months.

We’ll see what comes out of the dark.

Technically is my ego.

Mystic is my soul.

And I’m trying not to lose either of them in the process.

P.S.

After the meditation, the realization, and most of this post was drafted, I went back to the Everything game and found these quotes waiting for me before the rest of the achievements in the game somehow unlocked without me really doing much of anything:

There are two inseparable halves, the object—which has divided itself into everything through space and time, and the subject perceiving it, which is not in space or time, but only in the present. Every idea of the world dies along with every subject of it.

I’ve given up trying to prove I exist. The proof will be gone soon enough. All I have is myself.

Above me is a watery abyss of no definite form, which can hold my stare forever. It’s me looking at me.

We will continue on our paths as long as we exist here. They might never cross again, or I might see you a thousand more times. You might forget this moment for the rest of your life, or you might have forgotten it already. In any case, you should know that I love you.

Make of that what you will. But I highly recommend this game.

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Footnotes

That thought came to me mid-sphinx pose at my Tuesday night yoga class when the most obnoxiously loud water sound effect blared through the studio speakers. It was so loud the instructor had to get up and turn it down.

I was lying in the front row, eyes closed, trying desperately not to laugh.

That’s when I realized: this is EXACTLY what’s wrong with modern yoga.

Before I even went to the class, I was doing some yin poses for grounding after my post-work meditation session. During this I was wondering about how yoga in the West got so... sterilized for lack of a better word.

Questions this post seeks to answer (or at least get you wondering):

• Why does yoga class feel so hollow / like spiritual bypassing in Lululemon?

• What is yoga ACTUALLY supposed to be?

• How did it get this way?

Brief history

Originally, the word “yoga” meant “union”—union with the Divine. But in the West that word has somehow come to be associated with exotic stretching with a few Sanskrit names thrown in. Yoga was stripped to its bare bones and exported to the West in a format that could be taught in group settings—at your local YMCA, or at a suburban studio like the one I attend.

In order to write this post, I did some research and was pleased to find that this topic has actually its own Wikipedia article already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_in_the_United_States.

I’ll try to summarize it as best I can.

Early “pure” introduction

Yoga was introduced in America in the late 19th century, almost entirely as intellectual and spiritual.

Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed yoga as philosophy (and was mocked mercilessly) for his “Brahma” poem in 1857.

Hindu leader Vivekananda taught it in 1893 as a rigorous spiritual path of meditation and breathwork (pranayama). Notably, he rejected the physical postures (asanas) and hatha yoga entirely, focusing purely on the inner work.

The shift to physical practices

The “sanitization” began when teachers realized Americans were more interested in health and beauty than spiritual liberation.

The practice of yoga as consisting mainly of physical postures began in 1919 when the pioneer of asana-based yoga, Yogendra, brought his system, influenced by physical culture, to the United States.

In 1948, yoga got its Hollywood makeover when Indra Devi opened a studio there. She is credited with making yoga “glamorous” and acceptable to American women by framing it not as a religious ritual, but as a beauty and health regimen for celebrities like Gloria Swanson.

Mass media “whitewashing”

The most explicit example of sanitization in the article comes from Richard Hittleman, who launched the TV show Yoga for Health in 1961.

He strategically omitted or minimized esoteric aspects like kundalini and the subtle body in order to sell millions of books and keep his TV audience from changing the channel.

Although he personally believed the goal of yoga was “pure bliss consciousness,” he presented it publicly as a practical method for physical health, removing the “threatening” non-Christian spiritual elements for the average American.

Other yoga television shows followed, including Lilias Folan’s WCET series Lilias, Yoga and You!, which ran from the 1970s to the 1990s, helping to make yoga acceptable to the American public as well.

Modern fitness focus

By the late 20th century, the transformation from “spiritual union” to “fitness routine” was nearly complete.

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga arrived in 1975 with continuous flowing movement that connects yoga poses together called vinyasas. It gave rise to a spinoff called Power Yoga in the 1990s.

In 1974 there was the creation of Bikram Yoga, also known as hot yoga with studios heated to 105F (41C).

These all turned the practice of yoga into an energetic, sweaty, aerobic exercise.

Cosmopolitanism

The Wikipedia section “Cosmopolitan yoga” is basically all my complaints with actual references. To pull some particular powerful quotes (emphasis my own):

[The historian Jared] Farmer identifies 12 general trends in yoga’s history in the United States from the 1890s to the 21st century:

peripheral to central; local to global; male to (predominantly) female; spiritual to (mostly) secular; sectarian to universal; mendicant to consumerist; meditational to postural; intellectual to experiential; esoteric to accessible; oral to hands-on teaching; textual to photographic representations of poses; contorted social pariahs to lithe social winners.

Considering all these trends, Farmer stated that modern yoga as exercise belonged to Srinivas Aravamudan’s category of the “global popular”, which Farmer glossed as “a postcolonial realm of religious cosmopolitanism.”

In Lasater’s view, American yoga in the 21st century has lost “the gentleness, consistency, and direction of the practice”, replaced by ambition. Lasater believes that many Americans “have conflated asana with yoga.”

History summary

In short, since yoga’s introduction in America about 150 years ago, it was converted from a practice of spiritual union into a secular consumer product.

What was originally included

So now that we’ve established that largely the spiritual side has been cut from modern yoga in America (outside of ashrams and temples that seek to preserve its roots), let’s cover what was originally included before it was secularized to the American public as a fitness routine or stress relief practice. Let’s talk about what yoga was before it became stripped down to just asanas (and maybe some breathwork if you’re lucky).

So what exactly was lost in translation? To understand that, we need to look at what yoga actually consisted of before it became a fitness trend.

The missing limbs of yoga

The Yoga Sutras, written by sage Patanjali (who lived somewhere around 2nd century BCE and 5th century CE), are widely regarded as the authoritative text on yoga. They outline the eight limbs or “branches” of yoga.

It’s helpful to approach this with the understanding that each “branch” that was cut from the ancient tree of yoga builds upon the previous one.

Most Westerners think yoga = asanas (physical postures). So let’s start there, even though asana is actually the third branch of yoga’s eight-limbed path. We’ll build up from what you know to what got left out in order to appeal to the American mass in the past century.

Here’s a diagram to visually understand the branches:

4th Branch: Pranayama

Asana is a way to move energy (prana) around the body physically. This can be experientially observed by most people.

You stretch to feel more awake don’t you? It doesn’t have to be reaching your toes; it can be as simple as stretching a tight neck, reaching your arms overhead in bed, or leaning side to side to stretch a sore back.

Pranayama is simply moving that energy around with the breath instead of stretches. You can also confirm this for yourself by changing the rate of your breath or the duration of your inhales and / or exhales.

If you’re feeling anxious, you’re likely hyperventilating or taking shallow breaths with short exhales. This is the reason that many wellness apps or restorative / yin yoga classes will encourage the extension of the exhale—in order to calm down into relaxation and activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Conversely, you can get yourself more activated, awake, and stressed if you start purposely hyperventilating. You’re pushing more energy through the system / bringing more in with the rapid breaths.

5th Branch: Pratyahara

Now, when the energy can be directed with the body (asanas) and the breath (pranayama), we have 4 questions to answer:

• How can we concentrate that energy?

• Where do we concentrate it?

• What happens when we concentrate it?

• Why do we concentrate it?

Pratyahara answers the first.

It means to withdraw the senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). That means:

• Not focusing on the fake water soundtrack on Spotify

• Not huffing eucalyptus essential oil pouring out of a $25 Amazon diffuser

• Not distracted by complicated flows or sweat pouring off your body from the overheated studio

• Just... turning inward. That’s it. That’s the practice.

6th Branch: Dharana

Once the energy has been awakened with movement and breathwork and the awareness has been withdrawn inward by turning away from the senses, concentration must unfold next to prevent the mind from becoming lost in the only sensory stimulation left: thoughts.

Dharana answers the second question of “Where do we concentrate the energy?” For many this can be the breath or an internally repeated mantra, ideally something steady and arising with little to no effort.

This is where:

• Modern yoga gives you all of 2-5 minutes of “savasana” (corpse pose) at the end of class to “go inwards” before “returning to your body by wiggling your toes and fingers.”

• Seated meditation or yoga nidra (meditation while in savasana) would fit in if modern yoga was more of an esoteric practice.

• The focusing on the breath or mantra starts to become powerful—when the previous branches have been honored in the practice.

7th Branch: Dhyana

This answers the question, “What happens when we concentrate?”

Over time concentration becomes less effortful and instead absorption into the breath or mantra itself unfolds. This is where people will begin to make mystical statements of “becoming the breath,” “becoming the vibration,” or “becoming the practice”.

At this point, you are still aware and sense oneness with the object of your (effortless) concentration (because absorption requires no effort like water into a dry sponge).

This level isn’t casually reached, not with a couple yoga classes a week, especially with no built-in meditation longer than a few minutes with how busy and hectic our modern lives are.

8th Branch: Samadhi

This is the ultimate goal of yoga, answering the question “Why do we concentrate the energy”?

Samadhi is a state of pure awareness, where the absorption isn’t into the object of concentration, but transcending the object so that awareness is absorbed into itself.

I’ll save the deep dive on samadhi for a Level 2 or 3 post, but here’s the essence: this is the blissful state that unfolds when the original meaning of yoga is realized: union with the Divine (the awareness).

My lamentation for modern yoga

Here’s my honest confession: I go to yoga class regularly, and it consistently feels less meditative than anything I do at home in my sacred space. And I don’t know how anyone is supposed to be practicing pratyahara with the stupid playlists and the running water noise from the diffuser (but maybe that’s just me).

Comedic timing

What’s funny is I wrote the above paragraph complaining about the playlist at yoga class, immediately went off to my Tuesday night yin + hatha + vinyasa blend class, and right in the middle of it, the most obnoxious running water sound yet came on for one of the tracks. It was so loud that the instructor had to get up and turn the speaker down.

I was thinking to myself, “man, that sounds like pissing” and then I don’t even know what in my head was like, “ah yes, the soothing sound of Pissing into a Serene Lake”. I was lying up front in sphinx pose with my eyes closed and a stupid grin on my face trying desperately not to bust out laughing. So that’s how this post got its title.

I can’t help but feel like this experience was in direct response to my complaint which is partially why it was extra funny. Normally, sounds like this irk me (misophonia anyone?), but tonight I was able to genuinely smile about it rather than get annoyed (because the only other alternative was to start snickering for no reason in the middle of class).

But now I’m left with the mystery: was it the still small voice or the personality who cracked the joke? Does it matter? Either way, I smiled instead of getting annoyed. Maybe that’s the point.

Practical suggestions

If you feel like yoga class is missing something, you’re not wrong. Here’s what to try at home1:

1. 3 rounds of sun salutations (surya namaskar) to move the energy.

2. 10 minutes of alternate nostril breathing (nadi shodana) to balance the energy.

3. 20 minutes of seated meditation (eyes closed, no music, quiet environment, focusing on breath or an easy mantra) to concentrate the energy.

Wrapping up

Yoga isn’t about touching your toes. It’s about union. And you can’t unite with the Divine if you’re distracted by the sound of someone pissing into a serene lake.

So turn off the playlist. Sit in silence… and see what happens.

P.S.

Update (Dec 27, 2025)

If you’re wondering why yoga has become exotic stretching with a Spotify playlist, I just finished the investigation. It turns out this wasn’t an accident—it was a systemic process to make the soul profitable. Read the full report here: The Numinous Neutered—How the Soul Was Industrialized for Profit

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Footnotes

This is that post, or at least the first part of it.

It can happen to anyone

From those struggling to survive to those who labor and strive, no matter how much you do, there’s always the Next Thing looming in the distance, the finish line receding further and further away into the horizon.

Eventually the human spirit tires of chasing and wonders why it was ever running in the first place.

At one point, it was towards love, but now it only seems to be away from fear.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when that switch happened. Perhaps you can’t remember. I know I can’t.

Fear

Fear uses up a lot of life energy (the will to live) over long periods of time. In a burst, it can save your life in a dangerous situation, jolting you into action, urging you to move towards safety or defend yourself from an incoming attack.

But sustained even mildly over years and decades? You get where we currently are now. Numbed, disconnected, tired, and / or existentially exhausted. All of the above if you’ve already been reduced to ashes.

Ironically enough, resting is HARD at this point. Lying in bed, the thoughts are too loud. Maybe you can’t fall asleep so you drown it out with background noise while you drift off. Yet, even in dreams maybe you’re getting chased or stuck at the office as if working a double.

If the mind is such a hostile place when you’re trying to just rest, why would you want to sit with that during the day, especially when everything needs doing and you’re already running behind from exhaustion?

Something’s gotta give

Either you’re going to becoming a husk of a person going through the motions of the daily grind, your mind either too overactive or too numb to the point where you can no longer truly see what’s right in front of you. Or... you stop... and maybe even turn around to face the other way.

When you stop running, you realize:

• The next promotion will not bring you the peace.

• The next trip will not bring you the satisfaction.

• The next thing will wash right over you.

• And you will still be here.

I’m not saying to quit your job, stay home, or never try to have fun again. I’m also not saying that you should never run, especially if your life truly depends on it (though sometimes we don’t know if it actually does or not).

But if you’ve been chasing that Next Thing with the expectation that it will bring you joy, happiness, or contentment, you’ve already set yourself up for failure. This is what I did for my entire adult life. It’s something I still catch myself doing.

“If I just get this promotion...”

“If I just make this much more money...”

“If he would just propose...”

“If we could just buy a house...”

I would torture myself so much over wanting the Next Thing and how I don’t have it right NOW. I’m a very impatient person, especially if I think I’ve put in enough effort for something. Historically, I’ve never been pleased with where I was and would be so miserable in the process of striving for the Next Thing that when things finally came together (due to time, herculean effort, sheer luck, profound grace, or some combination), I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the results.

And exhaustive efforts with no perceived reward? A recipe for burnout:

“Maybe if I just do / have this instead, then I’ll be satisfied”.

Sound familiar?

Enough is enough

It took me multiple projects getting killed mere weeks before launch back to back within a couple years all while I was gunning for a promotion (which depended on a track record of successful projects) to realize my actions needed to be decoupled from my expectations; they were already decoupled from the results. I didn’t realize this at the time. I just thought I needed to “sublimate my driven ego”, something I knew conceptually that meditation was well-suited for according to Dr. K (my favorite Harvard educated former monk turned psychiatrist) from HealthyGamer.

I had decided in early 2022 after the rubble was settling from an acquisition to start meditating daily, and I was going to need help.

Community practice

This I think was the key. Had I started on my own with some simple guided meditations on a mindfulness app, I think I would have lost interest and fell off.

While counting the breath or visualizing a soothing scene works for some people, that kind of stuff didn’t land with me. I’d tried some things here and there before (YouTube in college for stress and well as Calm and Headspace at another point), but these helped only in a superficial way.

I joined the HealthyGamer Discord’s meditation channel, interested in the community participation and live guided sessions. I took part in these daily when I could and was introduced to new meditative practices including:

• samatha (calm abiding)

• metta (loving-kindess)

• neti-neti (not this, not this)

• and (my favorite) self-inquiry

Many others on the channel also resonated with self-inquiry to the point that the meditation lead took the time to compile an entire YouTube playlist on the topic. I binged all 30ish hours of it in one weekend. I was hooked.

Who are you?

I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole with self-inquiry around the end of April. Who am I if not anything I can witness?

Exactly a month after participating in these meditation sessions daily, I was going about my normal morning routine. I don’t normally talk out loud if by myself, especially in the shower, so I was a little confused why I suddenly said out loud:

“Who are you?”

Instantly, something beneath the usual mental chatter shot back with a crystal clear:

It stopped me in my tracks.

I hadn’t heard that phrase since my childhood. I had completely forgotten about it and yet here it was popping into my mind without any effort or prompt to “dig up” the memory. It was unsettling.

I brushed it aside shortly after, but mild curiosity persisted underneath.

Going deeper

Something was there, something I felt like I’d forgotten long ago, just like the quip in the shower. I was suddenly not so interested in mere stress relief and started craving something deeper.

I was then on the hunt for anything that could point the way: books, videos, lectures, podcasts. I wanted to dig deeper into my mind and beyond it into the stillness, into this sense of “Am-ness”.

About a month later, The Impersonal Life found me in its purest of forms: no cover, no author, no table-of-contents, no foreword, just a raw PDF that felt like it grabbed me. I remember the feeling of the hair on my arms standing on end as if my body was remembering something my mind was failing to process but something else even deeper recognized from my meditations, but in written word. Another weekend, another binge (still my favorite book, BTW).

The outer reaches of inner space

Now was the work of applying teachings. I couldn’t keep solely reading, listening, watching. I had to experience it for myself. Thus began my Jungian-style “psychonautics” (Red Book anyone?), sometimes assisted by a small edible. Later I learned cannabis has historical use as an entheogen.

This stirred up many archetypal images: the carp who became a dragon, the ouroboros, the shepherd, and finally, the Self. Now communication seemed to be established, albeit the signal wasn’t very clear this early on.

The dream

To reiterate, I originally started meditation because I was burnt out from efforts that were either thrown away or didn’t bring me joy.

As of late 2022, I was still trying to do well at work. I was at this point being asked to spearhead a new customer product with a next quarter due date for the beta according to the CEO.

Because of this, I was at my most stressed point yet in my career. Yet, I couldn’t seem to stop caring, striving, even when I felt like I was doomed to fail. I was too scared to let that happen, too terrified to not try.

After a month of frantic struggling to make headway on the mountain of work to come up to speed on the new technology and meet the deliverables, I was feeling as gray as the mid-December sky.

One day, I ended up waking up at 5 AM and wasn’t able to fall back asleep for an hour. As I was drifting off, something was telling me that I had to not rely solely on my brain for answers and to that, I internally approved of any answers that came forward from the rest of my being.

My mind then started to disconnect and it seemed to start talking on its own in snatches of speech. I didn’t take it too seriously and next thing I knew, I was in a vivid dream.

It was a warning of exactly what would happen if I continued down this path: staying late at the office fixing production bugs I caused, all sense of enthusiasm for life gone.

But it didn’t end there.

I was visited by a woman that spoke in a soothing language that captivated me in a trance. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t understand the words, but understood the message of compassion.

Her touch on my heart felt like home and she sang a song that lulled me into a dream within the dream.

Her song accelerated into a waterfall of information that flashed before me against the blackness in white text, words appearing faster than lightning.

I tried to keep up, but it was no use. I only saw one word several times that I recognized just before it would disappear:

God.

I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what was happening. But I knew, somehow, that this wasn't just a strange dream.

P.S.

Update (Dec 31, 2025)

For the undercover mystics and morbidly curtious, Part 2 [Leve 2:Union] is live (forgot to link it earlier):

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• Passion doesn't have to mean smothering

• Love doesn't have to mean strangling

• You can be DEVOTED without being DESTROYED

I'm learning how to let the things I love... breathe.
That's the training that's still ongoing.

I hope to come back someday with my findings.

But for now, this is the field note: I saw the pattern. I'm in it. I'm learning.

Stay tuned.

P.S.

Can we appreciate how this post even came?

1. "I want to meditate, but I'm tired from good work”

2. Pass out for 2 hours on my mat

3. Begrudgingly go to bed

4. Tears come out of nowhere

5. Sudden insight

6. Post flows out from said insight

7. I feel a little better

Apparently even the lessons about not strangling arrive by... not forcing them. Who knew.

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Update (Dec 20, 2025): This is Level 0: Technical. For Level 1: Transitional, read the sequel: God is a Cosmic Masochist—A Meditation on Numbing.

Something that’s come to my attention within the recent years is how prevalent burnout is becoming in the workplace, particularly in tech (which is the only one I really have insight into given being in the tech space for a decade now). The world is churning people up and spitting them out, and most don’t even realize they’re burning until they’re already ash.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

1. How to recognize if you’re burning out (before it’s too late)

2. Two evidence-based practices that actually help

3. Why these work (the science behind completing the stress cycle)

4. How to start today (with a low bar you can actually clear)

It’s not just you

At first I thought it was just me 4 years ago with 2 projects killed back-to-back within the span of 2 years as I was gunning for a promotion to staff-level (went up to 3 axed projects in a row as of 2 years ago, but this time I actually wanted it to be killed... maybe more on that in another post).

But as I talked to more of my friend network in the field, the more I noticed people:

• “crashing out” (at least, a former teammate used those exact words to describe it for them, another had a manic break that shook their entire life up and moved away)

• submitting notice with no jobs lined up to take an intentional gap in employment (a former coworker spent half a year with aging parents and traveling to decompress)

• retiring early / “Barista FIRE” (one former coworker decided to become a crossfit trainer for example, even AFTER a 2 month sabbatical)

• trying to swap out of a toxic job while juggling both scrum meetings and interviews all while getting heat from their manager in 1-on-1s for not meeting expectations under the unreasonable demands (you know who you are)

• OR, at the very least, considering how to make an exit from their current job / switch fields into something else entirely

I realized it wasn’t just my network when my favorite Harvard-educated psychiatrist and former-monk-in-training went on his channel earlier this year to do a video *specifically* on this topic. That was the moment when I went: “Oh shit. It’s not just us struggling”.

What can we do?

Notice the smoke

The first step of handling burnout unequivocally is realizing you actually have it (or are on the way to it). The problem is that it’s hard to detect until you think you’re suffering from depression (this comes up in the video I’ll mention later).

There is a phase called “brownout” which is the usually undetected or ignored stage before getting to full-blown burnout where you can no longer perform basic self-care tasks because even that takes too much energy and you’re just completely spent.

Warning signs you’re approaching burnout (brownout phase):

• You can’t remember the last time you felt excited about your work

• Sleep doesn’t restore your energy anymore

• You’re irritable over small things that wouldn’t normally bother you

• You’re constantly tired, even on weekends

• You’re disconnected from people and activities you used to enjoy

• You’re going through the motions at work but feel no sense of accomplishment

• Self-care feels like “one more thing to do” instead of restful

Warning signs you’re IN burnout:

• You can barely function at basic tasks

• Getting out of bed feels impossible

• You’re experiencing physical symptoms (headaches, stomach issues, constant illness)

• You feel emotionally numb or constantly on the verge of crying

• You fantasize about quitting without a backup plan

• You can’t focus or make decisions

• You feel hopeless about things improving

For a deeper dive into recognizing these patterns, Dr. K’s video on burnout is excellent, but the above gives you the essentials. I cannot recommend enough that you watch this video, even if you don’t think you have burnout. The warning signs are all too easy to miss.

What actually works (and it’s simpler than you think)

I know you’re so exhausted that you’re stuck in the same routine because it requires the least thinking. It requires the least effort when you’re running on fumes. It’s automatic while you’re too busy thinking about the mountain of tasks that loom ahead of you, the never-ending stream of concerning news, the chores that need attending to at home, among many other worries that all add up to an overwhelming load before you even have your morning coffee.

I know because I was there. Hell, I’m still there on some days. Not all of us can just leave and never have to fix yet another last minute feature that product management promised a customer would be available by next quarter (can you tell I’ve considered using spirituality as an escape before?).

BUT...

There is a way to keep the engine from becoming engulfed in flames causing you to make a strategic emergency landing at best and an abrupt crash-landing at worst.

Moving your body (yes, that counts as exercise)

In a later book recommendation post I intend to write, this is the FIRST thing that comes up in the Burnout book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. This book is, and I quote:

for women (or anyone) who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything they have to do, yet still worried they weren’t doing “enough.”

(As a woman in tech, this book hit me like a brick.)

The first chapter of the book explicitly talks about exercise. It’s fundamental to complete the circuit on what they refer to as “the stress cycle”, addressing the “fight or flight” response we have built into us when we’re subject to:

• constant stressors (yes, even just responding to that Slack message from another coworker about that PR needing yet another rebase)

• unconscious microstressors of modern life, the “daily hassles” (think traffic, long lines, someone pinging you while you’re in the middle of debugging that pesky race condition that keeps messing up your unit tests).

To summarize the stress cycle:

• When you experience stress, your body activates the fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline to prepare you to deal with a threat. (Maybe like me you’ve noticed from your fitness tracker / smart watch that your RHR is too high recently)

• In nature, this “stress cycle” completes when you physically respond: you fight the predator, you run away, the threat passes.

• The problem in modern life: Your body doesn’t know the difference between “saber-toothed tiger” and “passive-aggressive Slack message.” It floods you with stress hormones either way.

• But you don’t fight. You don’t run. You just... sit there at your desk trying to figure out when and how to respond. The stress hormones stay in your system, building up day after day.

To complete this cycle, your body needs a PHYSICAL outlet. For example:

• Walk around the block after a frustrating meeting

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator

• Dance to one song (maybe easier if you work from home)

The goal isn’t fitness. The goal is completing the stress cycle via physical movement so those stress hormones don’t stay trapped in your body.

Kurzgesagt also recently put out a great video on modern stress if you’re interested.

Sitting in silence (yes, meditation—but not what you think)

This might be survivor’s bias, but I can honestly say this made a world of difference for me. This is what I would recommend AFTER you’ve tried your best to get regular exercise or some form of physical movement in in direct response to a stressful conversation, meeting, or commute.

I want to emphasize that I AM NOT saying to go sit on a cushion and “focus on the breath” or whatever in RESPONSE to stress. That’s spiritual bypassing. However, ACTUALLY practicing breathwork (pranayama) such as box breathing or simply extending your exhales to be longer than the inhales DOES influence a physiological response to calm you down.

What I AM saying is that building meditation into your routine is immensely beneficial for your mental health. It strengthens the frontal lobes, the part of your brain that controls attention, applies the “brakes” for your amygdala (emotional center), and helps you make decisions... all things that are critical in managing and preventing burnout.

Options for what this could look like:

• Spending the first few minutes of the day only sitting quietly with only yourself when you first wake up as part of your “get ready for work” routine as soon as you roll out of bed, ideally before your brain really “turns on” instead of immediately checking the barrage of notifications / news updates, messages, whatever. Though, if it’s too ingrained as a habit, schedule a chunk of time on your calendar so it turns into an automatic notification reminder (or even schedule an alarm with a nice ringtone if you really need the ability to snooze it for a few minutes). I did the calendar event strategy (though now I no longer follow a strict schedule after several years of daily practice).

• Spending 5 minutes before or after eating your lunch to notice how you feel. Notice the hunger or fullness instead of operating from pure routine or rushing off to the next thing.

• Have your nightly wind-down include meditation. An effective practice is yoga nidra where you lie down and just rest. If you end up falling asleep, great! You needed it! Happens at my local studio all the time.

Doing nothing is hard!

Whether at the start or end of the day, thoughts are going to come. They’re going to snowball at first.

It’s because:

• You’re now NOTICING them. Many times we don’t even realize we’re thinking.

• These thoughts are now being allowed to finally surface after being suppressed with sensory stimuli for days, weeks, months, even years. When was the last time you even sat on the toilet without your phone? Maybe you even listen to podcasts in the shower or while on your commute to “stay up-to-date”?

BUT...

They will not keep snowballing. The surge will subside. This I interpret as the “poison” that comes up in the Hindu legend of the “churning of the ocean” to get to the “elixir of life” (amrita) at the bottom, what I understand as the mind for the “ocean” and the root of being for the “ocean floor” respectively.

The thoughts will become sparse and the gaps of that restful Nothingness will grow like watered seeds. I cannot tell you how long this takes because it directly depends how long you’ve been drowning out your own inner noise with outer noise. For increasingly more of us, that’s been getting longer and longer.

TL;DR

Burnout is growing in the workplace, especially if you’ve been in the field for several years.

My number one advice is to do what the Burnout book calls “the stress cycle” via exercise or physical movement to blow off steam.

The next is to make meditation part of your nonnegotiable self-care routine, as important as showering or eating. You are tending to your brain’s health by doing this and your overall body’s by extension.

You need to let your mind take out the proverbial “trash”, to digest the thoughts of the day (you may notice eventually this happens without your input!), or simply to create silence after waking up instead of a morning doomscroll sesh that creates a negative coloring over your whole already overwhelming day.

Thank you

My thanks for making it this far and I genuinely hope someone finds this post helpful. I needed to read this almost exactly 3 years ago when I was nearly crying at my desk from overwhelming pressure to deliver on a daunting and understaffed project to the point that I needed to take an immediate week off because I was barely functional. My hope is this reaches you before you get that far because not everyone is fortunate enough to have managers that will allow them to take time like this.

Don’t let yourself burnout.

You still have so much life to live and you should feel ALIVE for it, not a husk of a person that used to have motivation and dreams.

That “person” is still in there.

They’re at the bottom of the ocean waiting for you to meet them.

All it takes is some movement and some stillness.

Additional resources

Books

• [Previously mentioned] Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA (non-Amazon link to the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592377/burnout-by-emily-nagoski-phd-and-amelia-nagoski-dma/)

YouTube Shorts

(As you may have noticed, I have a strong bias towards Dr. K’s content because I don’t subscribe to many channels and try to stay off YouTube in general)

• Why do we burnout? https://youtube.com/shorts/-LE5q1GgkyU

• What causes burnout?

• Why software devs keep burning out https://youtube.com/shorts/3IAQoduxAxM

• How to stop burnout at work https://youtube.com/shorts/BYVnZiL2ARo

• Why is everyone so burntout?

P.S. for the seekers

I intend to do a more “spiritual” take on this on a future date because that’s kind of my schtick. This post is more geared towards the strivers like I once was (and honestly, still may be a bit deep down, albeit to a more sinisterly subtle degree now).

Update (Dec 20, 2025)

The "spiritual take" is now live. If you are ready to move from survival (Level 0) to transformation, read the sequel: God is a Cosmic Masochist—A Meditation on Numbing.

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