Burnout Isn’t Inevitable: How Grounding and Ongoing Learning Keep You in Love With Your Work
You know that drained, foggy feeling after a long day of clients — when you can’t tell if it’s your energy or theirs weighing you down? Or when work starts to feel mechanical, like you’re just going through the motions?
Do you ever come home from work and feel the headache your first client had, the shoulder pain of your third client and the low back pain of your last client?
One Reason Burnout Happens
A lot of manual therapists struggle with this, especially in the first year of practice, but some never fully figure it out. It’s not your fault. You just haven’t learned to stay grounded and centered while you’re working.
Studies show that focused work is good for our mental health If we can maintain our focus, our work should feel refreshing, not draining.
One thing I enjoyed teaching at TCSM was grounding and centering, and the difference between the two. When I was in massage school, we talked about it and they gave us the exercise from the intro to massage book with tree roots growing out from the bottoms of your feet. I won’t bore you with the details on that one—let’s just say it didn’t stick with me.
I learned a much more effective way to ground and center from a therapist I saw for a few years. She did Rapid Eye Technology, (think EMDR on steroids) and other energy work. So she had a lot of experience with grounding and centering to be fully present without projecting her own stuff on her clients, or taking theirs home with her.
I’ll share what she taught me in a video on social media, so go check that out when you get a chance. But here is is for you to read over.
Step 1: Whole Brain Posture.
Cross your right leg over your left leg.
Cross your left arm over your right arm, turn your palms toward each other and interlace your fingers.
Rotate your hands toward your body (supinate your hands) while maintaining interlaced fingers.
They call this Whole Brain Posture because it stimulates the corpus callosum, that part of your brain where right and left sides communicate. This posture helps to synchronize your brain hemispheres for clearer function. (Side note: You can reverse legs and arms—you just need to have opposite leg and arm in front.)
Step 2: Ground Yourself
Visualize a cocoon of white light being spun around you. You could make it any color, especially if you’re used to working with colors, but I like to use white because I think it doesn’t add any bias to your self talk in the next step.
Define the cocoon. Tell yourself that this cocoon creates a barrier between you and your client, and that your energy stays inside the cocoon, and everyone else’s energy stays outside the coccoon. Of course you could use this in your personal life, or in a class, a big crowd, etc. This is how I ground.
Step 3: Centering Self-Talk
Still in Whole Brain Posture, with my grounding cocoon around me, then I have a little self-talk. You can adapt this to use for other situations, but here is what works for me with clients:
I am centered, balanced, and calm.
I am using both sides of my brain to bring in the best technical skills needed for this client (left side), as well as all of the creativity, freedom of searching, and artistic expression I have available. I am giving 100% of what I have available today, to give the best treatment within my skillset.
I am focused on what’s under my hands, the human being on the table, someone’s baby, and I am leaving all of my personal concerns outside this room.
I am centered, I am balanced, I am calm, and I am focused.
I did this religiously probably for the first year or so of my practice, until grounded and centered just became how I show up in the treatment room. Every now and then when I’m extra tired, stressed, or have a client who is more difficult than others, I will pull this out before the client arrives and use it to bring up my skill level for the day.
It’s important to ground and center for every client so you can be worth what they are paying, and so that you don’t take their issues home with you, or send yours home with them. Taking on other people’s stuff causes more burnout than the physical labor of manual therapy, hands down (pun intended).
Staying grounded and centered helps us to listen better to the body, which naturally makes us more effective. If my mind isn’t clear, if I’m foggy, stressed, distracted, or enmeshed with my client too personally, I will have a hard time being objective about what I’m feeling under their skin. Ineffectiveness also leads to burnout. As bodyworkers, effectiveness is important to us, since very few of us got into this line of work just to make money. Yes, we are making a living, but most of us are naturally driven to help others.
Prevent Burnout By Continuing to Grow and Learn
Learning keeps you focused and engaged. What has driven me to learn over the years has been my own personal need to grow in skill. What drives that need is my need to be able to help the people who come to me for help.
Few things are more frustrating than being paid to help someone, only to realize you lack the skills needed to make a difference.
Whenever I would have clients that I wasn’t getting anywhere with, or I found myself referring them out to other more experienced therapists, I would find a class to take that would enhance my skills, hoping to meet more people’s needs. Usually it proved helpful.
It was hard determining which classes to take at first. I lacked the experience to know what worked and what didn’t in manual therapy, and I ended up wasting money on a few classes that I wasn’t impressed with.
You can always take something away from a class, even if it’s just a concept or a way of thinking. I’ve had people tell me that if they get one technique they can use in their office they are happy. I’m like, whaaaat? I guess I’m a lot more demanding than that.
When I take a class, I want to understand the anatomy we are treating in the class better, and I want to use every single technique taught. I prefer the techniques to be taught in a step-by-step way, not just explained and demonstrated quickly. I want to be able to pull out my manual and my notes later and replicate the technique with my clients to make sure I got everything I could out of the class.
Study groups are helpful, too, or even a trade buddy from the class.
Once I found Craniosacral Therapy, I felt like I struck gold. Then I chanced into a manual osteopath’s office and ended up taking his classes for bodyworkers, repeating them and assisting him for 10 years or so. He was such an amazing teacher.
I was also teaching at TCSM during that time, getting experience and learning from Rebecca how to build curriculum. I guess that’s how I got so picky about what classes I take now. Revamping the curriculum almost quarterly until we finally had it just about perfect taught me a lot over the years about quality of work and how there is always room for improvement. Now when I take a class, like the ones from the Barral Institute, I expect (and usually receive) high retention of the material.
The last time I took a class I had noticed I was getting a little bored in the treatment room, before attending the class. But after I returned from learning for four days straight, I could hardly wait to get my hands on my clients again, and every client who came in felt likle a new challenge, even if they were a returning client.
It really is inspiring to keep learning. I think if I keep learning I’ll keep treating until I’ve got at least one foot in the grave, if not both. You just can’t not treat people when you know that there’s a good chance you can help them.
The work I do now does require a great amount of focus—back to grounding and centering. But like I mentioned, focused work is good for our mental and physical health. Most days, at the end of the day, I feel like I got a treatment. My mind is clear, my heart is open. This is sustainable for me. Some days I even wish I had one more person so I could try my hand at solving another puzzle.
Dynamic Integrative Therapies has saved my bodywork practice, and kept me happy and in my work.
If you want to feel refreshed, focused, and clearer after a full day of clients — not drained — it’s possible. It starts with grounding yourself, centering your energy, and staying engaged in learning that inspires you.
If you’re ready to get your feet wet with a more focused and effective way to work and connect with the humans in your treatment room, sign up for one of my classes. I would love to share this work with you.
Follow me on social media and check out the video I did on grounding and centering.
