5 steps to prevent practitioner burnout

Burnout amongst practitioners in the health and natural therapy industries is common. Practitioners are passionate and enthusiastic about helping others - at first everything goes well but then over time they become exhausted and their health suffers.

Why is burnout for practitioners so prevalent these days? Burnout mainly results because practitioners are using ineffective strategies to stay grounded and balanced. A massage student recently told me that his lecturer suggests that practitioners should only give 80% of themselves when working with clients, otherwise they will get ‘drained of their energy’. Restricting yourself in this way or even using crystals or room sprays to ‘protect’ yourself gives you a false sense of security which eventually fades.

The key to preventing burnout is to develop a strong energetic connection so you feel grounded, safe and secure from within, rather than having a need to protect yourself externally. From this space of awareness, you connect more deeply to your clients and can tune into their needs with greater empathy, understanding and wisdom.

So how do you provide 100% of yourself to every client without burning out? The answer lies in having a daily self-practice to help you stay grounded. When you are grounded, you shift your perception of how energy is exchanged. You realise your clients’ energy is the same as your energy. The energy is neither positive nor negative – it’s your mind that judges it in this way. It is similar to when we see a flower. Our mind might tell us that we don't like its colour, fragrance or shape. To another person, however, the flower may be beautiful. The flower itself is neither positive nor negative - it just is. We often judge people in the same way.

If you ‘protect’ yourself from the negativity of others so they don’t drain your energy or transfer their stuff onto you, then do so knowing this is a temporary measure. It’s like training wheels on a bicycle, providing support until we are grounded from within ourselves. Then, we realise there is nothing from which to protect ourselves because this need for protection arises out of fear. Although this fear may feel genuine based on past experiences, superstitions, or beliefs, ultimately it arises from our mind judging others and external conditions as ‘negative’. We react in this way because we feel uncomfortable physical, mental or emotional sensations.

When we accept these uncomfortable sensations and focus less on the external world around us, we cultivate a strong energetic connection from within. To help you to be grounded in this way, try the following ‘five step self-practice’:

1. Transcend duality – let go of your fears, superstitions, beliefs and attachments to ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Be responsible for your own uncomfortable sensations.

2. Centre yourself – build your energetic centre with Meditation, Qi Gong, Yoga or Reiki.

3. Be mindful – take 10 breaths anytime, be aware of your five senses when you brush your teeth, walk, and eat. Sit with trees, walk in nature, play with an animal.

4. Be kind to yourself – relax and nurture eg take a bath, read, play music. Move your body and exercise. Eat wholefoods, and snack between clients eg eat nuts or fruit.

5. Keep hydrated – water in your belly is grounding. Drink it between clients!

With daily self-practice, you’ll feel confident to give 100% to your clients without burning out.

Free healthy recipes

Holding Reiki Courses from my home has given me a wonderful opportunity to prepare home-cooked, vegan meals for students.

Some of my favourite recipes, including the 'Divine Date Blissbombs' as they have become known in my family are available below (or you can download a copy on my website. So feel free to get creative in the kitchen...

And remember if you are looking for quick healthy snacks on the run, grab a banana or a piece of fruit, some nuts or dried fruit, or carry some 'salty live seeds' with you.

Divine Date Blissbombs

1 cup organic pitted dates
½ cup organic walnuts
¼ cup organic sunflower seeds
¼ cup organic raisins
1 tbsp organic unhulled tahini
Organic desiccated coconut and love

Place dates, walnuts, sunflower seeds and raisins in a blender or chop very finely. Then place mixture in a bowl, mix in tahini. Hand roll into small balls. Roll balls in coconut. Store in fridge.

To make chocolate version, add heaped tablespoon of raw cacao powder when you mix in tahini.

To make superfood version, add goji berries, chia seeds, psyllium, spirilina or any superfood you like.

To make apricot and macadamia nut blissbombs, replace the dates with apricots and the walnuts with macadamia nuts.


Raw breakfast oats

1 cup of ‘live’ oats (soaked in ½ cup of room temp water overnight)
1 organic apple chopped
1 organic banana chopped
Tbsp Goji Berries
Tbsp Pumpkin seeds
Tbsp Sunflower seeds
Tsp Chia Seeds
Tsp Psyllium
Tbsp LSA
Tbsp Love

Add extra warm water to the live oats to create oat milk and desired consistency. Mix together with other ingredients.


Quinoa Salad

1 cup cooked Quinoa (or sprouted Quinoa seeds for live-food version)
Chopped organic capsicum
Chopped organic shallots
Chopped organic celery
Chopped raw organic broccoli (soak for 1 minute only in boiled water)
Chopped organic tomatoes
Organic olives
Olive oil
Vinegar
Ground coriander
Salt and pepper
Love

Mix Quinoa with vegetables. Make a dressing from oil, vinegar, herbs and spices. Mix together.


Hot Cacao Drink

1 cup boiled water
1 heaped tsp raw organic cacao
Honey or rice syrup
Love

Mix cacao with water. Add sweetener to taste. Makes a wonderful hot chocolate alternative for these chilly winter nights.


Raw Hummus

1 cup of 1cm sprouted chickpeas (to sprout, soak chickpeas for 24 hours, then rinse chickpeas in
water twice per day until sprouts appear)
3 tbsp organic unhulled tahini
2 tbsp organic lemon squeezed
Filtered water
Himalayan salt
Ground Cumin
Ground Coriander
Dried or fresh coriander
Paprika
Sprinkle of Love

Soak sprouted chickpeas for 1 minute in boiled water (let boiled water stand for 1 minute before
soaking chickpeas). Drain and blend chickpeas in food processor, with tahini, lemon juice and water until you have created desired consistency. Add salt, herbs and spices to taste. Store in fridge for up to 3 days.


Live Salty Seeds
Organic sunflower seeds
Organic pumpkin seeds
Few drops of organic tamari sauce
Few drops of love

Mix seeds with tamari. Warm and dry seeds in sunlight or in a cool oven (set to under 100 degrees celsius).

For cooked version, lightly dry fry seeds in fry pan until they brown. Add tamari to taste. Let the seeds cool or eat warm.

Bon Appetit! :)

Healthy eating around Brisbane

I keep putting it out there to the universe that someone opens a chain of 'LOVE food cafes' around town very, very soon. Until then, here's a few places you might like to try out:

Planet Matterz, Morningside

Fundies Organic Wholefoods Cafe, Paddington

Wrays Organics, Newmarket

Sol Breads, Paddington, West End, & Newstead

The Forest, West End

Northey St Organic Markets, Windsor

Green Grocer, West End

Mrs Flannery's Organic Supermarkets

Leavain Bakery: Shop 8, 38 Junction Rd, Morningside for sourdough bread

We order our fresh veges and fruit from local growers through Food Connect. Or you could shop at the Northey St Markets on Sundays 6-10.30am.

Bon Appetit!!

How to put some LOVE-in your food

Food is affected by the environment in which it is grown and the consciousness of the people preparing our food. Make your next meal with LOVE and see how yummy it tastes!

Everyone can do this, whether you have learnt Reiki or not. As you wash and cut your vegetables and fruit, connect with them. Be grateful for the earth and water and sun that helped them to grow, the farmers that planted and picked them, and everyone else involved getting the food to you. Smell its freshness, be bedazzled by its colour, and finally savour its taste. You and the people eating the food receive the LOVE too.

And next time you dine out, take a look around and get to know who prepared your meal. If they are stressed, under pressure or just want their shift to end, that's the vibration you receive as you eat your meal!

We eat how we are

You've probably heard of the saying 'you are what you eat'. The connection between what we eat and our health is becoming more obvious as heart-disease, obsesity and diabetes rates increase. Many people are realising that their reliance on overly processed or fast-food due to their fast-paced lifestyle is making them sick, overweight and depressed. Some continue to eat in this way, others are moving towards organic food, organic gardening and home-cooking with wholefoods (not tinned or packaged food). We eat to match the pace of our life, our state of mind, and our level of consciousness. Thus, we eat how we are.

I've been inspired by Gabriel Cousens MD whose brilliant book, Spiritual Nutrition has helped me to join more dots between what I eat, energy, and spiritual awareness.

Here's a few insights from Gabriel's book:

• Food is condensed cosmic energy.

• Without proper digestion to assimilate the different energy levels and foreign forces of food into our body, food would make us ill.

• Our relationship with food is more than just adding up calories, vitamins and minerals; it's about understanding the subtle vibration from its energy field.

• Food is affected by the environment in which is it grown and the consciousness of the people preparing it. So add some LOVE.

• Food supplies only 10% of our body's energy needs (that explains why some people survive eating only unhealthy fast-food). Pure cosmic energy is the primary nutrient that we all take into our system - we get it through meditation. Other sources include sunlight, oxygen, sexual energy and the earth's Geomagnetic Energy.

• Six Foundations for Spiritual Life are: nutrition (vegan, organic, live-food); building prana (through yoga, reiki, tai chi etc); service and charity (to see our attachment to things); spiritual guidance and inspiration; silence (meditation, prayer, mantra); Kundalini awakening (shaktipat initiation).

Read more about Gabriel's work.

"For diet to be truly effective,
it needs to be in the context
of a full spiritual life of meditation,
good fellowship,
right life,
and loving our neighbours
as our true self."

Gabriel Cousens

A little quote to inspire...

Here's a little quote that might inspire you to go beyond your comfort zone:


A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future.

You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

Denis Waitley

Stepping out of your Comfort Zone

I've tried a few new things lately to consciously get myself out of my 'comfort zone'. For me being such a private person, it's easy to stay cocooned in a world of comfort, with regular routines, same-old-same-old behaviours. But wow... when you go beyond your comfort zone, the results can be quite liberating and amazing.

One of my recent experiences has been volunteering at a Brisbane-based hospital doing 'hands and feet massages' for people in the Intensive Care Unit, Coronary Care Unit and the Oncology Ward. It's been very opening, heart-warming and a bit nerve-racking all at the same time. Though I quickly realised how simple it is to face all those uncomfortable and unfamiliar sensations.

After week 2 I became comfortable stepping outside of my 'comfort zone'. I overcame embarrassment from not knowing exactly what to do, fear of rejection of approaching people who didn't want a massage, the uncomfortable session of being with people who are uncomfortable themselves, and of course a few smelly feet.

I'm now keen to embrace all new experiences and all the discomfort that goes with them. As I realise how easy it is to expand my comfort zone :)