When does a specifically Christian mindfulness practice help with burnout?
Christian mindfulness practice can help you get to the heart and soul of your practice. When we are burned out, we often feel numb, overwhelming stress, detachment, and loss of purpose and concentration. Unaddressed, burnout can lead to increased anxiety or even depression.
Christian mindfulness helps us re-center our thoughts and experience of life in the larger purpose that God has for you. As divine image-bearers, we already have purpose, we can exercise our agency and freedom to work, live and move in the world with dignity.
However, burnout can shatter our sense of self.
We may FEEL like we have lost control. A step is to remember the dignity that you have as God’s image bearer. You are worth taking necessary and wise steps to move out of burnout.
Sometimes those steps can feel scary. Most often, they require courage.
Consider the Christian Mindfulness practice posted here to help remind you of your dignity, to build courage to take those steps out of burnout.
Inhale & exhale a few times.
Acknowledge the gift of breath as you draw your breath in. Notice the sensations of your body, muscles and any tension or tense places, as you exhale. Inhale again. Send that breath to the tight places in your body. As you exhale, notice any thoughts of gratitude for abilities that God has gifted you with.
Inhale again with this truth in mind: God, you give me dignity and worth; help me move out of this overwhelming stress and numbness.
Exhale: Thank you for the dignity you have imbued in me. Help me not to forget.
As you invite God into this present moment, may grace be your guide.
You are so so worth it.
For more on Christian mindfulness and how it can help you move out of burnout, click the Home tab to learn more about therapy services I provide, or the Mindfulness book tab for more practical instruction. My book on Christian mindfulness is an award-winning (Outreach Magazine Counseling book of the year, 2022) and practical book that derives from my years of experience as a therapist treating trauma, depression and anxiety with mindfulness as one tool. For more on my experience, click the About Regina tab.