Self-care, if it is to have continuous value in our lives, should be anchored into moving toward what we value.

As our economy and society have often been insensitive to the natural order — taken her for granted and assumed an infinite supply of materials to consume. Our work has followed this basic assumption as well — that people will continue to give endlessly of themselves for those productivity margins.

Certainly when we experience burnout we need to find ways to address our compromised wellbeing. But the larger issue of burnout work culture needs to place a wider responsibility on the systems that produce them. No amount of essential oil baths or stretching exercises are going to fix your toxic work environment or provide compassion-centered... See more

From this compassion-centred framework, we are creating resilient workplaces not just resilient workers. Wellbeing becomes a focus of work environments.

Rather than being merely reactive to workplace concerns, are there ways in which workplace leadership and community members can identify potential threats to burnout prior to it happening?

If we think that burnout happens because of weaknesses or vulnerabilities of an individual worker, then we are less likely to assess work environments and work cultures that cultivate burnout as a logical outcome to poor working environments, hostile work cultures for those with marginalized identities, unreasonable work expectations, ineffective... See more

When we constrain our self-care practices to avoid something bad from happening, we deprive self-care of its fundamental value in our lives. It turns self-care into an obligation, a purely defensive maneuver, or a method of somehow recovering a lost sense of motivation, morale, and hope for the future.

Burnout is the shared responsibility of both the individual, the organisation, and our work culture. We have increasingly become a burnout culture and is is salt on the wounds of so many people who are struggling to suggest that the problem is that they are not doing enough yoga.