35: From Burnout to Renewal: Aligning Body, Mind, Heart & Soul ft. Dr. Ioana Popa

Burnout doesn’t come with bells and whistles.

It rarely shows up as one dramatic moment. More often, it’s a quiet fade—less joy, more heaviness, Sunday night dread, getting sick the second you finally slow down.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Dr. Ioana Popa—physician psychiatrist, Christian spiritual care and life/leadership coach, and co-founder of Team for the Soul—for a conversation about what she calls hidden burnout, especially in high-capacity Christians who feel called to serve.

If you’ve ever felt guilty for resting…
If you keep pushing because “this is what God called me to do”…
If you’re doing all the right things, but joy feels far away…
This episode is for you.

What We Cover in This Episode

• Dr. Ioana’s journey from psychiatry to spiritual care + coaching
• Why burnout often goes unnoticed until it’s severe
• The stress phases (and why chronic stress can feel like “I’ve got this”)
• Hidden signs of burnout: Sunday blues, vacation sickness, constant buzzing stress
• Why guilt is one of the biggest mindset traps for believers
• Boundaries as humility—not selfishness
• The power of stepping back so others can rise
• The Renewal Blueprint: a daily rhythm to regenerate body, mind, heart, and soul
• Why the body is often the fastest route back to regulation
• Breath, sleep, and water as non-negotiables for sustainable health
• A powerful reminder: emotions are meant to be visitors, not residents

Hidden Burnout Is Real

Dr. Ioana shares that she burned out twice—despite being trained in mental health—because burnout can disguise itself as productivity. It sounds like:
“Just one more mountain… then it’ll get easier.”
But the mountains keep coming.

The Renewal Blueprint

This isn’t a rigid routine or another to-do list. It’s a flexible framework that helps you build daily “mini renewals”:

• Morning reset
• Midday pause
• Afternoon separation from the day
• Night restoration

Small habits. Consistent rhythms. A blueprint you can pivot with in any season.

Connect with Dr. Ioana Popa

Website: teamforthesoul.com
LinkedIn: Dr. Ioana Popa
Free Resource: Daily Renewal Template
Podcast: Thriving in Christ

Final Encouragement

Friend, your body was designed to whisper before it has to scream. Burnout is not a badge of honor—and rest is not rebellion. Let this episode be your permission slip to return to sustainable rhythms, in a way that honors God’s design.

Be blessed—and I’ll see you next week.

✨ Ready to shift from fear to faith in your body? Discover the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck—your daily reminder that God designed your body with wisdom and resilience.
Get yours here → drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body

✨ Your body has been trying to tell you something.

Find out what it's saying with the free 30-second Body Signal Decoder Assessment. Pick your signal, get your personalized guide straight to your inbox, and finally start making sense of what's going on inside.

Get it here: os.drbrooksheehan.com/decoder

🎧 And if you caught the mention of the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck during the episode, here's where to grab yours. 63 scripture-anchored cards to help you trust the body God designed for you.

Get yours here: drbrooksheehan.com/cards

📱 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐ If this episode spoke to you, would you take a second to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify? It helps more women find this show. And more women learning to listen to their bodies is exactly why I do this.

Transcript

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (00:00)

Burnout doesn't come with bells and whistles. I call it the hidden burnout. We understand stress in two ways. The stress, the actual event. But we also understand stress the way we respond in our body. We get into acute stress when we know it. I'm stressed. I don't know, we have to push through it. But then when we move into the second phase of resistance in the chronic stress, we don't know it anymore because the body, God ordained brain is producing lots of stress hormones, utilizing and mobilizing energy.

Welcome to the body speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brook Sheehan. Join me, on a journey, in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you - the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and wellbeing. It’s time to discover them, together. Let’s dive in.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Welcome, welcome to another episode of your body speaks. I'm Dr. Brook, of course, your host and I am so excited to share with you a new dear friend of mine that I know all of you will come to love and adore just like I have just by listening to her  podcast you guys. This is the first time I get to meet her in person but I have come to love and adore her from the podcast and just all the amazing things she teaches.

So I'm so excited for you guys to get to know her. I want to read her bio so you know who she is. This is Dr. Ioana Popa, and she is a physician psychiatrist, Christian spiritual care and life and leadership coach, executive coach, and speaker. She's completed her MTS degree at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts with a focus on spiritual care.

She is the co-founder and CEO of the Team for the Soul Institute in which she provides coaching, consulting, and spiritual care for Christian professionals and servant leaders, as well as executives and their team to regenerate daily, prevent burnout, move from grief to hope, and transform towards higher potential in Christ in order to keep on giving to others. This is gonna be such an amazing conversation.

She does provide training to the public through her Thriving in Christ podcast, which that's the one I was talking about, and her YouTube show. She presents at conferences, leads workshops, and retreats at churches, nonprofits, schools, and other organizations. Dr. Ioana I'm so excited you're here. Thank you so much.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (01:39)

Thank you so much Dr. Brook for having me. What a joy!

Dr. Brook Sheehan (01:43)

It's gonna be so fun. So I want to jump right into it. And one of the first questions I love asking is really just sharing with our listeners about your journey. You know, a lot of what I just read there and shared is so remarkable. So going from psychiatry to actually co-founding Team for the Soul. So how did God take that windy road? What did he do in your life to get you to where you're at right now? Helping people prevent burnout?

And then was there a defining moment in that journey to get here?

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (02:15)

Thank you. What a great question. It is a winding road. It's so interesting because I went to medical school just for the pure reason that my parents wanted me to. They really told my sister, okay, go to medical school. And I was like, okay, I love learning. I said, when it's going to be my turn, it's fine. You know, I had to learn physics and biology and chemistry. I love this science stuff.

So I went to medical school and I realized that I love I did more OBGYN in school and I was thinking about doing that in surgery and then I realized I actually love talking with people. I love learning about the mind. We had access to Freud's copies. This is back in Romania. So this was kind of an underground copy of Freud. When I was 14, I was reading like, my goodness, this is so fascinating. So I thought, oh, I will go do psychiatry.

So when we moved to United States, this is what I applied and did. And what was interesting, if to summarize my journey, which is indeed long, but I started caring for the body and then through psychiatry really attending to the mind and to the heart, something was missing though. So through, as I was practicing psychiatry, I was drawn to the spiritual aspect and realized that there was something more as a faithful Christian, it's not really captured in the way psychiatrists practice.

And mind you, three decades ago when I was doing my residency training, you couldn't talk about spirituality. Nowadays, it's so much more common to really have these conversations, but not back then. So something was missing and was tugging at my heart. Long story short, at some point, we had to move several times and I homeschooled my kids.

At some point, I quit psychiatry, then came back to psychiatry. I did education in high school and middle school and college. I was searching to something that was missing and clearly I love teaching and educating, but the piece that was also missing was that spiritual care. And this is when I trained as a life and leadership coach and then I did my master in theological studies. That was a piece that was missing to really be able to integrate the soul as well.

Now I am doing what I'm doing. I started coaching about 10 years ago and then with my husband, we co-founded Team for the Soul 2019, right before COVID as a family company. And I realized that during COVID, there were two opposite scenarios. On one hand, people who were on the front line,

Dr. Brook Sheehan (04:36)

No.

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (04:51)

And really the numbers were low, like in hospitals, and my husband is a chaplain, they were overburdened. So some of my friends were overburdened and constantly had to be on and on and on. And others like me, I was stuck in the home. Mind you, it was not such a big deal. I was still doing my sessions online and I realized how can I support I'm here stuck at home.

And I had a friend who was a physician and he inspired me and said, you got to do something. The burnout is really rampant. So I started, I took a class on how to start a course online. And this is where I started the renewal in action and the renewal blueprint in trying to integrate all that I knew from medicine and science, from psychology, from spiritual care. I took some classes in chaplaincy and also Christian faith.

So why bringing everything together? How do we align body, mind, heart and soul on a daily basis, morning, midday and afternoon and night? Because I love the prayers of the hours. And I'm like, there's something about spiritual traditions that reminds us of that. So this is how I came to develop that. And I've been helping a lot of students and my clients with this regeneration blueprint. I use it myself. And you asked me about a defining moment. That was a defining moment during COVID.

But the realization that I had personally is like, my goodness, I burned out twice in my life and didn't even know it too much. It was just stress and, you know, a sense of heaviness and lack of joy. So if I burn out and I am in the field, having all this knowledge, what happens to the people that they don't? I realize I need to help them do something because burnout doesn't come with bells and whistles. And that's why I burned out twice.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (06:13)

Mmm. Mmm.

And a lot of times, sometimes burnout shows up just all of a sudden. You're just kind of going around your day doing, and then boom, it's like a thief in the night, that terminology, right? Like a silent snatcher of joy and all the things in your life. Whoo, yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (06:46)

Yes.

I love that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (07:00)

And what a journey God has brought you on to get to the point that you're able to not only do what you do and help people in the way that you are, but to team up with your husband that you guys can do this together, which is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. And one of the things I want to kind of hit on that you just said about body, mind, heart, soul, in the health and wellness world, it really is just physicality a lot of times. And, and then sometimes they'll start to go, okay, well, yes, you're having physical symptoms of anxiety.

Maybe you should go see a therapist. Maybe you should just go talk to somebody, right? Let's just go get under therapy. And so somebody goes, okay, I'm gonna go just do therapy. And then they sit in a chair and they're talking and nothing's getting resolved because they've got all this other stuff going on. So yes, maybe they address the mental with therapy, but maybe they don't even hit on some of the emotional childhood traumas or things that they've endured in their life. And then the spiritual component is so huge.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (07:52)

Yeah.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (07:53)

And so with my clients and my patients I'm always talking about the four pillars of health which is physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. You have to have all four standing in order to really truly be able to embody what it means to be a human on this earth that God placed our souls on, you know, in. That being said, I want to because you talked about two, I would like you to actually, I know this wasn't one of the questions I had prepared for you, but you had talked about the two times you burnt out.

I know you are making time for the simple joys in your life, but when those burnouts first happened, where did you find, what kind of situation did you find yourself in in terms of mentally where you just like, I just can't do this anymore. What did life look like during those two burnouts for you?

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (08:40)

What a great question. And if I can pause and just say, I meant  what  you said before body, mind, heart and soul. Yes, this is so important. And I found out that many people in this space are addressing either the mind and the spiritual and the body or just the mind and the spiritual or some combination of it. But all four are important. So I'm so glad we're such kindred spirit. And it is.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (08:44)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (09:04)

It is coming from God's wisdom because that's how he created us. Emotions are essential in our lives. Thoughts and mind is essential. We need our body, obviously, and there is a spiritual component. So, yeah, thank you for that. And if you're listening, yes, listen to Dr. Brook. She is right.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (09:06)

Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (09:22)

Absolutely. And coming back to your question, the reason I didn't recognize it is because burnout doesn't come with bells and whistles. I call it the hidden burnout. From a medical perspective, if I can just do a short parenthesis here, when we go under stress, we understand stress in two ways. The stress, the actual event, it could be huge event, catastrophic, or for everyone could be life altering event or it could be just the daily hassles.

But we also understand stress the way we respond in our body. So the stress as a response, we get into acute stress when we know it. I'm stressed. I don't know we cannot, we have to push through it. But then when we move into the second phase of resistance in the chronic stress, we don't know it anymore because the body, God ordained brain is producing lots of stress hormones, utilizing and mobilizing energy.

So we feel like, I got it. I have 20 balls in the air. Guess what? I can do it. Give me more. And I'm just sleeping five hours a night. Great. I can do it. I can push through it. So it is we're not educated well enough around the risks of this. So I'm  a physician. Right. So I should have known this. And obviously part of my brain knew that. But when it happens, it's a lived experience. It's a total different situation. So.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (10:25)

Right.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (10:44)

By the time we go into the exhaustion phase, this is where we say, ⁓ my goodness, yes, I am in chronic stress. my goodness, I am in burnout. Yes, mental health issues might come or physical issues that might come. So for me, the way it came, I had no joy. I felt constant, almost like a buzzing stress that was behind the scenes and just life kind of felt gray. mmm, I was blessing the juices.

Mind you, that helped me and propelled me, was also a call to self to something different. So this is where I made some transitions. I was invited to be a medical director and I got so excited the first two days. And then I noticed I was so stressed about it because I realized, wait a minute, if I want to bring more into my life, this is not the direction I want to go. I wanted to teach, but you know, we make mistakes and God really harvest them as well.

So for me was just a sense of running behind the schedule, difficulty relaxing, the sense of no joy and just this sense of, I don't like it. And I keep, I always keep hearing in the back of my mind, ⁓ this is going to pass. I'm just going to push this mountain. And then in a week or two or a month, I'll be over and it'll be over, gone.

It wasn't gone. It was another mountain and another mountain. So I realized, okay, this is actually life. This is the river of life. So I need to make better choices. For some people, though, it might come with problems with sleep. It might come with more depression or anxiety or physical symptoms like chronic pain or high blood pressure or decreased immunity. And I actually had that. And as a listener, you might appreciate this.

I was at that time teaching at a school and vacation would start the first two or three days I would be sick. I'm like.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (12:40)

Yes. Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (12:41)

This is because we're in that chronic stress and our immunity is low. So if you experience that, know that this is a subtle sign or Sunday night blues. That was another one that I've experienced like, not Monday again. Or you go on a vacation and you're so happy and all of a sudden you come back like, ⁓ no, a hundred emails. I don't want to do this anymore. Those things are important signs that whoops, something is happening. So we want to pay attention.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (12:44)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah, that is so good because God did create these bodies with so much wisdom and they don't respond well when we continue to push and pushing beyond its capacity, right? And you mentioned, okay, finally getting to the holiday break at school and then spending the first three days of that break just sick in bed, because it's almost like you slammed up against a wall and you were going full speed ahead, 100 miles an hour down the road.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (13:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (13:36)

Go, go, go, go, go, and then crashed into something. And it's just, of course it's gonna fall apart. And it's like you said, tank your immune system. And one of the ones that I share too is like another hidden sign of burnout is consistently dry skin because your body's trying to pull in moisture to help your lungs.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (13:50)

Hmm

Dr. Brook Sheehan (13:54)

Take the exhale because you're shortening, you're not breathing deeply anymore. And so if you're constantly having to put lotion on over and over and over and over again, pay attention. Dr. Ioana is right. There are these subtle red flags to pay attention to and not dismiss. So, that's so beautiful. And I love the term hidden burnout because that's exactly what it is. It's like, you're just going along, not knowing. And then all of a sudden, like you said, Sunday blues or…

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (14:10)

Yeah.

Okay.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (14:22)

These things that are happening to you that have never happened before, and you're just trying to understand what is going on. So I want to transition a little bit to a lighter note. What are some of your little daily habits or the mini renewals that you practice that help you stay refreshed? And then how do you personally regenerate on the go during a really busy day? So you don't fall into those burnout anymore.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (14:46)

Yes, yes. And I'm going to start by sharing the foundation of that from a biological perspective. As a listener, and you might have heard about the sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system fight or flight versus the relaxing or smart vagus is another popular term is a popular term now. So our bodies, we live now so much more into active fight or flight.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (14:50)

Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (15:09)

So when we do that and we don't regenerate, when we regenerate, we move into the more the relaxing nervous system. But nowadays we are bombarded with opportunities, especially in the Western countries. We have a lot of online abilities. We're on our phones, news, social media, movies. I mean, we have access to a lot of amazing things and nonetheless, they all pull for our attention. So invariably we live a lot in our sympathetic nervous system.

And we don't have time to regenerate and really shift into the more the relaxing nervous system. And when I was, I love a meditation and Christian contemplation. So I was doing my training in mindfulness and I was reading, even before that, I was reading about some research that was done with Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns. They did, they use electroencephalogram, the EEG, and they wired them…

Dr. Brook Sheehan (16:02)

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (16:04)

To see their brain activity. And what was interesting before, you know, when I practiced medicine, there were a lot of wires and the machines weren't able to pick up high frequency for this. How is this important? Well, nowadays with the technology, the computers are able to pick much higher frequencies of vibration.

So they discovered there were gamma waves that these practitioners of meditation and mindfulness and silence, they were producing when they were actually almost like incorporating, balancing the sympathetic, the active nervous system and the relaxing nervous system. So I realized that it is possible. All we need is to break the cycle. If we don't have to stay go, go, go all the time, if we just pause.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (16:46)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (16:54)

And the best way to do it is putting a timer because then we go more into the God's timing that it feels timeless. So our mind can unhook and just stay a bit offline so that we can really stay more in the silence. Another way to think about it, the left brain, you know, cause and effect, very logical, can relax even for 10 minutes. And then we can access more into our right brain, our intuition, our wisdom where insights just pop up.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (17:02)

Yes.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (17:22)

God's voice, might hear different insights and words. Some people get a lot of insights, know, when taking a shower, taking a walk, right? We don't think, we just tune into a different capability in our brain, which is part of our awareness.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (17:39)

Yes.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (17:42)

So as I apply the renewal blueprint for myself, my practices are morning, midday, afternoon, and night. And this is what I encourage my listeners, especially through the Renewal in Action. And I have actually a gift for Christian women, daily renewal template, just to start a bit. And the idea is that we can pause five, 10 minutes, start the day, and try to integrate and find practices that will incorporate both body, mind, heart, and soul, or at least two or three of them so that we can regenerate.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (17:47)

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (18:08)

So in the morning, I love to spend time in silence, spend time with God. I love to read the Bible, a short passage, but also I love to just sit in awareness and do a contemplative practice. And with that, just allow God's inspiration to nourish. So it nourishes my soul, but also my mind, my emotions, and I relax, so I include my body into that.

And then I exercise a bit in the morning and of course eat and drink water and whatnot, get ready for the day. But then midday, I like to pause as well to have some of this timeless time where I could just do whatever that allow my mind to unwind, obviously eat, connect with God and ⁓ just even think about my heart, my emotions. Hey, how is my heart right now? Do I have any residual emotions?

And then at the end of the day, kind of separating off from the day, I think this is a piece that's so important for many of us. Otherwise we just carry our mind constantly circulating. And in my program, I just say, hey, you have to stop and pause, look at your to-do list. Okay, is there anything else you need to do? No. Okay. Unwind. Time to unwind and do that mentally, do that emotionally.

See if there's any baggage that I'm still carrying from the day. Do something physically to relax. You know, could be just relaxing or drinking a cup of tea or stretching or whatever the practice is. My husband loves to exercise. And then just before going to bed again, connecting with God. So, but the idea is that we do this simply. Lowest hanging fruit. What is helpful for you and not keep adding more to your to-do list.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (19:33)

No.

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (19:52)

Like in my program, I train people to train their subconscious to carry the habits forward. spend a bit of time creating the blueprint, but then it's flexible. So no matter what the situation is, I can pivot and my students and clients can pivot right away. Like holidays, you know, it's a big disruptor. We just come right back. We just pivot. We have the framework and we build alternatives. So no matter what, even if we're really tired, I'm still going to do something, you know.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (19:58)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (20:20)

My best day, maybe I do 20 minutes of exercise or 30. When I have a suboptimal day, maybe just 10, five, but I still go.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (20:20)

Yeah.

I love that. Oh my gosh. That's so beautiful. And that blueprint when you're working with clients is very unique to them, right? To what they're able to do for their each of their days. Okay.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (20:39)

Yes, they will build their framework. I help them to understand the principles and build their own framework and discover. And then based on that, they will have it for life. So no matter what the season is, they can actually move forward and adjust.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (20:43)

Right.

Okay. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, that is so, it just made my heart smile so big because I talk a lot about this when I'm speaking about the human body and doing things for ourselves, for our health, for our physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, all of those, that we're all so unique and we can't just push a cookie cutter. This is a plan for you and this is a plan for Jack and this is a plan for Joe and it's the same for all three of them. It's like, no, no, no, you guys, we're all so beautifully unique and I love

what you just shared there. How did the renewal blueprint come to be? Where did that idea come from? Tell me about it.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (21:31)

Well, as I mentioned, it was during COVID, right? When I had my friend, my husband on the front line, and then I realized I got to do a program. So I just prayed and I pulled, I spent about two months and just dive deep and pull from all the information and map it all out. And it just came to light. And from my experience, I love creating curricula.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (21:34)

Okay.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (21:59)

That is because I taught not just in high school and middle school, but also in college and I created several courses. I actually had a course on self-care for helping professionals and I taught another one on stages of faith and spiritual formation. Developing the curriculum in general is a process. It's something that's very dear to my heart.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (22:00)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (22:23)

So once I realized the need, I've mapped it all out and it just came into being and coming from spiritual practices, coming from psychological practices, coming from Christian, from Bible verses. There's a very cool book written by Dr. Skovholt, Thomas Skovholt and Michelle Trotter-Mathison around burnout in a healing profession.

And they develop a beautiful cycle of caring framework that in the interactions with our patients, clients is good for us to be aware, attached to them at the beginning, then we do our thing, but we need to have that felt separation and then we need to spend some time for ourselves. So that structure was really central to the idea of the renewal blueprint and apply it in a way that incorporates body, mind, heart and soul and the daily cycle.

It is a adaptation coming from that. It's a beautiful, beautiful book and a lot of research they've done. So very, very helpful.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (23:25)

Wow. So you have been an obedient, faithful servant, good and faithful servant, right? Following God's principles and doing his work that during COVID when you're seeking those kinds of things, it's just like Holy Spirit downloads. You're getting all the information for it as you're going. It's just like, all right, pull this, do that, put this here. You're like, okay. So that's awesome. I love that. Now I,

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (23:39)

Yes.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (23:50)

I know a lot of my listeners may have not heard your show or heard what you like when you talk about the mindset traps that Christians can fall into. But I've heard you talking about this, things like feeling guilty for resting. And I know you mentioned the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest branch or believing that it's selfish to say no, really, how do you work through or how do you help people notice these things in themselves and then how do we reframe them in a Christ-centered way because it is absolutely not selfish to say no.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (24:24)

Yeah, I think absolutely. I think there are many different types of mindsets. In my program, I go over several of them that are prominent, but the biggest one is indeed feeling guilty. Am I not supposed to be just like Christ and just give, give, give? And I love Joyce Meyer. She has a podcast when she says, you know, I have to remember we're not the Holy Spirit junior.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (24:34)

Thanks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (24:51)

We are not the Holy Spirit Jr. So yes, we want to be like Christ, but we're finite beings. And it's just a sign of humility to realize, okay we got to get back plugged with Christ. And even Christ, who was God and human, He would say goodbye to people and go in the desert to regenerate. So if Him who is not just a human, but God as well did that, how much more we need to do that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (24:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (25:14)

The guilt is sometimes ingrained, but it's part of the more of a conditioning. So we don't have to really listen to all the voices and all the words that we might hear inside of us because we have a lot of beliefs and conditionings just growing up. So we need to reframe them and realize what's important. And for the fact that I burn out twice, I hope that's enough of a lesson for people to know, like, we don't need to go there.

Okay, guilt, no guilt. We're not helpful to people when we are not feeling well and we're exhausted. And we say, no, no more humans, please. Like, can I please not see any more human? That's not a good state to be in, right? So we need to, the way we plug our phones and computers and the way we see our friends and we say, you got to rest. We just have to do that for ourselves.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (25:42)

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So true, so true. And I don't wanna get into a big long side topic, but it's in a way, it's undiagnosed codependency when we are always feeling like we have to, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. It's not Christlike if I don't show up at every event at church, if I don't give the shirt off my back.

And yes, of course, Jesus Christ calls us to love one another, but we also need to take that time for ourselves to regenerate, like you were saying, how He went out in the desert after spending time with all these people. He's like, I need to pray. I need to be with the Father. I need to spend some time just to refresh His own soul. So if He's doing it, we need to do it too, because we need to model His behavior. And I love the way that you put that. No, go ahead.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (26:49)

Yes, and I appreciate what you said about the codependency. I think this is so important because in relationships, I mean, it could be with our spouse, could be with our kids. Sometimes we just feel like if we don't do it, no one else is doing it and they're not going to show up. And it might be true, but actually we're giving if you are a giver and you love to help others think about it differently. When I don't do that, maybe I allow that person to rise up to their highest potential.

If I constantly do things for them, they're not going to be motivated to do much. So it is with my students were doing and I had one client and she said, ⁓ Oh my goodness. It was her son who was in the thirties was not doing the dishes and she always wanted a kitchen clean by the end of the day. And she was always doing the dishes. So encouraged by the lesson, she said, okay, I am going to not do the dishes and see what happens. And to her happiness,

Dr. Brook Sheehan (27:18)

Yes. Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (27:45)

By next day, the dishes were done. Now, mind you, if you have maybe a teenager like I had sometimes, it was not next day. It was a week later. I just had to close the door, like, okay, due time. The point is that sometimes in our eagerness, we think we're doing more good, but actually it's more good to just step back a little bit and allow God to show up in their lives and rise up to the occasion.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (27:46)

Yay!

Yeah.

So beautifully said. I love that. I love that. Well, I want to get to, I'm going to ask you the last question that I ask every ⁓ podcast guest on my show. But before that, I want you to share the renewal template that you would talked about the freebie more in detail. I know you already hit on that a little bit, but more in detail. And if there's anything else you want to share that I may not have asked you, I would love for you to take the time right now.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (28:36)

Yes, thank you for that. So the renewal blueprint, think about as a framework where, and I've kind of shared before, you regenerate in the morning, spend some time in the morning, midday, stay in flow, afternoon, separate from the cares of the world, how we hear in the Bible, and then a night just to regenerate and renew. And think about it doing it body, mind, heart, and soul. And in the template,

I give some options. So there's just a very simple step to bring that on and create the sketches for that so that you can, you can jumpstart on it. And then there is also contemplative practice to kind of bring that, bring them together through visualizations. know, athletes use visualization is really very helpful. So when we can visualize our day, pausing and taking care of ourselves, then it's so much easier for us to do it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (29:23)

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (29:29)

I think it's very important. then we'll see, mean, in the, on my website, there's a wait list right now for the renewal in action program, but that blueprint gets you straight to start sketching the renewal blueprint. Absolutely.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (29:30)

Yeah.

So good, like getting a head start on your homework assignment. Exactly, said well to a teacher. I love that. I love that. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. And I will be sure to put that in the show notes. I want to ask you right now, because I love closing this with this question is in your experience, how does the body speak? And what have you learned about how God uses the body to guide us, teach us?

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (29:47)

Yes.

Yes, yes, that's it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (30:09)

Or get our attention? And I know we talked a lot about burnout and the ways that we crash into that wall and our body gets our attention that way. But is there anything else maybe that you see that our bodies try to wave that surrender flag that we need to pay attention to?

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (30:25)

Yes, I feel that the body is the fastest route to help us regulate our emotions, help us regulate our mind, even our thoughts to calm ourselves down, almost like it's the closest to the soul. There's something about the body that's so powerful. So and there's so many laws in this universe, God ordained laws, and we don't know them all.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (30:35)

Mm-hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (30:53)

But when we do things and there might be pain or stress or any health issues or even emotions, right? Emotions or energies moving through the body. We know there's something, maybe there's a law that's violated. So we want to pay attention to it. And it's not like God is saying you know, no, you haven't done this well. Let's just go back and fix it. I'm going to teach you a lesson. It's just, it's we're living in a fallen world and things don't go exactly how we want to, but the body does communicate really quickly.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (31:13)

Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (31:20)

And we want to pay attention to that. Is that what, do you feel in your body? Do you feel more relaxed? Do you feel at ease? Do you feel like you can enjoy life? Can you be present with others, right? Energetically with your body, or do you feel stressed and constricted? And so pay attention to the body. And the fastest way we can regulate is through our breath, which is one of the names of God, Yahweh, which is the breath.

That a sense that we can slow it down and actually interview someone in our Thriving in Christ in a renewal conversation. And she talked about the deeper breath as we're massaging the vagal nerve. And I'm like, I love that. We're just doing a nice massage and it gets into a relaxed mode so much quicker. So yes, it is essential to listen. And to that point, two quick suggestions, sleep,

Dr. Brook Sheehan (31:52)

Mm-hmm.

I love that too. I love that.

Hmm.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (32:15)

And water. Don't skip sleep, we can't. It's gonna catch up with us. And the same if we don't drink water.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (32:22)

Yeah, it's so true on both of those sleep and water and you've said everything so beautifully. Yahweh, you know the breath and that's the language our lungs speak. So it's so so important to listen to that and to take care of yourself because it you said the body is the closest thing to the soul and so it really does.

If the body's not doing well or our minds are not doing well or we're not well emotionally, we're going to start showing up spiritually discombobulated or spiritually tweaked in a way. And so we just have to really be mindful of taking care of all of these areas. And it doesn't have to be overwhelming. It doesn't have to be a full-time job to burn you out. Dr. Ioana can talk about that. It's not a full-time job.

Sustainable, simple practices like the renewal blueprint that will move you through your day in a way that's very sustaining so you're not ending up in this all of a sudden feeling really burnt out and not knowing how you got there because there were all kinds of warning signs ahead of time, right? Yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (33:24)

Right.

Yes, yes, yes.

And to your earlier point and our conversation about body, mind, heart and soul, emotions will also show up in the body and thoughts will impact emotions and the body. So it's almost like just a connector. It brings everything together. So we do want to definitely pay attention to it. And it's just so amazing. ⁓

Dr. Brook Sheehan (33:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's one of the things I say a lot and my patients who listen to this show will remember that I say this a lot is emotions were never intended to be residents. They were intended to be visitors. So they're meant to visit the body. They're meant to flow through their body. They're not meant to take up residency. And we end up with ill functioning organs because you've got these deep rooted emotions that are stuck in there…

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (34:00)

Yes, exactly.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (34:14)

That are putting pressure on the physical work of your liver or your kidneys or your stomach or your lungs and so forth. yeah.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (34:22)

Absolutely, I agree. Well beautifully said, yes, emotions are intended, 100 % agree to be just visitors. They come and go.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (34:28)

Yep. Just visitors.

Like time to get the eviction notice. You're not living here anymore. So thank you so much. How can people connect with you? I will put everything in the show notes. So spelling, you can spell it out or however you want to do it. But yeah, how can they connect with you?

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (34:34)

Yes. I love it.

Thank you so much. Yes. On the web at teamforthesoul.com This is our website. I'm on LinkedIn, Dr. Ioana Popa and on Facebook and Instagram. And yeah, I'm more often in LinkedIn than any other places. But teamforthesoul.com there's the you can set up an inquiry call if you're interested to see how I work.

I have an interesting short program with daily contemplation in Christian and Bible verse. It's called Wake Up to Your Soul. You can find out more information there. And definitely I'll give you that daily renewal template, the link, that free resource for the listener to jump start right away.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (35:26)

Absolutely.

Yes, get your homework assignment done and then show up to class with all her other offerings and be like, look what I got done. So, so awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. I really enjoyed this conversation and this is gonna be, yes, just a great episode. So thank you. Thank you for that.

Dr Ioana - Team For The Soul (35:44)

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Brook. What a joy.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (35:47)

So fun. Well, listeners, be blessed and we will see you next week.