Ep. 8 You Are Not Lazy — You Are Exhausted

Exhaustion isn’t laziness — it’s communication from the body.

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If you’ve ever found yourself stuck on the couch wondering why you can’t “just push through,” this episode is for you.

In a culture that glorifies productivity and constant doing, many women silently carry guilt about needing rest. But what we often call laziness is actually the body applying its emergency brake — a protective response to long-term depletion, stress, and nervous system overload.

In this conversation, we explore the difference between being tired (something rest can fix) and being deeply exhausted — when sleep doesn’t feel restorative and your body starts asking for something different.

Through an Ayurvedic and nervous-system lens, we’ll look at how chronic stress can slowly drain your reserves (ojas) and how giving endlessly without receiving nourishment, safety, and rhythm eventually leaves the body running on empty.

You’ll learn how exhaustion can show up as:

• Brain fog or mental heaviness
• Muscle tension, headaches, or body aches
• Digestive shifts and loss of appetite or cravings
• Hormonal or weight changes
• Emotional flattening or overwhelm

Most importantly, this episode offers a gentle invitation to pause — not to fix yourself, but to listen.

A short guided practice at the end helps you reconnect with your body’s signals so you can hear what your next small step toward restoration might be.

Because your body isn’t failing you.
 It’s asking you to come back into rhythm.

00:00 — Welcome + What Burnout Really Feels Like (couch-locked exhaustion & guilt)
03:26 — The Laziness Lie & Hustle Culture Shame Spiral
06:01 — Your Body’s Emergency Brake: You’re Not Lazy, You’re Exhausted
07:39 — Tired vs. Exhausted: Temporary Fatigue vs. Chronic Depletion
11:09 — Ayurveda + Nervous System Patterns: Ojas, Stress & Survival Mode
14:07 — Cultural Messages That Keep Us Pushing Past Our Limits
16:04 — How Depletion Shows Up Physically, Mentally & Emotionally
20:10 — Why Rest Is Your Birthright (and How to Prevent the Crash)
22:10 — Guided Mini Practice: Hand to Heart, Pause & Listen
24:57 — Your Next Step: Giving Yourself What You Need

If your body feels tired but your mind won’t slow down…this is exactly where to begin.

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Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda / The Body Rhythm

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Body Rhythm Podcast. I'm your host, Chelsea Johnson, talking all things diet, lifestyle, health, and healing with a dose of heart and soul. Hello and welcome to the body rhythm. And today we're going to talk about all things exhaustion and burnout. And, you know, I love to talk to you about things that are close to my own life experience, things that I've had to walk through and go through and come out on the other side. Just imagine that you are lying on your couch, unable to move, lying on the bed, maybe you're binging Netflix. This sense of exhaustion takes over. This feeling of guilt takes over about why you don't have more energy, why you just feel kind of like a lump, only able to rest on the bed or on the couch and do absolutely nothing. And maybe you begin to ask yourself, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just get up and do the things that I need to do? Why can't I just get up and do the dishes? Why can't I get up and clean the bathroom? Why can't I just go to the grocery store? And it becomes sort of a spiral. Begin to tell ourselves that everyone else is seeming to manage. We look on social media. Everyone is posting all of the things that they've accomplished throughout the day, throughout the week, and they just seem to be able to push through. And maybe that creates more of a sense of guilt within yourself. And for me, it took a while in this state of utter exhaustion and really the inability to move that I realized that I was depleted. And the relief that came to recognize that, hey, there's nothing wrong with you. The body has exhausted all of its resources. And what is depletion means that we don't have what we need. For giving, giving, giving all of our love, all of our time, all of our attention, all of our resources to other people. And then we're not able to receive that love back, self-love, or feel that we're loved from God or loved from others in our community, in our family, then it can become a really difficult, painful position to be in. So if you've ever felt this way, like you should be able to do more, but the body just isn't able to, the mind just isn't able to, then today's episode is for you. So the laziness lie is what I like to call it. And this is the lie that I think a lot of women tell themselves that they lack motivation or they lack willpower, or they're not trying hard enough, or they're being undisciplined about work, or it's some sort of character flaw not to constantly do things. And we live in a hustle and grind culture where uh activity is valued. I say activity over productivity is valued because if we look at what people are posting on social media, what we see all around us, it really is people posting about how active they are, about all of the cool, wonderful things they're doing, whether that's true or not, and not necessarily just about all of the productive things that they're doing. There is this glorification on always being busy. And our culture, society values always being busy. And if you're not, then this narrative of you're lazy begins to take hold. So this narrative of laziness creates shame and guilt. It creates a sense of us feeling that we have to push harder and do more, even when we are tired, even when we do need rest. Pushing through this hustle and grind culture does not allow for us to listen to our body's natural rhythm, our body's natural wisdom. We become disconnected from ourselves. And then when we become disconnected from ourselves, from our body, from the signals that our body is giving us, then we begin to get stuck in a cycle of depletion, a cycle of exhaustion and burnout. And that cycle keeps us from actually getting help, from actually taking the time to rest. When we begin to notice that we're in that state of just laying in bed watching TV or Netflix, if we're just lying on the couch, binging our favorite show, that usually is our body's emergency break, trying to get our attention and saying, hey, something is not right here. Something's a little bit off. And it's the body's way of trying to get you to pay attention to what's happening before actual collapse. Because actual collapse is a complete numbing out, it's a complete shutdown of yourself. And I have been there, I was shut down in bed, could not move. And I had ignored all of my body's emergency breaks until then. And so this emergency break, this feeling of laziness is really our body's survival mechanism. And I really want you to notice this one thing because if you've been calling yourself lazy, please hear this. You're not lazy, you're exhausted, and there is such a difference. So let's talk about the differences between being tired and being exhausted. Being tired is more an acute feeling. It's a feeling like you've had a busy day, and maybe you come home from work and you go to sleep early, and then you wake up in the morning and you feel refreshed, you feel renewed, you have more energy, and then you get back to your daily activities. It's more of a cute phase, a temporary phase that comes, and then you rest and the body recalibrates, and then you move forward. When you're exhausted, maybe you've had busy weeks or busy months or busy years. More of a chronic lifestyle than just being tired. Maybe every morning after you've slept, or you go to bed early, and then the next morning you wake up and you don't feel refreshed. You continue to feel tired, you continue to feel that getting out of bed is a chore. You know, that was me. I could not move from bed, and I thought to myself that getting out of bed was just the worst thing possible. And it took all of the energy that I had in my body to put my feet and legs over the side of the bed and take that first step in the morning, and maybe that's you, where the rest doesn't fully restore. And we drink the coffee in the morning and we get dressed and we push through because this is what we're told we have to do, and then we begin to go into the depletion spiral, and that is that push-thrown-ess push through that exhaustion, push through the feeling of no energy, and then our reserves get lower, and then everything begins to require more energy than it should, like that first step out of bed, maybe even just opening the eyes in the morning takes a lot of effort. Maybe the simple tasks begin to feel impossible. Things like making breakfast seem impossible, or making lunch, or dinner, or cleaning the bathroom, or taking out the trash. These things that usually we could do on our day-to-day basis seem to now, in this depletion spiral, take more effort and more energy than they ever have before. But the more that we push, the more that we ignore our body's natural rhythms, the more depleted we become. In Ayurveda, there's this term called ojas. And ojas is this natural vitality, this natural honey-like serum that flows through us that gives us our innate immunity, our innate vitality. And when we're depleted, when Ojas is depleted, we become exhausted. When we're in this state, we're actually experiencing nervous system dysregulation, where in the fight or flight response, the sympathetic nervous system response, where the body thinks that everything is dangerous and all of the resources are going towards keeping you safe and protected. And when the body thinks that you're in danger and you need to be safe and protected, well then it's not going to direct most resources to digestion. It's not going to divert resources to reproductive system. It's not going to direct resources to the elimination system. And so all of these other systems begin to get out of whack. Maybe you've noticed when you're in these states of exhaustion or chronic stress that your digestion might seem a little bit off. You might feel a little bit more bloated or gassy, heartburn. Maybe your interest in sex or your partner is so low, and that's because everything is being diverted to the stress response. Chronic inflammation is another thing that can happen when our body is dealing with the depletion spiral. Willpower is a limited resource. When you're depleted, you have no willpower left. Your body needs rest, it needs nourishment, it needs safety, it needs stability. And forcing these things, you can't force nourishment. You have to receive it. And it's hard to be in a state of reception when we're completely burned out and exhausted. Just a couple of things that our culture kind of ingrains in us without us actually really thinking about it is sleep is for the week. I'll sleep when I'm dead, I'll rise and grind, no days off, hustle harder. You're just not wanting it bad enough. Do any of these sound familiar to you? These messages show up for ourselves when we feel guilty for resting, or we feel like we should always be productive, or we equate our work with our output. Believing that rest has to be earned through our hard work, right? Or for women, I think this is a big one. We take care of others, and then we think of taking care of ourselves as being selfish, or maybe feelings of guilt come into play. And then we're putting out all of this outward energy and we're not receiving anything to ourselves. And these are impossible standards because we do see them everywhere, and what we see has an impact on us, whether we recognize, realize it, or not, then we just begin to question why we don't measure up to the standards rather than questioning what the standards actually are. Healing requires being able to see the situation clearly and being able to realize that you are enough as you are, and you are worthy of rest. So, how does exhaustion, depletion show up in the body? What are some physical signs that you might notice? Well, as I mentioned, you might wake up feeling just as tired as you were when you went to sleep the night before. You might need multiple cups of coffee to get going in the morning, and then maybe more cups of coffee throughout the day. Maybe you have afternoon crashes that feel debilitating. Maybe you get a second wind at night when you should be winding down. Maybe the racing thoughts in the brain just don't shut off. And so the body can't begin to relax into its natural wind down rhythm. Perhaps you felt wired and tired at the same time. Sometimes for me, that has happened where I'm so exhausted physically. I can't do one other thing, but then my mind won't shut off. And because my mind can't shut off, my body can't begin to go into that relaxation state, into that sleep state. Body signals that you might feel is maybe muscle tension that doesn't release, muscle tension in the neck, the shoulders, the jaw. And maybe it's there and you don't even realize. Maybe it's there because we cut off listening to our body's signals, and then this tension just begins to build up until the body does something that we can't ignore anymore. It might be headaches or migraines. It might look like digestive systems, constipation, IBS, diarrhea. Maybe the immune system function is decreasing, so you might get sick a little bit easier, more frequently. Maybe it's weight changes gaining or losing weight without necessarily changing habits. Hormonal imbalances for women in irregular periods, PMS, low sex drive. And maybe in the mental and emotional body, it's brain pog or difficulty concentrating, memory issues, decision fatigue, even small decisions feel overwhelming. Maybe it's irritability in a short temper, or crying easily, or feeling on the verge of tears. From ourselves, from others, loss of joy and things that you used to love, to do, or a feeling of being overwhelmed by everything. What happens when we keep pushing is we continue into our depletion spiral, and the symptoms get worse, and then we eventually crash, we become ill, we get injured, we have a breakdown, we become numb, and then recovery takes even longer. And then we're not able to go back because the brain has to find a new way to function with what's happening. And so, my hope for you, dear sisters, is that you don't reach this point that you begin to pay attention to the body's signals. And if you are in the state of chronic stress or burnout, overwhelm, give yourself permission to rest. When we rest, we can begin to notice the body's patterns. We can begin to notice where the tension is stored. When we're constantly doing, doing, doing, and we're not paying attention to the body. Maybe we don't know where tension is stored. Maybe we don't even realize anymore that there are digestive issues happening. Rest is required for life. It's required for us to have a meaningful, joyful life experience. It's necessary for us to deal with the ebbs, the flows, the zigzags that life deals us. And rest is our birthright. You know, I've read a lot of spiritual texts over the years. And not one of them says you have to give up rest, taking care of yourself for a deeper connection to God, for a deeper connection to peace, for a deeper connection to love. Rest is our birthright, as love is our birthright, as caring for ourselves is our birthright. Once you begin to internalize that, you know. Move into the healing space, into the space of better health, of optimal health. I have a short practice for us today. If you've just been going, going, going, and you want a short practice to just let yourself stop and notice what's happening. Stop whatever it is that you're doing. If you're walking, stand still, if you're sitting down, sitting at a desk, take a few moments, whatever you do in stillness, and close your eyes. Put the hand to your heart. And notice all five fingers touching the heart space. Notice the flow of the air on the skin. Notice its temperature. Notice your heartbeat. Noticing if the heartbeat is strong or it's more weak. Notice the lungs moving as you inhale and exhale. Noticing where your body is in this moment. What the signals that you may be ignoring as you go about your daily activities. What are the signals telling you in this moment? What is your medicine? The answer might come to you pretty quickly. What's your medicine? And then when you're ready, opening up the eyes, taking the hand back down to the lap, down by your side. Now that you've noticed where you are and what your medicine is, take the next step to listen to your body and give yourself what you need. Have a wonderful day.