Ep. 10 When Yoga Leaves You Exhausted

This episode is part of the Stress & Body Series exploring how stress affects the nervous system, digestion, emotional health, and daily rhythm. Episode 1/6

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Have you ever left a yoga class feeling more exhausted than restored? In this episode of The Body Rhythm, we explore why certain yoga practices can overstimulate the nervous system when the body is already stressed or depleted.

Many high-capacity women assume that more movement, more effort, and more discipline will lead to better health.

But when the nervous system is already under stress — from burnout, emotional strain, poor sleep, or digestive imbalance — activating practices like fast-paced Vinyasa, power yoga, or hot yoga can push the body deeper into sympathetic “fight or flight.”

Instead of restoring energy, the body becomes more depleted.

In this conversation we explore:

• Why Vinyasa yoga can feel invigorating for some bodies but exhausting for others
 • The difference between activating movement and regulating movement
 • Signs your nervous system may need regulation before intensity
 • Why gentle practices like restorative yoga, yin, somatic movement, and slow breathwork help shift the body into parasympathetic “rest and digest”
 • How digestive health, emotional stress, and nervous system load influence what type of movement actually supports healing

This episode offers a simple but powerful reminder:

Healing is not always about doing more.
 Sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is slow down.

When we listen to the body’s rhythm instead of overriding it, movement becomes supportive rather than depleting.

If you're experiencing yoga burnout or feeling depleted, your body isn't failing you — it needs a different kind of support.

That's exactly what I created the Spring Reset for. It's a 14-day guided experience designed to calm your nervous system, restore your digestive rhythm, and help you transition into spring with more ease — no pushing, no overriding, just coming back to yourself.

The Spring Reset begins April 20th. I'd love to guide you through it. LEARN MORE

00:00 Welcome 

00:40 Vinyasa Left Me Drained

02:07 Why Vinyasa Activates

04:28 Not All Movement Regulates

06:49 Regulation Before Activation

07:18 Beyond Yoga Burnout

08:55 Permission to Go Gentle

10:13 Recovery Is Active

11:27 Mind vs Body Signals

12:33 Embodiment and Nervous System Check

13:24 Spring Reset Invitation

14:54 Closing and Reflection

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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. If you're someone who keeps trying harder to feel better, pushing, optimizing, doing more, this episode will resonate. I'm also guiding a 14-day spring reset this April focused on calming stress and steadying digestion, which I'll share more about at the end of today's episode. Today I want to share something that surprised me. A few days ago, I decided to go to a vinyasa yoga class. And this was my first vinyasa class in probably over a year. And I decided to go because I really wanted to move the body. I didn't want to do kind of a more slow or gentle class. And so I went to the local yoga studio and I expected to feel energized, clear, maybe a little bit sore, but overall good. But instead, what happened is I felt deeply tired afterwards. Not just right after the class, but for the rest of the day, I was exhausted. Not just for me, but maybe for you, for a lot of people who are trying to do the right things for their health and still feel depleted or worn out. This episode is about how our nervous system reacts when we're already coming from a depleted place or a stressed-out place or an overwhelmed place. So what does vinyasa yoga ask of the body? Well, vinyasa is beautiful. It's rhythmic. It connects breath with movement with asana. It builds strength and coordination. It builds cardiovascular demand. It helps with our focus. It helps with balance. But it also asks something specific of the body, which is continuous movement. As we're breathing, we're changing positions of the body. These are weight-bearing transitions, or they require a lot of muscle group activation. It's repeated activation, it's usually faster pacing in the class. There's less time to pause or recover between poses. And physiologically, this keeps the body in a sympathetic activation, what we often call fight or flight. And when we have a regulated nervous system, this can feel really invigorating. But for a dysregulated nervous system, for a nervous system that is already tired, already stressed out, inflamed, grieving, caregiving, underrested, digestively compromised, this type of yoga class can feel like it's too much. It's asking too much from our already depleted nervous system. Usually when we come to yoga class or we hear people talk about yoga, it described as being healthy movement, which absolutely it is, right? Doctors tell their patients to go to yoga to help with your breath. It's supposed to calm you down, calm the thoughts. Movement is supposed to be good for stress. And then what happened in my case was why do I feel worst after this class? And here's the nuance: not all movement is regulating. And not all movement is regulating for the season that we're in. I used to be able to do vinyasa classes five times a week, and it was nothing to me. But that's not where I am anymore. And honestly, I haven't been that way since COVID when I decided that I needed slower movement to kind of counteract all of the things and thoughts and external stimulation that was happening at that time in the news and with friends and with family. I really moved away from vinyasa in that time to a more slow, gentle practice. When our nervous system is already living in a high state of alert, adding more stimulation, even if it's good stimulation, can deepen exhaustion. It's not failure, it's a feedback loop. And my body wasn't saying, never do vinyasa again. It was saying this is not what I need right now to feel my best. And there's a difference between movement that activates and movement that regulates. Vinyasa activates. Power yoga activates. Hot yoga activates. Even some flow flows still activate. Practices like restorative or yin yoga or gentle yoga, somatic movement and slow breath-led practices. These types of practices can create space in the nervous system. These types of practices tell the body, hey, you're safe enough to soften. You're safe enough to let go. It begins to tell the nervous system that you're safe enough to move from sympathetic response into parasympathetic, or from fight or flight into rest and your and digest. And when we're dysregulated, regulation has to come before activation. And this is not a forever thing, but it's a for now thing. It's recognizing the uniqueness of you. It's recognizing where you're at in your journey and giving yourself, giving your body exactly what it needs without judgment, without guilt, without second guessing. And this just isn't about yoga classes. This can show up in workouts that leave you feeling wiped out instead of nourish. It can look like diet plans that look perfect but stress your digestion. It can be productivity routines that should help, but actually increase anxiety. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, when it's chronically stressed, when it's burnt out, when you're just going through a season where you're giving all that you have and don't have much left, the body stops responding to the effort the way that we expect it to. And more discipline doesn't help, more intensity doesn't help, but listening helps. Beginning to ask yourself and ask the body what it needs, what would be the thing that would create the greatest sense of ease in the body that would create that softening in the body, that would create a feeling of not having to hold up anything, a feeling of letting the tension go, of letting the burdens begin to roll off of you instead of you having to carry them all the time. That you are not lazy, you are not weak, you are not doing yoga wrong. Your body might simply be asking for a different doorway back to balance. And gentle practices don't mean you're going backwards. I hear this often from students that if they don't feel like they're doing an invigorating vinyasa class, then they feel like they're not doing enough. They're not doing enough for the health, they're not doing enough to stay in shape. I'm reminded of a student I was working with who was very, very stressed out. So stressed out that she began to have fainting spells. And I brought up this idea of gentle practices instead of vinyasa. But her mindset was I can't take a break from vinyasa. I can't slow down enough because it means that I'm going backwards. But that's not what this means. When we do restorative practices, when we do yin practices, when we do breathing practices, when we do gentle walks, it means that you're allowing for recovery. And recovery is not passive, recovery is active, it's an intelligent response. It's giving yourself exactly what you need in that moment to feel good. Once the nervous system comes back to homeostasis where it naturally wants to be, then you can add more of these invigorating practices, more of the vinyasa flows, more of the hardcore workouts. I also reminded of someone I worked out with who had um a broken bone. And her not doing her um daily five-mile runs was devastating for her, and she decided to push through it and ended up making the situation worse. And so sometimes our mind can override what our body is telling us, and I think that's where some of our problems lie. Our mind becomes more in control of the body. The mind tells us what we should do, what we could do, what we have to do, what we need to do. And these are actually things that are influenced by outside factors. They're not influenced by what is actually happening in your own body. And I invite you to perhaps ask yourself what it is that your body is asking for you in this moment at this time. And is it really asking for invigoration? Or is it asking for a little bit more softness, a little bit more release, a little bit more letting go? This is the wisdom of embodiment. This is your body's natural intelligence, this is listening to your body's natural rhythm and giving yourself the gift of exactly what you need. This is honoring your uniqueness, this is honoring your practice. So if you've been feeling confused by your energy levels, if you've been doing all the right things and still feel tired, this might be a moment to ask: what kind of support does my nervous system actually need right now? This question alone can begin to change everything. If you've realized that more effort isn't what your body needs, then the spring reset that I'm guiding in April is a structured way to step out of stress mode, to step into steadiness. It's designed for exhausted women, for high capacity women who want real support instead of just pushing through, like perhaps you always do. It is designed to calm stress, steady and support digestion, and clear the mental noise. The details are in the show notes. And I offer you just one more question to ask yourself, perhaps today, perhaps in the coming days, perhaps when you're in your car, on your walk, perhaps in your next yoga class. What kind of support does my nervous system and my body need right now? And the answer might come to you pretty quickly. And I invite you not to just push it aside and let the mind take over, but to recognize the answer that comes back to you. This is the start of listening to your innate wisdom. This is the women's power to heal. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of The Body Rhythm. Be well and nourished.