What Stressed Bodies Actually Need (It's Not Another Workout)

What if the reason you still feel exhausted isn't because you're doing too little—but because you've spent too long believing you always have to do more?

You work hard. You take care of everyone else. You exercise. You try the wellness routines. You keep pushing because that's what you've always done.

But if your body still feels tense, exhausted, anxious, or disconnected...

Maybe it isn't asking for another workout, another routine, or another wellness trend. Maybe it's asking for something you've been taught not to need: a time to pause.

So many high-achieving women believe healing comes from doing more—more discipline, more exercise, more productivity. But a stressed body often heals in the opposite direction.

🎧 Press play to discover why so many people mistake constant performance for wellness, what stressed bodies are actually asking for, and how creating small moments of safety can begin to change the way you feel—without adding one more thing to your to-do list.

Resources

✨ Wondering how chronic stress is showing up in your body? Take my free Hidden Stress Pattern Quiz to discover how stress may be affecting your sleep, digestion, energy, and daily rhythms—and receive personalized next steps to help you begin working with your body instead of pushing against it

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Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda / The Body Rhythm

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

When we do our self-care routines, our yoga routines, our nightly walks, whatever it might be, are those things places that we can return to ourselves where it's not a workout, it's not a practice or something to get better at, but it's a place, it's a feeling to begin feeling better in the body because the value isn't just physical.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the Body Rhythm Podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to stop pushing through and start feeling like themselves again. I'm CJ, Ayurvedic Wellness Guide, helping women reconnect to the natural rhythm their bodies have been craving. But it wasn't that long ago that I was exhausted in a way that sleep didn't fix, bloated no matter what I ate, and lying awake at 3 a.m. with my mind already running tomorrow's to-do list. I thought I just needed to be more consistent, more disciplined. I didn't realize that my body wasn't feeling me. It was completely overwhelmed because you're not broken. You've just been living outside your natural rhythm for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Body Rhythm. I'm Chelsea and I am so glad that you are here. And today we're talking about what stressed bodies actually need because I think it's getting a little bit blurry out there on social media, AI, all the things. So he was always doing endurance training. And um, he talked about how hard that was on his body and how he was just going, going, going all the time. And I knew a little bit about that because I have done a marathon, I've done several half marathons, and so I know that the endure training for an endurance sport can be very taxing on the mind and the body. And so he was in output mode all the time. That was just how he lived. And then he got injured. And in the stillness that came after his injury, when he couldn't just push through anymore, he started noticing something. He began to notice how his body felt off when all of that external stimulation disappeared. And what I heard underneath his story was that with all of the things that he was doing, accomplishing, right, traveling, he hadn't felt connected to himself, not in a long time. And he began to wonder if there was something more that he was missing. And the injury stopped him. And then being stopped, something else began. He began exploring a different way of life, a different way of moving, a different relationship with his own body, with his own mind, with his own spirit. And I don't think his story is unusual. I think a lot of us are living exactly like that, right? We're in go, go, go, go, go mode until something stops us. I know I've had several things stop me in the past, most recently being burned out from caregiving, and then I had a knee injury where I was stopped from doing anything for about six months. And so when we're stopped, when life forces us to slow down, that's really when we began to notice what's happening underneath, or notice the patterns that are there that millet that really don't work for us anymore. So over the last several years, I've noticed a pattern over and over and over again, especially with the men who come to my classes. I get a lot of men coming to my classes and they don't walk in talking about flexibility or fitness goals or, you know, the most advanced yoga pose. One man that came actually told me that he almost didn't come because he didn't know yoga, he had never done it, he wasn't sure any of it would be a good fit, that it wasn't for him. And I told him, just do what feels good, you know. And afterward, he came up to me and he said, you know, I wasn't sure about this, but I actually do feel a lot better. And that was it. Because I think this says something about the way that yoga gets presented now. It's even so different from when I began 25 years ago. And when I began 25 years ago, when I went to a yoga class, it was about feeling good in the body. Yes, there was a prescribed sequence, but there wasn't this overemphasis on alignment, right? And I think for me, uh looking at what is being taught to yoga teachers, to new yoga teachers, especially, that in an effort to standardize teacher training, there's been this overemphasis on alignment. And I think a lot of yoga marketing sends a message of flexibility and fitness and aesthetics and advanced poses, right? It's a whole look and culture around it. But for a lot of people, men especially, women who are overwhelmed and burnt out and stressed out, the message that they receive is it's not for me. And that's actually why I decided to pursue yoga therapy, is because in yoga therapy, it's not based on aesthetics, it's based on how you feel in your body and getting you to feel good again in your body in a way that you can sustain. And what I've come to realize is that I don't actually offer yoga in that sense at all. When someone walks into one of my classes or works with me, you don't need yoga clothes, right? In fact, I have some regular students who come who never wear the the yoga clothes, who never wear the Lululemon leggings and shirt, right? You don't need experience, you don't need to know any poses, you don't need to know proper alignment, you don't need to know Sanskrit, you don't need to be flexible, you don't need to perform. You just need a stressed body and a willingness to work with what you got. Because here's the truth underneath all of this exhaustion and burnout, anxiety, feeling stuck, depression, waking up at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. with your mind running, a nervous system that isn't able to power down, pushing through the day month after month, year after week year, just because that's what you do, none of that benefits from performance yoga or alignment yoga, right? A man in construction or healthcare or law enforcement or tech or finance or caregiving for a parent, he can relate to every one of those things just as easily as a woman can. Um uh another student came to my class who had been traveling a lot and working a lot for a long time. And what he said he needed wasn't another vinyasa class. He said he didn't need anything that was fast-paced or something that was going to ask more of him, more intensity, performance, keeping up, because he was already putting all of that into his job. What he said he needed was a place to return to himself, to just be. And I think that line says almost everything. Because when we do our self-care routines, our yoga routines, our nightly walks, whatever it might might be, there are those things places that we can return to ourselves where it's not a workout, it's not a practice or something to get better at, but it's a place, it's a feeling to begin feeling better in the body. Because the value isn't just physical, right? If it's a yoga class, the class should create safety and support and slowness for a student to finally begin to notice what's happening inside, because so often we push what's happening down and we say we'll deal with it later, and then later never comes. And so when we slow down and create that sense of safety in a class, it's often the first time in a long time that a student can begin to feel what is happening underneath, what they've been pushing down into the void. And I think there are so few spaces that actually offer this, especially for men and burned out women, a space where no one is competing, no one's trying to fix you, no one's telling you to toughen up or push through, where no one is expecting you to perform. And I think those kinds of spaces are rare for men, for women who are taught from a young age that needing a space like that is in itself a weakness because it's not, it's what the body needs to live life at its fullest, right? This story, these experiences are about what healing actually requires underneath out of everything else. It doesn't need a better technique or the right pose or the right alignment or the right protocol or doing it correctly. It needs a felt sense of safety and permission and allowing ourselves to stop performing even for a few minutes. What is it that we've been taught perhaps since our childhood not to ask for it, not to even notice what we're missing, or not to even need it. I think it's worth asking that question. Because a lot of us learned the same lesson just differently. Don't ask for too much, handle it all yourself, don't take up space by needing rest. It's weak. And it can show up in our life as productivity, as productivity, as over-preparing, as perfectionism, as being the strong one, being the one that everyone relies on, the one who is always fine and continues to march forward. Does that sound familiar? So here's what I keep coming back to. I think that these stories are about what a stressed body needs, whether it's male or female. Because stressed bodies need healing that isn't about technique, it's about safety and permission to not have it all together, to not do everything perfectly, to not optimize to the fullest. Maybe the question is where in my life is there space where nobody expects me to perform? Even for five minutes, maybe ten minutes. And if you can't think of one that's worth noticing, right? Just as information. This episode really isn't about yoga, although yoga can show us what's happening underneath, but it's about rhythm. It's about creating a rhythm and routine that finally works for us. It's about a stressed body finally getting permission to stop racing, to stop pushing through. Because that's how we live longer and feel better in our bodies. And if you've been wondering how stress might be affecting your body, how it might be showing up in your symptoms, such as bloating or gas or insomnia, waking at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., take the Discover Your Hidden Stress Pattern quiz. We'll tell you what pattern your body's been running and provide some small, simple steps to start feeling better in your body again. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the body rhythm. Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. And I will see you next week.