EP 017 SPIRITUAL BURNOUT

Today on this episode of The Psychedelic Integration Podcast, we’re coming to you from the comfort or our living room sofa to talk about Spiritual Burnout and The Healing Power of Rest. What is spiritual burnout or therapeutic burnout, what does it look like, and how can you learn how to spot it? This is a crucial subject that is rarely talked about (but often experienced) on any spiritually focused path, and can be especially profound and important to recognize as part of your psychedelic integration plan. 

LISTEN TO EP 017 | Spiritual Burnout and The Healing Power of Rest

In this episode, John and Sinclair have a conversation about…

• How working on spiritual development can become an obsession, making life feel heavy and hard
• Defining spiritual burnout or therapeutic burnout, and what it looks like when you don’t take rest
• How avoiding psychedelic integration actually leads to spiritual burnout
• How society rewards hustle culture, grinding yourself down, and overachieving and the dark side of doing this with plant medicines and psychedelics
• Why using plant medicine for “performance enhancement” can feel out of alignment 
• Signs of spiritual burnout including low energy, depression, loss of excitement, loss of excitement, overwhelm, and exhaustion
• Psychedelics are designed to reconnect us to our natural curiosity about ourselves and the universe, and when it stops feeling good, that’s a sign that something is out of balance
• Why you have to take breaks from medicine to see results and allow for healing
• Setting up for disappointment by looking at ourselves as unhealed, never doing enough, and seeing spiritual development as a problem to be solved
• How to recognize spiritual burnout, what causes it, and how to shift away from feeling overwhelmed
• Taking it easy, taking your time, slowing down, and allowing things to be as they are
• Consciousness expanding is only one side of the coin, integration is the other side
• Balancing doing with rest and receiving
• Asking yourself, what is the point of sitting with medicine if you are not doing anything with it?
• Avoiding spiritual burnout starts with understanding that medicine is a tool, spiritual living is a path
• It takes how long it takes, and that is a gift
• Shifting from perfectionism to progress and celebrating all the positive steps you take on your path of growth
• Fun as an integration practice
• Being gentle and compassionate with yourself when you are doing shadow work
• Short term vs. long term burnout, and how each is interrelated to lack of community, understanding, and support
• Taking breaks from medicines or anything that is sucking the joy out of your life is healthy and necessary
• Connecting back to your heart and listening to your body
• Learning how to know what season you are in and how you can work with us to integrate your psychedelic journeys over a longer period of time