From Burnout to Balance: How Feng Shui Helped Me Heal My Nervous System
When the lights in my life went out, Feng Shui helped me switch them back on.
A story of burnout, healing, and how my space became the catalyst for recovery.
A few years ago, my corporate career came to a screeching halt. What looked like success on the outside masked a deep, unrelenting exhaustion within. I was eventually diagnosed with chronic burnout and nervous system dysfunction.
At my worst, I couldn’t walk properly. I struggled to hold a conversation. My mind was foggy. I had two frozen shoulders in succession, lumbar disc issues, pelvic instability, chronic inflammation, and emotional exhaustion. My nervous system had shut down. I was barely functioning.
My body was screaming, but underneath the physical collapse, the deeper message was clear: I had to change.
The Turning Point
In that stillness, stripped of distraction and productivity, I turned to something I’d long been curious about but never fully explored, Classical Feng Shui. With time to reflect, I began reading, rearranging, experimenting. It was part curiosity, part a deep, intuitive pull..something within me knew this was the path I had to explore.
As I analysed my home using Flying Stars Feng Shui (essentially the astrology of space, or a building’s energetic birth chart), the patterns were both confronting and clarifying.
My home was classified as a Double Facing home; supportive for money, but not for people. In Feng Shui terms, this often means that while career or financial energy may flow, health, relationships, and emotional balance suffer. It described my situation exactly. The imbalance in my environment was not just echoing my condition, it was reinforcing it.
Your Home as Your Mirror
The more I studied, the more I saw my own story mirrored in the space around me. My home was drained, off balance, and out of alignment, just like I was. The writing was quite literally on the wall.
So I got to work.
I cleared, cleansed, remedied, refreshed, and rebalanced my space with deep intention. I didn’t treat Feng Shui as a band-aid, it became part of a slow, committed return to health. I aligned my environment with what my body and spirit truly needed: rest, nourishment, and harmony.
And as I shifted the energy and aligned my physical space, something inside me began to shift too. I began to feel clearer, calmer, and more grounded.
It wasn’t an overnight fix. It had taken years to reach that state of depletion, and it took time, patience, and devotion to come back from it. But as my space shifted, so did I. It was profound.
And eventually, a new path emerged.
Today, I blend feng shui and speaker coaching to help others reconnect with their purpose with vitality, clarity, and flow.
What Is Nervous System Dysfunction?
Your autonomic nervous system regulates essential functions like your heartbeat, breathing, digestion, and stress response. It has two main states:
🟢 Parasympathetic (rest & digest) – calm, grounded, regenerative
🔴 Sympathetic (fight or flight) – alert, reactive, survival mode
When you’re under chronic stress or burnout, your system can get stuck, either in overdrive or complete shutdown. This dysregulation is what’s known as nervous system dysfunction.
It can feel like:
Constant fatigue, even after rest
Brain fog or mental confusion
Emotional numbness or overwhelm
Physical tension (shoulders, back, jaw, feet)
Anxiety, panic, or sensitivity to stimuli such as loud noise and artificial light
Digestive or sleep issues
In extreme cases (as in my own with the onset of two frozen shoulders in succession), your system enters freeze mode, where even basic functions feel impossible. It's the body’s last-ditch effort to protect itself when fight or flight are no longer options.
Why Feng Shui Helped
Your environment is not neutral. It constantly signals safety or stress to your nervous system, whether consciously or not. I discovered my home had a ‘weak backing’ and a ‘door-window line’ which meant that my space was not supporting me in life and the Qi entering my home was rushing straight out again. The beauty with Feng Shui, is that for every problem there is a solution (and also there is no perfect space - it simply doesn’t exist). With all the contributing factors to be dramatic decline in health accounted for in my space, I got to work applying remedies with intention to restore harmony.
For me, feng shui became more than just “moving furniture.” It became a way to:
Create physical calm
Feel supported to restore balance to my life
Reconnect to beauty, intention and myself
Align my outer space with my inner vision
My home became not just my mirror, but my medicine. It held and supported my return to clarity, vitality and purpose.
Your Space Can Heal, Too
The Truth Is: your home is not just a container for your life, it’s a reflection of it. And the beautiful part? Energy can shift.
With intention and the right tools, your space can become a powerful ally in your healing, creativity, growth and purpose, both personally and professionally. It can either support or sabotage your wellbeing and often, it’s doing so whether you are aware of it or not.
If you’re feeling off balance, burnt out, or stuck, take a look around you. Your space may be telling a story your body already knows.
Start Here
If this resonates, I’d love to hear: 👉 What’s one thing in your home that either drains or uplifts you?Let’s start the conversation.
Email me hello.enlivenedspaces@gmail.com
Follow along on instagram @enlivened.spaces
