Prolonged stress can profoundly affect the body. Amid the hustle and bustle of everyday life, international transformational facilitator Irena Kovaljukova wants South Africans to slow down and restore balance.
Burnout is often discussed as an emotional cost of modern working life, but research suggests it can also have a tangible financial cost.
A South African study of 3,182 private-sector employees, published in the South African Medical Journal, found that employees experiencing high burnout visited general practitioners more frequently and generated almost twice the medical-aid expenditure of employees in the low-burnout group.
Over the six-month study period, total insured medical benefits were R2,737 higher per person in the high-burnout group. Although the rand figures are historical, the relationship between burnout and greater healthcare use remains significant.
The repercussions of severe, prolonged stress-related exhaustion may extend far beyond the immediate period of burnout.
A 10-year follow-up of patients who underwent rehabilitation for stress-induced exhaustion found that, among those still working, 31.5% had reduced their working hours, 28% continued to score above the study’s burnout threshold, and 22.5% experienced moderate-to-severe insomnia.
Around 73% had changed workplaces.
This was a clinical population with stress-induced exhaustion, not a study of everyday occupational burnout. Even so, it offers a compelling picture of how prolonged stress can alter working lives long after the initial crisis has passed.
Restoring mind, body, and spirit
It raises a relevant question: why do so many of us wait until our bodies and minds are exhausted before taking restoration seriously?
For many high-functioning professionals, even wellbeing has become another task to accomplish.
Run further. Train harder. Wake earlier. Track the sleep. Complete the challenge. Hit another target.
Sometimes, however, restoration may require the opposite.
International transformational facilitator Irena Kovaljukova — who tours South Africa this September — works with a gentle, body-led practice called Safe Energy Activation, which she says is designed to create space for people to stop performing, turn their attention inward and reconnect with their own physical and emotional experience.
Kovaljukova describes the practice as working with the body’s own energy rather than requiring the individual to generate more effort.
Its purpose is not to diagnose or treat burnout, anxiety, depression or any medical condition.
Instead, it sits within complementary wellbeing as an opportunity for slowing down, body awareness, reconnection and restoration.
Botha van der Vyver 13 Jul 2026 Positive outcomes
The scientific literature around energy or “biofield” practices is growing, although it remains an emerging field and should not be overstated.
A 2025 scoping review mapped 353 peer-reviewed studies of biofield therapies, including 255 randomised controlled trials.
Of these studies, 172 reported positive findings across all investigated outcomes and another 95 reported mixed findings.
Importantly, the review’s authors concluded that inconsistent methodologies and reporting mean the effectiveness of biofield therapies for specific health conditions is not yet established conclusively.
However, individual areas of research show interesting signals.
A 2024 meta-analysis involving 824 adults examining Reiki — a separate energy-based practice and not the same methodology used by Kovaljukova — found a statistically significant reduction in anxiety across the included studies.
The researchers reported a standardised mean difference of -0.82, noting that outcomes varied by population and treatment frequency.
Another systematic review of 14 randomised placebo-controlled Reiki trials found encouraging results for some measures of stress, anxiety and depression, with indicative evidence relating specifically to burnout.
The authors were equally clear that the number of studies remains small, many had some risk of bias, and further controlled research is required before definitive conclusions can be made.
The longevity of it all
Research into adjacent body-based practices is also relevant.
A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials examining breathwork found a small-to-medium reduction in self-reported stress, based on 12 trials involving 785 adults.
This suggests that the broader conversation around wellbeing is beginning to make room for interventions that involve stillness, breath, body awareness, relaxation, and receptive rather than effort-driven experiences.
Perhaps longevity should not only be understood as adding years to life.
In the context of burnout, it may also mean protecting our capacity to remain well enough to participate in the life we already have: to work sustainably, maintain relationships, sleep properly, think clearly and still have enough of ourselves left when the working day ends.
As Q3 draws towards its close and businesses begin the push towards year-end, perhaps self-care does not need to become another demand on the diary.
Sometimes the intervention may be considerably softer: the phone goes down, the body becomes still, nobody requires an answer and, for a short period, nothing needs to be achieved.
For a society increasingly accustomed to running on empty, creating that space before complete exhaustion arrives may be one of the more valuable investments we make in ourselves.
