Listen here or on your favourite podcast app: Learning to Breathe: How Burnout Recovery Led to Leaving Law
What happens when a corporate lawyer discovers that climbing the professional ladder for eight years has only led to a spectacular view of the wrong wall?
In our latest episode, we sit down with Alicia Snijders, who walked away from a lucrative legal career to become a breathwork facilitator – and no, it’s not as ‘woo woo’ as you might think.
Alicia’s journey into leaving law began like many others: she never intended to become a corporate lawyer. Armed with a creative writing degree and altruistic intentions, she stumbled into studying law during the GFC when job prospects were grim. What was meant to be a two-year stint became an eight-year odyssey through the hierarchical maze of corporate law.
“I drank the Kool-Aid,” Alicia admits candidly, describing how easy it becomes to follow the beautifully orchestrated system of promotions, pay rises, and bonuses without questioning whether you’re actually heading somewhere you want to be.
The turning point came in 2020 when Alicia experienced a devastating personal experience. When the ongoing trauma from that experience meant that she couldn’t perform to her usual standards, her firm’s response was devastating: if you can’t perform, you shouldn’t be here. This lack of compassion became the push Alicia needed to move on.
Burnout recovery for Alicia didn’t look like a spa weekend or meditation app. It looked like recognizing that her HPA axis (the stress response system between hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenals) was chronically dysregulated. Enter breathwork – discovered, of all places, in a Canggu sauna in Bali. What Alicia thought might be too alternative turned out to be grounded in science and became the first intervention that created palpable shifts in her nervous system.
In this episode, Alicia breaks down the early warning signs of burnout, explains why traditional talk therapy has limitations for highly cerebral people, and shares her evidence-based approach to nervous system regulation.
Listen to discover how redefining success from external metrics to internal ones – from promotions to “how am I feeling in my body and mind?” – can transform not just your career, but your entire relationship with being human in the workplace.
