Summer Burnout Is Real. Here's How to Ride It Out.

It’s half past five in the morning. I’ve had my cold shower, the kitchen doors are open, and I’m sitting here full of joy for the day ahead. And yet, if I’m honest, summer is one of the hardest seasons for me.

I love it. But I don’t cope all that well in the heat, so I’m deliberate about keeping cool. I get into the sea two or three times a week, I start every day with a cold shower, and I keep big bowls of salad in the fridge so there’s always something fresh to grab. None of it is dramatic. It’s just how I look after myself when the temperature climbs.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this. For a lot of us in midlife, juggling work, family and everyone else’s needs, summer can quietly become one more season to keep up with, rather than one to enjoy.

The myth of the easy summer

We like to tell ourselves summer arrives on a gentle breeze. The days stretch out and we decide life will suddenly be easy: barbecues, eating well, barefoot on the grass, an effortless golden life lived outdoors. It’s a lovely picture. It’s just not the whole story, because summer, for all its light, is full on.

Over twenty years ago I read a book called Staying Healthy with the Seasons, and it changed my life. Until then I’d wanted to be a perpetual summer: bright, tanned, on the go, running every day, driving everything forward. The book pointed me back to what nature actually does and its rhythm.

Picture a cherry tree in full blossom. Its flowering is brief and a incredible, and then the petals let go. The leaves turn gold and fall, and everything the tree once wore sinks back into the soil, feeding the roots through the dark months so that it can return, bare branches breaking into blossom, when spring comes round again. There is no right or wrong in any of it, and no point comparing one season with another. Each asks for something different, and is no less lovely for being unlike the last. We are no different. You would never expect the blossom to stay there all year, so why do we expect that of us, to be on the go, high energy and pushing 24/7. Our summer bodies need different things from our winter ones, and in midlife that feels truer than ever.

I began to love winter after that, and to love summer for what it is: fleeting, bright, and not meant to be lived at full tilt. Because you can burn out in summer. We don’t say it often enough, but you can.

A lot of that burnout starts with a feeling we don’t like to admit to. In summer it can seem as though everyone else is living a brighter, fuller life than you are. Out on the beach before the morning’s properly begun, high on a mountain path by lunchtime, gathered on some hilltop for a sunset you’re sure you ought to be watching too. Or so it looks. Most of it lives in our own heads.



So I’ll say it gently. Keep an eye on your me-time. Say no to the odd thing. And don’t do things simply to be seen to be enjoying summer. Real enjoyment can be sitting in your garden watching the bees, or slipping off for a quiet swim with nobody else there.

Ride the energy, but keep track of it

What I’ve come to notice about summer especially is that stillness doesn’t arrive on its own. In winter it comes easily: the evenings draw in, you’re already indoors, and rest feels like the natural thing to do. Summer is the opposite, a season of movement and light that pulls you outwards, so the quiet has to be made on purpose. For me that means protecting the early morning meditation before the heat and the day’s demands take hold, keeping up a quiet reading habit, and holding on to the idea of saying no. The stillness won’t come looking for you in summer. You have to make a little room for it.

So the line I keep coming back to is this: ride the energy summer gives you, but keep track of it. A slow, simple day is every bit as well spent as one spent racing around. Take the long light and the sea swims, just don’t spend it all without noticing, then wonder in August why you feel so frayed.

A pause in the middle of summer

This is exactly why I run our Yoga and Wild Swimming retreat on Anglesey each August, and have done for years. It’s my own pause in the middle of the summer holidays, a proper reset from family life. We swim every day, we eat beautiful fresh food, and for once I don’t have to cook. Even though I’m teaching and hosting, I come away renewed, because the sea does something restorative that’s hard to explain until you’ve felt it. We open with a lake swim and a sauna, and it unfolds from there. Best of all, it’s right here on our own coast. No airport, no flying.

If summer has started to feel like a lot, it might be just what you need: a weekend, or a quiet midweek break from the noise, in a calm coastal corner of Wales where the planning is done and all you have to do is turn up.

And if you can’t get away yet, take the lead from the cherry tree. Let some days be slow. Throw the kitchen doors open at first light, stand under a cold shower, and let summer be what it is, without trying to be everywhere at once.

[Yoga and Wild Swimming, Anglesey — view the retreat here]