You don't always have an hour for a meditation session or a full yoga class. Sometimes you have five minutes between meetings, a moment in the car before walking into a difficult situation, or a few minutes before bed when your mind won't stop. The good news is that five minutes is genuinely enough — if you're using the right techniques. Here are five evidence-based approaches that create a real physiological shift in your nervous system, quickly.

Most burnout advice focuses on the mind: think differently, set better boundaries, practice gratitude, take a break. This advice isn't wrong, but it's incomplete. Burnout is a physiological state. Chronic stress dysregulates the nervous system, disrupts the HPA axis (the body's stress hormone system), depletes neurotransmitters, and creates patterns of physical tension and hypervigilance that don't resolve through thinking or resting alone.