Jamie Janko spent more than 12 years working in Major League Baseball with teams including the Braves, the Yankees, and the Dodgers. On paper, she was killing it, and her body was telling a different story.
In this episode of Success, Rewritten, Jamie, founder of ReWild Breathwork, walks through burnout she didn't have language for, the identity she lost when she left her career and marriage, and the business she built after learning that success doesn't have to cost your life. Content note: this conversation includes candid discussion of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide loss. If you or someone you know (in the US) is struggling, call or text 988.
What does burnout look like when you love your job?
For Jamie, burnout was hard to spot because she loved the work, the people, and the sense of belonging. Baseball was her first big job out of college, and she says she didn't know what a boundary was. She missed weddings and births, telling herself the job was more important, a pattern she now calls conditioning.
Around 2016 and 2017, with the Dodgers, she was doing two workouts a day, eating perfectly, and still gaining weight and breaking out in rashes. Doctors handed her steroid cream and no explanation. Then her dad told her over the phone one day, in the Dodgers parking lot, "Jamie, stress will kill you." Her answer: "Dad, I don't feel stressed." Looking back, she says her mind and body were telling very different stories.
What happens to your identity when you leave a career you built your life around?
Jamie left baseball, worked with a functional medicine doctor who helped her see she had been living in chronic stress, and moved into coaching, nutrition, and fitness. Then she burned out again, this time on helping other people. Out of that second burnout, she walked into what she thought was a meditation class and learned about breathwork for the first time.
What followed was a stack of changes at once: she left her career, her marriage, and the country. A planned couple of months in Bali became two years. She describes it as getting off a hamster wheel and asking who she was without her job and her marriage, and she says she couldn't even find that identity again. The depression that followed arrived in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and she tells the story of a turning point there with care and a warning up front for listeners.
How do you talk about suicide and support a friend?
During her first month in Bali, Jamie had suicidal thoughts and didn't tell anyone, out of shame and embarrassment, including a friend she was spending time with there. That friend never said how she was feeling either, and ten months later she died by suicide. Jamie still wonders whether they were having the same thoughts at the same time and neither of them said it. She has lost more than one friend to suicide, and it changed how she shows up for the people in her life. Now she asks not just “how are you?”, it’s "how's your heart?" She became a crisis counselor for Crisis Text Line and encourages listeners to have real conversations with their happy friends too, because the people who seem fine can be the ones struggling. Emily adds that in the US, you can call or text 988.
What is breathwork, and how can you try it today?
Jamie says breathwork changed her life and somatic work, which helped her move trauma through her body, saved it. Breathwork is also the practice at the center of her work, and she explains it in plain terms early in the episode. She breaks it into three buckets: functional breath for everyday breathing, breath for changing your nervous system state in a moment like a hard conversation, and a more therapeutic style called conscious connected breath. She leads Emily through a simple coherent breathing practice: in through the nose for a count of five, out through the nose for a count of five. She suggests four to eight minutes a day, and says to drop to a count of four or three if five feels uncomfortable.
She also explains why the nose matters, including its role in boosting nitric oxide, and why a long, slow exhale helps when you feel panicky. Jamie and Emily also compare notes on mouth taping at night, and Jamie suggests a sensitive surgical tape rather than anything heavy.
Can you build a business that honors your nervous system?
Jamie's company, ReWild Breathwork, is a global education and certification company that has trained hundreds of people in over 30 countries. She says "Rewild" means "coming back to who you were before you were told who to be." She runs it in a way that, in her words, "honors the nervous system, that honors sleep, that honors taking care of yourself, that honors relationships, that honors community."
That doesn't mean she never slips. Her first sign of dysregulation is that other people start to annoy her, which is her cue to return to her own practices. "In discipline, there's freedom," she says.
What does success mean to Jamie now?
Today Jamie lives a nomadic life, leading retreats and working with therapists, coaches, entrepreneurs, and corporate teams. She gave up her Venice, California apartment and says, "I actually have everything that I need right here." Her closing thought for listeners: "your past doesn't define you."
Where can I find Jamie and ReWild Breathwork?
Website: rewildbreathwork.com
Instagram: @rewildbreathwork and @jamiejanko
If you're struggling, or supporting someone who’s struggling, call or text 988 (in the U.S.) to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
