“When did burnout become the new normal?” That’s the question Dr. Romie Mushtaq throws out there.
After all, if there’s one person who truly knows what burnout feels like, it’s her. The crushing buildup of stress led her to come face-to-face with a life-threatening diagnosis. And it wasn’t until 39 that she had her first regular menstrual cycle.
“People wear stress and burnout as a badge of honor,” she adds. But your brain wasn’t built to feel…busy. Nor was it built for burnout.
It wants peace, and this is your invitation to reclaim it.
Who is Dr. Romie Mushtaq?
If the name “Dr. Romie Mushtaq” isn’t on your radar yet, you best believe she will be soon enough. This neurologist brings a firepower of expertise that includes:
- Triple board-certified physician specializing in neurology and integrative medicine
- Award-winning speaker
- National wellness expert
- Certified yoga and meditation teacher
- Author of the best-selling book, The Busy Brain Cure
- Founder of brainSHIFT Institute
- Chief wellness officer for Great Wolf Resorts
Even her TEDx Talk has amassed over half a million views. And to add on to her rolodex of accolades, she’s also the trainer of Mindvalley’s latest program, Healing Burnout.
Now, don’t let her designer clothes and Jimmy Choos fool you. What most aren’t aware of is that she experienced career burnout.
She’d be Dr. Romila “Romie” Mushtaq by day, polished and composed as she makes her rounds with her patients. By night, she’d soothe her exhaustion with dark chocolate and another pair of high heels added to her online cart before waking up to repeat the cycle.
“I thought my problem was that I was a complete and total failure,” she says in her TEDx Talk. She points to a 2012 Medscape study that found almost 50% of physicians in the United States feel burnt out. It’s now 2025, and things haven’t changed much, with 53% reporting feeling drained or disconnected from their work.
Symptoms started to show up: chest pains, inability to swallow, frequent pneumonia… “It took almost seven years for a diagnosis of a rare medical disorder to be made,” she says. It was achalasia.
Having survived the surgery, she made it her mission to uncover the biology behind burnout.
“Is there something really happening here, or is this all just in my head?” she asks. Because a busy brain can convince you it is all imagination.
Defining the “busy brain”
Dr. Romie has a name for the mental chaos most high achievers normalize. “Busy brain.”
Between our schedules, screens, and screaming individuals on the street, our senses are overloaded.
— Dr. Romie Mushtaq, trainer of Mindvalley’s Healing Burnout program
While “busy brain” may sound like a character by The Awkward Yeti, this is the internal chaos that hijacks your focus, revs up your thoughts, and wakes you at 2:37 a.m. with seventy-two conversations firing at once.
“A ‘busy brain’ is a term I coined for a specific pattern of neuroinflammation in the brain caused by living and working under chronic stress and burnout,” explains Dr. Romie in her Mindvalley program. These symptoms include:
- The inability to focus or adult-onset ADHD,
- Anxiety, and
- Difficulty falling and staying asleep.
The thing is, chronic stress overwhelms the hypothalamus. And when that becomes inflamed, a slew of disturbances follow: Your hormones shift, digestion sputters, energy dips, and thoughts scatter.
“Between our schedules, screens, and screaming individuals on the street, our senses are overloaded,” Dr. Romie adds. This overwhelm keeps the brain from finding the breathing room it needs to return to a steady state.
“If we don’t start by optimizing our brain function, we’ll never be able to optimize our passion, purpose, relationships, and callings.” And her solution to all this? To brainSHIFT.
Dr. Romie’s The BrainSHIFT Protocol
The brainSHIFT framework is Dr. Romie’s science-backed roadmap for you if your mind feels like it’s running ten browser windows and a group chat at the same time.
It’s the system she built after studying thousands of brainSCORE results, digging through psychoneuroendocrinology research, and listening to the stories of high performers who kept burning out in slow motion.
The idea behind brainSHIFT is simple: the brain can heal. It just needs structure, rhythm, and the right micro-habits to calm neuroinflammation and reset the hypothalamus.
“A brainSHIFT is the best way to restore a sense of sanity in a time that can be quite stressful,” Dr. Romie points out. And there are eight shifts that can help get you “from busy to a calm consciousness where you feel back in control.”
Many of her students feel the impact fast. Ana Sroka, a coach from Poland, is one of them. “I love the bridge between data and clarity—how much you can learn in such an easy, practical way,” she shares with Mindvalley. And she finally understood “why the brain gets so busy and how to work with it to make it better.”
That’s the great thing about Dr. Romie’s program and brainSHIFT: every step brings your brain closer to balance. And once it begins to settle, the rest of your life finally has space to move forward.
How to begin your own brainSHIFT in 8 steps
“When you choose to brainSHIFT,” Dr. Romie says, “you heal your busy brain.” And here’s where it begins:
- Get your brainSCORE. You start by taking the Busy Brain Test to understand your symptoms and identify where your brain stands.
- Reset your circadian rhythm with the 7-Day Sleep Challenge. You set the same bedtime and wake time for a week so your brain can find its rhythm again.
- Begin digital detox. She teaches how screen addiction can lead to brain rot and how to break the dopamine loop with sensory resets.
- Use brainPAUSE tools during the day. This includes binaural beats, micro-movements, five-minute breaks, and stepping away from screens.
- Apply the “choose sugar or caffeine” rule. You either consume a high-glycemic carb or caffeine to prevent brain bloating and focus crashes.
- Add one to two servings of healthy fats to every meal. Part of the BrainFUEL system to stabilize focus, hormones, and energy.
- Check your key labs. Get your thyroid, vitamin D, fasting insulin, glucose, and hs-CRP tested so you know what is driving your symptoms.
- Replace self-judgment with self-compassion. This includes identifying the three “busy brain enemies”: resistance, denial, and projection.
These eight shifts give your brain the structure it needs to steady itself again. Just ask Dao Lam, a Mindvalley Member and life coach in Vietnam. Thanks to the brainSHIFT approach, she no longer feels as drained as she used to. She shares with Mindvalley, “Sleep has come to me easier, and I get to enjoy my life fuller as well.”
You, too, can feel the shift the moment you try them. And as Dr. Romie says, “All you have to do is come with an open mind.”
Learn more with Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Talks, courses & books
If you feel the spark to go deeper with Romie’s work, you have plenty of doors you can walk through. Each one gives you a richer look at how she blends science, story, and soul into practical tools you can use in real life.
- Her Mindvalley program, Healing Burnout. This is where she guides you through the full eight-week brainSHIFT protocol. You get the steps, the science, and the tools that help high achievers regain clarity.
- Her TEDx Talk, “The Powerful Secret of Your Breath.” A fast, insightful look at how stress rewires your mind and how breath can bring you back into your body. She uses humor and honesty to make the science feel surprisingly easy to grasp.
- Her best-selling book, The Busy Brain Cure. A deeper dive into her research on neuroinflammation, hormones, and the busy brain. You get a clear look at what is happening inside your own mind and how to bring it back into balance.
- Her media features and keynote talks. From global stages to corporate wellness events, she explains burnout in a way that feels human, relatable, and grounded in real science.
- Her YouTube channel. She posts bite-sized lessons on stress, focus, and brain health so you can get clear explanations without any medical jargon.
All of these give you a deeper way to learn from her work. Take it from Monica Ducu, a business consultant from Romania, who went through the neurologist’s Mindvalley program. She says:
Dr. Romie’s practical examples, from analogies to discussions about digital addiction, made complex concepts accessible and offered valuable insights and techniques into modern brain health—a crucial map for navigating our post-pandemic mental landscape.
Absolutely, she’s a teacher you will want in your corner. And every resource she creates brings you closer to a calmer, steadier mind.
Futureproof your well-being
Your brain has carried the weight of your deadlines, your decisions, your late-night spirals, and your early-morning pushes for far too long. So if you feel even the slightest inkling that it needs room to breathe, there is a place where you can finally give it what it needs.
Mindvalley’s free resources for the mind are designed for people like you. People who want clarity without overwhelm, who want tools that fit into real life, and who crave focus, calm, and a way to feel steady again.
You can…
Your mind has been waiting for this kind of care. So, give your brain a break and take the power back.
Welcome in.
