You close the laptop and the work doesn't stop. It follows you to the terrace, into dinner, into bed at 1 am where you're composing a reply to an email that hasn't arrived yet. You've tried the advice — no phone after nine, a hard stop at seven, a walk by the sea in Antibes — and the body comes with you, still at the desk.

This isn't a discipline problem. Discipline is a mind thing, and the mind has already left work. It's the nervous system that hasn't. It's still running the posture of a working day — shoulders up, breath short, attention scanning — because nobody told it the day was over in a language it understands.

The setting, not the schedule

The nervous system doesn't read clocks. It reads bodily signals: stillness or movement, tension or ease, demand or no demand. A day of calls and decisions puts it in a setting — alert, ready, braced. That setting doesn't reset when you close the laptop, because closing a laptop is not a bodily signal. It resets when the body gets enough signals of the opposite: stillness, warmth, nothing needed.

Most people never give it those signals. They go from desk to dinner to screen to bed, and every one of those has demand in it. So the setting stays.

Why holidays don't fix it

A holiday changes the scenery, not the setting. People arrive in Cannes for two weeks and spend the first four days exactly as braced as they were in the office, in nicer light. The body can be on a sunlounger and still at the desk. By day five it starts to let go — and then it's time to think about going back.

What "switching off" feels like when it actually happens

Most people have forgotten. It feels like the shoulders being lower than you knew they could be. Like the breath going all the way down. Like an hour going by without checking. Like being tired in a soft way rather than a wired way. It's a physical state, and if you can't remember the last time you were in it, that's the diagnosis — not of anything medical, just of a system that's been on for too long.

A session as the signal

This is what a Reiki session is, for someone who can't switch off. Forty-five minutes of the exact signals the nervous system needs: lying still, fully clothed, hands resting lightly on the body, nothing asked. Not to relax, not to breathe correctly, not to stop thinking. The thinking usually stops on its own around minute ten, when the body gets enough evidence that nothing is needed and drops.

Founders and executives I work with describe it in practical terms. "I didn't think about work for forty minutes and I don't know where they went." "I slept through for the first time in a month." "I noticed on Thursday that I wasn't braced in the meeting."

One session shows the body what off feels like. If it's been on for years, four over a month — The Renewal — is where off starts to become available at 7 pm as well.

What it won't do

Fix a workload that's genuinely impossible. Replace a doctor if the sleeplessness has become something a doctor should see. Reiki is complementary — alongside care, not instead of it. What it does is remind a body that has forgotten how to stop that stopping is still possible.

FAQ

Why can't I switch off from work even at home? Because closing the laptop isn't a signal the nervous system understands. It stays in work mode until it gets bodily signals of safety — stillness, ease, no demand — for long enough to believe them.

How do I stop thinking about work at night? Not by deciding to. By giving the body a real experience of off — deep rest with nothing asked — so the setting changes. One session usually shows what that feels like.

Is not being able to switch off a sign of burnout? It's one of the earliest. If rest doesn't restore you and the mind won't leave work, the nervous system has been on too long. It's recoverable, and the first step is one hour of genuine off.

If your body is still at the desk

One session, €180, at your home after hours or my space in Cannes. Message me on WhatsApp and tell me when your day actually ends — I'll book just after it.