Are You Overlooking the Transformation You Most WAnt?
Photo by Virginia Johnson.
During this week's office hours for The School for Humaning Well, one of the students—I'll call her M—shared an experience I consider revelatory. Not because it was a dramatic goal-line success. But because it was so simple... and yet so profound.
With her permission, I'm sharing it with you. Because what she's experiencing is easy to overlook—and it's exactly the kind of transformation most people want, but think they can only have by changing their outside world.
The Setup
M co-runs her own company. She manages a large team. And right now, she's in the middle of integrating new backend software that's complex, nuanced, and filled with hiccups.
Normally—and by normally, I mean just a few weeks ago—this would've sent her system into a spiral.
Anxiety would surface. Urgency would take over. She'd work late into the evening, her mind spinning with all the things that still needed fixing. The laptop would stay open long after dinner. And even when she finally closed it, her body wouldn't settle.
That was her normal.
What Changed
For the past few days—since our last class weekend—something different has been happening.
M has been feeling... spacious. Grounded. Settled.
Here's how she described it:
"The last couple of days have been really busy with work, plus this new software rollout—and I've still felt so settled. Yesterday afternoon, as dinner time approached, I noticed: Wow. I really am feeling okay right now.
Normally I would be super activated. Like, 'Oh my God, all these people have questions about the new platform, I've got to fix this, I can't stop working yet.'
But I wasn't feeling that. And... that's really nice."
Then she paused.
And this is where it gets even more interesting…
The Mind's Response
M went to a yoga class that evening. And during the class, her mind took a new approach.
"Is this apathy?"
The feeling of spaciousness—the absence of buzz and activation—felt similar to when she's felt apathetic in the past. And her mind latched onto that.
This must be a problem. You don't care anymore. Something's wrong.
But M had enough awareness to catch it. She could feel the story forming—and she could also feel something else underneath it:
This isn't apathy. This is what a settled nervous system actually feels like.
In that moment, she saw it clearly: Her mind was working overtime to convince her that peace was a problem.
Why This Matters
Here's what most people don't understand about this work—and why it's so easy to dismiss M's experience:
The mind thinks it knows what a regulated nervous system feels like.
It thinks it understands what "calm" is, what "present" is, what "grounded" is.
And because it thinks it knows, further exploration doesn't happen.
But here's the truth: The mind can never understand direct experience.
Thinking about calm and feeling calm are not the same thing.
And one of the ways the mind stays "in charge" is by assuming it already knows—so you stop looking deeper.
The Revelation
For M, this moment was revelatory.
She's experiencing—on a visceral, embodied level—what it actually feels like when her system isn't running in overdrive.
She can close her laptop at the end of the day with ease. No pull to do more. No urgency demanding her attention.
Yes, there are still things to do. Issues to handle. Problems to solve.
But she has more capacity to trust that it will all get taken care of—in due time.
And here's what's even wilder: This experience is so foreign to her system that her mind is creating stories to explain it away.
Because the mind is designed to keep your current pace and conditioning intact. Why? Because that pace—even if it's anxious, even if it's exhausting—feels familiar. And familiar equals safe.
So when M dropped into deeper regulation, her mind panicked:
"Wait. This doesn't feel like home. This must be wrong. Let me label it as apathy so we can get back to what we know."
But M is seeing through it. She's recognizing how activated her system has been for years—and how good this settled state actually feels.
A New Baseline
What's happening for M isn't a fluke. It's not a good week. It's not external circumstances finally lining up.
It's a shift in her internal baseline.
She will never not know that this level of spaciousness and groundedness exists.
Once you feel it—really feel it—you can't unfeel it.
Your body knows the truth. And once your body knows, the game changes.
M didn't force this. She didn't "work hard" to make it happen. She didn't white-knuckle her way into calm.
She simply leaned in. She followed the whisper inside that craved true freedom.
She showed up to the work. She stayed with the practices. She allowed insights to arise.
And the insights did the "work" for her.
This is what it looks like to align with the Intelligence of Life that runs through all of us. This state is our birthright.
The Invitation
Most people think they know what a settled state feels like.
But if you've been running at the speed of thought for most of your life—if urgency, anxiety, and busy-ness have been your normal—you might not actually know what it feels like when your system is truly at rest.
And you won't know until you experience it.
Not think about it. Not read about it. Not understand it conceptually.
Experience it.
That's the work we're doing in The School for Humaning Well.
We're not learning about presence. We're dropping into it.
We're not talking about a regulated nervous system—well, we are, and mostly, we're feeling what it's like when the system finally settles.
And when that happens—when you touch that place even once—everything changes.
Not because you've fixed yourself.
Not because you've transcended your humanness.
But because you've remembered something you always knew:
You're already whole. You always have been.
And, this is your natural state.
Living this new baseline unlocks a whole new world. One that doesn't require outer reality to be different in order to feel relaxed, spacious…and free.
I hope you're as inspired by M as I am.
Cheers to deepening your baseline.
With loving,
Amber
P.S. If M's story resonates—if some part of you recognizes that you've been living at a more activated pace—I want you to know: there's another way.
It's not about doing more or trying harder. It's about softening enough to let yourself feel what's already here.
That's the work. That's the invitation.
And if you're feeling the pull, trust it.
The next enrollment for The School for Humaning Well opens later this year. If you want to be notified when doors open, join the Humaning Well Community here. You'll receive my twice-monthly letters—along with invitations to programs and gatherings I only share with this community.
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