Hi friends,

Welcome to the May edition of How Humans Flourish—a research-informed newsletter exploring how we thrive in body, mind, and the choices that shape who we become.

Last month, we touched on the idea of the Self—capital S.

The Self is not the personality we've refined. Not our habits, our hustle, or the curated version of us we offer to the world.

It is the real Self.

The part of us that's calm without controlling. Confident without chasing applause. Clear without needing a spreadsheet to justify it.

That Self sounds poetic in theory. But what does it mean in the rhythm of real life? Why does it matter? And what actually changes—in our bodies, our minds, our relationships—when we begin to live from that place?

Here's something to consider: There's a state your body was designed for… and many of us have never truly felt it.

Not because it's out of reach. But because it's unfamiliar. We were taught to suppress, to perform, to survive. Not how to regulate. Not how to feel.

According to gastroenterologist and neuroscientist Dr. Emeran Mayer, fewer than 5% of people in North America live in a state of optimal health—a state marked not just by the absence of disease, but by high energy, emotional steadiness, satisfying relationships, creative fulfillment, and purpose-fueled living.

That means 95% of us aren't broken. We're just miscalibrated.

Many of us live in bodies caught in a feedback loop of cortisol and control:

Dopamine chases that never really satisfy.
Adrenaline that gets mistaken for intuition.
Exhaustion that gets mistaken for identity.

Sometimes we tell ourselves this is the cost of being "high-achieving." But more often than not, it's just a nervous system that's never had permission to exhale.

What Happens When We Finally Exhale

Let's look at what happens—scientifically—when the nervous system begins to soften:

Cortisol drops. The body begins repairing the quiet damage done by chronic stress.
Heart rate variability rises—a biological marker of emotional flexibility, resilience, and adaptive intelligence.
The vagus nerve signals safety to your body: you are okay, you can connect, you can create.
Neuroplasticity returns. The brain attunes itself to growth. New habits stick. Intuition sharpens.

You stop reacting. You begin moving from precision, not panic.

So the question becomes: What becomes possible when the body is no longer protecting us from the past? What emerges when it's free to build the future?

The Biology of Becoming

As your heart rate variability increases, so does your capacity for complexity. As the vagus nerve fires, so does your ability to love and digest (literally) and rest.

And in that safety, something remarkable happens: You open. You change.

Not in the ways we're usually chasing. But in deeper, more fulfilling ways.

Because that calm, clear Self mentioned earlier? It doesn't lead when the body is shut down. It leads when the body is regulated enough to trust its own knowing.

Neuroscientists like Richard Davidson have shown that contemplative practices—breathwork, meditation, focused attention—reshape the brain, increasing activity in regions associated with empathy, insight, and emotional regulation.

You start to notice more.
You feel timing, tone, texture.
You become more precise with your choices, more porous to awe.

The Chemistry of Human Voltage

Researchers at UC Berkeley found that awe—whether sparked by beauty, courage, or deep mystery—reduces inflammatory cytokines in the body.

In other words: awe calms the immune system. It shifts us from reactivity into resonance. From urgency into expansion. It reorganizes what we thought we knew, and quite literally, creates space for a bigger, deeper life.

Neurologically, awe rewires our sense of time and possibility:

The prefrontal cortex quiets.
The Default Mode Network—the part of the brain that loops and fixates—goes offline.
Dopamine rises.
Time slows down.

And for a moment, the system remembers what it feels like to be both fully present and deeply connected to something larger.

I orchestrate my days around awe. I cherish the moment, the conversation, the piece of art that makes me stop, expand, and feel the hair on my arms rise. When I was younger, awe had to be loud, but now I've trained my body to catch awe in the quiet.

The warmth of sun on my back.
The stillness after a deep breath.
The look in a loved one's eyes when words aren't needed.

It's not about intensity. It's about intimacy—with life, with sensation, with the moment in front of us.

This is why practices like consistent gratitude journaling actually work—they help attune us to the micro-miracles of our day, activating neural pathways associated with positive emotion and disrupting the brain's default negativity bias. Over time, regularly practicing gratitude can shift baseline mood and attentional patterns through neuroplasticity—our brain's ability to rewire itself based on repeated behavior.

We begin to see life through the lens of what's nourishing, not just what's missing.

The Sovereignty Loop

Once awe cracks us open, the next step is deeper: Self-Sovereignty.

Not self-control. Not self-sufficiency. But the felt sense that we can lead ourselves.

We are wired for social external feedback loops.
We scan for approval.
We calibrate to culture.
We react to old wounds.

But when your interoceptive system (our internal sensory system that allows us to sense and understand what's happening inside our body, providing information about internal states like hunger, thirst, pain, and emotions) becomes louder than external noise, your life changes.

Research shows:

People with high interoceptive accuracy (meaning they can feel and interpret their internal signals) are more emotionally resilient, better at regulating fear, and less likely to rely on external validation to make decisions.

They don't need rigid plans.
They can pivot.
They can pause.
They sense.

Think of:

The single mother who used to say yes to every request out of guilt… now pauses. Feels the tightening in her chest. Trusts that it means no. And says no—with grace. She has energy left at the end of the day. Her children feel her presence.
The founder who used to schedule 14-hour days, back-to-back… now organizes her calendar around her circadian rhythm. She keeps one hour of unscheduled time each morning for deep thinking. Her decisions have gone from reactive to precise. She sleeps. Her team respects the cadence.
The artist who used to burn out every six months… now recognizes the subtle signs of depletion in his breath and digestion. Instead of quitting, he recalibrates. He stretches, eats more fiber, walks, sits in the sun. He's released four projects this year alone. Not one of them rushed.

These aren't radical transformations. They're acts of physiological sovereignty.

And let's be clear: sovereignty isn't for the faint of heart.

It requires stamina. It requires courage.

This is why mental and physical wellbeing always comes back to increasing resilience—not because suffering is noble, but because clarity and follow-through require strength.

To live in a world that perpetually tells you to be everything except yourself is not just emotionally exhausting—it's biologically disorienting. And the work of sovereignty isn't just about tuning into your internal signals—it's about having the nervous system capacity to follow them.

Because as UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has shown, we are quite literally wired to care what other people think. Social rejection activates the same neural circuits as physical pain. So for every person who says, "I don't give a damn what people think," I can show you an fMRI that says otherwise.

This is why contemplative lineages teach stillness. Breath. Repetition. Practice.

Used unconsciously, they can become tools for escape (like drugs, like sex, like anything).

But used with intention, they fortify the system—so you can stay tethered to your highest truth, even when the world tries to pull you away from it.

This is the sovereignty loop:

Regulation creates a sense of safety in our body → When we feel safe, we can tune in and hear the deeper signals within us → Those signals—intuition, body wisdom, cognitive intellect, inner knowing—build self-trust → With trust comes courage and confidence → Courage and confidence help us make different, more aligned, choices → Those new choices reshape our behaviors → And over time, those behaviors compound into positive lifestyle changes → Positive changes reinforce self-trust so we can begin again—stronger, steadier, more attuned.

When you live from Self-leadership, life stops being a negotiation. It becomes a tuning process.

Design, Not Discipline

Discipline is important. But in the economic system we live in, we are often rewarded for overriding our body.

And yes—you can build success on adrenaline and performance.
You can achieve. You can inspire. You can even build an empire.

But eventually, the cost shows up.

And here's the most unfortunate truth: Most of us don't feel called to do this work until something stops working.

The anxiety spikes.
The body breaks.
The feedback no longer fuels you.
The mask no longer fits.

But what if we didn't wait?

What if we chose flourishing—not because everything is going wrong—but because it makes the taste of life more delicious?

Because it's our birthright. Because it's available. Because it's like having a transformer for a body and only using one mode, when there are ten available to us—and one of them flies.

Neuroscience tells us:

Willpower is not infinite. It is not a character trait. It's a neurological resource—depleted by stress, decision fatigue, and biological misalignment.

What would our world look like if the most powerful, successful, creative people didn't try to control their system—they learned how to tune it?

Take my friend, a beautiful filmmaker.

She doesn't schedule meetings, pitches, or shoots randomly. She checks in with her body and ensures her creative and external output are in accordance with her menstrual cycle (she uses Natural Cycles to keep track).

In the luteal and menstrual phases—her internal, brooding window—she doesn't fight her body. She writes. She charts emotional character arcs. She edits.

And in her follicular and ovulatory phases, when her energy turns outward and verbal fluency spikes—that's when she pitches.

Her hormonal shifts are not evolutionary inconveniences. They are her creative architecture.

And she's not alone.

There are CEOs who now protect 90-minute blocks of deep work after REM-rich sleep windows—because their brains process insight best in those hours.

There are athletes who train in alignment with solar rhythms—not hustle culture—because circadian entrainment makes movement more efficient and recovery faster.

There are parents who've stopped organizing family life by obligation and started organizing it by resonance—asking, "What nourishes, or enlargens, our family system? What depletes it?"

This is not soft.
This is not self-indulgent.
This is precision medicine for your entire life.

And when your days are built around the intelligence of your system?

You get more done with less depletion
You create from inspiration and creativity, not obligation
You lead from rhythm, not rigidity
You source energy from a completely different bodily well.

Discipline might get you across the finish line. But design will let you fly.

The Threshold

Flourishing isn't impossible. It's just unfamiliar.

We've spent lifetimes living from the edges of our minds—but there's a whole center we haven't touched.

The Self—calm, curious, connected, compassionate—was never meant to be rare. It was meant to be our starting point.

And when you feel it, you'll know.

That's the threshold.

The question is no longer: What's wrong with me?
The question is: What more is possible from here?

Because we weren't meant to just endure this life. We are meant to live it—fully, vividly, audaciously.

In aliveness,

p.s. ⟡ This Week's Signal: Pause for 90 seconds after your next "yes." Notice where it lives in your body. Is it a reflex, or a resonance?

How to contribute:

How Humans Flourish isn't a brand or a platform—it's a quiet space carved out for reflection, restoration, and remembering. It was born from the desire to offer something that feels slower… deeper… something untouched by noise or performance.

Since its beginning, I've chosen to keep this space free of ads, free of distraction, and free of the pressures that often flatten meaningful work. Every essay, every gathering, every thread of research is offered with care—and takes time, energy, and devotion to sustain.

If this work has met you in a moment of need, brought you closer to yourself, or reminded you of what matters—then I invite you to help keep it alive.

You can become a Sustaining Patron, joining a circle of steady supporters who make this possible. Or, you can offer a one-time contribution to help ensure How Humans Flourish continues as a thoughtful, ad-free resource for years to come.

Sustaining Patrons also receive unlimited access to our weekly Wisdom Rooms—sacred spaces where the exploration deepens and where we remember, together, what it means to flourish.

Your support, in any form, is a beautiful act of community.