Well•come, kin. Pause, and take a deep, calming breath with me. In... and out... As you breathe, remind yourself of your innate wisdom and wholeness. With each breath—be here. Fully present, as we embark on this journey together.

LaShaun Here to help you feel good & function well in the most meaningful areas of your life. Because being stressed, striving and stuck in survival mode was never the goal. ​ #whensciencefeelslikemagic

We optimized our rest. We productivity-stacked our healing. We looksmaxxed, grindmaxxed, skinmaxxed, and (because we are nothing if not evolved) we slowmaxxed too.

Maxxing is doing the absolute most (and oftentimes the absolute worst) to:

feel good. look good. perform good. optimize good. and occasionally, accidentally be ‘good’.


It’s borderline absurd. 
Moneymaxxing, Statusmaxxing, Networkmaxxing, Heightmaxxing, Gymaxxing, Maximalism. Slaymaxxing, Chaosmaxxing, Silllymaxxing…

TJMaxxing (just kidding)

We found the cottagecore aesthetic and promptly made it a project. We discovered nervous system regulation and immediately began tracking it. We took the concept of doing less and did it *harder* than anyone.

(You know who you are. I know who I am. Hello: we’ve met.)

Here is what nobody put in the welcome packet for conscious living: you can optimize your way directly past the thing you're optimizing for. 

Let’s talk peace. You can build such an exquisite container for peace that there is no room left inside it to actually feel any.

The self-help shelf, organized by spine color, full of instructions for becoming. The morning routine so precisely engineered it generates its own cortisol. The intentional walk with the right shoes, the right podcast, the right quantity of presence. The digital detox, documented.

We have been maxxing our peace without ever actually having any.

This is the maxxing paradox. And PeaceMaxxing is its undoing.

I can hear some of y’all…not another protocol. Bear with me.

PeaceMaxxing isn't whole + well style isn’t vibesmaxxing with a meditation cushion. It's the one maxx that dismantles the maxxing impulse entirely because the thing you're after has never been achievable by addition. You cannot stack your way to wholeness. You cannot track your way to enough-ness. You cannot optimize toward a feeling that only arrives when you stop performing arrival.

There is a Hebrew word: Shalom. (שָׁלֵם)

We've been told it means peace. It means considerably more. 
The root ‘sh-l-m’ describes a state in which nothing is missing and nothing is broken. 
Completeness. 
Wholeness. 
Every part of what should be present. Present. 

It is inherently relational; you cannot manufacture Shalom alone, in a morning routine, on a retreat you booked four months in advance. It lives between, between you and your body, between you and another person, between you and whatever you call sacred.

Shalom asks you to be whole.

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Here's what whole actually feels like.

It moves. It has a pulse. It rises and it settles. It can hold the collywobbles before a hard conversation, the hot tears in the car at 4pm for no reason you can name, the warm-in-belly feeling when someone says exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment and underneath all of it, it still knows the way back to center.

Because peace isn't the absence of the wave.

Peace is the body's trust in its own return.

Which means the whole arc counts. All of it. The buildup, the crest, the release, the stillness that pools in after. That full movement *that* is what a regulated human being actually feels like. Not the performance of calm. The rhythm of return.

The cry was the peace. The exhale you didn't know you were holding was the peace. The argument where everyone finally said the true thing was the peace. The run that started angry and came back grateful was the peace.
The dance in the kitchen at an objectively unreasonable volume was the peace. The walk that started as escape and ended as arrival was the peace.
The furious journaling that left three pages of wreckage and one true sentence was the peace. The garden you attacked on a hard afternoon, hands in actual dirt, was the peace.The prayer said badly, in fragments was the peace. The grief you stopped managing long enough to actually feel was the peace.

The moment you stopped being a project was the peace.

Which means PeaceMaxxing is not about getting better at stillness. It's about getting better at the full arc. Feeling completely, without flooding. Moving through, without getting marooned.


Not the optimized version. The real one. Your specific, embarrassingly ordinary, irreplaceable things. 


That is your PeaceMaxx. The returning. Again and again, imperfectly, humanly, in the unremarkable Sunday morning of it.
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The Koan at the Core: The only way to win at PeaceMaxxing is to stop keeping score.

Let's talk about what's actually happening in that body of yours.

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Your nervous system was never built for flatline calm.

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Stephen Porges, whose Polyvagal Theory mapped the autonomic nervous system's hierarchy of states, describes its highest-functioning condition the ventral vagal state as active availability. In this state, the system is open, regulated, and capable of full engagement with the world and with other people. It is the platform from which you can move into intensity and return. The key word, always, being return
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The system moves through three states:
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• ventral vagal: safe, connected, available
• sympathetic activation: fight, flight, the meeting that required considerably more cortisol than the agenda warranted; and
• dorsal vagal shutdown: the numb, foggy, what's-even-the-point collapse that looks like peace but your the system raising a white flag.

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That last state is what we accidentally aim for when we demand constant calm. Real regulation is the capacity to move through a flatline or a flood and come back.

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Heart Rate Variability makes the argument beautifully.

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HRV (the variation in time between heartbeats) is among the most robust markers of physiological health available. Here is the finding that should reorganize how you think about peace: a perfectly regular heartbeat is a clinical warning sign. A healthy heart varies. It responds. It breathes with you, rises with demand, and returns. Research published in *Frontiers in Neuroscience* (2023) confirms that higher HRV links directly to better emotional regulation, executive function, and overall wellbeing.
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The biological argument for peace-as-rhythm is written into every heartbeat.

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The flatline isn't peace. The flatline is the problem.

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And then there is what flourishing actually requires.

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A 2024 paper in Frontiers in Psychology examining Self-Determination Theory found that eudaimonic wellbeing, the deep, alive kind, depends on three conditions: autonomy (living congruent with your actual values, not your aspirational ones), relatedness (real connection, not networked connection), and competence (the felt sense of being genuinely capable) (Curren & Park, 2024; doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1409377; PMID: PMC11079117).

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Notice what is not on the list.

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No optimization stack.
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What flourishing requires is congruence: when who you are, what you feel, and how you live are aligned. No gap between the self you perform and the self you actually inhabit. Carl Rogers named this condition decades ago. The research keeps confirming it. The absence of self-betrayal is, apparently, the whole point.

The practice:

Find somewhere unremarkable. A chair. A parked car. The edge of a bed.

Place one hand flat against your sternum (that broad bone at the center of your chest) the one your ribs radiate from Press gently. Enough to feel the warmth of your own hand returning.

Ask.
Without pressure: What does my body need right now, in this actual moment, to begin the return?

Now.

The answer will be quieter than expected and less impressive than hoped. Water, maybe. One true sentence said aloud to one true person. Four minutes of nothing, not rebranded as anything.

Whatever it is, do that.

PeaceMaxxing isn't the protocol. It's learning, slowly, imperfectly, to trust the answer. To let the wave crest and fall without reaching for your phone, your planner, your next upgraded version of yourself.

If anything you’ve read here has been resonant, nourishing, or of service to you in a meaningful way, please do, share this email. I appreciate your reciprocity.

In sharing, you contribute to a bigger picture - a world pulsating with well-being and wholeness. I'm grateful for you!

Here are more ways I can support you.

• Feedback, love notes, and other inquiries? Just hit reply
• Want me to give a talk at your event or with your team? Workshops, consulting + speaking inquiries, apply here.​

p.s. Shalom, Reader.
Nothing missing. Nothing broken.
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