The Pace Principle – Why Nervous System Regulation Is the Secret to Real, Lasting Change
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 13
- 12 min read
Charlotte Phelps, Founder of The Alchemy of Being, transformed her life from a terminal prognosis into a mission to empower others. She offers tools and insights, born from her own journey, for personal growth and holistic health, helping individuals curate their unique 'Toolbelt for Life'.
We live in a world obsessed with speed, faster growth, faster healing, faster everything. But the body doesn’t measure progress by time, it measures safety. Real transformation has a rhythm, and that rhythm is set not by your willpower but by your nervous system. At the heart of this is nervous system regulation, the balance between effort and recovery, action and rest, that determines whether your body feels safe enough to change.
Last month, we explored joy as medicine, how laughter, awe, and purpose restore balance and resilience. This month, we’re grounding that same energy into something deeper, the Pace Principle. It’s the idea that lasting change only happens when your nervous system is regulated enough to allow it. Go too fast and your body contracts, go too slow and you stagnate. But when you find the right pace, your pace, growth becomes sustainable, integration becomes natural, and well-being starts to hold.
What is the Pace Principle?
The Pace Principle is simple, progress that honours your capacity.
It’s about understanding that your nervous system, not your goals or your calendar, is the real metronome of your life. Every tool, habit, and healing practice you’ve collected will only take root at the speed your body can process it. That’s not weakness, it’s biology.
Think of your nervous system like the soil of a garden. You can’t force flowers to bloom faster by shouting at them or pouring on more water. They grow when the conditions are right, when the soil is nourished, the temperature stable, and the rhythm of day and night respected. The same is true for you. Pushing harder doesn’t always mean progress, often, it means overwhelm.
The Pace Principle teaches you to work with your biology, not against it. It’s a shift from hustling for healing to cultivating it. When you start listening to your own internal rhythm, when you honour rest, recovery, and the natural cadence of change, you stop burning out and start integrating.
Ironically, that’s when everything begins to move faster, not because you’re forcing it, but because you’ve stopped fighting yourself.
The science of pacing
To understand why pace matters, we need to look at how the body handles change. Your nervous system isn’t just a background function, it’s the command centre for safety, energy, and adaptation. That means it isn’t an optional extra in personal growth, it is the infrastructure through which change must travel. Understanding this is the heart of the Pace Principle.
At its core sits the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which has two main branches working in partnership:
The sympathetic nervous system, which mobilises you for action. It’s the energy of movement, motivation, and alertness, often referred to as the “fight or flight” system.
The parasympathetic nervous system, which brings you back to rest and repair, the state where digestion, recovery, and healing can actually occur.
When these two systems work in balance, you feel steady and capable, alert but calm. But when you push too hard for too long, the sympathetic system dominates. Cortisol and adrenaline rise, digestion slows, sleep becomes lighter, and emotional bandwidth narrows. You are in fight or flight mode, when the system is expecting danger. And you can’t integrate change when your body thinks you’re in danger. This isn’t mindset, it’s physiology.
For those who want a deeper understanding of this fundamental aspect of human physiology, McCorry’s review of the ANS offers an excellent overview (McCorry 2007, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education).
Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Siegel describes the optimal range for this ANS balance as the window of tolerance. Inside that window, your system can process new information, recover from stress, and grow.
When you’re outside it, either hyper-activated (anxious, agitated, overdriven) or hypo-activated (numb, shut down, exhausted), the brain stops prioritising learning and switches into self-protection. Essentially, your brain and body have bailed out of integration mode and reverted to damage control.
It’s why even positive changes can feel impossible to sustain when you’re overwhelmed.
Research on stress physiology confirms that long-term imbalance creates what scientist Bruce McEwen called “allostatic load,” the cumulative wear and tear on the body from chronic over-activation of the stress response (McEwen 2007, Physiological Reviews). The antidote isn’t more effort, it’s regulation.
That’s where the Pace Principle comes in. When you slow down enough for your nervous system to feel safe, you create the biological conditions for growth. Your body moves out of protection and into possibility. Change stops being something you force and starts being something you embody.
In practical terms, your nervous system sets the maximum tempo at which meaningful change happens. It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing at a pace your system can digest. When you respect that cadence, the change you make doesn’t just happen, it holds.
This understanding sits at the heart of The Alchemy of Being. Our approach isn’t about chasing the next tool or quick fix, it’s about helping you understand your own rhythms, so you can use every practice in a way that honours your nervous system, not overwhelms it.
Why we push too hard
If we know our nervous system has limits, why do we keep ignoring them?
Because the world around us rewards pace, not presence. We live in a culture that glorifies hustle and treats exhaustion like a badge of honour. The faster we move, the more valuable we’re told we are, as if growth could be measured by how many things we juggle at once.
The self-development world can sometimes feed that same illusion. There’s an unspoken message that transformation should be instant, that if a tool “works,” you’ll feel better right away.
But biology doesn’t operate on motivational timelines. Change isn’t a light switch, it’s a sequence of nervous system adjustments that need repetition and rest to take hold. When we chase the next hack or breakthrough, we’re really chasing the adrenaline of progress, not the substance of it.
Perfectionism and comparison make this even harder. As I wrote in Wellness Isn’t a Competition, we’ve been conditioned to measure ourselves against other people’s pace. We scroll through stories of overnight change and forget that what we’re seeing is often the highlight reel, not the process. The moment we compare our quiet, behind-the-scenes progress to someone else’s polished results, our nervous system tightens. We shift from self-connection to self-critique, and regulation disappears.
Sometimes, pushing harder isn’t about ambition at all, it’s about avoidance. Productivity can become a socially acceptable form of emotional bypassing, a way to outrun discomfort instead of sitting with it. But every time we do that, our body keeps the score. The stress response stays switched on, and the very system we rely on for growth starts to contract.
Here lies the irony: the more we push, the less space we have to receive. The harder we drive ourselves, the more our nervous system braces, not blossoms. Sustainable transformation doesn’t happen by force, it happens by rhythm.
Signs you’re outpacing yourself
When we live in a world that glorifies overdoing, it can be hard to recognise when we’ve slipped into it ourselves. Most of us don’t realise we’re out of sync until the body starts sending signals, gentle at first, then louder. These cues aren’t proof that you’re failing, they’re feedback from your nervous system that the pace you’re keeping has become unsustainable.
Here are some of the most common signs that you’re moving faster than your system can process:
Chronic fatigue or brain fog after “self-work.” You might notice that journalling, therapy, or inner work leaves you drained instead of grounded. Integration hasn’t failed, your capacity is simply asking for rest.
Irritability or emotional reactivity after retreats or programmes. Instead of feeling calm, you come home edgy, overstimulated, or flat. Too much input, too soon, can flood the nervous system and trigger contraction rather than expansion.
Reliance on adrenaline to stay motivated. If every burst of progress depends on a deadline, crisis, or caffeine hit, you’re running on the chemistry of survival, not sustainability.
Feeling like nothing “sticks.” You read the books, do the courses, have the insights, yet the changes don’t last. That isn’t lack of discipline, it’s your system quietly saying, “Slow down so I can catch up.”
These are not setbacks, they’re signposts. They show you where safety has slipped out of the equation. The body’s wisdom is simple, when it tightens, it’s asking you to pause. When it softens, it’s ready to grow.
I learned this the hard way during my decade of illness. Looking back, I can see all the signals my body sent long before it broke down completely, the sore feet trying to slow me, the loss of my voice asking me to be quiet, the rashes showing irritation quite literally under my skin. But the more I dismissed those messages, the louder my body spoke. Eventually, my bowel stopped moving, my menstruation stopped, and my body simply said, “Enough.” Those weren’t random symptoms, they were feedback from a system that had been overruled for too long.
When we don’t listen, the body finds a way to make us. The invitation is to notice the whispers before they have to become shouts. The Pace Principle begins here, with learning to notice before you’re forced to stop.
How to find your true pace
Once you begin to see your body’s signals as guidance rather than inconvenience, you can start working with your nervous system instead of against it. The goal isn’t to slow everything down for the sake of it, it’s to move at the speed that your system can safely sustain. Here’s how to start discovering your true pace:
Listen to your body, not your plan. Your calendar might say you can do more, but your breath, heart rate, and muscle tone tell the truth. Notice how your body feels after you complete a task, conversation, or healing practice. If you feel grounded and open, you’re within your window of tolerance. If you feel tense, foggy, or restless, your system is asking for a pause.
Introduce one thing at a time. Real change doesn’t require a full-life overhaul. It’s far more effective to add one small habit or tool, give it time to embed, and only then move on to the next. This slow layering approach allows your brain and body to adapt without slipping into overwhelm.
Build recovery in. Rest isn’t regression, it’s how the nervous system locks in progress. Just like muscles need rest between workouts, your brain and emotions need downtime to consolidate what you’re learning. Schedule micro-rests, a few deep breaths between meetings, a quiet walk after therapy, or an early night after an emotional day.
Let joy be your compass. As we explored in Joy as Medicine, joy is one of the clearest indicators of regulation. When you’re in balance, curiosity, playfulness, and ease come naturally. When they vanish, it’s often a sign you’ve tipped into survival mode again. If laughter feels forced or pleasure disappears, don’t push harder, pause. Reconnect to something that genuinely lifts you.
Reflect on your current capacity. If you want help finding your baseline, our Toolbelt Assessment is designed to help you reflect honestly on where you are right now and align your practices to your actual energy, not your ideal one.
The more you practise listening, resting, and adjusting, the more intuitive your pace becomes. You stop waiting for burnout to tell you you’ve gone too far and start trusting your body to guide you as you go.
At The Alchemy of Being, we share tools, modalities, and resources, but the real goal is self-expertise. We don’t want you to depend on the tools, we want you to learn to discern which ones truly serve you. The Pace Principle is one of the foundations of that work, because without pace, even the best tools can’t take root.
The rhythm of growth: Pacing in real life
I learned about pace the hard way, through sleep. For years, I treated rest as a waste of time, something that got in the way of living. But the turning point came when I finally understood what actually happens when we sleep. It’s not passive. It’s when the body repairs, rebalances hormones, files memories, restores energy, and heals. I realised I had been depriving my body of all the things it could only do when I slowed down.
Relearning how to sleep became one of the most profound teachers of my life. At first, I hated it. It felt unproductive and painfully slow, as if progress had ground to a halt. But little by little, I began to see that sleep wasn’t time lost, it was time used differently. My body was working as hard for me at night as I was for it during the day. That understanding changed everything.
What started as frustration slowly turned into empowerment. For the first time, I stopped speaking about my body as if it were a separate thing, it became we. Rest stopped feeling like surrender and started feeling like partnership. I learned that patience wasn’t passivity, it was intelligence. My body had been waiting for me to listen all along.
That’s the rhythm of growth, learning that the invisible work counts just as much as the visible. Healing, digestion, hormonal balance, and emotional processing, none of them happen faster because you will them to. They happen when you give them space. The art of resting isn’t doing nothing, it’s allowing your body to do what only it can do when you stop getting in its way.
Of course, everyone’s life is different. I’m single, without dependents, which means I have a lot of control over my pace. Not everyone does. For parents, carers, entrepreneurs, or anyone holding multiple responsibilities, slowing down can feel impossible. But pacing isn’t always about having hours to rest, it’s about finding micro-moments of regulation in real life. Five quiet breaths before you open your laptop. A short walk outside between meetings. Sitting still for sixty seconds to feel your feet on the ground. Those moments count. They add up.
The truth is, you don’t have to overhaul your life to live by the Pace Principle. You just have to start noticing when your body whispers and give it a moment to be heard. That’s where growth begins, not in how much you can do, but in how deeply you can listen.
The pace principle in practice
The best way to understand the Pace Principle is to live it, even for a week. Try softening the rhythm of your days and see what changes. You might take an extra moment to breathe before responding to an email, pause to feel your feet on the ground before walking into a room, or let yourself finish one task fully before starting the next. Maybe it’s noticing when your shoulders tense and consciously relaxing them, or taking three slow breaths before you speak. Tiny, consistent pauses like these begin to re-educate your nervous system to trust that it’s safe to rest.
If slowing down feels uncomfortable, that’s normal. We’ve been trained to associate rest with laziness and productivity with worth. But pacing isn’t indulgence, it’s nervous system literacy. It’s learning to read the cues that tell you when your body’s capacity is full and to respond with compassion instead of criticism.
You may find that in the stillness, things you’ve been forcing begin to unfold on their own. Relationships soften. Decisions become clearer. Your tools start to integrate without so much effort. Pace is the invisible scaffolding for everything else, it’s what allows integration to hold, joy to last, and self-trust to deepen.
If you’re ready to explore this more intentionally, our Getting Started Guide offers simple ways to begin resetting your rhythm across body, mind, and soul, with practical steps to create space for your nervous system to breathe.
Everything we create at The Alchemy of Being is designed to help you slow down enough to listen, to your body, your intuition, and your own wisdom, so you become the expert in you.
The invitation is simple: experiment. Try moving through life just ten percent slower for one week and notice what happens. Because when you stop rushing the process, you finally have time to experience it.
Conclusion: Slow is the new sustainable
Real healing doesn’t rush. It roots.
The Pace Principle is the bridge between knowing and becoming, between collecting tools and actually living them. It’s what turns integration into embodiment and joy into sustainability. Because when your nervous system feels safe, the changes you make don’t just work, they last.
Learning to match your outer ambition with your inner capacity isn’t easy in a world that equates speed with success. But the truth is, slow isn’t weak, it’s wise.
It’s the rhythm that allows your body, mind, and soul to move in harmony rather than in competition. When you stop forcing and start listening, transformation stops being something you chase and becomes something you live.
Integration, joy, and pace, three facets of the same journey, learning to live in rhythm with yourself.
So here’s your invitation to reflect, "What would change if you stopped measuring progress by speed and started measuring it by steadiness?"
Because sometimes the fastest way forward is to finally slow down.
Read more from Charlotte Phelps
Charlotte Phelps, Founder of The Alchemy of Being
Charlotte Phelps's life took a pivotal turn at 33 when she was given just six weeks to live due to a likely bowel perforation. This diagnosis came after a decade of being told she was fine by the medical world, making it both validating and shocking. Forced to explore unconventional options to survive, Charlotte not only regained her health but also underwent a transformative journey of soul, mind, and body. She also developed a profound need to understand how she had lived, which sparked a decade-long exploration of holistic practices and alternative approaches. This journey ignited a deep passion to share what she’d discovered with others, leading to the creation of The Alchemy of Being.
