There's a moment in every transformation when the real work begins.
It’s not the moment we have the insight, the breakthrough, or even the healing. It's the moment we have to decide: Are we going to live from this new place, or are we going to go back to what feels familiar?
For most of my life, I lived from the outside in. I made decisions based on what others expected, what felt safe, what looked right. I sought approval, avoided conflict, and tried to fit into boxes that were never designed for me.
But when we learn to see through love instead of judgment, as we explored in Love Is the Only Way, when we remember how to trust our inner knowing, something shifts. We move beyond the madness of seeking validation everywhere else and start living from a different place entirely.
We start living from the inside out.
Breaking Free from External Validation
For years, I was trapped in a cycle of second-guessing myself. Should I make this decision? Would this disappoint people? What would they think if I chose differently? But most of the struggle was internal, battling my own doubts, fighting with myself over what was right.
Even my faith was built around external validation. I believed the right things, said the right words, followed the right rules. But it was all performance, all trying to earn something I already had.
The breakthrough came when I realized that the divine love I had been seeking outside myself was already within me. The wisdom I had been looking for in books and teachers and authorities was already alive in my own heart.
This didn't happen overnight. It took years of breathwork, of sitting with discomfort, of learning to feel my body again. But slowly, I began to trust what I knew. I started making decisions not from fear but from love. Not from duty but from desire.
I stopped asking "What should I do?" and started asking "What wants to emerge through me?"
That difference was everything.
Developing Inner Authority
Living from the inside out doesn't mean being selfish or ignoring wisdom from others. It means developing the capacity to discern what resonates and what doesn't. In holotropic breathwork, Stan Grof calls this our "inner healing intelligence," the innate wisdom that guides our healing and transformation process. It means learning to feel into decisions rather than just think through them.
We've all had moments when something looked perfect on paper but didn't feel right in our bodies. Or times when we said yes to something when our whole being was saying no, and later regretted it. Learning to trust that inner knowing, that quiet sense of resonance or resistance, is what it means to live from the inside out.
This is what it means to stop forcing ourselves into situations that don't fit. We stop saying yes when our whole being is saying no. We start choosing from alignment rather than from obligation.
Practices for Living from Center:
Decision-Making from Center
Before making important choices, take time to get quiet. Notice what your body tell you about different options. Ask yourselves: "What choice would I make if I was living from love rather than fear?" Pay attention to the first response that comes, before our minds start analyzing.Values Alignment Check
Regularly reflect on whether your life is aligned with what you actually value, not what you think you should value. Are you spending time on things that matter to you? Are you saying yes to opportunities that resonate? Are you honoring your own priorities?Boundary Practice
Practice saying no to things that don't serve you, even if they're good things. Practice saying yes to things that light you up, even if they seem impractical. Boundaries are how we honor our inner knowing.Walking Meditation
One of the most powerful ways to cultivate this inside-out living is through mindful walking. When we walk with presence and intention, we're literally moving through the world from our center. Each step becomes a practice of authenticity.
This is why I co-created the Walking Pilgrim app with my friend Michael Wood. It's a 33-day journey that combines breath, walking meditation, and presence practices. Walking becomes a way to embody the transformation we've been exploring in this series, moving through life from our own truth rather than external expectations.
Extending Grace from Groundedness
When we're grounded in our own worth, when we know who we are and trust what we know, something beautiful happens: we naturally extend that same spaciousness to others.
We stop trying to control how others see us because we're secure in how we see ourselves. We stop taking things personally because we know that other people's reactions are about their own inner world, not ours. We become able to love people without needing them to be different.
This is where forgiveness becomes natural rather than forced. When we're living from our center, forgiveness isn't something we have to work up or talk ourselves into. It's simply what happens when we see clearly. We understand that everyone is doing their best with what they have. We recognize the survival patterns, the conditioning, the fear that drives difficult behavior.
And from that place of understanding, grace flows naturally.
I think about my relationship with my father, who passed away several years ago. For much of my life, I carried anger about things he said and did, ways he hadn't been able to show up. But when I learned to live from my center, that anger simply dissolved. Not because I forced forgiveness, but because I could see his own pain, his own conditioning, his own attempts to survive.
Living from this deeper center gave me the capacity to love him completely, without needing him to have been different. This kind of grace is only possible when we stop living from fear and start living from presence.
And that’s the journey we’ve been on together.
The Journey We've Taken Together
We began this series with Beyond the Madness: Just Trying to Survive, learning to see that when people hurt others or make destructive choices, they’re often just trying to survive their own pain and conditioning. That understanding helped us move beyond judgment into compassion.
Love Is the Only Way invited us to see through the lens of love, recognizing the Cosmic Christ in all creation. Coming Home to Ourselves turned that gaze inward, helping us trust our inner knowing and the wisdom of our bodies. And now, we’re discovering what it means to live from that place.
This is no small transformation. We’ve moved from external validation to inner authority. From performance to presence. From fear to love.
And yet, the inner work is only the beginning.
Living from the inside out is not the end of the journey—it’s the foundation for what comes next: the courage to live authentically in every area of our lives.
It’s one thing to trust ourselves in private. It’s another to show up fully in the world, especially when it might cost us approval, safety, or belonging. This is the next frontier: moving from inner transformation to authentic expression.
When we trust ourselves and live from love, we naturally extend grace to others—because we’re grounded in our own worth. From that place, relationships become real, our work begins to serve the soul, and our lives start to actually feel like ours.
And here’s what I’m discovering: when we stop hiding and risk being real, something miraculous happens. The right people come. The right opportunities emerge.
The world doesn’t need a performance. It needs the truth of who we really are.
That’s the journey we’ll explore next.
Coming Back to Love
At the heart of everything we've explored in this series is love. Love for others in their survival patterns, love that sees the divine in all creation, and love for ourselves as we come home to who we really are.
When we live from the inside out, we're living from love. When we trust our inner knowing, we're trusting the love that lives within us. When we extend grace to others, we're seeing them through the eyes of love.
Love is not just something we feel, but something we are. Not something we give, but the source we live from.
The madness ends when we remember that love is our true nature. Everything else is just finding our way home to that love and learning to live from it.
And now, with this foundation in place, we begin a new phase of the journey.
What Comes Next: Embodying Authenticity
Inner healing is not the end of the road—it’s the beginning of something more real.
When we begin to trust ourselves and live from our center, the next question becomes: How do we embody that truth in daily life?
How do we live in a world that doesn’t always welcome our authenticity?
How do we stay grounded when fear, fatigue, or social pressure pull us back into old roles?
These are the questions I’ll be exploring in a new four-part series called:
Living Authentically: Tools and Practices for Coming Home to Yourself.
We’ll dive into the real, messy, liberating work of embodied authenticity—not just feeling aligned inside, but living in a way that reflects that truth:
In our decisions, no longer seeking approval but choosing from love
In our daily rituals, building self-care practices that anchor us in presence
In our relationships, setting boundaries, speaking truth, and offering grace
In our bodies, learning to feel safe enough to stay present, even in discomfort
Along the way, I’ll be sharing practical tools I’ve used—like conscious breathwork, shadow work, journaling, and the Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of walking meditation and presence that I co-created to help you return to your center, one step at a time.
If the first series helped you understand what it means to come home to yourself, this next one will help you live from that place, in every area of your life.
The journey continues next week. I hope you’ll walk it with me.
Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit where he helps people reconnect to the wisdom of the body and transform through breathwork, shadow work, somatic practice, and spiritual clarity.
He is also the co-creator of the Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of breath, presence, and personal transformation through mindful walking. Sign up at walkingpilgrim.com.