In this week’s post, I share an experience that caught me off guard and opened an unexpected doorway into how we move through change. It made me wonder what really happens when the familiar falls away and the world stops behaving the way we remember.

JANUARY 9, 2026
Today, I invite you to come on a cosmic journey with me.
Where are we going?
Let’s just say somewhere in between time and space…and into the multidimensional layers that make me appreciate this human adventure every day anew.
A little over eight years ago, my husband and I decided to do something completely crazy and move to France.
We had toyed with the idea of moving to Europe for a while, but we didn’t have a business we could take with us nor any idea where we wanted to live.
Online, we met a French gentleman in a group for people wanting to move to France and he began looking through rental offerings for us in case something came up.
For the better part of a year, he sent us listings once in a while and we explored them to see what was available.
During that time, my husband started working online and we moved closer and closer to building income we could take with us no matter where we moved.
We made the decision that when our online income reached a certain threshold, we would be ready to move.
As it usually happens, life didn’t wait around for us to plan it all out in advance.
A perfect rental place came up and within 10 days, my husband, our cat, and I were on a plane to Paris.
We had no plan. All we had was a rental car to drive from Paris to our rental house five hours away, a few nights in a pet-friendly hotel to get settled, and that was it.
The first month was complete chaos, as we got furniture and basic necessities organized so we could move from the hotel into the house.
There was no time for feeling homesick or even internalizing the experience because life demanded I function.
After the first few months passed, I finally had a few moments to breathe. I sat outside on the lawn, looking over the countryside, listening to the birds singing, and I felt strange.
I looked at my hands and they were physically present. I looked at my toes in the green grass. Check. They were also physically present.
And yet I felt a strange sense of disconnect, a surreal feeling that my body wasn’t quite my own.
I noticed throughout the day I would catch myself thinking that in Canada we would be sleeping right now, or I would be driving to the office, or going out for lunch with my parents.
My mental reality seemed to have detached from my physical being, with one still living in Canada and the other physically present in France.
I had to let go of all my old routines, as they no longer served me in France. I felt like a leaf floating precariously on a giant ocean, untethered and lost.
The sudden split made me realize how deeply routine anchored my mind.
My body had moved, but my inner clock still followed an old calendar. My nervous system no longer knew what reality to expect.
It struck me that this is what every period of change feels like. Part of us still keeps the old system running, even as another part starts to imagine a different one.
Maybe this is some of the tension we all live inside, creating the future while still wired to the past.
It made me think about how businesses, ideas, and people evolve. We often talk about change as if it is a clean switch, as in one strategy off and another on.
In reality, both versions run at the same time for a while. We keep operating through the habits and assumptions of the old reality even as we begin to sense and build the new one.
To me that is what growth feels like on the inside. I am building something new while part of me is still executing the code of what used to work. It is the space between what was and what is becoming and the moment where creation actually happens.
Routines anchor us to one reality or another. They keep us oriented, telling us which version of life we are living. Once a routine crumbles, the reality it holds in place begins to dissolve with it.
It is only when our routines fall away, or are stripped from us through trauma, stress, loss, or life circumstances, that we start to notice that other realities exist. We suddenly become aware of some of the parallel lives that make us multidimensional and it is this awareness that can cause the surreal disconnect I was experiencing.
The next time you notice this disconnect, or you feel like your mind and body are not inhabiting the same vessel, I encourage you to explore it with curiosity.
Treat it like a kind of cosmic playground. Observe where your attention goes when the familiar constructs fall away. Ask yourself which version of reality your routine has been anchoring. And notice what becomes possible when you let that anchor go, even for a moment.
This is where the adventure of being fully human becomes tangible. And in that moment, you can choose to experience any reality that calls to you.

By Petra Brunnbauer
Petra Brunnbauer is an award-winning Mind-Body Coach, founder of The Jōrni®, host of the globally-ranked Jōrni Podcast, and author of The Functional Freeze Formula™. With a Master’s in Psychology and as a doctoral student in Mind-Body Medicine, Petra is committed to advancing holistic approaches to health and healing.

