The essence of our method can be illustrated, for the sake of simplicity, by considering the dynamics of a finite mass particle in a one-dimensional double-well potential (Figure ) at finite temperature, e.g. Langevin dynamics. Let us imagine that the shape of the potential is not known and the temperature is sufficiently low, i.e. k B T ≪ E act , so that the particle is trapped in the left basin. In such a situation it is not trivial to decide whether the particle should be pulled toward left or right along x to go to the other state. Our key idea is that the local potential experienced by the particle inherently exhibits some degree of anharmonicity, which, in turn, must be reflected in the shape of its probability distribution. By sampling the vicinity of the minimum for a sufficient duration, it is possible to estimate the local probability distribution function and its moments, such as the skewness. The latter, for a one-dimensional distribution, is defined in Equation (1) as: