Description
Do you sometimes cry when you are angry, or laugh when you are sad?
Do you long to more deeply understand your confusing and complex emotional experiences? Our emotional circuits are the neural pathways in our brains that each of our eight core emotions travels upon. These circuits are surprisingly distinct from one another and are fueled by different neurotransmitters. Rage, for example, is powered by a completely different set of chemicals, and arises in a different region of the brain, than fear or care. Together, these eight circuits of emotions and motivation offer us a continually shifting yet deeply reliable tapestry of self-knowledge and orientation toward the world.
When we become acquainted with all of our emotional experiences, and even grow affectionate toward them, we gain access to self-confidence, clarity of meaning, and a steady sense of our own truth. We become able to set boundaries that protect us and create the kind of internal landscape we want to live in.
For many of us, trauma and the impact of early relationships have entangled these circuits. For example, someone who laughs whenever they are afraid or someone who cries when they are angry is showing a brain whose pathways have become crossed in the effort to survive. Fortunately, these entanglements are not permanent. Through resonance, unconscious contract work, and time-travel accompaniment, the circuits can begin to unhook from one another and return to their original clarity, giving us a freer experience of being alive.
For the many of us who have lived without resonance, we may try to suppress all our circuits at once—leading to depression, anxiety, or collapse. Or we may over-rely on one circuit, such as letting rage become our sole guiding light, because the others have not been welcomed enough to participate. With the healing work of resonance, we gradually befriend each emotional energy as a source of vitality and meaning. None of our emotions remain frightening or off-limits; instead, each becomes a messenger offering essential information about what we want and what is true for us.
This Resonance Basics class forms the fifth pillar of our foundational skills program. It both illuminates the previous classes and offers new material to weave into the skills we have already been practicing, helping to make the brain an increasingly cozy and welcoming place to live. Over the course of eight sessions, we will do an in-depth dive into each of the emotional and motivational circuits as described by Jaak Panksepp, as well as the one that I added to his framework, and we will use resonant healing practices to begin disentangling clearing and them in our own lives. Participants will come away with deeper intimacy with themselves and others: more ease in daily life, more self-affection, richer enjoyment of the world, and a clearer ability to forecast and understand the emotional terrain of the people around them.
Where?
The course will meet via zoom. We welcome participants from all time zones who wish to learn asynchronously for some or all of the sessions. Recordings and visuals will be made available to those who are registered for the live program (typically available within 72 hours of the live session).
When?
Starts: January 21,2026
Ends: March 21, 2026
8 weeks, no skips
Day of Week: Wednesday
Time: 10:30 AM – 11:55 AM Pacific Time
Click Here to convert to your time zone
What To Expect
In each 85-minute class, Sarah Peyton and Jaya Manske will weave together cutting-edge relational neuroscience with the lived, felt experience of emotional circuitry. Participants will have opportunities to practice Resonant Healing skills in small-group breakouts, and all students will be supported in forming or deepening Resonant Practice Partnerships outside of class.
Throughout the course, we will use the tools of Resonance to expand the brain’s capacity to welcome the full range of our emotional circuits with warmth. We will explore the 8 emotional and motivational systems described by Jaak Panksepp and Sarah Peyton, learning how these circuits emerge, how they become tangled through trauma, and how they can be gently disentangled through compassion, accompaniment, unconscious contract work, and time travel. Together, we will restore clarity, balance, and cooperation among our emotional energies, making room for each to guide and enrich us. Over time, this work builds a foundation of internal spaciousness, self-affection, and secure attachment to the whole of our living selves.
What You'll Learn
Week 1: SEEKING for Balance: How Every Emotion Has a Good Place Inside of Us
Week 2: CARE-ing for the Self: Releasing Unconscious Contracts
Week 3: RAGE-ing for Love: How Not To Lose Ourselves
Week 4: FEAR-ing for Our Safety: Getting Free of The Past
Week 5: GRIEF as integrator: Holding Alarmed Aloneness
Week 6: Protecting ourselves with DISGUST: Having Boundaries
Week 7: EMERGENCE into the Self: SEXUALITY and Identity
Week 8: PLAY-ing for Keeps: Living with Balanced Circuits
Who is This Course For?
This course is for students, from beginners to advanced, who want to strengthen secure attachment with themselves and others; anyone opening a deeper dialogue with their body; anyone who has taken other resonance classes and wonders how to integrate their learning; and anyone just beginning their journey with resonance healing. It is designed for neuroscience lovers, resonance geeks, and all who are curious about the emotional architecture of being human.
This Course Includes Resonant Assistant Support
Assistant support is available during classes. There are three ways this happens:
- In groups of three with one assistant and two participants, so that participants can practice the breakout exercises with support.
- In small groups, with 1 assistant and 3+ participants, with work with one participant occurring by lottery, and the remaining participants observing.
- Depending on assistant availability, the third option is 1-1 support to receive resonant processes like time travel and unconscious contracts for material that comes up during class.
Cost
This course is offered with an option for sliding-scale tuition. Please choose the rate that works based on your income:
$400 – Support those with fewer resources to attend (choose this option if you have the desire to support access for others to help rebalance systemic and global inequity).
$360 – Requested standard contribution (choose this option if you have sufficient financial resources and can pay fair value for this learning experience)
$300 – Discounted rate (choose this option if you sometimes struggle with limited financial resources and would benefit from supported access to this learning experience)
$220 – Scholarship rate (choose this option if you struggle with limited resources and have difficulty saving due to less reliable income or pay, or if you live in a country where earning power is less)
Recordings included.
Please Note:
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
- This course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
- This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this course may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.
