Inviting Awe:
a 12-Month Journey towards Meaning, Belonging and Transformation
Do you want to truly integrate the world of resonance and unconscious contracts? To be able to access awe, meaning, belonging and radical self-love to your life? Join Sarah for an on-going exploration of this life-changing work throughout 2024.
What happens when we find the gifts of turning toward the world with full, wide-awake appreciation? What are the blocks to awe as a regular practice? Does unhealed trauma inhibit experiences of awe? What happens when we release some of the contracts that keep us tied in knots and prevent gratitude?
Do you sometimes ache for meaning? Awe is our human birthright, we only need to be awake for a small moment to catch a glimpse of great beauty and be moved by it. Being awake, though, is a complicated request of ourselves. Join Sarah Peyton for this 29-week beyond-the-book course based on the Your Resonant Self Workbook, for a full year of radical, life-changing, self-love and love of others.
Awe is our human birthright, we only need to be awake for a small moment to catch a glimpse of great beauty and be moved by it. Being awake, though, is a complicated request of ourselves. Many people live without ever taking the breath and stepping into the not-knowing. Many people are wrapped in unconscious contracts that prevent being present, prevent being awake, prevent experiencing present time, let alone knowing that we can bring compassion, understanding, support and a radical self-love to this intentional opening.
When we begin to understand that these experiences are an essential part of being a human being and when we do invite awe into our lives, our lives and hearts soften, we create connections across differences, we become more aware of how much we love the people in our lives, and all the ecosystems and their elements, and we begin to enjoy the moment.
In this 29-week beyond-the-book course, focused around Sarah’s Your Resonant Self Workbook, we will look at the different kinds of unconscious contracts we make in the aftermath of difficult experiences in an attempt to keep ourselves safe, keep our sense of belonging, and save those we love the most, in the context of preventing or inviting awe. Join Sarah Peyton for a year of radical, life-changing, self-love and love of others.
Participants will have opportunities to work as a group and in smaller breakout groups to begin to name, disentangle and release the unknown agreements we have with ourselves which keep us from catching a glimpse of awe.
This Online Series Includes Twenty-Nine Sessions:
Meeting Thursdays, 10:30am-12:00pm Pacific time, December 7, 2023 – November 2, 2024. Convert to your time zone here
Inviting Awe: Chapter 1 – How Affection for the Self makes a Foundation for Awe
These two classes investigate the blocks to self-warmth that arise from unconscious contracts, their effect on the Default Mode Network (DMN), and how the DMN can block access to awe.
We will spend some time with resonant language, noticing what it’s like to use it with the critical voice of the DMN as regards self-judgments, and introducing the Resonating Self-Witness.
Inviting Awe: Chapter 2 – How Trauma Blocks Wonder, and Blocks our Life Energy
In these two classes, we bring our learning about unconscious contracts as a tool into relationship with the resonance skill of time travel empathy, demonstrating the integration of these two approaches to healing.
We will explore the connection between trauma and contracts that prevent experiencing awe, belonging, and transformation and continue our investigation of the importance of resonant language to loosen the amygdala’s hold on memory.
Inviting Awe: Chapter 3 – From Reduction to Reenchantment: Understanding our Two Lenses for Viewing the World
These two classes address unconscious contracts that have negative results on our daily lives in simple ways.
We learn about the instrumental brain and the relational brain and their relationship with belonging, transformation and awe. Links between awe and self-connection will be explored. Body sensations give us our resonant skills practice for this chapter.
Chapter 4 – How Healing Shame Opens Access to Wonder
These two classes introduce Beatrice Beebe’s work in detail, integrating it with Jaak Panksepp’s Circuits of Emotion and Motivation, which help us understand the nervous system’s drop into shame when we inadvertently break a contract.
We discover the interrelationship of shame and awe, and we further our resonance practice with metaphors.
Chapter 5 – Awe as an Antidote to Anxiety
These two classes explore the connection between anxiety and the emotional circuits of both FEAR and PANIC/GRIEF, and how awe can open the door to a profound sense of accompaniment, reducing anxiety.
We will start a practice of embracing our fears and bringing affection to the experience of self-acceptance. We will experience resonance remedies for anxiety.
Chapter 6 – Life-Serving Rage as Fuel and Doorway to Beauty
In these two classes, we trace the development of contracts, that can be made during traumatic moments, to either never be angry, or to punish ourselves or others for getting angry, and learn how to release them, making more room for an appreciation of moral beauty.
We also learn that when others’ actions cause us to break our own contracts, this can bring about rage. We will also connect our work with Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and practice resonant language skills.
Chapter 7: The Movement from Dissociation into the Embodiment of Awe
In these two classes, we continue integrating Porges’ Polyvagal Theory with the unconscious contract tool to uncover and transform patterns of dissociation, including contracts that keep us from fully entering or inhabiting the body, both in terms of classic dissociation and in terms of the left shift into the instrumental brain and out of relationship.
We look at the contracts we make not to feel anything, or to hide from real participation in life. We bring our resonance skills to support exquisite gentleness in the face of immobilization, and track the journey from collapse to immobilization without fear, and we learn to rejoin the real life of relationships.
Chapter 8 – Awe and Attachment: How Healing Shame Opens Access to Wonder
These three classes take us into the contracts we make to maximize well-being in response to our parents’ ways of being with us and being with emotion: the basics of attachment. These contracts are our foundations for every bit of relating that we do.
We discover a resonant language practice that holds our connection patterns as “just right,” which is a radical move into secure attachment with ourselves, no matter what contracts we are dealing with, and no matter how much regret we have for our pasts.
We look at avoidant patterns and contracts, we have the delight of looking at ambivalent patterns and contracts with special guest teacher Jaya Manske, and we enjoy the signs of the movement into secure attachment.
Q+A Session and Integration
The Q&A session will give you an opportunity to ask any questions you have about resonance, contract work or course content.
It’s also an opportunity to integrate the material thus far!
Chapter 9 – Clearing Disgust and Contempt in Service of Wonder
The use of self-hate, disgust and contempt to manage emotions is an aftereffect of traumatic attachment, and so makes sense in the context of our lives. As we understand this, the root causes of the contracts made in disorganized attachment start to become clear.
We learn how we can turn predatory aggression against ourselves and others as a distortion of our SEEKING circuit, and this illuminates an avenue for work. The dissolution of trauma-based contracts is supportive in opening the door to wonder. The work we have done to this point in this series supports us in looking at these knots of trauma, and untangling them to move us toward well-being
Chapter 10 – A New Look at Depression
Contracts that limit our life energy can lead to hopelessness and depression. Without an understanding of the nervous system, people often think these conditions are set in stone. The release of these contracts in these two classes supports the reclamation of movement and agency.
Both contract work and resonance skills are needed in this life-changing journey toward joy. We also take a look at the attachment contracts that can prevent connection in order to support a movement away from the life-long loneliness that can also be a contributing factor in depression.
Chapter 11 – How Addiction is a Hunger for Awe
It has taken a long time for the modern therapeutic world to begin to understand that addictions are related to trauma. Our deepest hungers are for relationship and for awe, and when we can’t have them, our emotional starvation leads us to our addictions. Just as our brain makes contracts with us to keep us safe, our brains can be said to make contracts with us on behalf of our addictions.
These two classes explore what happens to us in relationship to our addictions and addictive strategies when these contracts are dissolved. Resonance skills will be practiced to support self-compassion during this process.
Chapter 12 – The Relationship Between Sexuality, Emergence and Awe
The delight of the SEXUALITY circuit is that it carries us from childhood into our full individuation, maturity and authenticity. No matter the level of our sexual interest or activity, this circuit is important for well-being and growth. There are many entanglements that stop us from becoming who we really are, and many of them are connected with our sexuality and our emergence. The contracts that diminish this circuit diminish our life energy and our awe.
We will work with these contracts in these two classes and practice supportive resonance skills to help with both personal issues and internalized oppression from the way that society judges and ranks bodies in terms of mattering.
Chapter 13 – Reclaiming Joy and Awe
In these two classes examining the final chapter of the workbook, we will look at what supports the development and expression of joy and awe, and how the experience of joy becomes deeper and richer when we fully accept and have affection for our shadow selves.
We will learn how joy is a dyadic experience (we co-create joy!) and that contracts that block trust and connection also stop joy from happening. We will dissolve these contracts and celebrate and practice the resonance skills which support the feeling and expression of joy and awe.
These classes include a look at false Bodhisattva vows, contracts made when children first perceive that there is pain in the world and commit their whole beings to a better world, no matter the cost. Commitment and contribution are very important and life-serving when they do not cost us everything.
**Closing Session**
During this class, we will close our year of work together and make time for questions and celebrations!
“We can only transform those patterns we are conscious of. Unconscious contract work helps us bring the hidden, subconscious programming into the light so we can truly shift our ways of being.” – Sarah Peyton
This Course Includes Three Free Bonuses, valued over $2200:
[$200 VALUE ]
Access to Sarah’s Neuroscience and Resonance Webinar Series for the duration of the Workbook Study
Each month Sarah offers a thematic, research-based webinar about relational neuroscience and how to use empathy and resonance and other trauma-informed processes to heal.
Each webinar is approximately 90 minutes, including slides and presentation, then plenty of room for questions. Registration includes free access to Sarah’s Neuroscience and Resonance Webinar Series for the duration of the Workbook Study (December 2023 – October 2024). A $200 value. Topics will be: December 12, 2023 – Sarah’s 2023 Process Work Exploration January 2024 – October 2024 – 2024 Monthly Neuroscience and Resonance Webinars (links coming soon!)
Opportunity to join Resonant Support Practice Groups
Opportunities to work in small practice groups and/or with resonance partners outside of class times to develop your resonance skills, learn and transform in community.
Practice groups will be available for those who join from the start of the series and sign up by the deadline to be included from the start (deadlines and limitations apply).
[$2,000 VALUE]
1:1 Resonant Assistant Support during classes
Sarah is delighted to be joined by a team of assistants who have been studying this material for years (in many cases 10 years or longer!) and/or are certified resonance practitioners.
Assistants, most of whom offer Resonant Support for $100-$250/hour, are available for free during class time to support you when you need it the most.
Sometimes this material can be unexpectedly deep and having accompaniment changes everything!
What People Say About Studying With Sarah
~ Sara Kammerzell, M. Ed
Cost and How to Register
The price of this series is $900.
We open for inquiry about partial scholarships on November 30, 2023.
Purchase of this class does not include the purchase of the Your Resonant Self Workbook. Please purchase the book separately.
Continuing Education Credits:
We are delighted to offer up to 42 CEU hours for psychologists and social workers for this course ($60 additional fee). Chicago Counseling Associates has been approved by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to sponsor continuing education for social workers and psychologists. CCA maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Live attendance is required to receive CEUs. Read more about CEUs.
*Please Note:
- In order to secure the early-bird rates, you must register and pay by the dates listed above.
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable and transferrable.
- Some partial scholarships may be available after November 30. Please write to Sarah’s team to inquire.
- 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.
About Sarah
Sarah is a sought-after expert who brings neuroscience expertise together with depth work, self-compassion, and the transformative potential of language. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and teaches people how words change and heal us.
Sarah teaches and lectures internationally and is the author of three books: Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, the companion Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-sabotage to Self-care, and Affirmations for Turbulent Times: Resonant Words to Soothe Body and Mind.
