What are the things we take in and try to digest which are not ours at all? What behaviors, attitudes, and insanities do we try to process and make sense of? And what do we end up rejecting that we actually need?

Our digestive lives are woven through with hunger, fullness, pleasure, disgust, fear, longing, expectation, memory, and relationship. The stomach and brain are in continuous rhythmic communication via the vagus nerve and the microbiome. Stress can change digestive physiology, while attachment experiences and learned expectations can influence how the gut responds to nourishment, and how we respond to the sensations we feel (or don’t feel).

Digesting and Not Digesting is a course about the emotions, behaviors, stories and food that we take in from sources outside ourselves, and what happens to them inside of us. In this course, we will explore ways to heal the traumas and release the unconscious contracts that have ruled our guts. We will look at the hidden rules of our digestion, how trauma can be entangled with nourishment, and what kinds of sweetness we and our bodies refuse to take in.

In this six-week experiential class, Sarah Peyton brings relational neuroscience into conversation with digestion. We will explore the research linking relationship and digestion, with special attention to abdominal discomfort, digestion difficulties and conditions including eating disorders and IBS. Each week will pair research findings with resonant language, gentle body awareness, time travel resonance, and unconscious-contract work.

Together, we will become curious about the many forms of digesting and not digesting: taking in nourishment, receiving care, sensing enoughness, living with visceral alarm, carrying what could not yet be processed, and finding our own pace for keeping, transforming, and releasing.

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.

When?

Tuesdays | 3:30 PM – 4:55 PM Pacific Time
September 15 – October 20, 2026

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What To Expect

In this course, we will:

• Learn how resonant language can help us understand digestive sensations, emotions, memories, and needs
• Explore how attachment experiences shape the ways we receive food, care, support, and nourishment
• Listen to the places where the gut has learned to brace, hold, hurry, slow down, empty, or protect
• Explore the relational, family, and ancestral experiences that have shaped digestion and receiving
• Identify unconscious contracts connected with hunger, fullness, disgust, enoughness, and letting go
• Work with the circuits of emotion and motivation that influence appetite, fear, longing, pleasure, and self-regulation
• Strengthen interoception, our ability to sense and understand the body from within
• Practice bringing warmth, choice, and accompaniment to the digestive system

Participants will leave with greater self-compassion for the ways their digestive systems have learned to protect them. They will have more language for what they feel and more understanding of what their bodies need. They will also have a personal set of practices for taking in, transforming, keeping, and releasing.

What You'll Learn

By the end of the six weeks, participants will have:

• A richer and more precise language for digestive sensations
• An understanding of how attachment and relational experience may shape receiving and self-regulation
• A compassionate framework for digestive patterns connected with trauma and protection
• A method for discovering and renegotiating unconscious contracts
• A map of emotional-motivational circuits and their possible digestive expressions
• Greater skill in distinguishing sensation, emotion, prediction, impulse, and need
• A personalized collection of resonant and body-based regulation practices

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

$270 Early Bird
$300 Regular Price

Scholarship Information

Partial scholarships may be available for this course. For more information, please write to help@sarahpeyton.com after September 8, 2026.

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.