2025 your resonant self extended journey
Shadow of the Mother
a year of inner healing
Join Sarah Peyton for a 12-month exploration of the Your Resonant Self Workbook and learn to see the influence of our mother’s shadow self on our own lives.
Thursdays
10:30 AM-11:55 AM PST
Dec 5, 2024 – Nov 6, 2025
What were the qualities of your mother’s shadow self (or your mothering person’s shadow self), and how do they affect you even now? What burdens do you carry in your own shadow that do not actually belong to you, that you are living out for past generations?
What happens when we begin to see the influence of our mother’s shadow on our own lives? What blocks to self-warmth do we discover? Does unhealed trauma inhibit experiences of self-understanding? What happens when we understand the impact of trauma on our brains? What happens when we release some of the contracts that keep us tied in knots?
Do you want to truly take in the world of resonance and unconscious contracts? Do you love this work, but is it hard to do it alone? Would you love to experience the journey to an invitation to a bigger life with support and community? Would you like to live through a year of healing through the release of hidden forms of self-sabotage?
Join Sarah Peyton for an exciting, rich 12-month exploration of the Your Resonant Self Workbook in Shadow of the Mother: a Year of Inner Healing. Each of the 13 chapters of this book is covered in two classes (three classes for chapter 8), in a series of twenty-nine 85-minute classes including a bonus session. Each class will include lectures, Q&A, discussion of exercises, demos, and personal explorations of the abilities and growth that make our brains good and comfortable places to be. This journey will take us from December of 2024 through to November of 2025, and move participants from removing the blocks to self-warmth to claiming their right to living consciously in good relationship with their own and their mother’s shadow. The class series also includes the monthly Neuroscience and Resonance webinars during the period of the course plus opportunities for community practice.
This 29-week course runs from December 5, 2024 – November 6, 2025
We will meet online from 10:30 AM-11:55 AM PST | 1:30 PM EST | 6:30 PM GMT (convert to your time zone here)
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?
This 29-week course runs from December 5, 2024 – November 6, 2025 with classes meeting twice a month on Thursday morning from 10:30 AM – 11:55 AM Pacific Time (To convert to your time zone, please click here)
What to Expect:
As a participant you will:
- Become acquainted with the influence of your mother’s brain on your brain
- Explore the depths of your mother’s shadow and its unconscious effect on you
- Welcome the parts of yourself you’ve never known how to love
- Individuate and separate more fully from your mother
- Release the contracts that separate you from self
- Know yourself more fully and compassionately
- Allow for new levels of complexity and paradox in this experience of being human
- Infuse self-care into your everyday life
- Delight in new freedom and access to joy
- Learn in-depth in community
- Find your way toward an invitation to experiencing more freedom from hidden patterns while exploring the fundamental concepts of resonance through the YRS Workbook
- Transform your brain into a more comfortable and kind place to live
The classes will be recorded for participants in many time zones.
This Course Includes 1:1 Resonant Support
Get assistant support during classes – experience resonant support from experienced practitioners when you need it during class times. Often, this work can have unexpected depth and touch on deeply held subconscious awareness and pain. Getting support when we need it most helps participants to integrate, regulate, and have a felt experience of the transformative power of resonance.
Cost
Regular Price for the series (if purchased after November 23): $1200
Join just Chapter 1, Chapter 2, or Chapter 3
Purchase of this class does not include the purchase of the Your Resonant Self Workbook. Please purchase the book separately.
What You'll Learn Each Week:
Chapter 1: Affection for the self: Did mother have it? Can we have it?
Weeks 1 & 2: December 5 and December 12, 2024
These two classes investigate the blocks to self-warmth that arise from unconscious contracts, and from family traditions of self-talk as reflected in our Default Mode Networks.
Chapter 2: How Trauma impacts mothers, and blocks family life energy
Weeks 3 & 4: December 19, 2024 and January 9, 2025
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.
Chapter 3: How did mom see the world, how do we see the world? Understanding our two lenses
Weeks 5 & 6: January 16 and January 30, 2025
This pair of classes addresses contracts that have negative results on our daily lives in simple ways. We learn about the instrumental brain and the relational brain and how they impact relationship. Links between reductivism and self-sabotage will be explored.
Chapter 4: How healing shame heals the generations
Weeks 7 & 8: February 6 & 20, 2025
In these two classes we learn the dance of facial expressions in early childhood, integrating it with the Circuits of Emotion and Motivation, which help us understand the nervous system’s drop into shame in relationship. We further our resonance practice with metaphors.
Chapter 5: Anxiety and alarmed aloneness in our mother’s shadow and in our own
Weeks 9 & 10: March 6 and March 13, 2025
These two classes explore the connection between anxiety and the emotional circuits of both FEAR and PANIC/GRIEF, and how differentiation 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 differentiation
Weeks 11 & 12: March 20 and March 27, 2025
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 to be different people from our mothers. 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 embodiment
Weeks 13 & 14: April 17 and April 24, 2025
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 the reclamation of relaxation without fear, and we learn to rejoin the real life of relationships.
Chapter 8: Attachment and freedom (with Jaya Manske)
Weeks 15, 16, & 17: May 8, May 15 and May 29, 2025
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. These contracts are our foundations for every bit of relating that we do. As well as reviewing the basics of attachment, 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.
Free Bonus! Q&A Session
Week 18: June 5, 2025
The Q&A session will give you an opportunity to ask any questions you have about resonance, contract work or course content.
Chapter 9: Clearing disgust and contempt
Weeks 19 & 20: June 19 and July 10, 2025
The use of self-hate, disgust and contempt to manage emotions is an aftereffect of traumatic attachment, and can be passed down intergenerationally as part of the Broken Mother Field. 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 resolving the mother’s shadow. 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
Weeks 21 & 22: July 24 and August 14, 2025
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 and release of the burden of the mother’s shadow. 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: Addiction and transgenerational hunger
Weeks 23 & 24: September 4 and 18, 2025
It has taken a long time for the world to begin to understand that addictions are related to trauma, and it will be a longer time before we fully see the way that hunger travels transgenerationally. Our deepest hunger is for relationship, and when we can’t have it, 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, and to carry our mothers contracts forward. 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 the broken mother
Weeks 25 & 26: September 25 and October 9, 2025
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 with the mother 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
Weeks 27 & 28: October 23 and 30, 2025
In these two classes examining the final chapter of the workbook, we will look at what supports the development and expression of joy, 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
Week 29: November 6, 2025
During this class, we will close our year of work together and make time for questions and celebrations.
What You'll Learn Each Week:
Chapter 1: Affection for the self: Did mother have it? Can we have it
Weeks 1 & 2: December 5 and December 12, 2024
These two classes investigate the blocks to self-warmth that arise from unconscious contracts, and from family traditions of self-talk as reflected in our Default Mode Networks.
Chapter 2: How Trauma impacts mothers, and blocks family life energy
Weeks 3 & 4: December 19 and January 9, 2024
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.
Chapter 3: How did mom see the world, how do we see the world? Understanding our two lenses
Weeks 5 & 6: January 16 and January 30, 2025
This pair of classes addresses contracts that have negative results on our daily lives in simple ways. We learn about the instrumental brain and the relational brain and how they impact relationship. Links between reductivism and self-sabotage will be explored.
Chapter 4: How healing shame heals the generations
Weeks 7 & 8: February 6 & 20, 2025
In these two classes we learn the dance of facial expressions in early childhood, integrating it with the Circuits of Emotion and Motivation, which help us understand the nervous system’s drop into shame in relationship. We further our resonance practice with metaphors.
Chapter 5: Anxiety and alarmed aloneness in our mother’s shadow and in our own
Weeks 9 & 10: March 6 and March 13, 2025
These two classes explore the connection between anxiety and the emotional circuits of both FEAR and PANIC/GRIEF, and how differentiation 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 differentiation
Weeks 11 & 12: March 20 and March 27, 2025
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 to be different people from our mothers. 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 embodiment
Weeks 13 & 14: April 17 and April 24, 2025
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 the reclamation of relaxation without fear, and we learn to rejoin the real life of relationships.
Chapter 8: Attachment and freedom (with Jaya Manske)
Weeks 15, 16 & 17: May 8, May 15 and May 29, 2025
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. These contracts are our foundations for every bit of relating that we do. As well as reviewing the basics of attachment, 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.
Free Bonus! Q&A Session
Week 18: June 5, 2025
The Q&A session will give you an opportunity to ask any questions you have about resonance, contract work or course content.
Chapter 9: Clearing disgust and contempt
Weeks 19 & 20: June 19 and July 10, 2025
The use of self-hate, disgust and contempt to manage emotions is an aftereffect of traumatic attachment, and can be passed down intergenerationally as part of the Broken Mother Field. 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 resolving the mother’s shadow. 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
Weeks 21 & 22: July 24 and August 14, 2025
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 and release of the burden of the mother’s shadow. 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: Addiction and transgenerational hunger
Weeks 23 & 24: September 4 and 18, 2025
It has taken a long time for the world to begin to understand that addictions are related to trauma, and it will be a longer time before we fully see the way that hunger travels transgenerationally. Our deepest hunger is for relationship, and when we can’t have it, 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, and to carry our mothers contracts forward. 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 the broken mother
Weeks 25 & 26: September 25 and October 9, 2025
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 with the mother 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
Weeks 27 & 28: October 23 and 30, 2025
In these two classes examining the final chapter of the workbook, we will look at what supports the development and expression of joy, 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
Week 29: November 6, 2025
During this class, we will close our year of work together and make time for questions and celebrations.
Register
Shadow of the Mother: A Year of Inner Healing (Your Resonant Self Extended Journey 2025)
$1,200.00
*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.
This Course Includes 3 Free Bonuses
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 2024 – October 2025).
Resonance Partner Practice
Practice partner pairing support 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).
1:1 Resonance Assistant Support
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.
Often, this work can have unexpected depth and touch on deeply held subconscious awareness and pain. Getting support when we need it most helps participants to integrate, regulate, and have a felt experience of the transformative power of resonance.
About the Instructor
Sarah Peyton, Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and neuroscience educator, integrates brain science and the use of resonant language to heal personal and collective trauma with exquisite gentleness.
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 four books on relational neuroscience and self-compassion: 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, and The Antiracist Heart: A Self-Compassion and Activism Handbook, co-authored alongside Roxy Manning, PhD.
