Ancient Maps, Modern Science, Your Transformation

Our nervous system shapes the quality of our daily life. It affects our health, relationships, and well-being by influencing our body, mind, and spirit. Yet most of us have never learned how to work with this incredible system that runs beneath everything we do.

In this 35-hour certificate course at the Polyvagal Institute, I’ll show you how to:

• Recognize your patterns – Learn to read the signals your body sends when it’s moving toward safety or protection
• Shift your states – Practice evidence-based techniques to move from anxiety, fear, and overwhelm into safety, ease, and connection
• Build lasting resilience – Develop a daily practice that strengthens your nervous system’s capacity to meet life’s challenges
• Access your highest potential – Experience how safety in your body opens the door to creativity, compassion, and authentic connection

Three Wisdom Traditions, One Integrated Path

What makes this course distinctive is the integration of three complementary frameworks:

Classical Yoga teaches us to access the mind through the body and the body through the mind. From the lineage of Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute in India (founded 1924, the oldest institute in the world dedicated to scientific research on yoga’s effects), these practices have been refined over millennia.

Medical Taoist Qigong gives us precise techniques for cultivating and directing our vital energy (qi). These practices, passed down through master-student transmission for thousands of years, work directly with the energy anatomy of our nervous system.

Polyvagal Theory provides the modern scientific language to understand why these ancient practices work. Dr. Porges’ research reveals how our autonomic nervous system constantly scans for safety—and how we can consciously influence this process.

Together, these three maps illuminate the same territory: your remarkable capacity for healing, regulation, and transformation.

The Secret: Daily Practice 

Here’s what I’ve learned from 40 years of teaching: transformation doesn’t come from understanding alone. It comes from practice.

The practices I’ll teach you are designed to be simple, safe, and doable in the midst of real life. A few minutes in the morning. A brief reset during your workday. An evening practice to prepare for sleep.

Small, consistent practices create lasting change. They build neural pathways. They teach your nervous system new patterns. They give you tools you can reach for in challenging moments.

This is not about adding one more thing to your overwhelmed life. It’s about learning practices that make everything else easier.

My Journey to This Work

I survived deep trauma myself. I know what it’s like when your nervous system feels like it’s working against you—when anxiety arrives uninvited, when your body tenses at the smallest trigger, when you long for ease but can’t seem to find it.

The practices I learned from my teachers in India and China literally saved my life. They gave me a way to work with my body, to befriend my nervous system, to find safety from the inside out.

For over 40 years, I’ve been sharing these practices—first at UC Berkeley where I received the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service, then at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Mount Madonna Center, and now at the Polyvagal Institute.

When Dr. Stephen Porges’ research emerged, I wept with recognition. Here was the scientific explanation for what these ancient traditions had known all along: that our nervous system is the key to healing, and that we can learn to work with it consciously.

This course is my offering to you—the distillation of what I’ve learned from master teachers, from the science, and from my own healing journey.

This course is an invitation to slow down, to listen deeply to your body, and to learn practices that have supported healing for thousands of years.

Over five previous cohorts, students have consistently appreciated the depth of the content, the warmth of the teaching, and the opportunity to engage with both ancient wisdom and modern science in one integrated framework.

If this work speaks to you, I’d be honored to have you join us.