Your Brain on Joy
Ancient Wisdom and New Science for Vibrant Aging, Whatever Comes
Something extraordinary is happening in the science of aging. The brain keeps growing. The cells keep listening. The nervous system keeps learning. And the practices that ancient wisdom traditions have refined over thousands of years, breath, touch, attention, intention, are now being confirmed, in laboratory after laboratory, as among the most powerful influences on how we age.
This five-week course is built on that convergence. It draws on the telomere science of Nobel laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, the neurobiology of Dr. Dan Siegel, and the Joyspan research of gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnight, woven together with embodied practices from Classical Yoga and Medical Taoist Qigong that you will begin living from the very first session.
Even in the hardest soil, something can still grow.
That is not a metaphor, it is what your cells are doing right now.
Underneath everything, that quiet joy is still yours,
and you can learn to feel it again.
This is not a course that asks you to arrive already feeling fine. Whatever this year has already asked of you, whatever you are still carrying as January begins, you do not need to set it down first. Joy, here, is not the opposite of what is difficult. It is what lets you keep meeting those challenges, one breath, one hand, one small season at a time.
It is above all an experiential course. The science gives the practices their roots. The practices give the science its body. And together, week by week, day by day, they offer something no amount of information alone can give: a genuinely different relationship with the life you are already living.
Joy meets you exactly where you are.
Five Weeks, Lived in the Body
Each week carries one honest question. The science, the wisdom, and the practice are an answer taking shape, until, by the end, you are not just holding an idea. You are experiencing a way of being.
Arriving
What if aging is something I am shaping, moment by moment, not something happening to me?
The revolutionary truth: your biology is not your fate. Neuroplasticity, telomere science, and the Joyspan findings, introduced not as information, but as liberation. The Three Centers become your home base for the rest of the course.
Growing and Connecting
What nourishes me, and am I giving myself enough of it?
Curiosity as medicine. Belonging as biology. The aging brain is not a museum, it is a garden, and how you connect, to others, to nature, to yourself, reaches all the way down to the length of your telomeres.
Adapting and Giving
How do I meet what life brings, and what do I have to offer from who I have become?
Resilience as fluidity, not toughness. Generosity that warms the giver as much as the receiver. Each of us as a solar cell in a wider panel, how we tend our own vitality is never only a private act.
Witnessing
Who is the one who has been watching all of this, and what does that witness know?
The most contemplative week. The shift from Chronos to Kairos, from clock time to the open, luminous time of genuine presence. The moon above the mountain, watching with peace.
Coming Home
How do I carry all of this forward, into my life, my relationships, my community?
Integration, not summary. A daily practice that belongs entirely to you. A closing blessing, offered, received, and carried into the world you return to.
The Three Centers
Named by both Classical Yoga and Medical Qigong, and mapped by Western anatomy to the solar plexus, the cardiopulmonary plexus, and the pineal-pituitary complex. This is the home you return to in every session, every practice, every morning.
Abdomen, Ground
The Sea of Energy. Our relation to ourselves. Safety, presence, the simple fact of being here, in a body that has carried us through everything.
Heart, Connect
The Sea of Tranquility. Our relation to others and to life. Warmth that doesn't wait to be earned, it flows outward on its own, the way light leaves a candle without diminishing it.
Third Eye, Witness
The vaster self. The moon above the mountain, watching the weather of experience without being swept away by any of it.
In a single sentence she can move from a soulful insight into the way we relate to ourselves to a penetrating comment about the brain’s neuroplastic potential. A gem of a human being.
She has an amazing ability to weave together healing practices developed over thousands of years with scientific insight, guiding us into our deepest source of inner peace and love, for ourselves and for each other. Being in Amelia’s presence is deeply healing.
A Taste of the Work
Two short practices, offered freely, as a beginning.
Dr. Amelia Barili
Faculty, UC Berkeley OLLI & the Polyvagal Institute
Recipient, Chancellor’s Award for Public Service
Trained in India at the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute and apprenticed to Qigong masters in the lineage of Grandmaster Yang Mei Jun, Amelia has taught Yoga, Qigong, and meditation for over forty years. A survivor of deep trauma herself, she teaches the path she has walked, and continues to walk, every day. For four decades she has brought these practices to retired professionals, clinicians, and a broader community of people ready to age with more ease, curiosity, and joy.
Your brain is still growing. Your cells are still listening. And the joy you're looking for has been quietly waiting, this whole time, not for you to earn it, but to reconnect with it.
Five weeks · Live online · Winter 2027 · January–February
OLLI at UC Berkeley · Open to all · No prior experience needed
Registration opens Winter 2027. Be among the first to know.