Build Capacity for Joy
This course helps your nervous system slowly expand its ability to hold goodness — so joy doesn’t overwhelm, disappear, or trigger shutdown.
Trauma-Informed Expansion
This isn't forced positivity. You’ll learn why joy can feel threatening and how to meet that fear with compassion instead of pushing past it.
Designed for life beyond survival
This is for people who’ve done healing work and are now asking, “How do I actually live?” without bracing for the fall.
About the course
Joy Trusting is an 8-week, trauma-informed course for people who can feel joy, but don’t trust it to last. If good moments make you brace, shrink, wait for the other shoe to drop, or quietly pull away… this course is for you. Joy Trusting is not about chasing happiness or manufacturing positivity. It’s about learning how to stay when something good arrives without guilt, fear, self-sabotage, or the need to earn it. Many of us learned early that joy was unsafe. That it attracted loss, punishment, disappointment, or withdrawal. So even when life softens, our nervous system doesn’t. Joy Trusting teaches you how to build capacity for goodness slowly, gently, and in ways that respect your history. This is the work of letting joy land. Not all at once. Not forever. Just long enough to know it’s real.
This Course Uses Adaptive Pricing
Joy Curious has three pricing tiers. The content is the same for everyone, the only difference is what you’re able to contribute right now. Choose the tier that aligns with your reality: TIER 1: STANDARD $397 (the posted price) - For those with stable financial resources. - Choose this tier if you can meet your needs comfortably, participate in extras (like eating out or small treats), and pay for the course without hardship. - This tier sustains the bulk of the work and keeps the entire model thriving. TIER 2: SUPPORTED $197 (use the drop-down to choose this option) - For those with limited financial resources. - Choose this tier if paying more would add stress, require sacrifice, or strain your basic needs. - This tier exists so cost doesn’t become another barrier to feeling alive again. - Limited spots available for this tier. TIER 3: SUSTAINER $647 (use the drop-down to choose this option) - For those with abundant or flexible financial resources. - Choose this tier if you are able to pay more as a way of supporting others in accessing the work. - Your contribution offsets the reduced-rate Supported-tier spots and also allows me to offer this work at no-cost to those in partnering women’s shelters. - This tier is generosity in action; a quiet act of community care.
What to Expect (Time Commitment)
This is a low‑pressure, spacious course. It should take no more than two hours per week and includes the following: - A live session via Zoom (60 minutes/weekly) - Two 10–15 minute video lessons exploring how to build nervous-system capacity for joy, safety, and steadiness - Guided embodiment & reflection practices - Optional creative invitations to nurture curiosity and play
Course Dates
Course Begins: January 12th, 2026 Live virtual sessions are held via Zoom on January 14th January 21st January 28th February 4th February 11th February 18th February 25th March 4th 4:00-5:00pm (U.S. Pacific Time Zone)
Hi, I'm Megan
I’m a trauma‑informed yoga teacher, writer, and guide for people learning how to live beyond survival mode. For most of my life, I lived inside my mind; hyper‑aware, anxious, self‑monitoring, and always tense for what might go wrong. I wasn’t afraid of joy because I didn’t want it. I was afraid because my nervous system didn’t know how to hold it. I learned early that joy wouldn't keep me safe, so my mind filtered it out so I could look for potential danger. I knew there had to be more to life after trauma. That survival mode wasn't the end. So I spent the last five years working on building my capacity for the good. Now, I seek out beauty. Appreciate the magic of the unknown. Delight in curiosity and play for no reason. All of this has helped me to inhabit my life fully, not just guard it from a distance. My work is rooted in lived experience, neuroscience, somatic practice, and a deep respect for sensitive systems. I don’t teach from a pedestal. The work in this course is the same work I still do every single day. I walk with you, showing you how to feel safer inside your own aliveness, one small moment at a time.
What You'll Learn
Over eight weeks, we’ll explore: - Why joy feels threatening Understand how trauma, long-term stress, and attachment shape your ability to trust good experiences. - How to build capacity for goodness So joy doesn’t overwhelm, disappear, or trigger shutdown. - How to stay when things feel good Without bracing, collapsing, or sabotaging the moment. - How to untangle joy from guilt And release the belief that feeling good is selfish, naive, or dangerous. - How to let joy be seen By yourself and others — without shrinking or apology.
What You'll Receive
Lifetime access to all course content 8 weeks of guided video teachings Downloadable practices and reflections Tools for navigating joy, guilt, and fear Supportive language you can return to in hard moments A growing ability to stay with what’s good
Curriculum
WEEK ONE — GROUNDING INTO GOODNESS Theme: Learning to feel safe enough to stay open. Focus: Establishing a foundation of safety by noticing where your body braces and where it softens. You’ll begin practicing what it feels like to receive small moments of goodness without pulling away. Practices include: Sensory grounding, gentle receiving rituals, and reflection on where safety already exists today. WEEK TWO — THE ROOTS OF DISTRUST Theme: Understanding why joy has felt unsafe. Focus: Exploring the protective patterns and fear reflexes that interrupt good feelings. You’ll learn why these instincts were an act of loyalty and ways to soften them. Practices include: Pattern mapping, nervous-system literacy, and tender self-observation. WEEK THREE — THE NEUROSCIENCE OF PLEASURE Theme: Discovering how the brain holds (and loses) delight. Focus: Learning how pleasure works in the brain and why it fades quickly without capacity. You’ll practice tolerating small doses of delight without shutting down. Practices include: Pleasure micro-dosing, presence stabilization, and mindful noticing designed to extend your tolerance for goodness. WEEK FOUR — ADULT PLAY AS PATTERN REWIRING Theme: Using exploration to soften vigilance. Focus: Reframing play as a nervous-system tool rather than something childish. You’ll learn how low-stakes exploration helps interrupt survival patterns and open space for ease. Practices include: Playful sensory experiments, improvisational micro-play, and gentle pattern-disrupting exercises. WEEK FIVE — CULTIVATING AWE & WONDER Theme: Letting the world become a source of regulation Focus: Exploring awe and wonder as stabilizing forces that widen perspective and anchor presence. You’ll begin letting the external world co-regulate your nervous system. Practices include: Awe-mapping prompts, “wonder walks,” sensory expansion practices, and grounding rituals. WEEK SIX — RECEIVING WITHOUT PERFORMING Theme: Softening the instinct to earn the good. Focus: Uncoupling worthiness from achievement or caretaking. You’ll practice receiving kindness, rest, and ease without needing to match it or “deserve” it first. Practices include: Receiving rituals, self-permission work, and relational safety mapping. WEEK SEVEN — EXPANDING CAPACITY Theme: Staying open without collapsing or pulling away. Focus: Identifying your signs of shutdown or sabotage when things feel good. Building a intentional plan to use as you’re learning to pause, soften, and remain present. Practices include: Joy-stretching, interruption awareness, cues to use creative energy, and anti-sabotage micro-practices. WEEK EIGHT — THE HOLDING PRACTICE Theme: Integrating joy as a steady rhythm, not a fleeting moment. Focus: Bringing the work together to create a personal practice for holding joy with steadiness and self-trust. Practices include: Integration mapping, a closing embodiment ritual, and crafting your individualized Joy Holding Plan.
How this Course is Different
Joy Trusting is not: - A gratitude practice - A mindset reset - A bypass of pain or grief - A promise that life won’t hurt It is: - Trauma-informed - Capacity-based - Nervous-system-led - Honest about fear - Grounded in real lived experience
A Final Note
You don’t need to earn joy by suffering first. You don’t need to brace to stay safe. Joy Trusting is an invitation to practice staying with the good gently, imperfectly, and in ways your system can actually hold.