The You Project: Austin
From Shadows to Sunlight
Twelve weeks. Two systems. One pattern.
The part that comes after insight.
September 15, 2026 | Tuesdays | 6:30pm-8:30pm | Casa De Luz
Early Bird: $1,250 through August 15th · Full Rate: $1,500 beginning August 16th
F R O M S H A D O W S T O S U N L I G H T
The You Project: Austin
You’ve likely been working to identify your patterns.
Maybe for years.
Perhaps you can trace the pattern back to where it began. You know the moments that tend to set it off. You’ve watched it move through your relationships, your choices, and the conversations you replay long after they’re over.
And yet, despite all of that profound understanding, the pattern remains. This is because intellectual insight and neuro-somatic change happen in different parts of us.
Understanding a pattern is a function of the mind. Repatterning it requires engagement with the whole self, beginning with the nervous system.
Without somatic engagement, the old blueprint continues to run in the background.
So it surfaces in familiar moments. A reaction that arrives before we can interrupt it. A behavior we thought we had moved beyond. A dynamic we promised ourselves would be different this time.
Insight alone can only take us to the edge of change.
The You Project moves beyond insight.
It addresses this space between knowing and living differently. We interrupt the conversation between mind and body to practice new responses in relationship. This is where change begins.
“It was honestly the first time I felt that spark again within myself in a really long time. I have forgotten how much I crave community.”
— Ashley B.
What Happens Here
Tuesday evenings in Central Austin. A group of committed, inspiring humans gathering in a carefully held space, each carrying a deeply understood pattern they are ready to actively change.
Over twelve weeks, that pattern unwinds as we follow it through the chakra system, one center at a time, each one revealing a different layer of the pattern. From shadow to sunlight.
Because this work happens in relationship, the pattern stops being an idea. It unfolds live, in real time, the way it does in our daily lives. Safe within the architecture of the group, we can catch the pattern as it happens and work with it in real time before the old loop takes over.
Two guides hold the space through two distinct systems, each shedding light on how exactly to rewire these patterns, and what has repeated for years begins to rewire. All of it unfolding alongside other members in the cohort who are moving through their own version of the work.
Collective healing in real time, the way humans were meant to heal, learn and grow. Doing our own work, but doing it together.
“I loved that we were encouraged to focus on a single pattern. It made it that much easier to observe the progress I made.”
— Jade D.
Two Systems. One Pattern.
At the heart of The You Project are two distinct systems for working with the human experience. We use both because neither is complete on its own.
The Chakra System: The Developmental Map
The chakra system offers the larger developmental map, tracing the movement from survival and identity through relationship, expression, and expanded states of awareness. It gives shape to the full arc of the human journey and points us toward wholeness.
Modern Science: The Precise Mechanisms
Modern psychology, neuroscience, and nervous system work help us understand the inner workings of how we protect ourselves. These fields illuminate the developmental conditioning and neuro-somatic adaptations that continue to organize our thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and sense of self.
The Integration: Interrupting and Rewriting the Pattern
Over twelve weeks, one pattern becomes the thread through it all. We follow it through each center, seeing how it lives across the many layers of our experience.
And we do more than observe it.
At each center, we draw from both Eastern energetic practices and Western neuro-somatic tools to work directly with the pattern, interrupting old loops, strengthening new responses, and creating new pathways in the body and nervous system.
This is the ground The You Project stands on.
“Learning the wisdom of the chakras with the understanding of the nervous system has allowed me to move more confidently through my triggers in daily life.”
— Jess B.
The Arc of the Experience
One Pattern. Three Phases.
Three Phases: From Shadows to Sunlight. Each phase builds upon the other.
Phase One · Resilience
Somatic Grounding, Safety & Pattern Physiology
We begin at the root.
Guided by the first three chakras, we turn toward the earliest layers of experience, where the nervous system first learned its strategies for safety, belonging, protection, and control.
Here, we map the neural wiring of the pattern.
How it formed. What it protected. How it has shaped our experiences and the ways we learned to move through the world.
We gain a new perspective that allows us to see the pattern less as flaw and more as intelligent adaptation, something developed not by choice, but by necessity.
With this awareness, we build the internal resources that support change, creating greater steadiness and capacity in the nervous system, interrupting automatic responses, and bringing choice back into places where there once was none.
Resilience is where we learn to work with ourselves rather than against ourselves.
Phase Two · Resonance
Relationship, Boundaries, and the Heart in Practice
Here the heart becomes our teacher.
As the shadows of disconnection, hyper-independence, and people-pleasing come into the light, we are faced with the ways we have learned to protect ourselves, sometimes by pulling away, sometimes by giving too much.
Guided by the heart chakra, this phase invites us into a new way of relating, one that holds openness and boundaries, compassion and clarity, in the same breath.
Within this group, we learn what it feels like to live in resonance rather than isolation.
We are offered the rare opportunity to be seen without having to manage how we are perceived, and to practice being seen fully, without losing ourselves.
The heart becomes the bridge we cross between what has shaped us and who we are becoming.
It is here that we discover we get to choose how we are in relationship.
Phase Three · Radiance
Embodied Expression, Consciousness, and Living Beyond the Pattern
The light begins to shine.
Guided by the upper chakras, this phase opens into embodied expression through voice, meaning, and expanded states of awareness.
This is where we get to experience ourselves in a way that is not organized around old defenses or shaped only by circumstance.
Where the spiritual dimensions of our humanity can come forward. Where what was buried beneath the pattern comes into the light.
The old paradigm dissolves. With it, how we relate to ourselves changes. How we choose. How we act. How we speak. How we live.
We reclaim our voice. We move toward clearer expression, aligned choice, and a deeper trust in what we know.
What has unfolded across the twelve weeks travels with us, carried into our relationships, our days, and the way we move through the world.
We begin to live, speak, and choose from something deeper than the pattern.
We walk in our light.
“I feel more self-love, self-compassion, and inherent worthiness than I did before we started.”
— Jade D.
What You Get
The experience is multi-layered, active, and deeply human. Methodical, but never rigid. Creative, but never random. Eclectic in form, precise in purpose.
This is not a drop-in group or a passive lecture series. It is a committed process held with care, structure, and integrity, where we make room for our full humanity and step into active practice, honest contact, and embodied change.
Twelve In Person, Experiential Sessions
The core of the program unfolds over twelve consecutive Tuesday evenings in Central Austin.
Each two-hour session is live, experiential, and highly engaged. We move through original practices, relational work, embodied exercises, reflection, and process work designed for that week’s developmental center.
The Deep-Dive Retreat
Midway through the process, we step outside the weekly rhythm for a dedicated half-day weekend retreat.
This longer gathering gives the pattern more time, space, and support to move beyond ordinary conversation and into the body’s deeper intelligence through an extended holotropic-style breathwork session, group process, and integration.
Relational Laboratory
You will move through the twelve weeks with the same stable cohort, limited to 16 participants.
Week after week, the same circle creates rhythm, predictability, and trust, giving the nervous system enough steadiness to soften and enough honest contact for relational patterns to become visible. The group becomes a living laboratory for relationship: a place to notice, try, risk, repair, and practice differently.
Here, belonging is not an idea we talk about.
It is something we practice.
Two Guides, One Weave
We hold The You Project together as two experienced guides with complementary training, lived practice, and ways of seeing.
Together, we weave modern psychology, neuroscience, nervous system work, somatic practice, ritual, expanded states, and the chakra system as a developmental map into one coherent process. This gives the room structure and intuition, science and spirit, precision and play.
We do not bring this work only as something we have studied. We bring it as something we continue to practice, live, and learn from.
The You Project Companion Guide
You will receive a companion guide created specifically for this twelve-week cohort, with pattern-mapping tools, chakra-based reflection prompts, integration practices, and supporting material for each phase of the work.
It is designed to help you deepen the work between sessions, track how your pattern moves through each developmental center, and carry what happens in the room into daily life.
How This Works Differently
The You Project is an intentional practice of working with what has been organized, protected, inherited, and lived through the body over time.
Symptoms are part of the story. We work with the whole pattern.
Grounded in Wholeness
We are not asking what is wrong with you. We are looking through a neuro-somatic lens at what your body, nervous system, and psyche have been trying to do for you.
A frustrating behavior begins to look different when we understand it as an intelligent adaptation, something shaped by experience, reinforced by the nervous system, and repeated because it once helped you survive, belong, protect, or stay connected.
Less shame. Less self-attack. More contact with the protective intelligence beneath the behavior. The pattern is not who you are. It is something your system learned, often beneath conscious awareness, long before you had the choice to respond differently.
As the internal war settles, more of you becomes available. The original desires. The vitality. The joy. The inherent nature that was never gone, only covered by protection.
Wholeness is not something we impose.
It is something we make room for.
The Group Is Part of the Method
Most protective patterns did not form in isolation. They were shaped in relationship. Reinforced in relationship. Hidden in relationship.
So we work in relationship.
Within the carefully held architecture of the group, the pattern stops being a theory. It has a chance to appear in real time, in the same relational field where it usually protects, performs, withdraws, reaches, or takes over.
The group becomes a living practice ground for the change we are trying to make.
With skilled guidance and the support of the group, we can catch the pattern as it happens, stay close enough to notice the old loop, and resourced enough to practice something different before it takes over.
The group is not simply where the work happens.
It is how the work happens.
A Culture of Presence, Not Performance
This is a space where we stop managing the appearance of our healing. We do not need to present the polished version, the articulate version, the spiritually evolved version, or the one who already knows what to say.
We practice being present instead of performing.
Present with what is actually happening in the body. Present with the protective move as it appears. Present with the part of us that wants to explain, disappear, please, defend, or prove.
Here, being messy, imperfect, and fully human is not a flaw to fix.
It is the way in.
We Walk the Path
This work is not theoretical to us. We do not ask participants to enter places we are unwilling to enter ourselves. The practices, questions, breath, reflection, and relational work we bring into the room come from years of study, clinical experience, personal practice, and lived engagement with our own patterns.
We hold the work from the inside, not from above it.
Our friendship has asked us to practice the same things we ask of the group: honesty, repair, boundaries, vulnerability, and the willingness to stay present when old patterns get activated.
"One of the most unexpected gifts of the program was the community. The group created a safe, supportive environment where I felt comfortable being honest about what I was struggling with. Hearing others share their experiences helped me feel less alone when my own patterns surfaced and reminded me that growth doesn't have to happen in isolation."
— Eleanor B.
The Modalities of Integration
This is not a talking circle. It is not a lecture series. And it is not a single-method program dressed up in borrowed language.
The You Project weaves together a unique combination of modalities, practices, and experiences, each reaching a different layer of the automatic pattern and opening a different pathway for change.
Whole System Pattern Mapping
The pattern does not live only in the mind. We map it across every layer it occupies. Sensation, emotion, thought, behavior, relationship, and identity. We follow how one layer feeds the next, and where the loop can be interrupted.
Live Relational Repatterning
Most patterns formed in relationship and continue to organize behavior in relationship. The group becomes a live laboratory where old relational circuitry can be caught in real time, worked with directly, and practiced differently before the old loop completes.
Subconscious Access & Expanded States
We work with expanded states of consciousness to reach what lives in the subconscious, beneath the reach of ordinary conversation. Cellular memory, subconscious association, and long-held protective responses become available at the level where the pattern was originally encoded. Some layers of a pattern simply will not open through talk alone.
Original Experiential Design
Nothing here is off the shelf. Each session is built specifically for its place in the arc, drawing from the chakra system as a developmental map and whatever the moment calls for. Somatic practice, sandtray, movement, breathwork, ritual, relational exercise. The design is precise in purpose and alive in the room.
“The You Project has given me hope when hope has felt scarce.”
— Jess B.
Is This for You
The You Project is for people who have already begun the work. It is built for individuals with insight, self-awareness, language, and depth, who still feel an old pattern moving beneath the surface.
Your life may look functional from the outside. Maybe even steady, successful, or well-held. But privately, you know how much energy it can take to maintain the version of yourself others see.
You may be able to name the pattern, trace its history, and explain why it exists. You may understand the old protection, the original wound, and the familiar loop. And still, in the moments when something different matters most, you may find yourself living inside it again.
This experience is for people ready for something more active than insight, more embodied than reflection, and more relational than trying to change alone. It is for those who long for deeper connection but still protect themselves from it. For those who know how to sit with the shadow, but are still learning how to walk in their light.
You do not need to be perfect. You do not need to be polished. You do not need to have it all figured out.
All that is needed, is that you are willing.Willing to be honest. Willing to be engaged. Willing to practice a new way of being.
Voices from the Room
Your Investment
Cost & Enrollment
Dates: September 15th – December 8th. Deep Dive Retreat November 21st
Times: Tuesdays 6:30pm-8:30pm
Retreat: November 21st 9:00am – 2:00pm
Location: Casa De Luz | 1701 Toomey Rd, Austin, TX 78704
Limited to 16 Participants
Early Bird Enrollment: $1250 through August 15th
Regular Enrollment: $1500
Payment: $350 Deposit reserves your place in the cohort and is applied toward your total investment.
Remainder of payment can be split up into three monthly payments.
The deposit is non-refundable, but may be transferred to a future cohort if you need to withdraw.
Enrollment includes twelve in person two-hour sessions, half-day Deep-Dive Retreat, two holotropic-style breathwork sessions, The You Project Companion Guide, original experiential practices, relational work, and between-session integration support.
If you have questions about whether this is the right fit, please reach out before registering.
A glimpse into the landscape beneath the pattern.
In The You Project, sand tray offers a way to explore the deeper layers of the self through image, metaphor, and symbol. What has been operating beneath awareness begins to take shape, allowing insight to become something felt and experienced, not just understood.
FAQ
-
The You Project is a 12-week experiential immersion designed to help you identify, understand, and actively transform a recurring pattern in your life. Combining the chakra system as a developmental map with modern psychology, neuroscience, and somatic practices, the program bridges the gap between understanding a pattern and actually living differently.
-
The You Project is designed for people who have already done some personal growth work. If you have insight into your patterns but find yourself repeating them anyway, this program may be for you. Participants are typically self-aware, reflective, and ready for a more embodied and relational approach to change.
-
Participants often choose patterns related to people-pleasing, perfectionism, self-doubt, hyper-independence, difficulty with boundaries, relationship challenges, anxiety, avoidance, self-criticism, or feeling stuck in recurring life dynamics. Each participant works with their own unique pattern throughout the program.
-
While the program is therapeutic in nature, it is not psychotherapy. Rather than focusing primarily on processing the past, The You Project focuses on creating new experiences in the present that support nervous system change, embodied awareness, and new relational patterns. The group setting also offers opportunities for real-time learning and growth that differ from individual therapy.
-
No prior experience is required. The chakra system is used as a developmental framework, and all practices are taught in an accessible and practical way. Participants come from a wide variety of backgrounds and levels of experience.
-
Each two-hour session includes a combination of experiential exercises, somatic practices, reflection, group process, nervous system education, relational work, and guided practices designed to support the week's focus. Sessions are interactive and participatory rather than lecture-based.
-
Somatic work involves bringing awareness to the body and nervous system as part of the healing process. Rather than working only with thoughts and insight, we learn to recognize patterns as they appear in sensations, emotions, impulses, behaviors, and relationships.
-
The group is an essential part of the methodology. Because many of our patterns were formed in relationship, they become visible in relationship. The cohort provides a supportive environment where participants can notice old patterns as they arise and practice new ways of responding in real time.
-
At times, yes. Meaningful change often involves encountering old protective strategies, uncomfortable emotions, and vulnerable moments. The program is carefully structured to support participants with grounding tools, nervous system resources, skilled facilitation, and a stable cohort environment.
-
The Deep-Dive Retreat is a half-day immersion held midway through the program. It allows participants to move beyond weekly conversations and engage more deeply through breathwork, group process, integration practices, and extended experiential work.
-
Yes. The program includes two holotropic-style breathwork experiences as part of the overall journey. These sessions are carefully facilitated and integrated within the larger framework of the program.
-
Because the work builds progressively and relies on the continuity of the group, participants are encouraged to attend all sessions whenever possible. Missing an occasional session is understandable, but consistent attendance helps you receive the full benefit of the experience.
-
Many of us have several patterns we'd like to change, but they are often interconnected. By focusing on one recurring pattern, we create the opportunity to explore it deeply rather than skimming the surface. This sustained attention allows us to uncover its roots, understand how it shows up in different areas of life, and practice new responses consistently enough for meaningful change to occur.
-
Absolutely. Many participants find that The You Project complements their individual therapy work beautifully. Therapy often provides insight, support, and healing, while The You Project offers a structured environment to experiment with new ways of being, build awareness in relationships, and integrate learning through embodied practice and group experience.
-
Yes. We understand that investing in personal growth is a meaningful commitment, and payment plans are available to help make the program more accessible. Please contact us for current payment options and details.
-
This is one of the most common concerns we hear. Most participants arrive feeling some degree of uncertainty about sharing in a group setting. The program is designed to create a supportive, respectful, and non-judgmental environment where participation unfolds at a pace that feels manageable. You will never be forced to share more than you are ready to share, and many people discover that the group becomes one of the most valuable aspects of the experience.
-
The You Project integrates both ancient wisdom and modern understanding. We draw from developmental psychology, neuroscience, somatic practices, and the chakra system as a map for growth and self-understanding. While participants often describe the experience as deeply meaningful and transformative, the program does not require any particular spiritual beliefs or background.
-
You may be ready if you find yourself asking questions such as: "Why do I keep repeating this pattern?" "I understand where it comes from, but why can't I change it?" or "I know there is more available to me, but something keeps getting in the way." The You Project is designed for people who are willing to be curious, honest, and engaged in their own growth. You do not need to have everything figured out—only a willingness to show up, explore, and participate in the process.
-
The cohort is intentionally limited to 16 participants. This allows for meaningful connection, individual attention, and a sense of safety and trust within the group.
-
Yes. Creating a safe and trustworthy environment is a core value of the program. Participants are asked to respect the privacy and confidentiality of everyone in the group.
-
Most participants spend some additional time reflecting on their experiences and engaging with the companion guide between sessions. However, there is no extensive homework requirement. The emphasis is on bringing the work into daily life in meaningful ways.
-
Enrollment includes twelve in-person sessions, the half-day Deep-Dive Retreat, two breathwork experiences, The You Project Companion Guide, experiential practices, relational exercises, and between-session integration support.
-
We encourage you to reach out and schedule a conversation. The You Project is a significant commitment, and we're happy to help you determine whether it feels like the right fit for where you are in your journey.
-
While every participant's experience is unique, many leave with a deeper understanding of their patterns, greater nervous system resilience, stronger boundaries, more authentic relationships, increased self-trust, and practical tools for living with greater freedom, choice, and alignment.
Final Invitation
The work here is personal, deep, and alive.
If you've read this far, something in this is speaking to you.
Why not become part of the next sixteen?
“You two, with the presence and personality that you bring, are the secret sauce for this program.”
— Eileen K.
Meet Your Guides
We come to this work through different paths and different emphases, yet they have brought us to the same place: a grounded integration of Eastern wisdom and modern psychology.
We both believe deeply in the human potential that lives underneath our patterns, the capacity that conditioning buried but never took away.
And we share a passion for creating spaces where people get to reconnect to their own goodness. And in an ideal world, fall in love with themselves.
Brenda Lee Gauthier
I have spent most of my life chasing "good enough."
Something I have lived, wrestled with, and slowly learned to meet differently. I know the exhaustion of seeing your patterns clearly and still finding yourself caught in them. I also know the longing for something deeper than insight. Something that actually shifts the way you live, relate, and inhabit yourself.
I have been working as a clinical and somatic therapist for the past fifteen years, specializing in trauma and nervous system recovery, somatic healing, breathwork, and pattern change. My formal training is extensive, but my wisdom comes from my own pursuit of feeling good enough.
Breathwork, yoga, Eastern philosophy and practices, somatic work, meditation, retreats, failure, humility, and beginning again. I was not collecting credentials or building a resume. I was looking for what would actually work. What would reach the places insight alone could not touch. What would help me stop performing my way toward worth and begin living from something more honest.
This path taught me to be more interested in presence than performance. More interested in truth than perfection. Everything else is just a longer way around.
If you are in this room, I already understand something about what brought you here. The ache of knowing there is more for you. The exhaustion of repeating what you already understand. The quiet hope that this time might be different.
I have been that person. In many ways I still am.
And what I know is this: we are not fixed. We are patterned. And patterns can change.
That belief is what I bring into this room.
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500)
Gioconda Parker
Yoga has been one of the great teachers of my life.
What began more than twenty-five years ago as a practice quickly became a path, one that called me into years of mentorship, disciplined study, and a lifelong devotion to understanding how people heal, grow, and come home to themselves.
My journey has taken me through deep study, teaching, training teachers, leading retreats around the world, and time spent learning in India and Thailand. But some of the most important teachings did not come through formal study. They came through discernment, heartbreak, courage, and the willingness to walk away from spaces that no longer felt aligned.
That experience deepened my understanding of what real practice asks of us: honesty, embodiment, humility, compassion, and the courage to live what we claim to value.
Today, my work weaves yoga, breathwork, somatic healing, ayurveda, trauma-informed practice, and spiritual psychology into grounded spaces where people can reconnect with themselves in practical and meaningful ways. I continue this work through retreats, trainings, and as founder of One Om School of Yoga.
I believe healing happens when the body is listened to, the heart is included, and wisdom is brought down into everyday life.
Whether on the mat, in community, or in the middle of life’s messier seasons, I’m devoted to helping people remember their strength, their wholeness, and their capacity to begin again.
E-RYT 500, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), Master’s in Spiritual Psychology, Founder of One Om School of Yoga