Embodying Safety
Integrating Yoga, Qigong & Polyvagal Theory. Starting March 12, 2026.
Learn with Amelia
This course uniquely weaves ancient embodied wisdom with modern polyvagal insights, showing how Polyvagal Theory maps onto understandings of the body, mind, and spirit refined over more than 3,000 years through Classical Yoga and Qigong. Drawing from a life long study with advanced master teachers, Dr. Barili brings practices once shared in small teaching circles into an accessible, trauma-informed framework—offering practical tools to support nervous system regulation, resilience, and authentic connection in both personal and professional life.
Pricing options
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$899.00
Regular price
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3 x $299.66
3 Month Payment Plan
Course Timing
Now enrolling our next cohort with self-paced content available March 12, and live-online sessions beginning March 19, 2026.
Cohort schedule:
This course alternates between live and self paced modules. Live sessions will be held on Thursdays from 2:30-4:30 pm ET (US & Canada) (time zone converter). It is strongly recommended that all live sessions are attended on zoom, though one absence is acceptable and must be made up by watching the recorded didactic portion of the class. You will have access to the course materials for an entire year, and extensions are available upon request.
Recordings of previous live sessions will be available on our learning platform. Convert class time to your time zone here.
Course Description
Embodying Safety: Integrating Yoga, Qigong, and Polyvagal Theory invites you into a practical and compassionate exploration of how your nervous system shapes your experience of life. In this course, Dr. Barili shows how Polyvagal Theory offers a clear, modern map that beautifully aligns with ancient wisdom traditions that have understood the body, mind, and spirit for thousands of years. Together, these approaches offer a shared language you can use to meet everyday challenges with greater clarity, steadiness, and choice, in your personal and professional life.
You’ll discover how the complementary maps of Classical Yoga, Qigong, and Polyvagal Theory illuminate your own unique nervous system—its patterns, sensitivities, and strengths. Through this understanding, you’ll learn how to restore balance, access deeper layers of awareness, and work with the body’s natural intelligence using practices drawn from ancient teachings and informed by polyvagal insights.
Dr. Barili guides you in engaging your nervous system’s innate pathways for regulation and connection, helping you gently reshape habitual responses to stress. You’ll learn to recognize when you feel overwhelmed, shut down, or reactive—and how to return to a sense of safety and ease using simple, embodied practices. These include breathwork, gentle movement, contemplative awareness, sound, touch, mudras, and brief guided meditations.
Designed for daily life and professional settings alike, this course supports anyone seeking greater resilience, creativity, and presence. Whether you are a clinician, educator, caregiver, parent, artist, or simply curious about living with more balance, you’ll gain accessible tools to support regulation, foster connection, and help yourself and others return to states of safety, flow, and co-regulation. The practices are gentle, easy to learn, and safe to share—with clients, students, loved ones, and communities.
Who is this course for?
This course is for trauma survivors, caregivers, parents, clinicians and somatic therapists, educators and healthcare professionals, yoga and qigong teachers, meditators, and anyone seeking to deepen nervous system regulation for personal healing or professional application.
What else should I know?
A gentle, evidence-informed integration of Polyvagal Theory with ancient embodied practices, this course offers practical tools you can use immediately to support regulation, resilience, and connection in daily life, clinical work, education, and caregiving.
You will receive a Certificate upon completion of this course.
We invite you to watch the introductory webinar recording here.
There are no pre-requisites for this course.
Course Framework
This course offers experiential instruction in integrating Yoga, Qigong and Polyvagal Theory to support healing, achieve your highest human potential and bring forth personal, professional and community transformation:
- 6 two-hour live Zoom classes every other week
- 8 hours of self-paced lectures by Dr. Amelia Barili
- Recorded conversations between Dr. Amelia Barili and Dr. Stephen Porges
- Additional self-paced content including videos, articles, and self-reflection
Extra Details
Learners will have access to the course for 365 days from the date of the first live session.
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The teachings offered in this course are suitable for the general public, as well as parents, coaches, counselors, educators, body-based teachers, meditators, healthcare professionals, and human resources trainers.
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These practices are easy to learn. No previous knowledge of Yoga or Qigong is required for this course.
Outline of the Course Modules
Module 1: Framework for integrating Yoga, Qigong and Polyvagal Theory
(Self Paced - Course Materials Released March 12, 2026)
Module 2: How to befriend your nervous system with Polyvagal Theory
(Live - Thursday, March 19, 2026)
Module 3 Yoga’s continuum of Body, Mind and Spirit:
(Self Paced - Course Materials Released March 26, 2026)
Module 4 How to befriend your nervous system with Qigong
(Live - Thursday, April 2, 2026)
Module 5 How to monitor and regulate dorsal states with Yoga and Qigong
(Self Paced - Course Materials Released April 9, 2026)
Module 6: How to monitor and regulate sympathetic dysregulation with Yoga and Qigong
(Live - Thursday, April 16, 2026)
Module 7: Experiencing and sustaining a ventral state with Yoga and Qigong
(Self Paced - Course Materials Released April 23, 2026)
Module 8: Ancient Techniques to Consciously Activate the Social Engagement System
(Live - Thursday, April 30, 2026)
Module 9: Going deeper and bringing it all together
(Live - Thursday, May 14, 2026)
Module 10: Practice and Testimonials of Integrating Yoga, Qigong and Polyvagal Theory in daily life and work.
(Live - Thursday, May 28, 2026)
Learn with Amelia Barili
Amelia Barili
Amelia Barili, PhD, is an award-winning UC Berkeley educator whose work integrates ancient embodied practices with Polyvagal Theory to support nervous system regulation, safety, and connection. Amelia studied with old teachers of the healing traditions of India and China and has taught Yoga, Qigong and Meditation for over 40 years. A survivor of deep trauma herself, in this course, Amelia shares with us a distillation of her lifelong dedication to learn from ancient sources of healing knowledge. Dr. Barili is a pioneer at integrating the ancient wisdom healing traditions of Classical Yoga and Qigong, which she knows deeply not only from her passionate dedication to learn them and teach them, but also from her own journey of discovering healing and inner guidance.
In the 1970s, Amelia graduated from Kaivalyadhama Yoga School in India. Founded in 1924, Kaivalyadhama is the first ever to research with scientific methods the application of yoga therapy to manage chronic diseases. Inspired by those teachings and discoveries about the transformational power of working with the energy body, Dr. Barili set out to learn what the other great pillar of ancient wisdom, China, taught about healing with the energy body. She apprenticed with Qigong masters and healers, among them several from the lineage of Grandmaster Yang, Mei Jun, the 27th generation inheritor of the Taoist Medical Qigong system developed in the sacred Kunlun Mountains in China. Drawing from the deep knowledge about the continuum of body, mind and spirit in ancient wisdom healing traditions, Amelia developed a unique way of integrating the teachings and practices of Classical Yoga, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qigong.
Dr Barili is the founder of “Integrating Yoga and Qigong” ™ approach which now has extended to “Integrating Yoga, Qigong and Polyvagal Theory,” ™ a practical transformative approach to integral health and transformation at an individual, community and global level. To find out more about Dr. Barili’s work, visit her website ameliabarili.com and her YouTube Channel: "thenewparadigms".
Student reviews
"This course has been phenomenal"
"I have been trying to promote Polyvagal Theory to Arctic regions for several years and the door has opened much wider since the pandemic. Understanding the science is crucial, of course, but people want it to be relatable and they want tools. Amelia has made the connection between traditions, culture, and science in an extremely helpful way for me to bring this forward with indigenous populations. Dr. Barili is helping me to make it very real and accessible to diverse populations - there are elements here I can use that I know will speak beyond the barriers."
"A Modern Wise of Our Days"
"Amelia is a modern wise of our days, offering the mental structure and method of a Professor, being a Master of Yoga and Qigong and having deep knowledge of modern neuroscience. You will re-discover your own inner wisdom and also how modern science validates what ancient wisdom already knew. And complement it on top with new neuroscience insights. Don't expect a quick hack, this is knowledge that needs to be practiced but will accompany you your whole life to aid you in creating a much happier and more regulated life! A super recommendable course!"
"More than expected"
"The course turned out to be very rich in theory but also, and above all, in the practical part. Amelia is a very warm and engaging teacher, and with her smile and her deep comprehension of people, she sets an example to follow on the path traced in this course. It's as if I now have a map and a compass to continue my healing journey alone (even if I hope to stay in touch with Amelia). And speaking of healing, I think I now have a clearer meaning of this word, which is twofold. On one hand, there is the possibility of actually improving health problems by toning and tuning our nervous system. On the other hand, healing can mean having greater inner strength, trust in life and in the possibility of accepting what it brings you and making it an opportunity to grow."
"Wonderful to walk the bridge between ancient wisdom and modern science."
"Love the practices specially Three Center Meditation, Morning practices, Contemplative movement with breath, Alignment, Separating the clouds and Putting back to Universe what you cannot carry... I do these pratices every day and I also teach them with warm feedback and thankfulness."
Thank you!
"The topic was relevant to my profession and important for my personal life. readings were very helpful. instructor seemed very compassionate."
Highly Recommend!
As a Registered Nurse and Qigong Teacher, I wanted to find a way to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western medicine. This course was the perfect bridge between that gap! Dr. Barili and Dr. Porges do an excellent job sharing both the Western and Eastern perspectives of nervous system healing, and offer a
wonderful way for me to teach healthcare workers and patients about how to regulate their nervous system from this accessible perspective. The exercises we learn in the class are so simple and easy, and very effective! I highly recommend this course to anyone wanting to have a deep understanding of Polyvagal
Theory, and how to apply it (especially in the healthcare field)!
Practices to share with the world"
I am so grateful for what I learned. Our family uses the 'practices' daily and I am eager to share them, PVT resources, and information about the social engagement system with the disability world. For me this means inviting my daughter's teachers, doctors, and PTs/OTs, etc. to learn about PVT, its complex beauty,
and what implementing it can do for themselves and the disabled people in their lives. My hope is that when
more teachers, doctors, and therapists learn and use PVT they will focus on creating embodied safe spaces where people with disabilities nervous systems are honored and cared for and that interventions will no longer be behavior based. So many people with disabilities are missing out on these life enriching methods and modalities that will truly allow them to flourish and reach their fullest potential.
Inspired!
Applying the mini practice for my health and wellbeing helped improved my chronic fatigue through daily practice. I enjoyed choosing from a variety of mini practice available through the course. I enjoyed the breathwork and contemplative movement the most. I see great potential in using the mini practices and other material in this course in mobilizing women in low resourced communities become advocates in
raising the next generations to be more ventral vagal evolved and communities to be compassion and resilience oriented.
I am inspired to develop personalized toolkits for families consulting with us in communities to inspire them to collaborate with each other in optimizing their health and wellbeing in fun and inspiring ways.
Empowered with Practices
This course is of great benefit to me personally, on my path to nervous system regulation, and general mental, emotional, & behavioral wellness. The teachings imparted by Dr. Porges and Dr. Carter have been of great benefit particularly Polyvagal Theory, and the theories of oxytocin and co-regulation. The ancient
wisdom teachings imparted by Amelia have been of great benefit to me personally on my spiritual path. I am
now empowered with practices I can build upon for furthering my current wellbeing, and spreading wellbeing like concentric circles of wellbeing.
Immediate tools for my clients
Amelia's proficiency in mapping the science of polyvagal theory onto and through the frameworks and practices of qigong and yoga has given me new capabilities to support profound and holistic safety and growth with my clients as well as for myself. Because the course was practical and intended for use while strongly anchored in knowledge, I have been able to give clients immediately useful tools to build their balance, presence and leadership skills while also being able to offer data to help them understand the 'why' of these practices.