Welcome to the JoyWork Course Portal
Hello! I’m Melissa, and I’ll be your guide through JoyWork OM: The Owner’s Manual for Human Flourishing.
I founded JoyWork to help people create pathways toward flourishing through self-knowledge, self-care, meaningful connection, and the ongoing practice of becoming more responsive to life as it is.
JoyWork OM brings those elements together in a science-based, experiential course designed to help you understand how your brain and body learn patterns—and how those patterns can change. Through a combination of practical science, somatic practices, mindfulness, self-inquiry, and shared learning, you’ll develop tools for working with difficult emotions, recognizing the patterns that shape how you act and react, and creating greater flexibility and choice in how you meet your life.
This is where the work begins.
Session One: How Change Becomes Possible
Tuesday, October 13 6:00-8:30 PM
Our brains and bodies are shaped by experience. The patterns we repeat—how we perceive, feel, think, and respond—reflect what our systems have learned to expect and prepare for.
In this session, we’ll explore how prediction, conditioning, and nervous system state shape our experience of the present. We’ll also look at how change happens: not by escaping conditioning, but by creating new patterns that support greater flexibility, discernment, openness, and responsiveness to what is actually happening now.
The goal is not to become calm all the time or to erase old patterns. It is to become increasingly able to recognize them, revise them, and create more possibilities for how we respond.
Week 2
Online Live Webinar
Connected Communication: Listening to Understand and Speaking To Be Heard
Friday, September 15 9:30-10:30am
Week 4
In Person Retreat Days
Connected Communication and Creative Conflict Solving
Day 1
September 28, 2023
9:00am - 5:00pm
Day 2
September 29, 2023
9:00am - 2:00pm
The Children’s Institute
2121 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90066
Week 5
Live Zoom Office Hours
Friday, October 6 9:30-10:30
Bring me your questions and challenges! This is our opportunity to come together one last time, answer questions, discuss challenges and celebrate successes.