THE BUTTERFLY BLUEPRINT
THE BUTTERFLY BLUEPRINT: WEEKLY PRACTICE LAB
Understand your states. Practice the skills. Return to choice.
One skill. One opportunity to practice. One way to bring it into your life. Every week!
A weekly, live online space to learn about your nervous system, explore somatic skills, and connect with others who are learning to navigate stress, overwhelm, and shutdown with greater awareness and choice.
Each 90-minute class combines nervous-system education, guided somatic practice, and community discussion.
Join for a single class or develop a consistent practice with a membership.
You may understand your patterns and still struggle when stress takes over
You may have been to therapy, read the books, practiced mindfulness, or learned a long list of coping skills.
Maybe you recognize some of these experiences:
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You know you need to slow down, but your thoughts won't stop racing.
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You understand your triggers, but still find yourself overwhelmed or reactive.
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You want to communicate clearly, but lose your words during difficult conversations.
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You know what needs to get done, but feel too exhausted, numb, or disconnected to begin.
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You have coping skills that sometimes work beautifully and other times don't seem to help.
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You want to feel more present in your relationships, work, and daily life, but stress keeps getting in the way.
This does not mean you are failing.
Here's something worth considering:
Stress can change our access to attention, energy, language, motivation, and deliberate decision-making.
And different nervous-system states may call for different kinds of support.
That's why I created The Butterfly Blueprint.
Same Person. Different State. Different Support.
Armor
Armor is an activated state.
It may show up as anxiety, urgency, muscle tension, racing thoughts, irritability, panic, defensiveness, overthinking, or emotional flooding.
Chrysalis
Chrysalis is a shut-down or conserving state.
It may feel like heaviness, exhaustion, numbness, withdrawal, brain fog, low motivation, disconnection, or difficulty finding words.
Flight
Flight is a state where you have more access to connection, curiosity, boundaries, expression, rest, and choice.
Flight does not mean feeling calm all the time. It means having more capacity to notice what is happening and respond in a way that supports you.
The Butterfly Blueprint: Weekly Practice Lab
Nervous system education. Somatic practice. Community connection.
The Weekly Practice Lab is an ongoing space to explore the relationship between your brain, body, nervous system, and everyday experience.
Every week, we investigate a different aspect of somatic practice.
You'll learn about the nuerology and biology behind what we're exploring, experience a guided body-based skill, and have an opportunity to reflect on how it relates to your own life.
We'll also make space to discuss what's been challenging, celebrate what has been working, ask questions, and learn from one another.
This course is not about staying regulated every moment of the day.
It's about developing a more personal understanding of your nervous system and discovering which practices feel useful for you, in different situations and states.
Some weeks we'll explore substantial neuroscience and introduce a simple exercise.
Other weeks we'll spend more time experimenting with several variations of a somatic skill.
There is no expectation that every technique will work for everyone.
We're here to get curious, experiment, and build capacity through practice.
One skill. One opportunity to practice. One way to bring it into your life. Every week.
Eight Families of Somatic Skills
Week 1: Understanding Your Nervous System States
Sensory Orientation & Grounding
Why can you feel grounded and capable one moment, then overwhelmed, reactive, or disconnected the next? We'll explore the Butterfly Blueprint's three nervous-system states, learn to recognize our own early warning signals, and practice sensory orientation & grounding skills to bring awareness to the present moment.
Week 2: Working With Your Breath
Breath & Respiratory Practices
Breathing and nervous-system activity influence one another, but not every breathing technique feels helpful in every situation. We'll explore the relationship between breath, stress, and arousal while experimenting with practices like paced breathing, extended exhalations, and breath awareness to discover what feels supportive.
Week 3: Finding Support Through the Body
Touch, Pressure & Proprioception
Our bodies are constantly receiving information about where we are, how we're positioned, and what is supporting us. We'll explore how touch, pressure, and proprioception influence bodily awareness while practicing grounding techniques such as pressing into the floor, supported contact, and self-holds.
Week 4: Working With Stress Through Movement
Movement & Muscular Engagement
Stress can show up as restlessness, tension, an urge to move, or difficulty taking action, and sometimes stillness isn't what our bodies need. We'll explore the relationship between stress and muscular activation while experimenting with gentle movement, contained pushing, rocking, and muscle engagement and release.
Week 5: Exploring Sound, Voice & Rhythm
Sound & Vocal Regulation Practices
Sound and rhythm can influence our attention, breathing, emotional experience, and sense of connection. We'll explore how auditory and vocal experiences interact with nervous-system activity while experimenting with humming, vocal vibration, rhythmic tapping, and other sound-based practices.
Week 6: Learning to Listen to Your Body
Interoception & Somatic Awareness
Our bodies are constantly sending us information, but interpreting those sensations isn't always straightforward, especially under stress. We'll explore interoception, the relationship between sensation and interpretation, and practices like somatic tracking, neutral anchoring, and gently shifting attention to develop greater awareness of our internal experience.
Week 7: Regulation Through Connection
Connection & Co-Regulation
Our nervous systems don't operate in isolation. Relationships, communication, boundaries, and supportive connection can influence how we experience and respond to stress, so we'll explore the science of co-regulation while practicing skills for asking for support, finding steadiness in connection, and navigating challenging interactions.
Week 8: Creating Conditions for Regulation
Environmental & Foundational Regulation
Regulation isn't only about what we do in a stressful moment. Our environment, rest, nourishment, sensory demands, relationships, and daily routines all influence our capacity, so we'll explore how to recognize these conditions and practice making small, realistic adjustments that better support our individual nervous systems.
The Learning Continues
After eight weeks, we return to the same skill families with new techniques, deeper science, and different real-life applications.
You might explore basic sensory orientation in one rotation, then return to that same family later to investigate how attention changes during conflict.
Every class stands on its own, so you can join at any point.
You don't need to attend all eight weeks or complete them in a particular order.
What a Weekly Practice Lab Looks Like:
Each class is approximately 90 minutes, live online, and divided into two parts.
Part One: Learn & Practice
We'll begin with a gentle practice to help you arrive and notice your experience.
Then we'll explore the week's educational topic, which may include nervous-system physiology, the brain, stress responses, trauma-informed concepts, or the science related to our featured skill.
From there, I'll guide you through a somatic exercise, with opportunities to experiment, modify, or simply observe.
We'll finish with a little personal reflection about what you noticed.
This portion is recorded separately from personal group discussion.
Part Two: Connect & Integrate
After stopping the recording, we'll transition into a more conversational space.
This is an opportunity to share challenges you've encountered with stress or nervous-system regulation, celebrate moments when you've noticed a shift or used a skill, ask questions, and explore how the week's material relates to everyday life.
You're never required to share personal experiences or disclose trauma history.
Our focus is on education, curiosity, skill development, and mutual learning, rather than group psychotherapy or trauma processing.
One Small Experiment for the Week
At the end of class, I'll offer a simple invitation to explore something between sessions.
It isn't homework. There's nothing to submit, and you don't have to do it perfectly.
What You Can Develop Through Ongoing Practice
As you participate in the Weekly Practice Lab, you'll have opportunities to better recognize early signs of activation, shutdown, or greater connection, understand more about the science of stress, learn a variety of body-based techniques, and discover which practices feel supportive for your individual system.
You'll also have opportunities to connect with others, ask questions, and develop your own collection of skills that you can experiment with in everyday life.
This isn't a promise that stress, anxiety, or shutdown will disappear.
It's an opportunity to practice responding to your nervous system with more understanding, flexibility, and choice.
Who Is the Weekly Practice Lab For?
This space may be a good fit if you've learned coping skills but sometimes struggle to access them when stress takes over, if you're curious about somatic practices and body-based approaches to regulation, or if you want to better understand how the brain, body, and nervous system respond to stress.
You do not need previous experience with somatic work or therapy.
You do not need to arrive calm, confident, or highly functional.
You simply need enough capacity to participate in an educational group program.
This approach is bottom up, not willpower based.
We are not forcing calm.
We are building choice.
You do not have to explain your trauma to benefit from this.
You do not have to relive anything to begin shifting your system.
When this program may not be the right fit:
The Butterfly Blueprint: Foundations is an educational somatic skills course. It is not psychotherapy, crisis care, medical treatment, or a replacement for individualized mental health support.
This program may not be appropriate when you:
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Are currently experiencing an acute mental health crisis
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Need immediate or intensive individual support
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Are looking for trauma processing rather than education and stabilization skills
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Are seeking diagnosis or medical treatment
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Are unable to participate safely in a group learning environment
Please contact a qualified healthcare professional or emergency service when urgent or individualized care is needed.
Meet your facilitator
My name is Tobey Hale
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor, psychedelic therapist, and integration coach. I hold an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling from Naropa University.
The Butterfly Blueprint grew out of both my professional work and my own experience with burnout.
For a time, I was working as an equine therapist at a residential treatment center. In many ways, it was my dream job. I cared deeply about the work and felt honored to support people through some of the hardest moments of their lives. I was working every day with the horses and getting to share their amazing co-regulatory power with my clients as they navigated substance abuse issues and resolving incredibly profound traumas. This was everything that I had gone to school for and spent thousands of hours training to do. I should have been lit up and thriving.
But when I came home, my own nervous system told a different story.
Some days, I felt incredibly anxious, tense, and unable to settle. Other days, I shut down completely. I would come home exhausted, disconnected, and without the energy to participate in my own life.
That experience was difficult to make sense of. How could I be doing meaningful work that I loved and still feel so depleted?
I had clinical training. I understood trauma, stress, and coping skills. I could explain what was happening intellectually, but understanding it did not automatically change what was happening in my body.
After I left the residential treatment center, I finally had the time and spaciousness to figure out how to move beyond a nervous system that no longer seemed to know up from down.
I intentionally slowed down.
Instead of pushing through or judging myself for how I felt, I began listening to my nervous system patterns and warning signs. I paid attention to what happened before I became overwhelmed, what happened before I shut down, and what helped me feel more present again.
Over time, I realized I did not need more information alone. I needed practical ways to recognize the state I was in and respond to what my nervous system actually needed.
That process changed the way I understood burnout, anxiety, and shutdown. It also changed the way I worked with others.
Throughout my career, I have worked in high-acuity residential care, equine-assisted settings, psychedelic harm reduction, sanctuary support, and festival-based peer care. My approach brings together clinical science, somatic practice, mindfulness, EMDR, harm reduction, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and integration.
The Butterfly Blueprint grew from that work.
I help people understand what their nervous system is communicating, practice skills that fit the state they are in, and build greater capacity for safety, connection, and choice.
I created The Butterfly Blueprint: Foundations for people who are thoughtful, self-aware, and trying hard, but still find that their nervous system gets in the way of work, rest, relationships, or daily life.
Transformation is not only a change in mindset. It is a reclamation of your ability to participate in your life.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Build a Practice That Fits Your Real Life.
Your nervous system is changing and responding to life all the time.
Some weeks you may feel grounded and connected.
Other weeks you may find yourself activated, overwhelmed, exhausted, or disconnected.
The goal isn't to eliminate those experiences or force yourself into a particular state.
It's to become more familiar with your patterns, develop a range of supportive practices, and discover how to respond with greater intention.
You don't have to figure all of that out in one class.
You can keep learning, experimenting, reflecting, and practicing.
One skill. One opportunity to practice. One way to bring it into your life. Every week.
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Tara Thorpe, LPCC, MA
“Tobey is a trusted colleague in the field - reliable, compassionate, kind, and professional.“
Natalia Richardson
"Tobey is so intuitive, gentle and knowing. Working with him, I could feel stagnant emotions being able to move through my body that wanted to be released. My nervous system got calmer and I felt really divine and beautiful. "
Sandra, TX
I am grateful for them and this course, they show up so truthfully and always make you feel seen, heard, and welcome. They share all their knowledge in the most graceful way.