The YBNL Playshop: Internal Body Language Training

The YBNL Playshop is designed to reduce the familiar sense of disconnection that can appear when life becomes stressful, uncertain, or unexpectedly changes.

The YBNL Playshop teaches a practical meditation exercise that shifts our stress-response mechanism. Through guided video lessons and independent practice, students teach themselves to remain connected even when faced with an upset, anxious reaction, or a sense of inadequacy.

The purpose is not to erase our history, analyze the past, or force ourselves into a positive mood. It is to notice what is happening in our body now, shift the old emotional charge that is present, and discover through our own experience what begins to change.

Over time, these changes can retrain our internal body language to become more supportive and less reactive. We may begin maintaining our sense of connection even while stressful events are happening, rather than automatically feeling alone or separated.

With practice, old reactions can lose their ability to automatically pull our attention away from the present. Connection becomes easier to recognize and maintain, while more attention becomes available for relationships, choices, intuition, creativity, and everyday life. The math is simple: when attention is removed from old events, that attention becomes free to use right here, right now.

The YBNL premise is simple: although the sensation of separation feels real, it is based on an assumption that isn't actually true. Practicing the cascade exercise gradually unravels that assumption until our body drops it and we find ourselves suddenly less occupied with our history.

Each experience of releasing a charge shows our body that holding onto an old upset created an unnecessary burden. As this understanding develops through repetition, our body realizes that its actual issue was the holding on, not what it was holding to. This shift changes how our body responds to stress, making our history become less emotionally impactful. Our sense of connection becomes more familiar and we find ourselves "being here now" as a matter of course.

The training is simple, self-contained, and designed to be practiced independently. Nothing additional is required to make the exercise work, and the results are something you evaluate for yourself. Results Tell the Truth is our college motto, and it primarily means that your experience is your teacher.

Practice the cascade and notice how your internal body language shifts. This experience is your actual teacher. As you continue, the epiphanies will guide you; that is results telling the truth. The Playshop anticipates this progress.

“When I first shared the cascade exercise, it was because I credited it with an increase in intuition. Later, a wildfire destroyed my home as I fled through a burning forest. A couple of weeks afterward, I realized I was not carrying any residual upset about it. Then, two years later, I had to escape another fire that destroyed another home, and again my body settled very quickly.

That is what I mean by results telling the truth. For me, the practice produced a very noticeable shift in how my body responds to stress.

But I won't try to prove it to you with long lectures and examples. I'd rather teach you the exercise so that you can experience the results for yourself. The video lessons total about 90 minutes, so you can begin practicing the cascade today. When you have questions or want to share your results, connect with me on campus. I really enjoy seeing what members discover through the training.”

— Brian Snyder

Why This Became My Work

I spent much of my childhood overwhelmed by physical and sexual abuse I endured when I was five or six years old. By my teens, I was trying to escape almost everything. In my twenties, I began pursuing teachers and gurus, going to nearly everyone I could find because I was trying to understand how I fit into the world.

I felt profoundly disconnected. I felt as though I did not belong here, as though other people had something I did not have, and as though I was somehow less than everyone else.

Then I met body-language teacher Patrick Collard.

In a single session, Patrick took that sense of disconnection and turned it inside out. I remember walking out and suddenly feeling that I belonged in the world. I felt connected. I felt whole. What I had let go of during the session hardly mattered to me. What mattered was that the feeling I had carried for so long was gone.

I committed my life to understanding what he had done, how he had done it, and how I could continue the work for myself. Eventually, Patrick took me aside and told me that I should teach it. I began teaching and working with people in about 1997 or 1998.

Patrick showed me a direct correlation between internal body language and external body language. The things we hide because we think nobody else has them are often the same things other people are hiding. Once I began recognizing the same patterns again and again, the idea that my own sense of inadequacy was uniquely mine stopped making sense.

That experience became the starting point for decades of study and, eventually, for The YBNL Playshop.

When Disconnection Takes Over

Have you ever felt connected and capable, then suddenly found yourself judging, withdrawing, second-guessing, or feeling as though you do not belong?

These shifts can happen after conflict, disappointment, criticism, rejection, unexpected change, or something small that touches an old sensitivity. The circumstances change, but the internal reaction can feel remarkably familiar.

Then the mind explains why we feel separate: “I am not enough to belong. Something is wrong with me.” The explanation reinforces the feeling, and the feeling makes the explanation seem true.

The “Not Enough” Conclusion Is Based on a Lie

The feeling itself is real. The conclusion we draw from it does not have to be.

Patrick showed me that nearly everyone carries some version of this reaction. The details vary, but the underlying sense of disconnection is remarkably familiar. That alone was a huge relief to me. It meant that what I was feeling was not evidence that I was uniquely defective.

A feeling of separation does not prove that we are inadequate, unwanted, or somehow less than everyone else. It is a sensation. The mind may explain that sensation with an old conclusion, but the conclusion is not automatically true.

This distinction is central to The Playshop. If the conclusion is false, we do not need to spend the rest of our lives fixing the person the conclusion says we are. We can notice the reaction, work with the body while it is available, and discover what changes when the old charge is no longer driving the story.

If someone tells you there's poop on your shoe and you look down and see that there isn't any poop on your shoe, you're not going to clean your shoe. There's nothing there to fix.

The Cascade Exercise

The cascade is the release of old emotional charge while the memory remains. The cascade exercise is the meditative practice taught in The Playshop to train that release.

It is practiced when an old upset, anxious reaction, sense of disconnection, or feeling of inadequacy becomes noticeable. You do not have to search for something to work on. You use what naturally comes up during ordinary life.

A difficult experience can end while its emotional effects continue. A new situation can trigger tension, fear, anger, hesitation, or self-doubt that belongs partly to what is happening now and partly to what happened before. The Playshop teaches you to work with the internal body language that is present without pretending the current situation does not matter.

Working With What Is Here Now

The cascade is not based on searching for the most painful memory, intensifying an emotion, or repeatedly telling the story of what happened. It is about what we are feeling in our body now.

The memory does not need to be erased. The unresolved charge can shift without requiring us to deliberately revisit or relive the event. Later, when the memory returns, we may notice that the same charge or upset is no longer there.

Students are expected to become comfortable with conscious use of the exercise by the end of the video lessons. This is stage three of competence: students practice what they are learning, test the exercise, and find it simple and relatively easy. Daily practice over the following weeks establishes the habit and incorporates it into ordinary life. The longer process of integration develops over approximately two to three months, at which point our body (or subconscious) runs the cascade in the background. After several weeks or months of this, students "graduate" when a stressful event passes by quickly, without effort or residual stress.

What May Begin to Change

The purpose of The Playshop is not to create a new personality. It is to reduce the influence of old reactions so that who you already are can participate in the present more fully.

In YBNL, repeated releases teach the body that holding onto old upsets is unnecessary. When the body or subconscious “gets it,” it begins releasing old charges on its own, often while sleeping. The intended end result is a body that resolves upsets as they occur rather than holding or burying them. Completion is recognized when a stressful event passes without residual suffering. A memory remains, but it no longer carries an emotional charge of suffering.

Students have described feeling more comfortable reaching out to other people, making friends, speaking honestly, and participating in situations where they previously withdrew. Some notice less judging, measuring, comparing, and second-guessing. Others describe more energy, more present-time awareness, and clearer choices.

Students have also described remembering difficult experiences without feeling the same emotional charge. When less attention is occupied by old upsets, more may become available for the people, information, opportunities, and choices that are here now.

Possible Benefits Include

• Less emotional charge connected with stressful memories.
• A steadier emotional baseline and an easier return to presence.
• Less judging, comparing, competing, and second-guessing.
• More attention and energy available for present circumstances.
• Greater awareness of intuition, empathy, and internal cues.
• Clearer choices and a stronger sense of connection.
• More freedom to participate in relationships, work, and ordinary life without the same old reactions.

These secondary effects differ from person to person because the old emotional charges affected each person differently. Memories remain, while the behaviors and reactions associated with their charge can soften. I ask students to evaluate these changes through their own direct experience.

A Personal Example

In one more recent situation, someone got in my face, threatened to beat me up, threw me into a wall, and injured me. Twenty years earlier, an event like that could have produced days of internal chatter: Why did this happen? Why does this person hate me? What does this say about me?

This time, that additional story did not take over. I still had to deal with the event and the injury, but I did not turn what happened into a judgment about my worth, whether I belonged, or whether I was wanted.

For me, that is one of the clearest practical results of the work: a difficult event can remain difficult without becoming a new identity or reopening every old conclusion about myself.

A Self-Study, Guru-Free System

The central work of The Playshop happens within you. I provide the lessons, explanations, and exercises. You notice the results through your own internal body language.

The Playshop grew from my earlier partnered body-language work. I developed the training as a solo practice so students could learn to produce and evaluate their own results without depending on repeated sessions.

The goal is not for you to keep returning to me every time an old reaction appears. The goal is for you to recognize the reaction and know what to do. The teacher provides the framework. The student learns the skill. The results belong to the student.

Why Guru-Free Matters to Me

During roughly thirty years of study, I met and spent time with about fifty teachers. Many of those experiences left me believing that the teacher possessed something I did not—that they were more connected, more gifted, or more capable than I could ever be.

That can create admiration, but it can also reinforce the very sense of separation this work is intended to undo. If I believe the teacher has access to something fundamentally unavailable to me, I have simply created another version of “not enough.”

The teachers from whom I learned the most were different. They were grounded and down to earth. They shared what they knew without requiring me to make them larger than myself.

Everything I know came through study and practice. I learned from remarkable people, including Patrick, but I still had to learn it. I was not smacked in the forehead and handed a special ability that other people cannot have.

That is why The Playshop is organized as a school rather than a following. Putting the teacher on a pedestal creates separation. Learning the skill for yourself restores ownership of your body, your personal space, and your choices.

Why the Online Format Matters

The Playshop is completed online through video lessons and real-world exercises. You can move at your own pace, repeat lessons, and return to the material whenever you'd like to.

More importantly, when you do the work yourself and recognize a real change in your own experience, you can credit yourself for producing that result. The skill does not become evidence that the teacher is extraordinary. It becomes evidence that you can do the work.

Start with the Free Class

You can begin with the free first class, Shift Your Inner Dialogue, which teaches practical exercises that reduce negative mental commentary. Practice the exercises and you will feel if YBNL is right for you.

You are not asked to accept the ideas on this page as a belief. Practice the exercises and evaluate what changes through your own direct experience.