1:1 Journey

Make friends with your Inner World
to create the Outer World you long for.

Some insight is irrefutable.

Given the mythologies of modern culture, it’s reasonable to believe that happiness is something to acquire. But lasting satisfaction is not outside of you. You cannot buy it, borrow it, friend it, copy it, or steal it. Real happiness is a function of honest self-exploration. It emerges from a willingness to approach and befriend the invisible material that propels our behavior: unconscious intentions, motivations, strategies, emotions, experiences, stories and beliefs. These are constructs in the Inner World that drive our choices while falling almost entirely outside of awareness. If we make no effort to know this Inner World, lasting satisfaction—simple peace within—will elude us.

Our methods to facilitate the journey toward real happiness are called Deep Self Design® and Deep Life Design®. These are multi-sensory, collaborative techniques based on respect, compassion, benevolent self-regard, friendship, courage and patience. They’re based on a truth we hold to be self-evident: that inner work is the ultimate route to abiding joy.

When you want to improve anything in your life, there’s only one place to look: inside you.

— Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len

If this possibility speaks to you, book an exploratory or keep reading to learn how we bring these methods to life in private 1:1 journeys.

What to Expect

Our 1:1 Deep Self Design® and Deep Life Design® journeys are tailored specifically to you. With a distinctive blend of business, creativity, and soul, we provide you with the guidance and support you need to achieve holistic, meaningful goals. Our approach is compassionate, judgment-free, and results-oriented. Clients report that after just six sessions, they’re able to:

  • See more clearly into their default operating system and automatic scripts that limit their thinking and potential

  • Identify blockages for reaching goals and gain skills to rewire emotional patterns and suboptimal behavior

  • Develop skills to gain clarity and confidence and make more courageous decisions that serve them

  • Develop their own definition of success based on their unique gifts and desires instead of worrying what others expect of them.

  • Equip themselves with effective strategies, powerful tools, and unwavering self-assurance to propel their success in the business world and elevate their career while staying firmly rooted in their personal values

The promise of our 1:1 Journey is that you will acquire a toolkit for behavioral redesign that will profoundly change your life for the better.

But don’t take it from us:

  • You helped me face and name the internal programming and conditioning that wasn’t serving me anymore.

    Your guidance was pivotal during a time when I was ready to reinvent and recraft my professional life. You helped me face and name the internal programming and conditioning that wasn’t serving me anymore. Today, I have agency over my life. I have the courage to make difficult decisions based on my newfound values. And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

    —Heera Kang, Program Manager & Writer

  • One of the most transformational sessions I have ever had

    Working with Liya is truly amazing. My first session with her was one of the most transformational sessions I have ever had. And, she continues to amaze me.

    —Caroline Lee-Smith, Psychotherapist & Owner of Caro’s Creams

  • Deep Self Design changed the way I work.

    Together, Sunni and I identified an invisibly operating Cheerleader part of me that was clouding my ability to see problems impacting my business. I was astonished at how quickly we went deep to identify and work with this dominating part and release it from a very old story around how I had to show up. Now I know how to recruit that part when I need it but not let it run the whole show. A huge, lasting win that happened surprisingly quickly.

    —Denise Honaker, Founder and Owner, Sips and Skills

  • DSD left me feeling empowered to find where I'm stuck and unstick myself.

    Before the DSD process, I was filled with anxiety around showing up as an expert in the field of visual literacy. Sunni worked with me to meet the roots of that anxiety, really understand it, and finally release it. I know now that I can lead my own internal system with greater ease and productivity. DSD left me feeling empowered to find where I'm stuck and unstick myself.

    —Dr. Susan Daniels, Professor of Educational Psychology and Co-Founder, Summit Center

  • Working with Liya has empowered me to pursue my dreams

    I can’t thank you enough, Liya. Your program helped me transition to owning my own business and creating a life that has allowed me to be a present and loving mother. This unique style of strategic and soulful approach helped me deepen my self-discovery process and gain insights that helped me make bold moves in a way that builds on what I have and works with my unique situation. I'm grateful that I am now living a dream I once thought impossible.

    —Stefanie Hodinh, Founder & Owner, She Does Your Books

  • I felt a solid shift in my relationship to my internal world

    One session applying DSD with Sunni left me grounded, more heart-centered and leading with my bigger Self. I felt a solid shift in my relationship to my internal world with no apparent downside.

    —Brian Hannah, Co-Owner, Muscle Activation of San Francisco

  • DSD taught me a powerhouse technique for zapping internal obstacles

    I’ve always been interested in self-development and I’m pretty skilled in this area, but DSD taught me a powerhouse technique for zapping internal obstacles. If more people lived this method, the world would be a much more evolved place.

    —Paige Davis, Author and Founder, Soul Sparks

  • The DSD process taught me how to acknowledge those emotions with patience and compassion

    As a business consultant and interim CFO, my biggest challenge was turning toward emotional content in myself that was affecting my ability to be present with employees who were struggling. The DSD process taught me how to acknowledge those emotions with patience and compassion and bring them into my work so I could be a more holistic leader and ultimately deliver the results both I and my clients need.

    —Danyelle De Jong, Founder and Strategy Consultant, Idea Illuminations

  • I was able to access deep insight that I had previously been unaware of

    Liya holds a compassionate space for deep awareness of self. I was able to access deep insight that I had previously been unaware of, and discovered a sense of equilibrium in my body and mind - a profound and gentle self-love that I had never experienced to this magnitude before. Truly transformative work.

    —Elyse Scott, Somatic Therapist & Healer

  • [DSD] helped me unlock what I’m really capable of

    When I was struggling to make the leap from founder/CEO who simply runs my company to a boss who owns my power, I worked with Sunni through her Deep Self Design coaching program. It was incredibly moving and powerful. It stripped away layers of stories I was telling myself about my business and my worth and helped me unlock what I’m really capable of.

    —Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator

  • [Liya's] ability to work with me at a deeper soul level is unlike anyone I’ve ever worked with

    During my career transition, I did a lot of research and worked hard to land a new role, but I still felt stuck. Working with Liya, I always left our sessions gaining a new perspective, with a clear strategy, and a set of action items that moved me closer to my goals. I’d go back out there energized, too. Her combination of professional experience, strategic thinking, action-oriented coaching, and ability to work with me at a deeper soul level is unlike anyone I’ve ever worked with. I highly recommend her programs!

    —Tami Chen, Product Manager, edX

  • Now I have clarity to move forward to what the universe and I can create together.

    I kind of knew Liya before entering in to my exploration process, but what I did not know was that how deep, soulful and insightful journey I was taken into. Liya has simple, but elegant ways to guide my own inner thought process. As a result of our shared journey, now I have clarity to move forward to what the universe and I can create together.

    —Mikko Pekka Hanski, Investor & Board Member

How 1:1 Journeys Work

Our approach weaves five time-honored, evidence-based practices into a method of behavioral redesign that profoundly changes lives for the better.

We offer five slots for individual collaborations at rolling intervals throughout the year, facilitating our core human curriculum tailored to your unique circumstance.

Our ultimate aim is to show you how to work skillfully with your Inner World so that you become confident in resolving anxieties and dissolving obstacles that compromise the quality of your lived experience.

We co-create a judgment-free, results-oriented container in which you’ll discover multi-sensory techniques to access the guiding wisdom of your Deep Self in order to befriend invisible material that drives the perceptions, emotions, and behaviors that impact your life.

A healthy, continuous relationship between Deep Self and the diverse facets of your Inner World means that when you want to do anything that matters to you, you will not unnecessarily be in your own way.

What you’ll gain:

Begin a priceless journey of self-discovery, self-repair, and ultimately self-authoring.

While every 1:1 Journey is unique, transformations you can reasonably anticipate, as reported by past participants, include:

  • Greater confidence in being with discomfort and meeting the challenges of life with a sense of agency and personal power

  • A reclamation of inner peace, creative courage, quiet confidence, and equanimity

  • The dissolution of internal obstacles that block personal expression, decision-making, creativity, and leadership

  • Ability to develop your own definition of success rather than worrying about what others think or expect of you

  • Feeling skilled and confident in your ability to gain clarity and approach situations authentically even when there’s relational disturbance 

  • Moving freely and unabashedly toward your vision of a life worth living

  • Create the conditions to serve with your unique gifts wholeheartedly 

  • Feeling equipped with effective strategies, powerful tools, and self-assurance to move toward your version of integrity and wholeness 

  • Leading in all areas of your life authentically and rooted in your personal values

  • To gain an embodied and experiential understanding of the most effective tools to do your own Inner Work

  • Find equanimity and centeredness in the presence of emotional turbulence

  • Living in your true function and gift while getting your needs met

  • How to live in congruence, integrity, and wholeness

  • Learning to experiment and co-create with life circumstances to accelerate your process of becoming

Relevant Questions

  • The length of 1:1 individual journeys can range between 3-12 months, depending on the speed and intensity you’re available for. After your interview, we’ll make a recommendation and socialize with you the thinking behind it. It’s paramount that your journey be workable and truly conducive to your current circumstance.

  • The investment ranges between $5,000-$10,000. Your learning goals and financial circumstances will help us determine the final program design and cost together. We can explore scholarships when available and needed. Our assessment of your investment is contingent on thorough and subtle attunement. The process will be transparent.

  • While DSD is therapeutic, instructive, evidence-based, and scholarly, we are not coaches, therapists, clinicians, or academics. We are authors, healers, helpers, entrepreneurs, interdisciplinary inner scientists, multi-sensory facilitators, educators and co-creators. We are experienced psychonauts, catalytic agents, autodidacts, fluent collaborators, and dedicated pragmatists. In short, we are Deep Self Designers–a category unto itself.

    In the Kalama Sutta, the Buddha advised students not to accept teachings simply because they’re passed down through tradition, taught by a revered teacher, or even when they are imbued with logic. Instead, he encouraged them to experiment with teachings, litmus-testing through direct, individual experience. He advised students to embrace a teaching only if they found it beneficial and conducive to well-being.

    This is very much the spirit of our offering. In our facilitative role of Deep Self Designers, we do not claim to have special knowledge. We do not profess to have rarefied insights, exclusive access to sacred realms, or illuminated qualities that you yourself do not have. We wear no symbolic or performative garments to indicate credibility, and we do not claim to have “answers” for what you should do with your life. We believe that you have them. We are facilitators. As such, we create conditions for your own wisdom and compassion to be cultivated and to emerge. We focus on equipping you with the knowledge and tools you need to be self-reliant. We delight in your awakenings, your ah-ha’s, your inner knowing. These will lead you in the most important ways, and it is unnecessary for us to take credit for that.

  • There’s an unseen producer of your lived experience called the Inner World. All humans have an Inner World, though many of us don’t know it intimately.

    This world is your personal, internal tide of thoughts, emotions, sensations, perceptions, beliefs, and stories about reality. It occurs largely outside of your awareness yet directly impacts your choices, behaviors, and decision-making, defining your felt sense of well-being and directing your energy and potential.

    The outer world includes things like life circumstances, other people’s behaviors, economic conditions, etc. At CDSD, we help people learn how to work with their Inner World so they can learn to work with the materials in the outer world with a sense of power, responsibility, and possibility. By approaching life this way, we can co-create with life’s instructions to meet our soul’s longing.

  • Doing Inner Work means working with your Inner World with compassion and benevolence. At CDSD, we help people develop the ability to do their Inner Work by accessing the Deep Self (your inner guiding intelligence that is full of compassion, curiosity, and courage) so you can meet the parts of you that feel shame, guilt, sadness, anger and work with the automatic script that has been running your life in the background. You learn to slow down your automatic reactions and default narratives so you can move into a powerful place of directing that movie you call life.

  • Deep Self Design® (DSD) is a creative life practice created by Sunni Brown (Sun Kagami), an acclaimed author, a world-renowned expert in creativity and visualization, and a Zen chaplain in-formation. Sun has been applying and refining this method since 2007 in close collaboration with clinicians, self-development experts, mental health professionals, and respected spiritual teachers. The DSD method weaves five evidence-based practices—Visual Thinking, Gamefulness, Self-Compassion, Silence, and Internal Family Systems—into a finely-tuned method of behavioral redesign that can profoundly change anyone’s life for the better. Learn more about DSD here.

  • Deep Life Design is a results-oriented approach to directing your life in a way that is co-creative, spiritual, experimental, powerful, and liberated. You learn to extend the core principles of Deep Self Design to create results in your life by continuing to do the kind of Inner Work that allows you to co-create with whatever instructions life brings your way. Instead of being held back by obstacles, you learn to work with them in a way that serves your becoming. When you learn this practice, you can bring an area of your life you are working on creating changes. However, this practice of becoming will have a positive impact on all areas of your life because you show up differently. Yes, wherever you go, there you are.

We create conditions for you to free up your energy and learn to craft work, relationships, and life experiences that are meaningful to you.

To be human is to long for things to change. We almost always have a sense that something about work, life, our relationships, or ourselves could be better. Maybe…

  • We could gain more confidence in speaking or leading.

  • We could make room for our dreams rather than just our obligations.

  • We could be less preoccupied with the opinions of other people.

  • We could finally drop habits that no longer serve us.

  • We could live a truly intentional life–one that’s creative, healthy, connected, brave, and alive.

Whatever your in-most longings are, they’ll keep knocking…nudging you on the inside until they have your attention. This is what 1:1 journeys aim to support.

Readiness Check

Our offerings root best with collaborators in a state of Readiness. What Readiness means is:

  • You are sincere in your longing to grow up and wake up, willing to face uncertainty in order to learn.

  • You are receptive to exploring your inner world and becoming more self-aware.

  • You are willing to cultivate self-compassion, even radical self-compassion, as well as benevolent self-regard.

  • You are committed to doing the work of emotional honesty because you believe in its value.

  • You have a genuine interest in being accountable and self-responsible even when circumstances are tough.

  • You are willing to experience temporary emotional discomfort to gain the gifts of self-knowledge and healing.

  • You are committed to doing work that can sometimes be turbulent and challenging and, therefore, extremely rewarding.

  • You will show up for your own process of maturation and liberation. You may falter, but you will not give up on or abandon yourself.

I Am Ready

Congratulations! You made it this far down the page and you are ready to invest in yourself! Set up a free exploratory call and let’s co-create a journey of transformation for you.