Flourishing in Stressful Times - with Tara Brach
What you'll learn
- Know your habitual, automatic reactions to stress
- Access the resources of mindfulness and compassion
- Make more conscious choices in pressured situations
- Grow stronger and wiser right in the very midst of stress
- Experience a larger, more empowered and joyful way of being in the world
Requirements
- There is no prerequisite to taking this course.
Description
When stressful events come our way, evolution has hardwired us to go into the fight-flight-freeze response. This automatic process served us well in surviving across millennia as a species, but in modern life, unconscious reactivity often is counterproductive and even harmful to the things that matter most to us.
In reality, stress – the actual experience of tension, of demand – though it may be uncomfortable, doesn’t have to be a problem. In fact, a certain amount of stress is necessary to bring out our full intelligence, creativity and care. It’s the essential ground for us to wake up to our own full potential: to who we really are. When we cultivate our capacities for mindfulness and compassion, meeting the challenges of life actually helps us grow mentally & emotionally stronger, as well as physically healthier thanks to reduced inflammation responses.
A critical inquiry for us as humans is: When we get triggered and reactive, how do we shift from flight-flight-freeze, into “attend and befriend”? This is the evolutionary shift that reconnects us to ourselves and each other; and, globally, can help to end violence and heal our precious earth.
In this short course packed with practical teachings and scientifically validated meditation exercises, students will work directly with their real-life negative patterns and learn to relate to stress with an empowering, clear and caring presence.
Who this course is for:
- Anyone who feels plagued by stress
- Anyone troubled by ongoing, mild-to-moderate anxiety
- Anyone caught in repeating destructive behaviors
- Anyone who'd like to handle relationship challenges more successfully
Course content
- Preview05:14
- 04:02We Don't Have to Figure it Out
- 04:37The Oak Is in the Acorn
- 05:35Practice Exercise: Skillfully Attending to Discomfort
- Preview05:14
Instructor
![Tara Brach, Ph.D.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.5 Instructor Rating
- 18,308 Reviews
- 80,356 Students
- 7 Courses
Tara Brach, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, an internationally known teacher of mindfulness meditation, and author of the bestselling Radical Acceptance, True Refuge, Radical Compassion and Trusting the Gold. Her podcast exploring the role of mindfulness in the realization of human potential receives more than two million downloads each month.
Tara’s work is prominently featured in the New York Times guide to meditation and other major media ranging from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post to Tim Ferriss. She has given keynote addresses at conferences offered through Harvard Medical School and Salesforce, among others, and contributed numerous articles to popular magazines and websites.
Tara regularly leads accredited workshops for mental health professionals, as well as retreats for wider audiences, at centers in the United States and Europe. She has been invited to teach classes to United States Congress members and staff, to judges of the D.C. Superior Court, and at the Smithsonian. In addition to her public teaching, she is active in bringing meditation into schools, prisons, and underserved populations around the Washington, D.C. area.
She and Jack Kornfield have co-founded the Awareness Training Institute (ATI) which offers online courses on mindfulness and compassion, as well as the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP).