Flourishing in Stressful Times
Join Tara Brach for a 5-Week Guided Course, Starting August 4, 2025
Learn to work with your negative patterns and relate to your stress with an empowered, clear, and caring presence.
10% of Revenue Donated to Charity: Radical Compassion means cherishing and caring for all beings—human, non-human, our living earth. In this spirit, 10% of proceeds from courses offered by the Radical Compassion Institute will be distributed to non-profits supporting climate and racial justice initiatives.
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 5-week course packed with practical teachings and scientifically validated meditation exercises, you will work directly with your real-life negative patterns and learn to relate to stress with an empowering, clear and caring presence.
What will you learn in this course?
Who would benefit from taking this course?
What You Will Get in the Flourishing in Stressful Times course
Welcome!
Getting Started
Lecture 1 - Course Overview
Lecture 2 - We Don't Have to Figure it Out
Lecture 3 - The Oak Is in the Acorn
Lecture 4 - Practice Exercise: Skillfully Attending to Discomfort
Lecture 5 - Practice Exercise: Ordinary Stressors
Journaling and Reflection
Lecture 6 - Stuck in the Mud
Lecture 7 - Benefiting from Stress
Lecture 8 - Major Stressors
Lecture 9 - Practice Exercise: How Did it Change You
Lecture 10 - Intention
Lecture 11 - Practice Exercise: May This Serve
Lecture 12 - Attention - and a Shift in Identity (with Case Study)
Lecture 13 - Practice Exercise: Our Path is Through
Lecture 14 - Less Lag Time
Lecture 15 - Big Squeeze
Lecture 16 - Mindfulness Counteracts Stress-Induced Inflammation
Lecture 17 - Case Study: Offensive Banter
Lecture 18 - Case Study: Parenting an Addicted Teen
Lecture 19 - Practice Exercise: Your Future Self Calling You
Lecture 20 - 3 Ways to Cultivate Evolutionary Potential
Lecture 21 - Practice Exercise: Getting Familiar with Everyday Nirvana
This course was previously offered on Udemy. If you have taken this course on Udemy and don’t want to take it again, please explore some of the other courses here.
For help purchasing or accessing this course, please review these Frequently Asked Questions. If you need further assistance, or to inquire about disability-related accommodations, contact tech support.