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A Masterclass with Liz Stanley,
April-August 2026
These times demand presence, clarity, and resilience that most of us weren’t trained for.
When disruption hits—crisis at work, conflict at home, uncertainty in the world—do you fall into reactivity? Freeze up? Power through until you’re depleted? Find yourself making choices you later regret?
Many people double down on planning harder, trying to control more, pushing through exhaustion—“thinking brain” strategies. But operating from the neck up—disconnected from your body, nervous system, and “survival brain”—keeps you stuck in cycles of anxiety, overwhelm, and ineffective action.
There’s another way.
With training, you can develop this quality: the capacity to stay grounded in uncertainty, to meet whatever arises with both steadiness and responsiveness. You can stand steady in turbulent conditions—grounded, present, and ready to act with wisdom. You can move away from a reactive stance and access genuine choice. You can remain calm and connected to yourself and others, even when everything feels unstable.
You can do all this not through positive thinking or willpower, but by appreciating how your mind and body are wired—and learning concrete skills to work with this wiring, not against it.
What You’ll Gain
In this course, you’ll learn the science behind how stress, trauma, and challenge affect your window of tolerance—and master practical tools to widen that window so you can:
- Stay intentional when pressure mounts, accessing choice instead of defaulting to old patterns
- Feel empowered to take effective action aligned with your goals and values, even during chaos, disruption, and uncertainty
- Remain responsive to what’s actually happening, rather than reacting from dysregulation or checking out from overwhelm
- Navigate relationships skillfully, helping others co-regulate instead of escalating conflict
- Make wise decisions—staying connected to your integrity under extreme pressure
Most importantly, you’ll build adaptive capacity—the inner resources that allow you to meet bigger challenges, transform how you show up in your relationships and work, and contribute to the world from a grounded, regulated place.
“I finally feel that I have the tools I have been looking for to deal with life challenges.”
What We’ll Cover—Session-by-Session Breakdown
Getting to Know Your Neurobiology (April 25)
We each have a window of tolerance to stress, trauma, emotions, and pain. You’ll learn about three neurobiological structures—the thinking brain, survival brain, and autonomic nervous system—and the functions they play in directing our window of tolerance. You’ll discover how they each try to keep us safe—and why they can work at cross purposes in ways that undermine us. Our goal in this course is to harmonize this neurobiology so that we can meet each moment with flexibility and resilience.
Coaching Your Survival Brain to Access Agency (May 9)
Unconscious appraisal of threat or safety—and all of the default programming that follows—is a survival brain job. Thus, the single most impactful skill that we can learn for staying inside (and widening) our window is how to set the conditions for the survival brain to perceive safety. You’ll learn what the Stress Equation is and how to influence it; how to read your survival brain’s messages in your body; and intentionally how to help your survival brain perceive agency during challenge.
Rightsizing Your Thinking Brain’s Role in Your Life (May 30)
Do you move through life disconnected from the neck down? Our thinking brain has some wonderful abilities, but not when it’s running the show exclusively. This session explores how this imbalance can manifest as chronic patterns of worrying, judging, planning, and compartmentalizing—and lead to anxiety, depression, sleepless nights, and an inability to turn off the inner chatter. You’ll discover concrete tools to leverage your thinking brain’s strengths while giving it a more appropriate role in your life. You’ll learn which situations the thinking brain is good at solving and responding to—and new ways to approach situations that thinking and rationality cannot solve.
Leveraging Your Emotions for Insight and Connection (June 20)
A major way the survival brain communicates with us is through our emotions. Emotions provide powerful information into the inner experiences of ourselves and others. How can we experience emotions and gain access to their valuable insights, without getting overwhelmed by them or getting disconnected from our hearts and the world around us? This session explores how.
Creating Sustainable and Effective Use of Your Energy (July 11)
Do you often feel burned out, resentful, overextended? Do you swing between overwork on deadline, and resistance and procrastination? This session explores the relationships between our intentions and sense of purpose, our mind-body limits, and the energy we have available to move and act in the world. You’ll first investigate how you use your energy. Then, you’ll learn several advanced moves to shift from using your energy habitually, reactively, or unconsciously, to using your energy intentionally and joyfully.
Moving Through Life with Intentionality and Resolve (August 1)
To transform our inner landscape and tackle the immense challenges that we face together as a species, we need intentionality and resolve. We need inner resources to encounter and remain engaged with discomfort. In this session, you’ll get in touch with your deepest intentions and learn how to embody resolve in a sustainable way. We’ll also step back to enjoy the fruits of our time together: What have you learned? What new possibilities have opened up for you? Your insights will drive the conversation as we discuss what’s shifted from traveling this journey together.
Course Structure and Cost
Six 3-hour interactive sessions over four months (April-August 2026), designed to give you time to practice, experiment, and integrate what you’re learning.
Session dates: April 25, May 9, May 30, June 20, July 11, August 1
Time: 12-3 pm U.S. Eastern Time (UTC-5)
This isn’t a “watch and listen” course. You’ll use your daily life as your training ground—running experiments, testing new skills, assessing what works. Between sessions, you’ll have guided practices to use and regular interactions with your cohort in Slack. I’ll drop in occasionally between sessions to offer insights and answer some questions.
Why this pace? Widening your window happens through consistent embodied practice, not cognitive understanding alone. Four months allows genuine nervous system change—the kind that sticks.
Limited to 20 participants to maintain an intimate, supportive community. Held live on Zoom with video replays available.
Are you based in Asia, Australasia, or Oceania? I’m open to running a second cohort at a time-zone-friendly hour if I receive at least ten applications from those regions. If that’s you, please apply and note your time zone—I’ll be in touch.
Tuition: $2200 (Discounted tuition for alumni of prior live courses: $1950)
To register, please fill out this application.
“I feel more resilient now, being able to stay present with reality, no matter what’s happening around me or inside me.”
Who This Is For
You might be navigating a major transition, facing ongoing challenges that keep triggering reactivity, or simply tired of operating from a narrow window and want more capacity to meet life as it comes.
You’re willing to practice consistently, experiment in your daily life, and show up authentically with a small cohort over four months. You understand that real and sustainable mind-body change requires embodied practice, not just cognitive insight.
This course is not right for you if:
- You’re looking for quick techniques or an intellectual understanding without embodied practice
- You’re not ready to work with discomfort or examine your patterns
- You can’t commit to the full arc of the course (practice between sessions is essential)
- You’re not comfortable engaging in small group discussions about your and others’ transformation process
Why Learn from Me
This course draws on 25 years of experience synthesizing neuroscience, trauma therapy, contemplative practice, and my own lived experience with extreme stress and trauma:
- I’ve taught Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®—a longer course I developed and validated through peer-reviewed neuroscience research—in combat zones and high-stress environments worldwide.
- I wrote the international bestselling Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma.
- There’s nothing I teach that I didn’t first learn in my own mind and body, then test through research, and refine through working with many thousands of people facing extreme challenges.
This program complements and extends beyond MMFT®. Whether you’re new to my work or a prior MMFT participant looking to deepen your practice, you’ll gain advanced skills and a supportive community.
“This was life changing!”
Testimonials from My Other Courses
“This was life changing! Thank you for your generosity to share this skill set with us.” ~ Kendra A.
“My attitude, patience, social interactions, and outlook have become more positive. I’ve experienced a notable reduction in hypervigilance, catastrophizing, self-shame, impulsive outbursts, and external reactivity. I’m now less reactive and more nurturing toward my family.” ~B.W.
“I am more present, more calm, more grounded, [have] less need to escape and avoid through social media and devices, my sleep is better…I am feeling encouraged to go back to exploring projects that I used to want but the trauma prevented me from doing… my heart is calmer, not racing anymore as it used to.” ~ J.K.
“I wanted the accountability and structure of a group to help me stay committed to my practice. The group aspect exceeded my expectations – it helped me remain committed. I did not anticipate the immense benefit from listening to everyone’s reflections and experiences. It added such a wonderful, even more personal, layer to the material… I feel more resilient now, being able to stay present with reality, no matter what’s happening around me or inside me.” ~ Garrett E.
“I took the MMFT course in the on-demand version. I wanted to be a part of a community and be able to ask Liz questions as I learnt the topics, which is why I took this live course. I received so more than I expected. I finally feel that I have tools I have been looking for to deal with life challenges.” ~ Melonie G.
“Liz is passionate and enthusiastic about her work, making us likewise passionate and enthusiastic. Her knowledge of the subject matter is unmatched, so every discussion was insightful and every question answered. I loved this course, and its effects will be lifelong.” ~ T.F.
“Overall, I think Liz is fabulous, and what she brings is so unique and inter-disciplinary that she’s a gem. I feel like I left this class more ready and resilient for the current crisis. Thank you!” ~ D.S.
“Liz’s work is outstanding and she is an excellent teacher. Love her style of sharing her personal experience with the tools. Also, her way of explaining why we do the practices was so helpful.” ~V.M.
“Liz is an amazing person and a wonderful teacher. Her absolute passion for what she shares with her students is truly inspiring. She is extremely knowledgeable, approachable, funny, gracious and caring. She makes each student feel special and respects their personal style. If Liz was the template for teachers, we would all be smarter and more inspired. Thank you for the effort you put into your classes – everyone one of them was superb and a tremendous learning experience.” ~ Anne N.
“Liz is one of the most professional, caring, and interesting instructors I have ever met. She has a unique ability to tease out individual comments from students that are applicable to the overall topic of the day’s session. I enjoyed hearing her stories about mind fitness, how it improved her life, and how it can improve the lives of her students.” ~ V.A.
“Liz is unique in that she does not care solely for how we are learning. She genuinely cares for our professional and personal well-being. I sought her advice and used the techniques we learned in class to address mental and physical stressors in my marriage, health, and career more effectively, and I became more aware of the impacts of stress on my life and in turn to those around me. I look forward to continuing to implement what we learned and pass it on to increase resilience to stress in my family, friends, and co-workers/organization.” ~ R.C.
“Can’t say enough good things about Liz Stanley. She’s a game changer.” ~ G.K.
Ready to Explore If This Is Right for You?
The first step to register involves filling out the application. I’ll be in touch shortly thereafter to finalize your registration.
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