A Masterclass with Liz Stanley,
September-December 2026
We live in a polarizing time, where blame, mistrust, disconnection, and conflict are rising.
Our interpersonal neurobiology is designed to automatically switch into a defensive, self-protective mode whenever we feel threatened—and many of us are stuck with that mode switched permanently on. In this context, it’s no wonder that social isolation, loneliness, depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and irritability prevail. Collectively, we are fueling vicious cycles of co-dysregulation, conflict, and violence.
Nonetheless, our social wiring is designed for connection and cooperation—a neurobiological capacity that has been critical for our species surviving and thriving. When we recruit and embrace this innate drive, we find security, well-being, fulfillment, generosity, compassion, belonging, and love.
This masterclass will teach you how.
With training, you can rewire your brain and body to increase your felt sense of safety and your ability to relate securely with others. You can discover when and why your defensive mode gets triggered—and how to coax yourself back into a regulated, grounded stance so that your wisest and most compassionate nature stays online and in charge during interactions with others.
What You’ll Gain
In this course, you’ll learn the science behind our human social wiring—and master practical tools so you can:
- Rewire your survival brain and nervous system to interact with the world from a place of agency and connection
- Deepen security inside yourself—and with your favorite (and least favorite) people
- Discover and transform unconscious defensive strategies in order to access choice, respond more securely, and connect successfully with others
- Navigate confrontation with more skill by communicating effectively to get your needs met, without inadvertently escalating conflict and co-dysregulation
- Repair relationships with more speed and ease after disconnections eventually occur
- Dismantle polarization, tribalism, and intergroup empathy bias in how you relate to “them” across lines of difference
Most importantly, you’ll build regulatory flexibility—the skills, confidence, and trust that you can return to a grounded, regulated stance even during intense challenges. You’ll develop the inner resources to transform how you show up to your relationships and to the world, with self-regulation, compassion, and flexibility.
If you are new to my work, or haven’t yet taken the Embodied Resilience masterclass, you’re still in the right place. While Embodied Resilience offers a strong foundation for this material, it isn’t a prerequisite: the first two sessions of this masterclass include a review of that core content, so that everyone starts from common ground.
“I noticed a remarkable improvement in my ability to navigate difficult situations and stay calm.”
What We’ll Cover—Session-by-Session Breakdown
Getting to Know Your Social Wiring (September 26)
We each have a window of tolerance to stress, trauma, emotions, and pain, directed by our thinking brain, survival brain, and autonomic nervous system. We also each have neurobiological structures that support our social wiring—our innate capacity for connection and cooperation. This session introduces the science behind the window of tolerance and the hierarchy of human defenses, and explores how these intersect with our interpersonal neurobiology. Our goal in this course is to recognize when our self-protection circuit has been triggered, down-regulate our stress activation, and access our connection circuit more often.
Regulating Yourself, Co-Regulating Others (October 10)
Unconscious appraisal of threat or safety—and the default programming that follows—is a survival brain and nervous system job. The single most impactful skill for staying inside our window is self-regulation: setting the conditions to perceive safety and regulate our stress activation. Likewise, the single most impactful relational skill is co-regulation: helping someone discharge stress safely, or receiving that same help ourselves. This session explores how to break vicious cycles of stress contagion and co-dysregulation, using non-verbal skills to boost felt safety and bring our social engagement system online more often.
Unlearning Insecure & Accessing Secure Attachment Strategies (October 24)
This session introduces the four attachment strategies—secure, insecure anxious, insecure avoidant, and insecure disorganized—and how and why we tend toward a predominant one. Regardless of our early-life conditioning, we’re all capable of relating securely when we feel safe and relating insecurely under relational stress; shifting into an insecure strategy is itself a sign of stress activation. You’ll learn what happens to your perceptions and behavior in each insecure strategy. You’ll also discover practical skills to interrupt these self-protective patterns and guide yourself back toward secure relating.
Communicating Needs, Navigating Conflict (November 7)
Building on our foundations for self- and co-regulation, this session addresses common sources of interpersonal tension: holding boundaries, saying no, expressing emotions and needs, asking for help, and navigating differences and conflict. You’ll learn to recognize when someone else has shifted into an insecure strategy, as well as practical tools for moving the interaction back toward co-regulation and secure relating. You’ll also learn how to engage in interactive repair after an attunement breach: naming what happened, processing emotional responses, reconnecting non-verbally, and re-establishing trust. Interactive repair not only helps us to widen our window and build our capacity for secure relating; it also lets conflict become a doorway to understanding and trust, rather than a threat to the relationship.
Dismantling Tribalism, Polarization, Intergroup Empathy Bias, and Dehumanization (November 21)
This session explores the psychology of social identification—how our social identities can fuel tribalism, self-righteousness, polarization into “us” versus “them,” and dehumanization, especially when we’ve been triggered into defensive mode. You’ll learn the neurobiological basis for intergroup empathy bias: the tendency to feel empathy for “us,” while feeling apathy, contempt, prejudice, schadenfreude, or hatred toward “them.” Fortunately, our social identities are remarkably malleable when we’re inside our window. This session explores how to shift and dissolve these harmful dynamics, unlearn judgments of others in real-time, and approach difference from a deeper level of connection.
Staying Secure in an Insecure World (December 12)
To tackle the immense challenges we face together as a species, we need inner resources to stay engaged with each other through life’s messiness and relational discomfort. Having relational resilience means recognizing when we’re activated and then accessing the agency to respond with wisdom, compassion, and kindness. This session explores how we can offer ripples of self-regulation and security through our relational networks. We’ll also step back to enjoy the fruits of our time together—reflecting on what you’ve learned, what new possibilities have opened up, and what’s shifted from traveling this journey as a cohort.
Course Structure and Cost
Six 3-hour interactive sessions over four months (September–December 2026), designed to give you time to practice, experiment, and integrate what you’re learning.
Session dates: September 26, October 10, October 24, November 7, November 21, December 12
Time: 12–3:15 pm U.S. Eastern Time
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, and understanding what’s holding you back. Between sessions, you’ll have guided practices and regular accountability with me and your cohort in Slack.
Why this pace? Creating deep relational change goes beyond just intellectual understanding. It happens through consistent embodied practice, and it requires taking some interpersonal risks and experimenting with new ways of relating. 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: $2,200 USD (Discounted tuition for alumni of prior live courses: $1,950 USD)
Early bird discount by August 31, 2026: $1,800 USD/ $1,600 USD for alumni of prior live courses
“There was so much to be learned from other’s stories!”
Who This Is For
You might notice chronic tension, ineffectiveness, or dissatisfaction in your personal and professional relationships. Your interactions might habitually trigger defensiveness, reactivity, and conflict—inside both yourself and others. You might feel disconnected, disempowered, isolated, conflict avoidant, or ‘stuck’ in your relationships. You might find it difficult to hold boundaries, say no, express your needs directly, comfort yourself or others, or stay in contact with others when you’re stressed. You might withdraw, go quiet, or create distance when relationships get hard—even when part of you wants to stay connected.
You’re willing to practice consistently, experiment in your real relationships, and show up authentically with a small cohort over four months. You understand that real and sustainable relational 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 relational discomfort, or to examine and take responsibility for your patterns with others
- You can’t commit to the full arc of the course (practice between sessions is essential)
- You’re not willing to take relational risks and try new ways of engaging in real-time with cohort members and people in your daily life
- You’re not comfortable engaging in small group discussions about your and others’ transformation process
“Looking back, I feel like we were able to safely condense what might have been years of inner work into just a few months”
Why Learn from Me
This course draws on several decades of experience synthesizing neuroscience, trauma therapy, contemplative practice, conflict resolution, and my own lived experience navigating relational rupture and repair—from intimate relationships to intractable conflicts between nations. I’m the author of the international bestseller Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma.
- I served two deployments to the Balkans as a peacekeeper, and worked across cultures in Partnership for Peace exercises for NATO—learning firsthand how trust gets built, or fails to, across deep lines of difference.
- I researched and wrote Paths to Peace, about the political psychology and domestic politics of ending intractable wars, which won the Furniss Award for best first book in the field of international security—I was only the third woman to receive this in the award’s 40+ year history.
- I regularly teach “The Psychology of Conflict and Conflict Resolution,” a graduate course in Georgetown’s conflict resolution practitioner’s program.
- I’ve trained executives and international groups in effective decision-making and conflict management, through executive education programs at Georgetown’s business school, and have trained first-responders in similar skills in other settings.
- I’m a certified practitioner of Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy that works directly with the survival brain, nervous system, and social engagement/attachment system—the same terrain this course teaches you to navigate in yourself and with others.
- I’ve spent decades researching how to widen the window, creating Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, validating it through peer-reviewed neuroscience research, and teaching it in combat zones and high-stress environments .
There’s nothing I teach that I didn’t first learn in my own mind and body, then test through research and lived experience—in war zones, classrooms, and my own relationships—and refine through working with thousands of people facing extreme challenges. This includes my own attachment strategies: I didn’t just learn attachment theory. I initially wired an insecure disorganized attachment pattern, shaped by my parents’ own unresolved trauma; reinforced it through further relational harm and trauma in the years that followed; and eventually changed it, with therapeutic support, toward the secure relating I now teach. Widen the Window includes a fuller account of that journey, for anyone who wants to go deeper.
This program complements and extends beyond the Embodied Resilience masterclass. It also builds on the interpersonal module in the MMFT course. Whether you’re new to my work or a prior participant looking to deepen your practice, you’ll gain advanced relational skills and a supportive community.
“I have fewer triggers with my husband and can stay calmer with him, even when he is upset.”
Testimonials from the Embodied Resilience Masterclass
“I’ve been a long-time, on-and-off student of Liz’s work. The sense of community and connection has been a huge support, and the practical tools in the Embodied Resilience course helped me understand my resistance to regular practice. I’m learning to be gentler with myself, to sit with discomfort instead of avoiding it, and to expand my window of tolerance.” ~Daniel L., USA
“My intentions for the course were to be able to manage my emotions more skillfully and be more present for my family. Just halfway through the course, I noticed a remarkable improvement in my ability to navigate difficult situations and stay calm. I feel more present and grounded in my body, and I have some really great strategies to maintain my emotional equilibrium and also deal with stressful events. It was a great course and well worth the time and effort.” ~Kendra A., USA
“My aim was to build my resilience and this aligned with that. I have fewer triggers with my husband and can stay calmer with him, even when he is upset. I am feeling so much more settled and grounded. I feel that the quality of the conversation isn’t something that exists outside this [masterclass], so the opportunity to explore these themes in a safe space with others was really valuable.” ~Anonymous
“I am getting so much from the Embodied Resilience masterclass. I find the structure of the class and support by Liz and classmates to be so helpful. Each step is well thought out and in an amount that I can learn/integrate until the next section, all of which build on each other. In between there is homework, including daily practice and inquiries. Liz is available in between meetings to answer questions. I got a lot out of the Sounds True MMFT course and Live Q&As, but wanted to go deeper, especially to address chronic stress. I’m feeling more grounded and resilient overall – if MMFT and Liz’s work speak to you, I highly recommend taking this class.” ~Lisa H., USA
“The Embodied Resilience Masterclass gave me practical skills and tools for not just managing stress, but releasing and recovering from stress quickly and simply. Liz Stanley’s teaching style presents content in a way that can be easily understood, even when the material is new to us. Valuable perspectives that give us more agency in our lives.” ~V. W., USA
“When listening to others talk about their experiences and feelings as the course progressed along, this was helpful to understand and integrate the information being taught more so than if I was just navigating this course on my own. There was so much to be learned from other’s stories! I also appreciated all of the exercises…. I loved how the practices built on each other so it was a beautiful unfolding and created such a virtuous cycle for change that could be processed without pushing and forcing.” ~Anonymous
“An illuminating journey! Liz is a great guide, and her knowledge and compassion shines through.” ~Michael H., Malta
“The course exceeded my expectations. I’ve wanted to be resilient for so long, and I’ve tried so many different strategies to be more resilient. Nothing else allowed me to feel safe enough to have presence for everything in my mind-body system, particularly some very tender core programing. I appreciated how intensive this course was – at times I felt like the transformation was too much, there was too much bottom-up processing, and I wasn’t going to be able to handle it. Now looking back, I feel like we were able to safely condense what might have been years of inner work into just a few months.” ~Anonymous
“Loved everything about the course. It was well developed!” ~Anonymous
Ready to Explore If This Is Right for You?
“You’ve already sold me on the next one. Applying this interpersonally feels like a great next step.”
— an Embodied Resilience participant, on choosing to continue with Relational Resilience
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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