Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)® is a trauma-informed training approach to resilience and recovery in high-stress environments. Through this course, you will:
- Build your resilience, by recovering from prior stress and healing from trauma
- Improve your decision-making and ability to access choice during challenges
- Create more effective relationships, especially during stress and conflict
We are now offering the original 8-week, 20-hour MMFT course live on Zoom. In the live MMFT course, MMFT Trainers will guide you through the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience—with interactive tools and daily practices to help you recover, heal, and increase your ability to thrive during stress.
We are starting the next live MMFT course on Zoom on September 23, 2024. You can register here.
How Does the Live MMFT Course Differ from the MMFT Online Course?
The MMFT Online Course is based on the original 8-week live MMFT course.
Both the live and online versions of MMFT include MMFT’s eight instructional modules and its sequence of trauma-informed exercises that is carefully paced to help move someone from dysregulation to resilience.
However, the live MMFT course also includes:
- An individual practice interview with an MMFT Trainer, which allows them to assess the participant’s progress with the exercises and give tailored, personalized instructions regarding any challenges they are facing with mind fitness practice. Participants also have an opportunity to ask questions privately.
- Live personalized coaching and tailored exercise guidance to work with individual sensitivities during in-class practice and practice discussion
- A 4-hour Intensive Practicum, which allows participants to integrate the practices learned to date through a longer period of continuous practice. In the process, participants can challenge their window of tolerance—and then use course skills to self-regulate and widen their windows.
While the MMFT Online course is always available on-demand for the self-paced, independent learner, the live MMFT course is a great choice for individuals who want to learn how to embody this material with active, sustained, and individualized Trainer support. Learning as part of a live group also provides external accountability and support, so that the new habits cultivated in this course can stick.
Successfully completing a live MMFT Course, either in person or on Zoom, is also a prerequisite for applying to the MMFT Trainer certification program.
What Are MMFT’s Benefits?
The original MMFT course (pronounced “M-fit”) was designed as 20 hours of training offered over 8 weeks. It has been tested through rigorous scientific research with U.S. troops preparing for combat deployment.
Some of MMFT’s benefits detailed in peer-reviewed scientific research include:
- Better cognitive performance
- Better regulation of negative emotions
- Better physiological self-regulation and resilience
- Better-quality and longer sleep
While these benefits were documented among troops preparing for deployment, they are available to everyone! You can read more about MMFT’s extensive research record here.
Who Is This Course For?
While initially designed for and researched in military populations, MMFT has been effective for people living and working in a wide range of high-stress environments. This program is ideal for anyone seeking recovery and healing from chronic stress and trauma in the past—as well as anyone facing highly stressful and uncertain situations right now.
Some of the groups for which MMFT has been particularly effective:
- Military: Active-duty/reservist service-members and veterans, and their families
- First Responders: Paramedics, firefighters, and law enforcement officers
- Health Care Workers: Doctors, therapists, nurses, and medical assistants
- Business Professionals: Executives, leaders, and others facing high-demand environments
- Parents and Teachers, whose stress and emotions can have large ripple effects to children
How Does MMFT Work?
MMFT’s efficacy comes from its specific combination of mindfulness practices, body-based self-regulation techniques, and insights from the world’s warrior traditions. This blend of mindfulness training with body-based self-regulation skills training is crucial for increasing resilience and enhancing performance during stress.
MMFT cultivates two core skills, attentional control and tolerance for challenging experience, through (1) an understanding of the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience; (2) mindfulness skills training; (3) body-based self-regulation skills training, to regulate the “survival brain” and autonomic nervous system; and (4) concrete applications for daily life.
Unlike many other mindfulness-based training programs, MMFT was explicitly designed for people working in high-stress environments, who frequently have high stress loads from prior prolonged stress and trauma without adequate recovery. Most mindfulness programs were not designed to accommodate and re-regulate such deep-seated mind-body dysregulation.
In contrast, MMFT’s body-based self-regulation exercises, as well as its unique exercise sequence to gradually cultivate awareness in the body, make MMFT distinct from other resilience trainings. This is particularly important for populations who have significant prior exposure to prolonged or overwhelming stress, so that they do not inadvertently become re-traumatized.
Upcoming MMFT Course Logistics and Registration
We will be hosting the next live MMFT course starting in September 2024. Most course sessions will occur from 7-9 pm ET (GMT-4). We plan to host a course in Winter 2024-2025 that can accommodate time zones in Europe, Africa, and western Asia.
Here are the specific dates for the next live MMFT Course on Zoom:
| Sept. 23 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 1 |
| Sept. 26 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 2 |
| Sept. 30 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 3 |
| Oct. 3 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 4 |
| Oct. 5-13 | 15-minute individual practice interviews | |
| Oct. 14 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 5 |
| Oct. 21 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 6 |
| Oct. 26 | 12-4 pm ET | Mind Fitness Intensive Practicum |
| Nov. 4 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 7 |
| Nov. 11 | 7-9 pm ET | Module 8 |
There are no prerequisites for this program, but you will be required to sign an informed consent agreement during registration. Participants of all levels of experience, all ages, and all identities are warmly welcomed. If you do not yet have a daily awareness practice, we recommend starting a daily practice of the Contact Points Exercise; you can access this audio recording by joining Dr. Stanley’s mailing list (on her website, www.elizabeth-stanley.com). Participants may also find it helpful to read her book, Widen the Window.
The course will be held online on Zoom; video replays will be available during the course if you miss a session.
Participants may watch up to two modules via video replay (and complete a make-up assignment) to still qualify for a certificate of completion. However, they must attend every other session, including their individual interview and the Intensive Practicum, live.
The course costs $625, and you can register here. You are welcome to pay in one or two parts. We offer a 15% early bird registration discount if you register by September 1. Use coupon code MMFTEARLYBIRD.
Wishing to make this training as widely accessible as possible to those in need, we will have a limited number of subsidized seats available for $375.
- If you would like to apply for a scholarship, please send an email to admin@elizabeth-stanley.com by September 3 that answers the following questions:
- Why do you want to take the MMFT course on Zoom at this time?
- Please offer some justification of your financial need.
- If you would like to help support others, so that we can help as many who are in need as possible, you are welcome to add a “tip” during the registration check-out that will be used to support more scholarships in this course.
Meet the Team
 Liz Stanley, PhD, SEP MMFT Creator, Professor at Georgetown University |
 James Frank, SEP MMFT Trainer, Somatic Coach, Men’s Work Facilitator |
 Chris Goto-Jones, PhD MMFT Trainer, Professor at University of Victoria, Therapist |
 Brittany McManamey, SEP MMFT Trainer, Attachment & Trauma Resolution Specialist |
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