This program is ideal for anyone facing highly stressful and uncertain situations. Today, all of us—from teachers to essential workers to parents—are facing similar, if less extreme, challenges. Thus scientific evidence about how our minds and bodies work, and how we make decisions before, during, and after stress and trauma, applies to everyone. Given the many challenges we all face right now, we all need resilience, recovery, courage, situational awareness, emotional regulation, creative problem-solving, clear-minded decision-making, wisdom, and effective interpersonal interactions. MMFT is the only program to date that builds all of these strengths via one comprehensive program.

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. However, without complementary skills to re-regulate the nervous system and survival brain, mindfulness alone may actually flood the mind and body with heightened attention on the stress response—which, paradoxically, may worsen the ability to self-regulate and thereby exacerbate symptoms. Therefore, for individuals working in high-stress environments, as well as for those with PTSD, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, chronic pain, and other stress-spectrum illnesses, conventional mindfulness programs can inadvertently reactivate traumatic memories and lead to emotional overwhelm and re-traumatization.

In contrast, MMFT was designed to help individuals widen their window of tolerance to stress—and to do so in a stress- and trauma-sensitive manner. To achieve these goals, MMFT draws from three lineages: mindfulness training, the warrior traditions, and the body-based trauma therapies for re-regulating the nervous system and survival brain after trauma. MMFT includes a unique sequence of trauma-sensitive exercises that is carefully paced to help move someone from dysregulation to resilience. MMFT’s exercises are deliberately shorter than those included in many other mindfulness training programs. This program has safely and successfully helped thousands of individuals coping with chronic stress and unresolved trauma to recover and heal.

In sum, while mindfulness-only training gives someone the tools to be aware of and accept the racing thoughts, intense emotions, rapid heart rate, shallow breathing, and butterflies in the stomach that come with stress, MMFT also enables that person to direct their attention in particular ways to downregulate and reduce that stress—thereby bringing themselves back into balance.

MMFT grew out of Elizabeth Stanley’s own lived experience—the stressful and traumatic experiences she endured, her own journey of recovery, her long-standing mindfulness practice and many monthslong silent retreats, and her years of clinical training and certification in body-based therapeutic techniques. MMFT’s efficacy comes from the 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. The carefully structured sequence of weekly teachings and practices build upon each other and have been scientifically developed and tested for maximum safety and efficacy.

This is the course that Dr. Stanley’s book was based upon—and that program has been empirically tested in four research studies, with its beneficial outcomes published in top-tier science journals (see more below). This course includes all of the essential elements of the live MMFT course—including video lessons and guided daily exercises—updated with the most recent research about stress, trauma, and resilience. Even more, this online course includes many new self-assessments, interactive learning tools, and audio exercises not included in the live MMFT course. You’ll receive weekly emails to support you along the way. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask Dr. Stanley questions directly about your unique issues during the monthly LIVE online Q&A sessions that run through November 2021.

One of MMFT’s strengths is that it has been tested through rigorous neuroscience and stress physiology research with the U.S. Department of Defense. Since 2008, Dr. Stanley and her collaborators have conducted four studies with combat troops preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan—with results published in top-tier scientific journals. MMFT has been linked with significant improvements in cognitive performance, resilience, emotion regulation, sleep, and immune functioning, as well as beneficial shifts in brain activation patterns in the brain regions involved with emotion regulation, pain distress regulation, and impulse control.

You can find her published research articles here.

Absolutely! You can try this online course risk-free for an entire year. If it fails to meet your expectations for any reason, simply contact Sounds True’s customer service for a full refund.

Sounds True was founded in 1985 by Tami Simon with a clear mission: to disseminate spiritual wisdom. We partner with the leading spiritual and wellness teachers on the planet to make their teachings accessible through books, audio programs, online learning experiences, and in-person events.

At Sounds True, we’ve created the world’s largest living library of transformational teachings that support and accelerate spiritual awakening and personal transformation. We make this living library available on multiple media platforms and in multiple languages for people of today and for future generations.

We provide a trustworthy and safe online home for spiritual explorers, where you can show up with authenticity and meet others on the path. We warmly welcome beginners while remaining true to the depth and challenges of the spiritual journey, as we create shifts in consciousness that unlock our greatest human capacities to love and serve.

Please visit our FAQs page.

At Sounds True, we want everyone to have equal access to the materials we publish. If you support or work within the civil service, military, healthcare, education, law enforcement, first responder, or public service organizations, please apply here. If you do not fall into any of these preceding categories, we do offer scholarships for those who require financial support. Please see our scholarship application here to find out more.