Kindfulness: 7 Simple Practices To Grow Inner Strengths - by Tara Cousineau, PhD

COURSE

Kindfulness: 7 Simple Practices To Grow Inner Strengths

With Tara Cousineau, PhD

Ever feel overwhelmed? Does life seem to throw one punch after another? Or maybe you’d like some peace of mind and to enjoy life more? This series is an invitation to strengthen your natural ability to grow inner resources. Consider this a “kindfulness-based stress reduction” course as the focus is on integrating practices for the head and the heart. It includes skills rooted in evidence-based practices. You’ll learn about the power of positive neuroplasticity to overcome the brain’s negativity bias, something we all have. Have a notebook with you as you listen. You may discover something new.

StressStress & AnxietyMindfulnessCompassionRelationshipsResilienceHealth & HappinessMindfulness MeditationScienceAnxietyPsychologyHappinessHealingRecovery & Healing

Meet your Teacher

Tara Cousineau, PhD
Boston, MA, USA

Tara Cousineau, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and meditation teacher. She's the author of "The Kindness Cure: How the Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World" and "The Little Deck of Kindfulness." She is a staff psychologist at Harvard University's Counseling and Mental Health Services and is dedicated to helping others be kinder to themselves and each other.

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7 Days

2.9k students

4.6 stars

14 min / day

Stress

English

Lesson 1

Breaking The S.P.E.L.

In this first lesson, we will explore cultivating well-being in the same way we can train our bodies to be healthier and more resilient, so when life throws challenges our way we are more ready to face them. Each lesson is structured with a short teaching and a meditation or reflection exercise. We begin with understanding resilience, how we can easily fall under a S.P.E.L. as our bodies react to stress, and how practicing kindfulness is an antidote.

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Lesson 2

Emotional Courage

In lesson 2, we begin to cultivate an awareness of how our emotions can influence our motivations, our actions, and our reactions. Emotions serve as important signals. The trick is to learn to manage our emotions, the positive and the negative, in a balanced way so we don’t avoid emotions or get hijacked by them. The skill is to befriend ourselves and our emotional lives with curiosity, compassion, wisdom, and humor.

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Lesson 3

Softening Into Difficult Emotions

In lesson 3, you are invited to come along for a guided meditation to lean into your emotional life with courage. Understanding the contextual nature of emotions means turning toward our emotions with curiosity and care, even when it’s hard. This exercise brings in compassion for ourselves and entails recruiting both your physiology and your imagination as a way to embrace your imperfect, vulnerable being with kindfulness.

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Lesson 4

Cultivating Presence & Perspective

This lesson expands our detective work on emotion regulation by tending to the power of being present and the capacity to take perspective. Learning how and when to zoom in and out of our daily experiences can redirect our attention to making beneficial choices. Both presence and perspective contribute to psychological flexibility, an important ingredient for resilience.

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Lesson 5

Tending & Befriending Yourself

This lesson offers a reflection exercise and invites you to consider the stressors or challenges that lead to distress while allowing yourself a little slack. It’s no wonder most human beings become overwhelmed with the tensions of daily living. But somehow, it’s easier to blame oneself, fall into rumination, or create mental mind movies that cause even more suffering. Here, we learn to befriend our inner life just like we might tend to a loved one in need.

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Lesson 6

Growing Inner Strengths

Cultivating inner strengths and positive emotions helps you to ward off falling under the S.P.E.L. that interferes with taking good care of yourself. This lesson describes a simple kindfulness recipe, P.E.P.P.I.E., to build resilience and give you the energy you need to meet life’s challenges. Have a journal handy or make mental notes on the ingredients you would like to strengthen.

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Lesson 7

Kindfulness As A Prescription

In this final lesson, we consider that we can’t do it alone. Kindfulness is inclusive and recognizes that resilience involves not only practice but people. We conclude with an integration exercise that pulls in the ingredients of P.E.P.P.I.E. Presence, emotion regulation, taking perspective, finding purpose, integrating healthy habits of mind, body, and spirit, and putting in joyful effort — these ingredients blend together in a great elixir for love and kindness.

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4.6 (85)

Recent Reviews

Rochelle

April 1, 2024

Great Course. I would have like a minute or so in between you giving definitions; so I could write them down.

Mira

September 14, 2023

Loving

Erin

August 17, 2023

This was very helpful. It got me thinking about realistic ways to work on my self loathing, self criticism and anxiety dominated brain. I knew love and kindness were things I needed to work on but metta meditation was just not doing it, my inner cynic just wouldn't allow it. This course walked through things in a more step by step way and allowed me to come up with actions to influence my feelings.

Angela

August 2, 2023

Amazing, this is helping me work through some difficult stressful issues and I will keep listening to it again as a helpful reminder.

Sam

April 19, 2023

First 5 star rating I've given. The course presented the information accurately and with the right tone that clicked for me. Thanks will listen again

Jai

July 27, 2022

Amazing, thank you!

Tracey

June 2, 2022

Thanks for the course. Day 4 was my fav lesson. I really like the tone of your voice and speed to speak- they are calming & give time to process information. Kindness- we could all improve to ourselves and the world.

Janet

June 1, 2022

Wonderful!

Cobie

April 15, 2022

A great course as it helped calm me down. I liked the background music. The whole course was helpful for reducing stress. I took lots of notes on how to be more patient with myself. Thank you very much! 🥰

Nancy

August 17, 2021

Crystal

June 27, 2021

I highly recommend this beautiful, inspiring course❣️ I feel so very grateful to Tara for sharing her positive life lessons. 🙏🏻 I found this course to be a blessing. 🕊

Chris

June 19, 2021

I have enjoyed this course, simple but very calming. Thanks so much xx

Tamra

June 15, 2021

Great class

Nicole

June 14, 2021

There are certainly good things in this course that I would recommend, but for me, the high tempo music got in the way of every single meditation. I found it made me tense and irritable.

Juliette

June 10, 2021

So many wonderful ideas and perspectives to reflect on. Will be worth a 2nd listen. I feel calmer, kinder and full of joyful purpose having taken this course. Thank you Tara.

Ronnie

June 10, 2021

A lot is packed into the course so repeated listening would be helpful. I found the music to be distracting.

Mike

June 6, 2021

Awesome, very impressive

Roxanne

May 28, 2021

Half meditative - half frantically taking notes to lock in what I was learning. I’m actually going to restart this course because of the nuances - I want to make sure my wandering mind didn’t cause me to miss anything! Thank you!

Cory

May 27, 2021

I really benefited from your class. Thank you ❤️

Jane

May 24, 2021

Thank you, Tara

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