7-Week Live Online Course
- Communicate effectively without conflict
- Resolve dificult emotions that keep you stuck
- Avoid mistakes that stifle intimacy
- Learn mindfulness skills to reduce stress
- Learn emotional intelligence skills
Feel Calmer
Train your mind to automatically lower stress and bounce over setbacks
Become Better partners
Learn the #1 reason relationships struggle
Transform Conflict
Discover the powerful tool that can transform conflict into connection
Communicate Courageously
Practice speaking from your heart and being less guarded
A Toolkit for a STRONGER RELATIONSHIP in 7 Weeks
Upcoming Course Dates
DATES FOR JANUARY SESSION COMING SOON
Course Structure: Two-hour Live Webinar Each Week + 15 Homework Lessons
Each lesson contains a chapter of instruction, a video animation to described the main concepts, reflection questions, and a 20-minuted guided meditation that’s tailored to the concepts introduced in the lesson.
NOTE: Full access to the curriculum previewed below is immediately available after purchase, with lifetime access.
A 165-page, spiral-bound workbook is available for order, or simply print out the PDF lessons in the online multi-media course.
Listen to this recording of Keith’s live teaching during one of the Mindful Love webinars about how Mindful Love is radically different form traditional tools for couples.
A huge toolkit for your marriage.
- Laura T.
7 Weeks of Live Class Webinars
Below is an outline of the class themes for each week.
INTRODUCTION: Why are we fighting?
By using a growth mindset with your relationship, this course will help you clean up attitudes and behaviors that otherwise predict separation and divorce.
Mindful Love is a unique curriculum that teaches meditation and mindfulness skills you can use to reduce negativity in your relationship and create the right conditions for growth and healing. According to a large body of scientific research, the exercises you’ll be doing every day in this course will literally change the physical structures in your brain.
Using mindfulness—a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations—you’re far more likely to be successful in getting off the merry-go-round of negativity than if you use just willpower.
You’ll learn how to use Care, Openness, Love, and Acceptance (C.O.L.A.) to transform negative emotions into productive ones.
WEEK 1: Mindfulness 101 – Body Focus
When we practice mindfulness, we focus on what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. The result is a spontaneous feeling of calm and heightened sense of awareness that you are more than just your mind and body.
Several studies have found that mindfulness increases positive emotions while reducing negative emotions and stress. Others show that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning, memory, emotion regulation, creativity, problem-solving, and empathy.
You are more than your thoughts, feelings and beliefs. In week one you learn a tool called the You-Turn, a differentiation skill that reliably stabilizes conflict by removing the projection of emotions onto your partner that occurs when you’re stressed or hurt.
WEEK 2: Banishing Blame and Criticism
Learn how to reliably feel more centered and calm. You can think and feel at the same time. You have room to consider your own feelings and the feelings of others.
When you’re driving in your car, making a U-turn at a dead-end road is an essential skill. Just imagine the absurdity of stubbornly refusing to turn around on a road that’s blocked by an accident or some other obstacle. No one really does that, right?
But somehow in our intimate relationships we believe that we have to draw a line in the sand and stand up to our partner when we hit a roadblock to getting our needs met. Rather than getting nimble and finding a new way to work together, we dig in our heels and try to coerce, cajole, convince, or maybe just out-cry or out-yell our partner when we want cooperation. Do these methods work?
Negativity almost always elicits some kind of reaction. But it’s almost guaranteed to be negative, and it’s never the kind of authentic, open-hearted attention we crave.
WEEK 3: Staying Centered When Your Partner is Off-Balance
Even in a healthy relationship, all it takes is one look from your partner to trigger a full-scale fight/flight/freeze response. Authentic intimacy with your partner requires you know how to prevent this or limit this so-called “lizard brain” from running your life and ruining your relationship.
The You-Turn helps you do this by short-circuiting the stress feedback loop that occurs when you misguidedly think that changing your partner will make you feel better.
When your brain is stressed, it biases sensory input from the outside toward fear and self-protection. You’ll be learning how to tune into your body to allow your full emotional intelligence to emerge during hard conversations.
WEEK 4: Building Emotional Intelligence
Learning basic emotional intelligence skills gives you the ability to care for and speak from your heart instead of panicking or collapsing during hard conversations.
Everyone knows that if you expand your verbal vocabulary, you improve your reading comprehension. The same is true with your ability to “read” emotions in people when your emotional vocabulary grows. This is called emotional intelligence.
When you know the difference between primary and secondary emotions, which you’ll become familiar with by taking this course, you’ll understand why having a deeper physical connection to your emotions, in your body, can move mountains between you and the one you love.
WEEK 5: Pursuing and Withdrawing – Identifying Your Protective Responses
A good question to ask to determine what protective attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors you have is to ask “What do I usually do when I’m stressed, irritated or scared?”
The usual answers typically fall into two categories: Pursue or Withdraw.
This course offers you a structured path to compassionately explore and befriend the parts of you that protect you, so they may relax and let you lead and allow more vulnerability to be seen by your partner.
Who are you in conflict? We are so used to our own mental habits and behaviors that reflecting this can be like a fish that doesn’t notice the water.
WEEK 6: Disarming Hostility With Empathy
Empathy is nearly impossible when you are stressed or hurt. That’s why this course helps you build a strong foundation of compassionate and attentive connection to your body and your inner life of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
When you feel centered, confident and calm it’s far more easy to let yourself be transported into the world of another.
You’ll learn:
- The three active ingredients in listening that convey empathy.
- How to use an active listening skill called dialogue that prevents hurt feelings and misunderstanding.
- How to engage imagination to power your conversations
Most important, you’ll understand why someone has to take responsibility for listening. Structure creates safety, which creates connection.
WEEK 7: Pleasure, Play, Joy, and Fun
What caring behaviors have you stopped doing in your relationship that were once automatic? Fixing her coffee the way she likes it. Calling his Mom just to say hello.
You’ll be asked to slow down and appreciate the small joys that are all around you every day and to start rituals that let you savor small joys in everyday moments.
Habits that cultivate appreciation and pleasure in everyday moments are vital for joy and fun in your relationship.
Benefits of Mindful Love 7-Week Immersive Course
Connection From the Inside-Out
Access multi-media homework modules and 165-page training manual that gives you a library of 20-minute meditations designed to reduce relationship stress.
Proven Benefits of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Access multi-media homework modules and 165-page training manual that gives you a library of 20-minute meditations designed to reduce relationship stress.
Introduction to Internal Family Systems (IFS) Work
Access multi-media homework modules and 165-page training manual that gives you a library of 20-minute meditations designed to reduce relationship stress.
What Experts Say About Mindful Love
“Keith Miller presents a clear and practical guide for couples while integrating elements of the most popular and powerful approaches: mindfulness,
neurobiology, and the Internal Family Systems model.”
Richard Schwartz, PhD.
Harvard Professor of Psychiatry and Founder of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) evidenced-based psychotherapy model.
“Mindful Love is an essential skill-builder in the tool box for couples devoted to a better love life. This program teaches you to calm your mind and clean up your thoughts,
enabling a more loving framework for everyday interactions.”
Kathy McMahon, PsyD.
President of Couples Therapy Inc.
About the Author
Keith Miller is a licensed clinical social worker and director of Keith Miller Counseling, a private counseling practice that specializes in relationships and mental health care. In 2022 he founded Calliope Health, a ketamine-assisted therapy clinic.
His first book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy, won the Reader’s Favorite Award for non-fiction in 2015. He is the former host of The Soul of Life podcast and is co-host of Tripping Over Love (coming soon) and has spoken across U.S. on the subject of interpersonal neurobiology, mindfulness, and stress-reduction for couples. He’s a proud Dad to two teenagers is a very mediocre golfer.
He celebrates the best of a wonderful-and-challenging 24-year marriage, and when it was necessary, starting a new chapter. Navigating an amicable separation, cohabitation, divorce, and co-parenting has been as much a lesson in Self-Leadership as staying married.
Keith Miller, LICSW
Frequently Asked Questions
What if we have to miss one of the dates?
All of the group meetings are recorded and posted to the private community space that’s only accessible to your class cohort. The Weekly Office Hours are not recorded.
What level of group participation is necessary in the large group meetings?
Most of the 2-hour class meetings will be Keith’s teaching about that week’s concepts. You’ll be asked to shut off your camera during exercise or discussion breaks to interact with your partner. There will be several opportunities each week for you to speak for your reaction to the concepts or exercises, or ask questions, in front of the group. Speaking for your experience can be a key to learning and everyone is encouraged to participate as much as possible. No one is ever put on the spot to share information about themselves they don’t want to share with the rest of the group. Short and structured breakout discussion rooms are a part of most classes, where you’ll be paired with one or two other couples in the course. This is optional but highly encouraged and one of the highest-rated elements of the course from graduates).
Do we have to be on the same computer/camera during the zoom meetings?
It’s best if you’re in same room as your partner and on-screen as much as possible. Of course if you are geographically separated, being on two separate cameras is no problem.
How long do I have access to the online content in the Mindful Love course?
You have lifetime access to log in to the Mindful Love online course material.
Can I take this course solo, without my partner?
Yes. A little secret behind Mindful Love is that it was designed specifically to be done solo. The fact that partners take the course together in my live teaching of this course is a huge bonus. This is one of the few relationship enrichment programs that asks people to seriously focus on and improve their relationship with parts of themselves before trying to improve their relationship to their partner.
What is IFS and will I learn it by taking Mindful Love?
IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, a popular evidence-based psychotherapy and spiritual tool that views the mind as naturally multiple and uses compassionate exploration of parts of you to befriend rather than berate or exile some of the most perplexing or difficult emotional states that many of us have learned to feel shame and fear toward.
Mindful Love does not explicitly teach IFS but is strongly influenced by it and can be seen as an introduction to basic IFS concepts such as Parts, Self, Protectors, Exiles, and the You-Turn concept, which was first introduced to me by IFS founder Richard Schwartz and IFS Lead Trainer Toni Herbine-Blank.
Do I have to know how to meditate to take this course?
No. Mindful Love was designed for people new to mindfulness and/or meditation. However many lifelong meditators have found the meditations in this course to be novel and helpful to deal with emotional states that traditional meditation does not address.
A totally transformative experience for our relationship.
- Greg. R.