COURSE

Unwind Your Anxious Mind

In this 10 day course you will learn everything about anxiety from how our brains survival mechanisms get hijacked so that we develop stress and anxiety, to the science behind why and how modern-day life, including information overload and social media fan the flames of anxiety, to how anxiety can interfere with sleep. Finally, you will learn about the neuroscience of mindfulness, how it links back to the ancient psychology behind anxiety formation, and some specific practices that you can use to "hack" your mind to regain control.

Stress Stress & Anxiety Neuroscience Science Mindfulness Mindfulness Meditation Anxiety

Meet your Teacher

Jud Brewer, MD PhD

Boston, MA, USA

Dr. Judson Brewer MD PhD is a thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery”, having combined over 20 years of personal mindfulness training with his scientific research. A psychiatrist, professor and the director of research at the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School and research associate at MIT, he has developed clinically proven app-based training to help people with emotional eating (Eat Right Now) and anxiety (Unwinding Anxiety). He has trained college sports teams, Olympic athletes and coaches, been featured on 60 minutes, had the 4th most viewed TED talk of 2016 (9.5 Million views), in Time magazine (top 100 new health discoveries of 2013), Forbes, Businessweek, National Geographic, and the BBC among others. He is the author of The Craving Mind: from cigarettes to smartphones to love, why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits.

10 Days

67.3k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

Stress

English

Lesson 1

The Difference Between Stress And Anxiety

Are you just stressed, or really anxious? Today’s lesson introduces you to how your well-meaning brain goes from a natural fight or flight response, to developing chronic stress and anxiety. You’ll learn a simple way to tell the difference between stress and anxiety and how to put that information to good use to regain control over your life.

Lesson 2

My Brain On Anxiety

Starting with a self-diagnostic quiz, in today’s lesson you’ll map out how and where anxiety shows up for you and take a deeper dive into the physical feelings of anxiety. Then we’ll do a 30 second science experiment together to see how your experience lines up with activation in a brain region that my lab found to be correlated with meditation. As a bonus, you’ll get to hear what happened to Anderson Cooper’s brain when we measured his brain activity. You’ll finish with a short practice that will help you work with your stress and anxiety.

Lesson 3

Why Am I So Anxious?

Now that you have a better sense of how anxiety shows up for you (and your brain), it’s time to dive into the science behind how our brains got hijacked from learning how to survive, to developing anxiety as a habit. Yes, you can learn to be anxious - even to the point where it becomes habitual. Thankfully, you can unlearn it as well. I’ll give you a method to begin mapping your mind, which is the critical first step in stepping out of habits you might have developed around stress, anxiety and other unhealthy behaviors.

Lesson 4

Too Much! How Our Modern World Makes Us Anxious

Isn’t being “in the know” a good thing? Well it depends. Building on yesterday’s training, today you will learn the connection between setting up habits and how your brain tries to get as much information as possible (to help predict the future). Then I’ll teach you how in modern day, this can blow up in our face, thanks to social media and smartphones. You’ll also learn how to put this information to good use, so you can get back in control and use technology wisely, instead of getting triggered by it.

Lesson 5

How We Can Step Out Of The Anxiety Cycle

Today you’ll get a mid-course check-up to make sure your mind-mapping is going well. I’ll also give a short background on anxiety medications, and how they affect our brains – both positively and negatively. And I’ll link in some of the scientific history of how mindfulness training came onto the scene, both with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s groundbreaking work creating Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and my own research on habit change (spoiler alert: it works pretty well for anxiety).

Lesson 6

Ancient Wisdom For How To Train Our Anxious Minds

Do you ever get cravings? This lesson unveils the surprising similarities between the ancient and modern psychology of the mind, and how the overlap between the two are important for changing a range of behaviors from anxiety to overeating and addiction. Using examples from my own research, I will walk you through how both the old and new approaches provide insights into habits that we all may form around anxiety, and how building your awareness can help unwind those habits.

Lesson 7

Hacking Anxiety: Is Curiosity Key?

Building on yesterday’s exploration of how awareness can help us work with urges and cravings to work with unhealthy habits, today I’ll unpack the science behind how the power of observation can change behavior. Better yet, you’ll learn how to tap into curiosity to literally hack the very reward-based learning system that set up your anxiety habit loops, so that you can step out of the cycle. Curious?

Lesson 8

Anxiety And Sleeping Problems

Now that you’re learning to tap into your own brain’s mental curiosity muscle, I’ll teach you how to apply this to help you get a good night’s sleep. First, you’ll learn the pros and cons of sleep “aids” (including alcohol). Then, you can take a short self-quiz that will help you spot any links between anxiety and trouble sleeping, and finish with a short mindfulness training that has worked wonders for helping my clinic patients sleep.

Lesson 9

Deep Anxiety

Do you (or someone you know) feel like you are just a naturally anxious person? As in, it is so deeply ingrained that you can’t remember what it is like not to have anxiety on a daily basis? You are not alone. Using both ancient and modern psychology, today you will learn how this gets set up as a fundamental identity of who we think we are, and also how to work with this deep-seated mental pattern. Using examples from my own experiences with full-blown panic attacks, I will give you three simple ingredients to begin to unwind even the most entrenched habits.

Lesson 10

A Kind Way To Unwind Our Anxious Minds

Having learned how your mind works to form habits (and even identities) around stress and anxiety and how to hack your mind’s capacity to be curiously aware, you’re ready for one more tool that also taps into your brain’s learning mechanisms to help with stress and anxiety: kindness. I’ll teach you a little science from my lab’s brain studies of expert meditators practicing loving kindness, and then show you how to tap into this potential for yourself (and others).

Ask your teacher

This course includes 547 community questions and 5 audio replies from Jud Brewer, MD PhD. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

547

4.8 (4012)

Recent Reviews

Kristin

January 18, 2026

Thank you!

JENNIFER

January 17, 2026

This is an excellent course. Everyone will benefit from the teachings. 🙏✨

Arturo

December 30, 2025

I love how this course is evidence and science based and ho well explain explained the lectures are. Wonderful course. Thank you very much. It has helped me ❤️🌟

Tracy

December 22, 2025

Excellent!!! So informative, positive and practical. I will be returning to this course. Thank you so much 💓

Suzanne

December 20, 2025

Excellent!

Matthew

December 19, 2025

Thank you. Lots of notes!

Colin

December 12, 2025

Wonderful course

Jayne

December 6, 2025

This was a wonderful course and I learned quite a bit. I found it extremely helpful. Would definitely recommend it to anyone going through a time of anxiety in their life.

Joe

December 4, 2025

Very practical application and I find it works! Not just a lot of words.

Jacqui

December 4, 2025

Offered some great practices.

Kelli

December 3, 2025

It had some key take away that helped. Some of his explanations I found confusing compared to some of the other readings I have come across. I guess for me it took him a long time to land the plane.

Steph

November 13, 2025

A really great course, with understandable concepts and doable practices. Thank you for sharing your wisdom!

Maxime

November 4, 2025

Thank you so much for this course. I've learned a lot and really enjoyed listening to this. Merci!

Cobalt

November 3, 2025

Love the clear and more scientific approach.

Elin

October 27, 2025

Very challenging and wonderfully helpful insights. They will slowly transform into help as they are integrated into my own… life wisdom. I appreciate that will take time. So generous. Thank you Dr Jud for trying to compact your heart, life wisdom and research in to 10 lessons. A truly loving and kind gesture. May your continued work be blessed ❤️

Robert

October 8, 2025

Excellent course. Very interesting.

Laura

October 4, 2025

Thank you for this course. I found it very informative regarding how our minds work and how mindfulness and compassion can help with anxiety and anxious thoughts. I’m looking forward to reading your books.

Paula

September 24, 2025

Thankyou this course was extremely informative and beneficial

Ana

September 24, 2025

Maravilhoso! Esse curso é simplesmente fantástico. Depois de conviver diariamente com a ansiedade por 11 anos, finalmente aprendi a sair dessa prisão. Gratidão! Que Deus abençoe seu caminho e que esse curso chegue a todos que precisam.

Karen

August 24, 2025

Thanks Doc, great course! Lots of info, very insightful. There were a couple of sessions I listened to a couple of times because I found them so pertinent to myself. I will probably listen to the course again. 🙏💙

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