COURSE

We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons In Moving Through Change, Loss & Disruption

We all go through times where it feels like the rug is being pulled out from under us. What we relied on as steady and reliable changes or we lose it completely. Not only are loss and separation painful, but even positive changes can create great stress. In these 10 sessions, you’ll learn powerful ways to meet life's challenges with wisdom, resilience and ease. Together, we’ll practice ancient teachings of Buddhist psychology and meditations that develop presence and compassion, helping us release the fear, doubt and resistance that hold us back. Each session will present a teaching and guided meditation practice to nurture deeper freedom and stability in daily life.

Stress Stress & Anxiety Mindfulness Compassion Relationships Resilience Health & Happiness Buddhism Mindfulness Meditation Anxiety Acceptance Contemporary Buddhism Spirituality Traditional Buddhism Religion

Meet your Teacher

Kaira Jewel Lingo

New York, NY, USA

Kaira Jewel Lingo began practicing mindfulness in 1997 and is a teacher in the Zen and Vipassana lineages. Author of the forthcoming "We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption," she teaches Buddhist meditation, mindfulness, and compassion internationally, focusing on waking up in daily life. Ordained for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches both Buddhism and secular mindfulness, writes, and offers spiritual mentoring.

10 Days

12.9k students

4.9 stars

17 min / day

Stress

English

Lesson 1

Coming Home - The Future Is Made Of This Moment

A key step that can help us begin to settle ourselves when we are profoundly unsettled by change and challenge is to come home to ourselves in this moment, whatever is happening. In this opening session, we’ll explore how to find our way back to the true home inside of us, that no one can take away or destroy, and how to dwell there more often. We’ll learn that taking care of this moment is the best way to take care of the future. The guided meditation will support you in arriving home and in setting your intention to be fully present for yourself.

Lesson 2

Resting Back & Trusting The Unknown

In this session, we’ll learn a practice of entrusting our deep and troubling questions to the depths of our consciousness, like planting a seed down in the soil. Rather than trying to think our way to an answer, we trust that being present and aware in daily life is the nourishment that the seed needs to one day sprout into a clear answer or direction. In the guided meditation we’ll soften and rest back into the unknown, building confidence that clarity will come in its own time.

Lesson 3

Accepting What Is

One of the things that can make navigating times of transition and challenge even more difficult is when we resist what is happening or think there’s something wrong with our life, or with us, when the road gets bumpy. But transition and challenges are a part of life. In this session, we look at the inevitability of pain and how not to add suffering on top of this. The meditation we’ll practice supports us in letting go of resistance, and opening to acceptance and peace with what is.

Lesson 4

Weathering The Storms: Belly Breathing & Mindful Walking

How can we manage times of overwhelm and crisis, when it feels like we can’t find any space inside? In this session, we’ll learn powerful practices of staying rooted and grounded in the midst of life’s storms. We will discover how to return to the reality, and safety, of the present moment through intentional, focused belly breathing, and also through walking mindfully, learning to stay connected to the earth in full awareness.

Lesson 5

Embracing Strong Emotions

Using a powerful teaching from Buddhist Psychology on how our minds work, in this session we do a deep dive into the how to really be with and soothe strong emotions, which can be so painful and disruptive in times of change. We learn, and practice in the meditation, how we can access mindfulness to help us recognize whatever painful emotion is arising, accept it, and then embrace it like a loving adult would hold a crying baby. As we do this, our emotion settles down and we are able to look deeply into to understand it at its root in the deeper layers of our mind. This leads us to insight and gradual transformation of habit patterns that keep us stuck in reactivity, fear and anger.

Lesson 6

Impermanence & The Five Remembrances

Many of us may get lulled into believing what we have now will always be here. This is a central cause of our suffering. We want that which has the nature to change to stay the same. In this session, we will pay attention to the ways impermanence, a key characteristic of our existence, operates moment-to-moment in daily life, as well as in times of bigger upheaval and turmoil. Facing the truth of impermanence frees us up to live more fully and stop being controlled by unconscious fears. We will practice a profound meditation offered by the Buddha on the Five Remembrances, and allow the insight of impermanence to wake us up, help us feel more alive, and deeply touch the preciousness of life.

Lesson 7

Calmly Facing The Eight Worldly Winds

Each of us must go through the “10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows,” the ups and downs that any life brings. In this session, we learn about the 8 worldly winds: pleasure and pain; gain and loss; praise and blame; and fame and disrepute, and how they are like spokes in a wheel that is constantly turning. But in the center of the wheel is a hole, which is our true nature of emptiness, of not-self, another key characteristic of existence. Not-self helps us see that we are not a separate self, but in fact, we contain everything. We are empty of an independent self and part of something much vaster. When we touch our nature of interdependence, we experience that which does not get blown about, which is not conditioned by fortune and misfortune. And this leads us to touch the freedom of non-fear.

Lesson 8

Equanimity And Letting Go

What is it that can help us come back to balance when we are pulled and pushed this way and that by the disruptions and upheavals of our life? In this session we will learn about 'upeska,' translated as equanimity and inclusiveness, a capacity we can cultivate that helps us to see the bigger picture and look with patience and understanding. We can grow our equanimity through staying open to learn, relaxing, and letting go of whatever we are clinging to. The guided visualization will help us to offer space to ourselves and our difficulty so that we can come to greater peace with it, and will teach us powerful statements on equanimity that we can apply anytime in our daily life.

Lesson 9

Nurturing The Good

We may believe that in order to be happy and at peace our suffering has to disappear completely. In this session, we’ll learn how we can nurture and strengthen the good in us so that we can draw on it in difficult times. Gratitude is enormously transformative in moments of hardship and a huge booster of resilience and strength. We’ll learn effective ways to develop it in daily life, including with the children in our lives, and even in the midst of heartbreak. This is an orientation towards life in which we live the present moment in such a way that we create a beautiful past.

Lesson 10

We Were Made For These Times

In this final session, we will gather our courage and confidence to meet whatever difficulties and transitions we are facing. We already have all that we need to meet this moment. Our mindfulness practice is has prepared us in each mindful step and every conscious breath to engage with life just as it is. We’ll harness the power of guided visualization to see ourselves moving through our challenges or times of transition until we have reached the other side. We’ll practice to embody now how we will look and feel when the storm has settled, and we are confident and at peace. We’ll deepen our intention through a closing compassion practice for ourselves and all others who may also be experiencing hardship, that we all may rest in our true home.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 292 community questions and 22 audio replies from Kaira Jewel Lingo. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

292

4.9 (1149)

Recent Reviews

Kat

February 12, 2026

A wonderful class, and a great accompaniment to the book We Were Made for These Times. Much Metta for both the book and the class. These are truly trying times, and these gifts are so precious. Thank you!

CLAIRE

January 17, 2026

Loved this course! I have listened on each section several times and made sure that I really understood, learned and enjoyed it! Thank you so much

Alla

October 22, 2025

This course was such a relief during a difficult time. Thank you so much!

Pia-Ariel

September 30, 2025

🫶🏽🙏🏽lovely content, delivered with calm and beautiful voice. Thank you Kaira

Jill

August 16, 2025

Thank you so much for your truly beautiful, inspiring, generous and supportive course. I loved beginning with learning to plant a seed and how to nurture growth by being present, calm, and clear. Each day’s lesson filled me with hopefulness and reminded me of the power in the present moment. Thank you!💗🪷

Marian

August 7, 2025

Great way to start the day. Thank you.

Eva

July 18, 2025

This course was a true gift✨ Thank you Kaira for putting this course together. I found it just at the right time. I plan to listen again so to absorb all the jewels of wisdom you so eloquently provided. Love & Blessings to you Kaira and all present here going through their own life transition. May you find peace and freedom dear ones🙏🩷🕊️

Kathy

July 15, 2025

Thank you!❤

Gazella

July 2, 2025

I really enjoyed this course. Kaira provided peace and reassurance to me in a time of suffering and it's really helped me feel confident enough to surrender to change. I also love the songs that she shared in each of the lessons. Highly recommended for anyone that has religious trauma, or/and is an auditory learner. Thank you ❤️

Anna

July 2, 2025

Simple and transformational.

Chris

July 1, 2025

Excellent course with beautiful meditations and reflections. So very useful when going through challenging times and transitions.

May 13, 2025

This was a fantastic course and I thank you greatly for putting it together. It was much needed as I face recent challenges/difficulties in my life. These are skills that will help me throughout life and remind me that “what I need, I have” right here in the now. Thank you🙏🏾🧘🏾‍♀️🪷🕉️☸️

TeresaG

March 3, 2025

Very helpful guidance

Gina

February 11, 2025

Next week I’ll be moving from Europe to the USA. This move has brought up some of my deepest fears regarding change and impermanence. This course has honestly been a lifesaver, and I’ll definitely repeat it.

Rochelle

February 7, 2025

WOW! This course has equipped me with tools I can you to find PEACE; while experiencing trials & tribulations. I found the sessions to be a bit long. But, at the end of each session your singing moved me to tears. Happy Tears. Peaceful Tears. Joyful Tears. Relaxing Tears. Your voice is BREATHTAKING. Thank You!

Kim

January 16, 2025

This was a practical and so well constructed course. Loved the tools as well as the pace of meditations. May we all be well and live with ease.

Amy

January 5, 2025

Thank you! 🙏🏻

Zoro

November 20, 2024

Beautiful, simply beautiful

Judith

November 7, 2024

Thank you so much Kaira for this beautiful course!! I have shared it with many others. Timely and needed at this time! Helpful, practical, and uplifting. 🙏🏼❤️🌎

Claudia

September 15, 2024

What a warm and wonderful course, thank you 💛

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We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons In Moving Through Change, Loss & Disruption

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