Choosing to Love 2027
A Yearlong Community of Practice with Tara Brach
Beginning January 17, 2027
Deepen your practice, cultivate an inner refuge, and learn to meet the challenges of your life—and our world—with presence, compassion, and courageous love.
Join Tara and a dedicated community of fellow practitioners for a year of live teachings, shared meditation, RAIN and other practices, inquiry and mindful dialogue. At the heart of our year together is the spirit of the bodhisattva path—awakening our hearts and minds, supporting each other on the journey, and bringing that growing wisdom and compassion into our relationships, our communities, and our world.
Choosing to Love 2027 at a Glance
A full year of practice and community
Monthly Teachings with Tara
Gather live with Tara for teachings and guided practices that bring mindfulness, compassion, and awakening into everyday life.
Quarterly Satsang with Tara
Bring your questions directly to Tara and explore how the teachings apply where you most need guidance.
Weekly Community Practice
Deepen your practice through RAIN partners, teacher-led meditation, and mindful dialogue with fellow participants.
Support Between Gatherings
Stay connected through the online community, supplemental practices, bonus teachings, and AvaTara.
Practice on Your Schedule
Live sessions are recorded and made available for later viewing if you are unable to attend in real time.
Begin Practicing Immediately
Enrollment includes immediate access to Tara’s Transforming Emotional Suffering with RAIN course at no additional cost.
In Shadowed Times,
We Remember the Light Together
These are turbulent times. Many of us find ourselves confronting fear, division, uncertainty, and a deep sense of disconnection—from our own hearts, from one another, and from the living world. In the face of so much suffering, it’s natural to wonder, “What can I possibly do?”
The spiritual path does not ask us to turn away from what is difficult. It invites us to discover the presence and love that can meet life fully. Again and again, we can learn to pause. To listen inwardly. To make room for fear, grief, anger, and vulnerability without being consumed by them. And from that inner refuge, we become more capable of responding to our lives and our world with wisdom, compassion, and courage. Choosing to Love: A Community of Practice is a yearlong journey with Tara Brach designed to support that remembering. Together, we’ll explore how mindfulness, compassion, and especially the practice of RAIN can become steady companions—helping us meet difficult emotions, deepen our relationships, and live from a more awake and loving heart.
What This Year Can Help You Cultivate
Inner Resilience & Freedom
Learn to pause and meet difficult experience with mindful awareness.
Through RAIN and other practices, you’ll explore new ways of relating to fear, stress, self-judgment, and reactivity—creating greater space for compassion, clarity, and choice. Rather than trying to escape the storms of life, we learn to discover the stillness that can
hold them.
Authentic Connection & Belonging
Spiritual practice can easily become something we do alone. Choosing to Love invites us into another dimension of the path: practicing together. Through RAIN partnerships, meditation, and mindful dialogue, you’ll have opportunities to bring presence directly into relationship—to listen more deeply, soften habitual defenses, cultivate empathy, and remember our shared belonging.
Compassionate Action in a Troubled World
How do we stay awake to suffering without becoming overwhelmed by it?
How do we respond to injustice without being consumed by fear, anger, or despair? Throughout the year, we’ll explore what it means to bring an awake heart into the world—not transcending suffering, but learning to meet it with wisdom and love. This practice can help us respond to both personal and collective challenges with greater courage, steadiness, and care.
How the Program Works
Choosing to Love is designed as more than a collection of teachings. It is a yearlong rhythm of learning, practice, relationship, and reflection that supports us in living the bodhisattva path together.
Learn with Tara
✓ Monthly Live Teachings & Guided Practice
Each month, gather online with Tara for teachings, reflection, and guided meditation.
Together, we’ll explore the challenges arising in our personal lives and our shared world—and the pathways that can lead us back to mindful presence, compassion, and love in action.
✓ NEW: Quarterly Satsang with Tara
Four times during the year, participants will be invited into a more intimate community inquiry with Tara.
These online Satsang sessions offer an opportunity to bring questions from your own practice and receive direct guidance from Tara.
Please note: Satsang sessions are recorded and may be shared with Tara’s larger community so that the questions and teachings can serve others beyond the yearlong program. Please keep this in mind when deciding what you wish to share.
Practice in Community
Insight deepens when it becomes part of how we actually live and relate.
Throughout the year, you’ll be invited to participate in weekly community practices, including:
✓ RAIN Partner Practice
Connect with fellow practitioners in small, trusted settings and bring the practice of RAIN to real experiences from your life. These gatherings offer an opportunity to move beyond understanding RAIN conceptually and experience its power within compassionate relationship.
✓ Teacher-Led Community Meditation
Meditate alongside your peers with the guidance of an experienced teacher. These gatherings help create continuity in your practice while offering the support and energy of practicing in community.
✓ NEW: Teacher-Led Community Dialogue
Explore mindful communication and meaningful questions in small-group conversation. These gatherings invite us to practice listening, presence, vulnerability, and compassionate engagement with one another—and with the challenges of our world.
Stay Supported Between Gatherings
Practice doesn’t end when a live session does. Throughout the year, you’ll have access to resources designed to help you stay connected to the teachings and community.
✓ AvaTara
Enjoy unlimited access to Tara’s new digital practice companion. Ask questions, explore teachings, and receive practice guidance on your own schedule whenever you want additional support between live gatherings.
✓ Online Community Hub
Share insights, ask questions, connect with fellow participants, and continue the conversation between live sessions.
✓ Supplemental Practices & Teachings
Receive additional guided meditations, reflections, and resources to help sustain and deepen your practice throughout the year.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long will I have access to the course?
You will have lifetime access to the course content to enjoy for as long as you wish via the course portal.
Will the sessions be recorded?
Yes. All of the sessions except the community dialogue sessions will be recorded for later viewing.
What if I can't attend every live session?
That’s okay. Live sessions will be recorded and posted for later viewing. We encourage attending live whenever you can, particularly because community practice is an important part of the program, but the recordings allow you to stay connected when life or time zones make live participation difficult.
When will the live sessions take place?
Sessions will take place every Sunday at either 11 am PT/US (2 pm ET/US) or 3 pm PT/US (6 pm ET/US). You can use this time zone converter to help you determine where that is where you live.
Do I need prior meditation experience?
Choosing to Love – A Community of Practice is designed for practitioners with some experience, however, you do not need to be an expert meditator to join in or benefit from the program. You should have a daily meditation practice and some familiarity with the RAIN practice. If you need a refresher, Tara’s Transforming Emotional Suffering with RAIN course may be accessed for free once you have enrolled in the yearlong.
What is AvaTara?
AvaTara is an optional AI driven digital practice companion that you will have access to throughout the course. It is trained exclusively with Tara’s extensive body of work. Ask questions, dive deeper into the teachings, and receive practice guidance on your own schedule whenever you want additional support between live gatherings.
How do I apply for a scholarship?
Tara is deeply committed to making these invaluable teachings as widely available as possible, particularly to members of underserved and marginalized communities. To help provide assistance to as many people as possible, please take some moments to reflect on what you feel you can afford to offer and what level of support is needed. Here’s the link to apply.
You will be notified via e-mail by December 1, 2026 if your request is approved, and will receive instructions for how to register.
THE 2027 SCHEDULE
Choosing to Love begins Sunday, January 17, 2027.
All live gatherings will take place on Sundays at either 9:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Sessions will be recorded and posted for participants who cannot attend live.
Full 2027 Calendar — Coming Soon
The complete schedule will be published here as soon as it is finalized.
Tuition
Choose the option that works best for you.
10% Early Bird Discount is Available until October 31, 2026 – Enter code earlybird2027 at checkout.
Enroll Now and Begin Practicing Immediately
Transforming Emotional Suffering with RAIN
You don’t need to wait until January to begin.
When you enroll in Choosing to Love 2027, you’ll receive immediate access at no additional cost to one of Tara’s most popular online programs:
Transforming Emotional Suffering with RAIN
This self-paced course offers an opportunity to strengthen or refresh your foundation in RAIN before the yearlong community begins.
Use the months leading up to January to deepen your familiarity with the practice so you can arrive ready to engage more fully with Tara and the community.
Included with your registration. Regularly $49.99.
Is Choosing to Love Right for You?
Choosing to Love is designed for practitioners who already have a foundation in mindfulness and are ready to deepen their practice within a sustained community.
Before enrolling, please make sure you:
✓ Have an ongoing meditation practice
✓ Are familiar with mindfulness and self-compassion
✓ Have some prior experience practicing RAIN
✓ Feel ready to engage with these teachings over the course of a year
You do not need to have a perfect or unwavering practice.
The invitation is to bring sincerity, curiosity, and a willingness to keep returning.
If you would benefit from refreshing your experience with RAIN, your registration includes immediate access to Transforming Emotional Suffering with RAIN before the yearlong program begins.
SCHOLARSHIPS
We want Choosing to Love to be accessible to practitioners from a range of financial circumstances.
A limited number of full and partial scholarships are available.
Scholarship application deadline: November 1, 2026
Recipients will be notified and receive registration instructions by December 1, 2026.
Refund Policy
We understand that circumstances can change when committing to a yearlong program and refunds will be available on the pro-rated schedule below.
Before Jan 1, 2027
100% refund of tuition paid.
January 1–17, 2027
100% tuition paid, less a $50 administrative fee.
January 18–31, 2027
75% tuition paid, less a $50 administrative fee.
February1-28, 2027
50% tuition paid, less a $50 administrative fee.
March 1-31, 2027
25% tuition paid, less a $50 administrative fee.
No refunds will be available for any reason after March 31, 2027.
Meet Your Teachers
SENIOR TEACHER
Tara Brach
Tara Brach is a meditation teacher, psychologist and author of several books including international bestselling Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion and Trusting the Gold. Her popular weekly podcast on emotional healing and spiritual awakening is downloaded 2 million times a month.
Tara is founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and has been active in bringing meditation into schools, prisons and underserved populations. Together with Jack Kornfield, she has co-founded Cloud Sangha and the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program, which serves participants from 74 countries around the world. Tara’s teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world.
MINDFULNESS INSTRUCTOR
Lisa Pedscalny
Rooted in over twenty years of Insight practice, Lisa Pedscalny is a mindfulness teacher based on Vancouver Island, on the traditional and unceded territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.
A graduate and alumni facilitator of the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and a certified EcoDharma Teacher through One Earth Sangha, Lisa founded Forest Floor Mindfulness, where she offers online sanghas, courses, retreats, and nature-rooted practices.
Drawing on living models of wisdom from the natural world, Lisa’s work integrates mindfulness, embodiment, self-compassion, and ecological connection as pathways of healing, interdependence, and sustainable engagement with the wider web of life.
MINDFULNESS INSTRUCTOR
Sharon Shelton
Sharon Shelton is a Certified Mindfulness Teacher, Mentor, and Life Coach. She is a Founding Advisor and Mindfulness Teacher at Banyan and mentors students in the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program.
Sharon also offers Dharma talks and daylong retreats at the Triangle Insight Meditation Community in Durham, NC and speaks at communities around the country. With warmth and expertise, Sharon helps individuals and groups integrate mindfulness into their lives while cultivating a wholehearted embrace of compassion.
MINDFULNESS INSTRUCTOR
Luis Gil
Luis Gil is a mindfulness instructor and leadership coach with 15+ years of practice and teaching experience. Rooted in the traditions of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and Burmese Vipassana Master Mahasi Sayadaw, Luis’ work builds bridges between the contemplative world and modern life.
Today that bridge spans several contexts: bringing Buddhist principles and mindfulness practices to organizational leadership, supporting inner development and healing spaces for men, and offering meditation as a foundation for psychedelic-assisted therapy and integration. His teaching is grounded in deep respect for the source traditions while remaining practical and immediately applicable to daily life.
An Invitation to Practice Together
We cannot always control what unfolds around us.
But we can cultivate how we meet it.
We can learn to pause instead of immediately reacting.
To offer compassion where we once offered judgment.
To remain present to suffering without closing our hearts.
To remember that we belong to one another.
And we can support each other in making that remembrance more than an idea—turning it into a way of living.
Choosing to Love is an invitation to spend a year practicing that path together.
If this speaks to something in you, we would be honored to have you join us.
Program begins January 17, 2027
10% Early Bird Discount Available until October 31, 2026 – Enter coupon code earlybird2027 at checkout.
Practicing Compassion in the Wider World
Radical Compassion means cherishing and caring for all beings—human and non-human—and for our living Earth.
In that spirit, 10% of course revenue from programs offered by the Radical Compassion Institute is distributed to nonprofit organizations supporting climate, democracy, and racial justice initiatives.