An 8-week program that targets the root of stress — not by managing symptoms, but by questioning the self-model that creates them. Structured and manualized, in the rigor of MBSR, extended with nondual practice.
Created by the INT — Institute for Nonduality-Based Therapies. Facilitated by Zachary Perlman & Michael Spurling.
Eight weeksStructured & manualized
Live + on-demandAttend or replay
Grounded in scienceDMN · stress physiology · ACT
Trauma-informedSafety, grounding, titration
Recognize the self-model — the felt sense of a separate, defended "me" — as the quiet engine behind much of your stress.
Tell the seer from the seen: rest as the awareness in which thoughts and feelings appear, so they stop running the show.
Use somatic anchoring to ground in the body and down-regulate the stress response, in a way that stays stable under pressure.
Carry a repeatable awareness inquiry — a direct, gentle method of looking you can return to in any moment.
Move from isolation toward interbeing: the felt connection that interpersonal neurobiology links to a calmer nervous system.
Leave with a daily practice that keeps the shift integrated and lived — not a peak experience that fades by Monday.
Breathing techniques, attention training, and reframing thoughts all help — and they leave the thing generating the stress untouched: the felt sense of a separate self with a world bearing down on it. You get better at managing the pressure. The pressure keeps coming.
NDSR goes one layer deeper, to the self-model itself. When the seam between "me" and experience softens, much of what that self was bracing against simply has less to land on. The aim is not a better-defended you. It is a more spacious one.
What if the stress isn't yours to manage — and the self that feels stressed is the thing worth looking at?
A unified curriculum integrating nondual philosophy, neuroscience, stress psychology, interbeing, devotional and non-theistic frames, trauma-informed practice, and somatic integration.
The self-model that creates stress. Who is the "me" that all of this is happening to — and is it as solid as it feels?
Awareness and its contents. Can the awareness in which a thought appears be the same thing as the thought?
Safety, grounding, and the body. Where does this land in the body — and how do I stay steady while it does?
Looking directly, gently. What happens to the problem when I look for the one who has it?
From isolation to connection. If nothing stands fully apart, where does "my" stress end and the world's begin?
Openness, surrender, and trust. What becomes possible when I stop defending the boundary?
Practice off the cushion. Can this hold up in traffic, in conflict, in an ordinary hard day?
Stabilizing the shift. How do I keep this as a way of living, not a moment that fades?
NDSR is a program of the INT — Institute for Nonduality-Based Therapies, which develops structured, trauma-informed interventions that reframe non-dual insight in empirically grounded terms. The eight-week program was developed and is led by its two creators.
Zach is the creator and developer of NDSR — the culmination of more than two decades studying meditation, nonduality, and comparative spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, and Kashmiri Shaivism. He has extensive experience designing contemplative programs, leading guided meditations, writing spiritually-informed books, and creating online courses, all bridging ancient wisdom with the modern world. His current work aims to evaluate whether NDSR can equal or exceed established programs like MBSR by targeting the root causes of suffering rather than surface-level symptoms.
Mike is the co-creator and co-developer of NDSR — a certified mindfulness teacher dedicated to making transformative contemplative practices accessible, grounded, and scientifically sound. With years of practice in mindfulness, meditation, and consciousness studies, he brings a calm, thoughtful presence to the program. His clarity, embodiment, and direct experience help participants approach non-duality not as a philosophy, but as a practical pathway to reducing stress and suffering in daily life.
Contemplative-neuroscience studies show nondual awareness practices quiet the Default Mode Network — the system tied to rumination and self-referential thinking — correlating with lower stress, anxiety, and depression.
A tightly held, rigid sense of identity is linked to greater emotional suffering. A more fluid, spacious sense of self is linked to wellbeing — which is precisely what this practice cultivates.
Interpersonal neurobiology shows that feeling connected, not isolated, down-regulates the stress response. Nondual interbeing practice cultivates that connection from the inside.
"A kind of optical delusion of consciousness — this feeling of separateness — is the prison we must free ourselves from."
Albert Einstein
Eight weekly sessions in a guided group: teaching, guided practice, and live inquiry, moving through the curriculum together at a steady, trauma-aware pace.
Prefer your own rhythm? Take the full program on-demand. Every session is available as a recording you can replay, pause, and return to as often as you like.
The whole program is built trauma-informed: grounding first, titration over intensity, and stability over breakthroughs — accessible to both clinical and non-clinical participants.
A library of recorded meditations and inquiries for each week, yours to keep and return to.
The week-by-week curriculum, prompts, and space to track what you notice as it unfolds.
The core awareness inquiries in short, portable form — for an ordinary hard day.
A path for keeping the shift alive after week eight, so it becomes a way of living.
Join the next live cohort, or begin on-demand whenever you're ready. Same curriculum, same materials — your pace, your way in.
8 weekly guided sessions · next cohort starting soon
Cohort dates & pricing confirmed at checkout · Questions? Contact
Self-paced · full recording playback · start anytime
Upgrade to a live cohort anytime · Questions? Contact
