Awakening to the Poetic ~ A Deeper Dive
Meditation and Poetry for Coming Alive
An Online Summer Intensive:
5-day Small Group Workshop Series + 3 One-on-One Coaching Calls
with Brooke McNamara
Workshop Intensive
We’ll meet Monday-Friday
June 19-23, each day from
9-11am PDT | 10am-noon MDT | 11am-1pm CDT
12-2pm EDT | 5-7pm BST
6-8pm CEST | 9:30-11:30pm IST
All workshops will be held online via Zoom, and recordings will be available for registered participants.
In addition to the 5-day workshop intensive, each participant will schedule 3 one-on-one coaching sessions with Brooke between June 5 - September 29, to explore your artistic and spiritual practice with more depth and focus.
Limited to 15 participants.
In these bewildering times, both our inner and outer worlds are undergoing rapid change. So much is unknown. We may fear becoming overwhelmed or disconnected from the emotional, relational, creative, and spiritual resources we need most right now.
What if there is a dimension of experience always available right here, which is innately meaningful and vital - without cause or condition?
What if it's possible to simply awaken to receiving and transmitting this poetic dimension of being human?
We can tune and open ourselves to the living poetry of life – that which tenderizes the heart, soothes the mind, energizes the body, erupts in sudden laughter, and inspires compassionate action. When we do, we access the world’s innate aliveness, teeming with seen and unseen layers of intimacy, guidance, beauty, humor, and ever-present Awareness awake as it all.
Awakening to the Poetic ~ A Deeper Dive is designed for those students of meditation and poetry with a hunger to deepen the conversation. This will include more focused attention and intentional feedback from both Brooke and other members of the smaller sized cohort in response to each other’s creative work, challenges, questions, and blind spots. While the container will be created to be deeply supportive, we will also offer honest reflections and questions to catalyze each other’s growth.
This intensive is for you if:
- You want more direct contact with Brooke and members of this community dedicated to deepening their practice and craft
- You want more personal, nuanced guidance in meditation, awakening, and spiritual development
- You are ready to receive reflections from a supportive group (in digestible amounts) on what is working well in your writing as well as what could be developed
- You trust yourself to practice being honest, vulnerable, caring and resilient, in both giving and receiving feedback
- You are interested in both small group work (the 5-day intensive) as well as one-on-one coaching from Brooke (the 3 coaching sessions)
- You have a collection of writing to refine OR want to create something brand new within our time together (either is fine)
- You have some kind of commitment to a meditation or mindfulness practice (even if it is new and just emerging)
Meditation harmonizes body, mind, and breath, allowing deep letting go of unnecessary tension and revealing an ever-present Awareness. This deeper nature is our birthright to realize, is not separate from any moment or expression of life, and is refuge when old reference points fall away.
Poetry ushers us into a realm of imagination, soul, and the liminal where we remember or sense things we didn’t know we knew. A realm where we can receive vision or whole-hearted wisdom (Prajna), not available through thinking or the conventional five senses alone. Where we may court and be courted by our muses, guides, or noble daemons. And where we can unfold bits of magic and insight simply by showing up to the page.
“By far the best poetry class I’ve ever done.”
~ Bridget Hanley, Writer, CA
“This course has been medicine for me.”
~ Esi Wildcat,
Artist & Priestess, Los Angeles, CA
"The sessions with Brooke and the community she gathers are gently powerful and powerfully gentle. After every session you have a sense of having had close friends for a visit and you would like them to stay, almost like when you were a kid, playing outside and being called in for dinner — you just want to play a little more…”
~ Igno Van Niekerk,
Author, Photographer, Storyteller, South Africa
How do you awaken and tune to the poetic? Do you remember your ways as a child of connecting to this animate, breathing world?
In these times of rapid change, challenge, and opportunity, it is vital that we connect in brave, supportive community to remind ourselves of the nutrients embedded in reality – the powerful ways that pain and loss carve through our beings, the delicious refreshment of beauty in all its forms, and the ultimate satisfaction of resting as our true nature: vast, unborn, and indestructible.
It is vital that we fuel each other with the wisdom and compassion we receive when we turn our embodied gaze toward subtle, poetic dimensions folded into every moment of being alive.
WORKSHOPS and COACHING SESSIONS WILL INCLUDE:
- Meditation instruction and sitting practice
- Spoken poems and teachings to bring themes alive in your experience
- Writing prompts, guidance on technique and artistry, and time to explore through your own writing
- Focused time for each participant to share their work, questions and challenges, and receive structured feedback and reflections from Brooke and the group
- Guidance in working with the body and nervous system to receive and integrate feedback beneficially
- Interpersonal exploration and time for connection in small groups and big group
- Co-creation of robust relationships and intimate community through consistent creative and spiritual practice together
About Brooke
Brooke Teisui McNamara, MFA, is a poet, teacher, meditation instructor, and ordained monk. She has been a Zen student of Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi since 2010, and before that studied and practiced with Dorothy S. Hunt, a spiritual teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti. Brooke has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow, and has taught at Naropa University in Yoga Studies and CU Boulder in Dance. She lives with her husband and two sons in Boulder, CO on the unceded land of the Hinóno'éí (Arapaho) and Cheyenne nations.
“My central passions were fed to the point where I'm now uncluttering my life to focus more completely on what matters the most to me.”
~ Ernie Tamminga, CA
“This course totally opened the floodgates to my creative flow… I found each session deliciously rich with nourishment & inspiration.”
~ Elizabeth Winheld, Writer, CEO of WINC, Boulder, CO
“My expectations have continually been surpassed. I would highly recommend this course for poetry beginners or seasoned practitioners.”
~ Priya Logan, Aritst, Doula, Mother, Scotland
“I deeply appreciate that you hold this space grounded in your Buddhist practice and as a beautiful bodhisattva-poet-warrior-gentle being!”
~ Sabine, Germany
You are invited to awaken to deeper dimensions of yourself and this life, and to express your honest, beautifully unique, surprising discoveries.
You are invited to remember together our shared infinite heart, and weave visions of play, truth, beauty, and justice, together in community, as a weekly ritual.
I hope you'll say yes to this adventure!