About the session
- how to transform fear into creative fuel. Discover the relationship between fear and courage, and how befriending uncomfortable sensations can unlock deeper artistic expression and authentic sharing of your work.
- how interconnectedness dissolves creative blocks. Understand how touching into "inter-being" and beloved community can help you move beyond self-preservation instincts and trust that your creative impulses are inherently nourishing.
- the layers beneath creative resistance. Explore how fear, care, tenderness, and spaciousness work together, and how recognizing these layers can help you share your art even when it feels vulnerable.
- how meditation and creative practice support each other. Discover the fertile intersection between Zen meditation and natural creative expression, and how touching your depths through stillness naturally overflows into artistic expression.
You'll be guided by Brooke in a practice for accessing courage through embodied awareness. Through writing and guided meditation, you'll explore how to move through fear, touch into care, and find the spacious refuge that supports courageous creative action.
This guided practice invites you to write about two moments of courage—one you witnessed and one you lived—then leads you through a somatic meditation to feel the layers beneath courageous action: the fear, the care, the tenderness, and finally the spacious refuge of interconnectedness. By moving through these embodied sensations, you'll discover how courage becomes more accessible when you can touch the heart underneath the fear and trust the field of compassion that connects us all.
About the speaker
Brooke McNamara, MFA, is an award-winning poet, author, and transmitted Zen teacher and lineage holder. She has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow, and is working on a forthcoming book of teachings, stories and poems due out with Shambhala Publications in 2027. She loves to write poems from 3 main ingredients: the raw material of everyday life, wholehearted and visceral listening, and the mind of meditation. Brooke has taught at Naropa University in Yoga Studies and CU Boulder in Dance. She teaches in-person and online courses and retreats to facilitate the awakening of innate wisdom, compassion, artistry, and play. She lives with her husband and two sons in Boulder, CO.
