Brooke McNamara, MFA, is a poet, creativity coach, meditation instructor, and transmitted Zen teacher and lineage holder.
She has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow. She loves to create poems from 3 main ingredients: the raw material of everyday life, wholehearted and visceral listening, and the mind of meditation. For her poetry, Brooke is the recipient of the Charles B. Palmer prize from the Academy of American Poets.
A dancer and writer since childhood, movement, meditation, and poetry have always been her way of sensing meaning in this wild world. From Tinkerbell to Clara in the Nutcracker to some mind-boggling, experimental contemporary performances, Brooke loves engaging mind, body, soul, and spirit to seek and ignite connection on many levels. From 2003-2018, she danced professionally with Malashock & Dancers (San Diego), LEVYdance (San Francisco), Sweet Edge Dance (Denver), and in extensive collaboration making dance-theater duets with Lauren Beale (Boulder).
Brooke has taught at Naropa University in Yoga Studies and at the University of Colorado, Boulder in Dance. She is president and a founding teacher at Dragon Lake Zen, and teaches in-person and online courses and retreats to facilitate the awakening of innate wisdom, compassion, artistry, and play. She continues to study and deepen with her Zen teacher, Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi.
Originally from San Diego, Brooke now lives in Boulder, CO on the unceded territories of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe people, with her husband, Rob, their two sons, Lundin and Orion. They continuously teach her every day how to live in love.
www.BrookeMcNamara.com
www.DragonLakeZen.org