What Is It?

An Invitation Into Your Own Unique Offering To The World

A 7 month program of group learning, earth honouring ritual, creative practice and one to one coaching for supporting you to heed the call of your soul and translate it into form. An Invitation Into Your Own Unique Offering To The World

FEEDING YOUR GENIUS is a 7-month program of consistent group workshop learning and one-to-one coaching with artist-guides Rachel Blackman and Brooke McNamara.

It includes somatic resourcing, creative practice to cultivate your deep knowing and unique instincts, and earth-honouring ritual with a concentrated mid-point retreat.

Feeding Your Genius is lovingly crafted to support you in heeding the calls of your soul and translating them into form. This long-term, multi-layered program will support and challenge you to live into rich authentic resourcing to activate your gifts.

How it Will Work & What to Expect

with Rachel & Brooke

Why This Work & Why Now?

What Wants To Be Born Uniquely Through You?

There is a Generative principle at work through all organic life. This principle courses through you by virtue of your being alive. Your cells, your bones, your dreams and your longings are all emerging from and vibrating with this generative power ~ it is happening even now as you read these words.  


Many of us have not even been taught we are a part of this generative, creative power, let alone how to engage with it and wield it responsibly, wisely, and artfully. When we forget we have access to this power, or forget to call upon it, our world loses enchantment and we sacrifice our agency and our potential.  


The potential the world is longing for us to activate. 


'The most common way 

people give up their power 

is by thinking they don't have any.'


-  Alice Walker


It is not about whether you are deserving of it, or skilled enough. It is part of you, because you are living and you have a responsibility to it. 


More than ever the world needs people who can trust themselves to act on behalf of the aliveness coursing through them. To listen, attend, translate and then to act on it.  


The spirit of this thing calls on you to engage it. It longs to be activated through you and made use of – for the purpose of your soul’s fulfillment and to meet real needs in the world. Perhaps there is something in you that remembers (even distantly) how to transform base metal into gold, and inherently wants to fulfill this capacity. 


The root of the word genius points us to a "guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth" and also "prophetic skill, generative power, and inborn nature.” How do you feed your genius, relate with it, and work well together to become deeply resourced and thriving with your generative power, for yourself and for the world?


What are you going to do with this extraordinary gift? 

Do Not Choose The Lesser Life

'do not choose the lesser life, 

do you hear me. 

do you hear me. 

choose the life that is. yours. 

the life that is seducing your lungs. 

that is dripping down your chin.'

- Nayyirah Waheed

You Are A Human Making

Envisioning, Incubating, Co-creating, Harvesting

Imagine yourself in full partnership with your aliveness.

This doesn’t mean you are always high energy or performing enthusiastic optimism. Instead, it is the feeling of resting into your own bones, here and now, and breathing into the soft space of your heart.

It is the invitation to be tender with all the parts of who you are, knowing each is doing its best at what it perceives its job to be.

Take a moment, if it feels resourcing, to lengthen this next exhale… Imagine yourself softening around - letting go of what can be released, resting into the reality of this moment, giving full permission to be, feel, and even befriend exactly what is here.

Now, as you open into the space inside and around you, what are you genuinely moved to do, and not do? What do you genuinely want?

The historical Buddha said, “Have few desires, but have great ones.” What are your great desires in this life; what do you want to do and be before you die?

And, what is extra - extra striving, extra tension, extra proving? Is it possible to let go a little of the extra, and relax into a deeper longing, an ever-present fire in the belly that wants your attention, a gift hidden somewhere below the surface that wants to be born through you, come into form, and perhaps meet a real need in the world?

Imagine yourself softening, resourcing deeply, and then powerfully cultivating your great gifts and desires. Feel the aliveness now that carries you all along the way. There’s no rush, and simultaneously, there is no time to waste. Our world needs your unique gifts.

Group Learning and Togetherness

Supporting Individual Process through Group Connection

We don’t have to do this work-play alone. It can be powerful, effective, challenging and more fun to play with others in a shared container of resourcing and generating.

Not only that, we are built to be interconnected. Our nervous systems are designed for interconnection and we do best when we are operating in an atmosphere of loving kindness.

Everyone’s efforts root and resonate power into the things we’re calling into form and this connecting can be a weaving and a co-mingling.

Collaborations may arrive; interconnections may prove fertile. Great ideas may spring out of unexpected conversations, creative collisions and happy 'accidents'. Ideas catch fire in people and need people to mobilise and express them. To draw them into form.

Together we are more powerful and more than the sum of our parts.

This program is a rare invitation to cultivate rich intimacy with the souls you are travelling along side. Let us dare to be witnessed in the triumphs, the challenges and the in between moments and to grow all the more sturdy and rich for those moments having being shared.

- Process -

:: phase one :: R E S O U R C E :: (13th March - 30th May)

Deep Resource. Sourcing Nourishment from three Fields - Somatic / Interpersonal / Numinous

:: phase two :: T H R E S H O L D :: (1st June - 6th June retreat)

Cultivating a Generative Practice / Celebration Portal & Commitment Ceremony

:: phase three :: G E N E R A T E :: (12th June - 25th Sept)

Gift Activation - Grit in the Oyster/ Making as Sacred Activism & Exchange / Meeting The Needs Of The World / Remuneration / Bringing Things into Form / Making Sacrifice to Make Sacred

* * *

MORE ABOUT THE THRESHOLD RETREAT

1st June - 6th June - This is currently planned as a live online retreat. There will also be offline explorations as part of this time together so please plan to keep this whole period free. You will get the most out if it, if you allow it to be fully immersive.

All tuition is included in your sign up fee.

MORE ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS

Generally these are at a fixed time on a Thursday and usually happen on the 2nd & 3rd Thursdays of the month. They run for 2 hours, are experientially focused and cover various themes. Some themes will be pre-planned, others will be emergent as the group needs reveal themselves. Brooke & Rachel will co-teach all of the workshops. For dates and times of the live workshops, scroll down.

MORE ABOUT THE INTEGRATION MEET UPS

These 90 minutes sessions are held with the intention of supporting your learning to be further digested through group process and deeper sharing. Also to support group connection for people who may not be able to be present for the live workshops due to time zones and other constraints. They are your spaces to use as you need. They will be lightly facilitated by either Brooke or Rachel and occasionally both. There are 6 scheduled for Thursdays at the usual time (see below).

MORE ABOUT THE REST WEEKS & PEER-LED CAFE SESSIONS

The rest weeks are scheduled for you to get on with your projects, catch up with your peer group, have your monthly coaching session or - you know - REST!

From May, there will also be opportunities for 60 minute peer-led 'cafe' meet ups, which are unfacilitated but offer an opportunity to meet socially and digest together.

MORE ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL COACHING SESSIONS

Individual coaching sessions can be taken at any point during the month according to Brooke & Rachel's availability. Your sign up fee gives you 6 individual sessions. 3 with each teacher and additional sessions are available* as you need at half price for the duration of the program (*subject to availablity).

What You Will Harvest From It - with Brooke & Rachel

Feedback from our 2024 Cohort:

- click/swipe left and right to read more -

Sandra

Infinite thanks - I recovered my identity as an artist and a deep connection and relationship to my own creativity, which I feel like is fully alive and flourishing again.

If you yearn to be moved and to get in touch with the part of yourself which moves, which dreams, which creates, which inspires and gets inspired and expresses itself fully and richly and deliciously and constantly in new ways; and if you also yearn at the same time to step into community and much (needed) nourishment and guidance and self-exploration, then you have come to the right place. This has been a life-changing and life-affirming experience which I would choose time and time again.

Agi

Starting from a whole phase of resourcing was so unusual and so the right move! It was actual experiential evidence to my body each week that rest is worth it for the sake of itself. How differently I felt afterwards has deeply changed what I believed was possible in relating to work, creating, myself, and to my intentions. It was a huge gift to have this perspective be so reinforced, this model of the world that is actually taking nourishment seriously and is therefore able to create from evolving presence. It was a beautiful proof of concept that has since spread onto how I approach most creative endeavours. It’s a bodily felt sense of “I can start from right where I am = I can start from believing I’m enough.” It's led to more freedom and more tangible results than I've had in the years before. Thank you for this!

Laura

The most meaningful thing I received from this programme was Connection... to pretty much everything! To ourselves (body, breath, aliveness, genius, heart, creative flow, generosity, openness and more), each other, the natural world, collective, subtle bodies, ancestors, futures.... genius. Thanks to you both for your beautiful geniuses in devising and holding such a programme!

I have been recommending it to friends and have told them I have never experienced such a sensitively, generously, unconditionally held space by two beautiful kick-arse womenfolk, where nobody was excluded, everyone was important, and we focused on connecting to the things that matter: ourselves as creative beings in a beautiful, abundant, magical world. Group work, 1:1 support, peer group sharing and support, all with an open-hearted love.

Elizabeth

The structure, following seasonal rhythms and themes that built upon each other, was very rich and comprehensive. The intimacy too, resonating souls to participate with. The check-ins via email and videos in between made it feel as live as possible for an online class. A lovely combination of structure and formlessness, of yin and yang, of inner resourcing and outer expression. Organic. Yummy. Attuned.

If you want something, a living little village, to dream with and walk through the creative fires of life with over the course of a season, choose this programme. Brooke & Rachel are wonderful space holders to invoke the questions needed to engage with the edge of your creative life, and the support of community does a lot to buoy the soul on its journey.

Katrina

This programme resulted in a (re)discovery of the wisdom of my own being, and how it yearns to share that with me, an ability to access and connect with my innate genius. I loved the deep resourcing - it was like a first taste of something delicious but rare. The pattern of workshops, integration and rests weeks worked well for me - a regular commitment but with flexibility. I immensely value the true friendship which we have created and the ability to share at this depth with the same small group of people for 7 months. I gained a sense of belonging, being valued and welcome.

This programme is a gift to yourself. It gives you the space to deepen into connection with a group of like-minded souls and to stretch the boundaries of your creative being. You will discover new and amazing things about yourself. There may well be tears, but there will be friends to help you through the tough spots. Brooke and Rachel are magical facilitators who react to the needs of the group. They seem to know exactly which elements to add or remove at the right time to create something succinct and moving. You won't regret it.

F

So much space and permission was given for anything and everything to be ok. Acceptance was set up right from the start and that imbued the energy of the group, which became a very loving, accepting, holding space. This made it easier to relax and open up, be vulnerable and share. The structure was very supportive and the very clear thought and intention put into the course by R&B was evident and appreciated. The somatic sessions were deep and rich and revelatory at times. The poetry that blasted me open! The grounding of the meditation that helped us to stillness and presence. The consistent returning to our intention, vow and truth... like developing a muscle that was going to always serve us. So much was meaningful and I know what I received is and will keep working on me. It's a beautiful, thriving, present, space to creatively nurture a connection/relationship with self...and keep cultivating it! A golden journey.

Erika

I loved the deep resourcing, the building a toolkit of practices. It felt deep, slow, nourishing. I loved the poetry and structure of the retreat. I love you two teaching together - really powerful combo! You are both such potent, powerful beings and skilled teachers/stewards/guides. The 1:1's were super impactful. Overall it felt like a very generous and abundant offering.

If you are looking for a deeply resourcing space, held with deep love and tenderness, in which to deepen your connection to your true nature, heal old wounds and explore your artistic side, then this programme is just perfect. Like a safe, warm womb for your weary soul, allowing you to let the goodness back in.

Erika

I received a space to connect with not only my genius, but also my shadows and darkness, that lead me to exactly where I needed to be. What worked well was following my own agency to go where I needed.

If you are ready to truly ask your soul what it might need from you, take this course. This is some deep resourcing work that is playful and not for the faint of heart, as you will be met with internal resistance that will be held in such a delicate container. There's no other space like it to connect to your genius, your divine, your aliveness, your true self.

Annie

I received delight, challenge, a huge amount of learning, support, inspiration, joy. Things to practice and build on. It was an absolute blast! The structure across the programme as a whole and the responsiveness to adapt to what the group/people needed was wonderful.

It is a unique and precious approach to support you in bringing your aliveness to the world.

Coco

It is a training like no other I have done before. I loved the variety of activities from mindfulness, body-based awareness, poetry, dance, creativity, somatic learnings and so much more. It is both yin and yang and allows spaciousness to discover aspects of yourself that you may not even know are lying dormant. It is restorative and a rich reminder of our humanness. I came away with a deeper connection to my animal body, to the greater animal body of the cosmos, and a sense of community and the diversity of our group.

Dates For Your Diary

DATES FOR THE LIVE WORKSHOPS & INTEGRATION MEET UPS

The basic rhythm of these are 2 x consecutive weeks of workshops on a Thursday that go for 2 hours each, 1 x integration call (also on a Thursday at the same start time, but for 90 minutes), and 1 x rest week each month. With slight adaptations around the midpoint retreat & the ending.

Thursdays in March -

13th & 20th - Workshops - 11am - 1pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm GMT
27th - Integration meet up - 11am - 12.30pm MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm GMT

Thursdays in April -

3rd - REST WEEK
10th & 17th - Workshops - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
24th - Integration meet up - 10am - 11:30am MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm BST

Thursdays in May -

1st - REST WEEK
8th & 15th - Workshops - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
22nd - Integration meet up - 10am - 11.30am MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm BST
29th - REST WEEK

JUNE RETREAT - 1st June - 6th June inclusive

1st June - Intention Setting Gathering - 10am - 11am MDT / 5pm - 6pm BST
2nd June - 6th June - Live retreat, online times are:
9am - 1pm MDT / 4pm - 8pm BST

Thursdays in June -

12th - Integration meet up - 10am - 11.30am MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm BST
19th & 26th - Workshops - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST

Thursdays in July -

3rd - REST WEEK
10th & 17th - Workshops - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
24th - Integration meet up - 10am - 11.30am MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm BST
31st - REST WEEK

Thursdays in August -

7th & 14th - Workshops - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
21st - Integration meet up - 10am - 11.30am MDT / 5pm - 6.30pm BST
28th - REST WEEK

Thursdays in September -

4th - Workshop - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
11th - REST WEEK
18th - Equinox Workshop - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST
25th - Completion Gathering - 10am - 12pm MDT / 5pm - 7pm BST

Curious And Want To Know More?

We are hosting some free mini workshops and Q&As over the next few months to help you make a decision.

We are running 3x opportunities to come and explore what it is like to work with us, with a space for Q&As about the program. 

To check how these relate to your time zone, go here.

The dates for these are listed below. Please click on the date and time that works best for you to sign up. Come to as many as you want! 

~

If you'd like a deeper cut, we ran a 90 minute workshop in 2024 that will give you more of a flavour of how it is to work with us at depth.

SOMATICS & POETRY FOR TENDING TO A SOFTENING HEART - An ever-green workshop with Rachel & Brooke - £40 / £30 GBP (approx $48 / $36 USD)

Investment & What's Included

- 3x 1:1 coaching sessions with each of Brooke & Rachel. So 6x 1:1's all together.

- 14x live groups workshops facilitated by Brooke & Rachel.

- 6x live integration sessions facilitated with either Rachel or Brooke.

- A summer 5 day retreat intensive live, online

- Life time availability of recordings of all the group sessions.

- Intimate peer groups, private off-Facebook community and What's App support.

- Additional 1:1 coaching sessions at half price for the duration of the program (subject to availability). (£75 saving per session)

INVESTMENT

- £3,950.00 GBP

EARLY BIRD price: £3,550.00 GBP (confirm your place via deposit paid prior to 10th January 2025).

Both price brackets are available as either a one-off payment or in up to 10 monthly installments.

Following receipt of your application and follow up zoom call, if it feels like we are all a fit, an upfront non-refundable deposit of £500 GBP will be due upon invitation to the programme to confirm your place. Payment of either the remaining full balance or the first of your installment payments will be due on or before the 28th February 2025. If you are on a payment plan, each installment will be paid via repeat payment on the same date each month.

Cancellation policy for 2025: Your deposit is non-refundable. Those needing to cancel before April 18th will receive back 50% of their remaining tuition paid after deposit. There will be no refunds for cancellations after April 18th.

How to Apply & Next Steps

APPLICATIONS OPEN NOW! CLICK HERE TO APPLY

When you click to Apply, you will be invited to fill out a short application form. You will then be invited to book a 30 minute zoom conversation with Brooke & Rachel. The aim of the zoom call is to get to know you a little better personally and see if we are all an easy fit.

This work is very intimate and not for everybody. It is important we feel like we can all work together in both an individual and group capacity. We will be assuming you are curious about both being self-responsible with your own process, as well as being a generative presence within the group environment.

The program is also a significant financial investment and we want to do everything we can to support you to feel like entering is the right choice for you in this moment. If it is, it will feel like a YES.

Everyone is welcome to apply. No pre-requisites are necessary, although you might find it helpful have an experience of what it is like to be in one of our facilitated spaces. Are we your cup of tea?

APPLICATIONS CLOSE 31ST JANUARY 2025
(Zoom interviews may continue beyond 31st Jan, but all invitations to join are expected to be concluded by mid-February '25)

More About Brooke McNamara

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

More About Rachel Blackman

Rachel Blackman is a Somatic Coach, Trainer and Educator, Mentor, Theatre Maker and Feldenkrais Practitioner.

She trains coaches to work with embodied intelligence at The Somatic School. Themes that really bring her alive include creativity and the generative principle, biological intelligence and supporting change at the level of neuroplasticity.

She is an Animist and and loves to hold spaces that weave together connections between the sacred, the embodied and our biosphere.

Rachel works with people 1:1 and in groups, coaching and teaching embodied intelligence, Earth honouring ritual and creative practice. She is one half of The Aliveness Lab with Kate Daisy Grant, whose aim is making embodied practices that are normally only available in 1:1 contexts, more accessible. She is also the mama of an online space and art project called The Museum of Tiny Failures, which is all about taking the shame out of our non-award winning moments.

In her life as an artist, you are most likely to have seen her as Charra in Matrix Revolutions. She is also an award winning theatre maker and has created 4 full length original plays.

Rachel is down-lineage of - way back - European, Scandinavian, Scottish and English ancestry and more recently, a mixed bag of convicts and settler colonists to Australia, where her family now live mostly on the unceeded territory of the Bungalung and Yugambeh Nations. She is now based in Brighton UK where she lives with her husband Shad and bonus son Akash by the big wild Mama sea.

This photo is by Shad.

www.vibrantbody.co.uk

Images 

Prayer Hands - by Arun Narayanan

Astronaut - vai Unsplash 

Fire - by Benjamin De Young

Ritual Shapes - by Ashley Batz

Ritual Objects - by Todd Quackenbush

Companions - by Cynthia Magana

Pastels - by Peter F

Companions -  by Anthony Da Cruz

Conversation - by Priscilla Du Preez

Moon cycles - by Alexandra Andrews

Spring Path - by Annie Spratt

Leaf reflection - by Javardh

Blank page - by Kelly Sikkema 

Offering - by Annie Spratt

Angled Photographer - by Aziz Acharki

Adventuring Letters - Hector J Rivas

Tomato harvest - by Valentina Ivanova 

Lightning in the desert - by Jonathan Blackman

Composing - by Sound Trap

Sand thrown - by Kunj Parekh

Men chatting  - by Matteus Ferrero

Roots - by Cory Vincent