Welcome to the Soulful Impact newsletter, where we explore a path to impact and success with a whole new level of fulfillment and freedom.
Hey everyone,
Here’s a summary of some exciting things happening with Soulful Impact right now and some recent lessons I’ve been learning on the journey.
Sending love your way in this season of fertile darkness. May you receive the invitation to turn inward in these shortening days, tend to your inner fire, and connect with the transcendent vision that shines through you like stars burning bright in the midnight sky.
-Brooks 🦅
Announcement: Conscious Coaches Training
We are launching the inaugural cohort of the Soulful Impact Conscious Coaches Training in January. If you’re an experienced coach looking to become more powerful and effective in service of your clients while bringing more consciousness and soul into your coaching and your life, this training is for you.
We have 3 spots left and the price is set to increase on Monday. So if you’re interested in joining, now is the time! See full details below and reach out with any questions.
Arizona Vision Quest: Highlights & Takeaways
Last month, a group of 7 of us gathered in the stunning desert mountains of Cochise Stronghold in Southeast Arizona.
It was one of the most powerful weeks of my life. Profound, joyful, and nourishing. A true feast for the soul.
Since then, I’ve been reflecting on what made the experience so special.
Part of it was our seamless group dynamic — the beautiful collage of what each participant brought to the table, the culture of love and trust we created together, and the way we all supported and challenged each other to step into the fullness of our soul’s true radiance.
It was also really special to have the sweet and romantic experience of falling deeply in love with a new place. I had been to Cochise Stronghold before, and had received a clear “yes” from the place to lead a quest there. (That’s crucial for me, to have a known connection to a place and receive its blessing before bringing people there to quest. Because the place is like my co-guide — even the lead guide — so we need to have a good working relationship.)
Even though I had received that blessing, my relationship with the place was still very new. I hadn’t been to this particular corner of the Stronghold before. I hadn’t been to Dharma Treasure Retreat Center (where we were staying). I didn’t yet know the specific features and personalities of the valleys, peaks, washes, caves, and forests of the land that would be holding my participants through their journeys of being reborn. When I first showed up, I was understandably nervous about what I would find.
It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. I was blown away by the power and the beauty of the place, the vibrancy of life force it emanated, and — most of all — how sweetly, generously, and fully it embraced and supported each one of us and our collective journey as a group.
The thing that most reliably blows me away every time I guide a vision quest is experiencing the love and wisdom that comes through the land and offers each participant exactly the reflection and the experience they most need. It’s a powerful and direct experience of reciprocity — to offer ourselves, our love, our gifts, and our vulnerability to the land, and to be offered such unspeakable blessings in return.
Having such an experience of reciprocity with the more-than-human world in particular fundamentally impacts our understanding of who we are. It brings us home to a deep remembering of our innate wholeness and embodied belonging within the Earth community. That’s the kind of empowerment we need to fully realize, embody, and live into our soul’s vision.
The Magic of Through Me
There’s one more takeaway that stands out above the rest in terms of what made this most recent quest so successful. Of all the quests I’ve guided — and all the other programs or retreats I’ve led for that matter — this one stands out because of the level of flow I was in as the guide.
For the vast majority of the time on the quest, in my present moment experience, there was no “me” doing the guiding. The guiding was happening through me.
Several different participants offered the same reflection to me, unprompted: It was so clear to them that in guiding this quest I was doing exactly what I was born to do — because of how much they could feel me in flow with what was occurring, and because of how perfectly what was coming through me seemed to meet what was needed in the moment. I received these reflections with a lot of gratitude and joy, and reminded them that they too (and you, by the way) were born to do something equally magnificent.
On one level, my flow state on this vision quest was a result of me now having enough experience and repetitions guiding previous quests (and other similar experiences) to have developed the mastery, comfort, and expertise I needed to fully relax into my ownership of the role. I trusted myself, my knowing, and my intuition fully.
It was also a result of the years of work I’ve now done directed toward cultivating that state of Through Me consciousness. Most recently, the dark night of the soul I worked through at the beginning of this year and the major realignments and inner renewals that have occurred in my life since then seem to have helped me stabilize a new level of expanded consciousness and flow state throughout my life.
But the piece I find most interesting and fun is how much this flow state seemed to be directly initiated by the level of challenge I was taking on in guiding this particular quest.
The setting was far from the only thing that felt new for me in Arizona. It was also the first time I had guided a group of this size, duration, and depth on a quest by myself, without a co-guide. Previously, I’d had my friend and mentor Rebecca Wildbear by my side, or someone with a similar level of experience and expertise. Rebecca has been guiding quests for over 15 years, and she led me on my first quest in 2014. (She and I also just released an awesome podcast interview together if you haven’t seen it yet.)
I had also made the somewhat bold decision to document this quest on camera. We are making a short documentary-style film about it, which I am incredibly excited about and look forward to sharing with you when it is ready.
As you can imagine, balancing the logistics of managing the filming process while also being a solo guide AND above all ensuring that the presence of the camera added to rather than detracting from the quality of the participants’ quest experience was quite the mental, emotional, and spiritual juggling act.
Last but not least, I admittedly came into the quest in less-than-ideal form. I had been working pretty hard to assemble the cohort and then had been rebuilding the curriculum for the program from the ground up. Plus I have a family at home, had been prioritizing time with them before going away, and thanks to my beloved and sweet 2-year-old, I hadn’t been sleeping too well. I was on the verge of getting sick.
I continue to learn so much from parenting as a spiritual practice. That’s a topic for a post of its own. But one of the greatest gifts it gives me is the forcing function it creates for me to really slow down and create a sustainable pace for myself. I’m excited to integrate that awareness more fully into preparing for my future quests.
And, this time around, that extra strain turned out to be a real blessing. Mere hours before the participants arrived, I noticed some old familiar mental patterns and anxiety rearing their ugly heads. The inner voices that wanted me to be in complete control and to have everything 100% planned and fully figured out before the week began were understandably freaking out.
The beauty of this was it gave me a prime opportunity to consciously choose to be guiding this quest from a different place. I knew that buying into those old stories and trying to control from a place of anxiety would be a recipe for immediate burnout. If I’d done that, I would have blown myself up. And that would have blown up the quest experience for all the participants too.
There really wasn’t much of a choice. I knew what I had to do: surrender and trust. I offered a prayer, crawled into bed, and rested for a few hours before the participants arrived. I simply chose to allow what would be to be.
I reminded myself in that moment — as I would again several times throughout the week of the quest — that a greater power was working through me. I didn’t need to do it all myself. I didn’t need to control it or figure it all out. In fact, I simply couldn’t. Being at the end of my rope in that way, while also being resourced and aware enough to know what I was doing, created an incredible opportunity for me to fully surrender to the state of flow and Through Me like I never had before.
And then it all worked out better than I ever could have imagined.
The Magic Mushrooms Take Center Stage
I haven’t shared too extensively yet in a public way about my work with plant medicine. There are many reasons for that, ranging from legal liability concerns to my own personal readiness to just fully own it.
Well, I’m excited to share that those concerns no longer seem to be holding me back. I’ve reached a point of comfort and rootedness in my work as a facilitator that I feel comfortable being fully out of the closet about this work.
I’ve also gained enough confidence in the solidity of the new legal landscape here in Colorado — where we decriminalized several psychedelic plant medicines including psilocybin with the passage of Proposition 122 in 2022 — to believe that being public about this work and doing it in the way I am doing it (in full integrity with my training and in compliance with the new laws) does not pose a substantial risk to me or my family.
So, with that being said, I thought I’d share a little update: After several years of working with both cannabis and psilocybin as plant medicines, I have transitioned the focus of my work fully to psilocybin. This has nothing to do with any lack of appreciation or respect for the medicine of cannabis. On the contrary, cannabis may have saved my life. I’m beyond grateful for all that she taught me and the doors she opened for me both as a human being and as a guide.
The reasoning behind my choice to stop working with cannabis has everything to do with the particularities and evolution of my soul’s individual calling. I may share more about that when I’m ready. For now, I’ll just share what I’ve told many friends: My relationship with cannabis was like a beautiful lover who wasn’t meant to be a life partner. There is nothing but love and reverence there between us, and we reached a point of mutual acknowledgement that it was time for us to move on.
This has opened the door for magic mushrooms to take center stage in my ceremony work! Which I am very excited about. I’ve begun facilitating more group ceremonies with psilocybin, whereas previously the majority of my groups were with cannabis and psilocybin was mostly 1:1.
This change has felt really expansive for me, and the first several ceremonies have unfolded beautifully. I’m also particularly excited to be working with an awesome team of two friends, who have been supporting me in leading local circles here in Carbondale. We just led our first public ceremony here last weekend, and are looking forward to planning our next one in the spring.
I’ll leave it there for now. If you’re curious to learn more about the ceremonies we are offering, you can find more details here:
Take care everyone!
-B
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What a beautiful reflection, Brooks. I can feel the radiance of your soul's purpose shining through you, all the way over here in California. Love your story affirming the power of surrender and trust, while being resourced and aware - am grateful for this reminder, like a kind nudging seed that floated over the interwebs and landed in a fertile space for me today. And what a lovely coming out! I trust in mycelial wisdom to know when to emerge, just at the right time. Much love and hugs.