Our Position

Men all over the world are living in a time of incredible challenges, and beautiful change.

Our world is more expansive, more capable, more connected, more destructive, than ever before.

The role placed on men in these times is to serve and protect.

Not against any common enemy.

But to protect our current world, culture and society by doing what is right.

Our land needs protecting.

Our water needs protecting.

Our women need protecting.

Our children, our sovereignty, our rights.

All of it needs somebody to stand up and make a difference.

Regardless of what you believe or your background, it can be agreed that more integral, balanced, integrated, loving men in this world will have a positive impact on society.

BROS is a small part of a much greater movement that is happening across the globe.
We are proud to be gathering men like you, in hope of making even just a small difference.

Our world is ready.

Our time is now.

Let us rise together.

Aotearoa New Zealand has shockingly high rates of male suicide, domestic violence and substance abuse compared to other countries in the world.

That is not a joke.

To find the root of this, you don’t have to look far to see the various mental, emotional and physical health challenges that many kiwi men face — the seed of isolation and destruction.

We believe that the core wound here is the story we have been told, on two ends of the same spectrum. One end says that we should “harden up” and “have a beer”, to numb our feelings and limit their expression in service of being humble and strong. Tasks and duties come before feelings & emotions. This is a result of being raised by hard men, doing hard things, in a hard world, as the challenges and culture of living in the 20th century did not allow space for feeling. It took the divine power of the masculine force & magnified it to a place of unhealthy leadership and dominance.

The other end of the spectrum says that our primal masculine force is dangerous, scary, predatorial and ‘too much’. This results in the ‘SNAG’ archetype — “Sensitive New Age Guy”, or the ‘Nice Guy’. This model of a man was born out of the more recent rise of feminism, the #MeToo movement, which was born of both anger towards men as well as pride for being women. This created a hyper-sensitive relationship between the traditional masculine primal force and how the lack of constraint of that force impacts feminine. Women wanted men to be more emotional, soft, less dangerous and more sensitive to their needs. As a result, a SNAG is connected to his heart; his emotions, his caring side, perhaps a little too much, and suppresses his primal power to not upset the feminine. He does this at his own peril, for in this action he drains away the very essence that shapes him as a man.

These two contradictory but complimentary ends of the spectrum have created wounds of numbing feelings, excessive aggression, unexpressed anger, on one side, then insecurity, guilt, fear, and shame on the other.

It does not have to be this way.

We can walk the middle path.

The integrated feminine and masculine, within men.

More on this can be found under “Masculine & Feminine Polarity” below.

Connected to our hearts; open, sensitive, caring, present.

And connected to our balls; primal, focused, clear, protective.

All held within the context that men are here to create, protect and lead, AND open, feel and heal.

Our work is to redefine the story of the modern kiwi man, and for men all across the world.

No longer does the wolf hunt on his own.

We move forward together.

Men are not perfect. We never will be. We fuck up, we stumble, we fall. We break the codes of what it means to be in “integrity”, over and over again. This has unfolded since time immemorial, and as our culture evolves, we see more and more scrutiny and lack of acceptance for these mistakes. This is both expansive and limiting for men, depending on their individual circumstances.

The problem is that men who are considered leaders in the “conscious/spiritual/new-age/awakening” spaces are still caught in this cycle of mistakes, despite the pedestal they are often placed (or place themselves) upon. What this creates is a lack of trust in that man, as well as the men around him, and ultimately in the rest of the “awakening” movement itself.

What this work is about is building a community where we are supported to repeatedly begin again. This doesn’t mean unlimited chances or “get out of jail free” - but instead to recognise the conditioning, trauma and unchosen beliefs, and from that place, we hold the energy of compassion for those who make mistakes in the world. It is not our belief that one should be exiled from a community for their inadequate actions, but more, held accountable and supported by that community to heal the wound and start his journey again.

With that said, appropriate action should still be taken for issues that are not in integrity. If a man who is connected to our community has stepped out of line or misrepresented themselves or the BROS movement, and you feel it needs addressing, please contact us here with the details of the incident and we’ll address it accordingly.

We recognise and understand the diversity of choices available for people to be who they would like to be. We equally recognise the public controversy around this topic, as well as understand the varying beliefs within our own community on how this should be handled.

There is a lot of support and advocacy for more feminine qualities in society such as emotional sensitivity, gender fluidity and DIEB (Diversity, Inclusion, Equality and Belonging), and we actively support those in other areas of our lives. Simultaneously, we also believe that men also need movements, acronyms, and new cultural paradigms to allow us to thrive in the modern world

In the spirit of radical inclusivity, we invite any of those who identify as a man to attend our events. We do not allow women, gender fluid, or other non-binary individuals to our events, to respect the privacy and confidentiality and the code of men in which our work operates.

What we are wanting to create is a safe space for men to reclaim their masculinity in a healthy way, and heal the damage that has been done to our own paradigm by the traditional view of masculinity, as well as the SNAG paradigm.

If you identify as a man, you are welcome.

If a part of you identifies as a woman, we respectfully ask that you do not join our spaces as this would disrupt the intention of what we are trying to achieve, in creating a renaissance for men.

Men in our community come from all walks of life. All cultures, races, ethnicities and nationalities are welcome in our space.

As our organisation has been born out of Aotearoa New Zealand, we pay deep respect to the tangata whenua, the original people of this land, and do our best act from a place of humility and reverence for the damage that colonisation has caused. We are sensitive to the wounds created by Te Titriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi) and the important reconciliation work that is being done to decolonize this country and bring our people back into harmonic balance.

Although not all of our core team have Māori blood, we all hold our own deep and profound respective for Māoritanga. Our men are committed to integrating those principles with integrity. With this awareness, we occasionally use Te Reo Māori language and phrases in our communication and experiences, and to inform the work we do.

We lived in a world of duality.

This is simply distinguished by the symbol of yin and yang, from the Taoist philosophy, which indicates that our reality, our world, and we as people, exist in a balance of opposites.

Day and night, hot and cold, sun and moon, birth and death, masculine and feminine.

The feminine force in this worldview is fluid, soft, open, slow, active, soft and soft.

The masculine force in this worldview is steady, structured, fast, still, direct, solid, and strong.

This is not a modern understanding of men and women. These are principles that flow through all aspects of nature and present themselves in surprisingly beautiful ways.

We understand that all humans, men, women and everything in between, have a balance of masculine and feminine essence within them. Some are more masculine, some are more feminine. We have feminine men and masculine women, and vice versa.

This is a controversial topic.

In our current culture, masculine & feminine can be triggering words for some people, as they believe that these principles command or assume the nature of a man being masculine, and a woman to be feminine.

The traditional view is that men are masculine and women are feminine, and that is that. The liberal, progressive view is that we all have both essences within us and therefore some believe we can choose who we want to be.

Our work is not specifically “masculine” or “feminine”, but a range of experiences designed to meet the men of our community where they need support. Some men need to cry and be held in a soft container. Others need accountability, a hard edge, or even a (friendly) punch in the face.

With that said, our work is specifically for men. If you’d like to understand more of what that means, please read our position on LGBTQ+ below.