The Courage to Matter
Delia Brett is a transformational coach, yoga teacher, and dancer with 35+ years of experience. Owner of Green Room Yoga and creator of East Van Wisdom School, she guides people to dissolve stuck patterns, reclaim their power, and awaken to deeper purpose and creativity.
I believe that beneath all our yearnings for personal success and happiness lies a yearning even more powerful, more essential to our purpose. The yearning to give all of ourselves. To be a source of love and upliftment for others. To see the power of our love received and multiplied in others' hearts. To make a difference. To break the patterns of shame, lack, and isolation that have plagued us, and to leave this world better than we found it.
You don’t have to be the CEO of a world hunger organization to make a difference. You just need a space to begin letting go of false narratives about power and success and to step out of the games of blame and shame, of judging and comparing. A space to learn the skills of showing up, imperfectly perfect. Just the way you are. Honestly. Authentically. With a willingness to bring the fullness of who you are to bear on your own life.
But how do we get there? How do we learn to recognize what we have to offer, to trust it, and to bring it forward in a world that so often teaches us to stay safe by staying small?
I know something about the yearning to bring what we have to the world and to let it make a difference. I also know something about staying small. I poured myself into my performances, giving everything I had to my art. But I didn’t feel safe speaking with the same passion and honesty in my own voice on the ordinary stage of my life.
For decades, I carried the weight of a non-profit company, a cooperative studio, a choreographic career, a neurodivergent child, and a two-artist, low-income family. I busied myself managing a whole village of other people’s needs and expectations, while never feeling safe enough to include my own. I held it all together on the outside, while on the inside I was falling apart.
I simply couldn’t keep going amid the sleeplessness, the stress, and the invisible labour of being an artist, a mother, and a woman in a culture that did not recognize the value of what I was giving. I had so much to offer, but like so many of us, I had internalized the message that asking for more support, money, opportunity, resources, or connection was selfish. That staying small and accommodating was my only option.
Then I found group coaching.
I discovered the truth was here all along, in us. I discovered that what I needed wasn't selfish, weird, or a burden. It was human. It was essential. My needs were not obstacles to my contribution. They were the very things that made it possible.
I found it in the witnessing, the amplifying, and the holding environment of a group willing to risk opening their hearts to one another. People who could help me see what I couldn’t see in myself, reflecting back the potential and possibility I had lost sight of. As I began to bring more of myself forward, something shifted in those around me as well. We were no longer simply witnessing one another. We opened doors for one another, awakened possibilities, and became part of each other’s becoming.
We need each other. I know this from decades of bringing people together through dance, performance, and creative work. I have seen what happens when people gather around a shared vision, each bringing their own perspective, gifts, courage, and time. Something emerges between us that none of us could create alone. That is what art is all about. Transformation. Synthesis. That is the power of a people willing to bring themselves fully to their work.
Yet we often overlook how much we can achieve when we bring this collaborative visioning into our everyday lives by communicating openly, listening genuinely, and looking beyond our judgments to see in others what we may not yet see in ourselves.
This is not about becoming someone else. It is about making room for more of who you already are and discovering what unfolds when you bring that fuller self into your relationships, work, creativity, and life.
But this kind of change doesn’t happen simply because we understand it intellectually. We need opportunities to practice. We need to be in relationship with others who are willing to meet us honestly, see us beyond the stories we tell ourselves, and help us discover what we might not find on our own. We need a place to experiment, take risks, stumble, learn, and begin again.
The courage to matter: A practice space for growth
The Courage to Matter is the third group coaching program I’ve developed, drawing on my experience with this work's transformative possibilities and decades of work in dance, yoga, embodiment, creativity, and facilitating people through change.
Offered through East Van Wisdom School at Green Room Yoga, this eight-week experience brings together embodied practice, dialogue, writing, creative exploration, contemplative practices, breath, and Energy Codes facilitation. Together, we work with what is here, what gets in the way, and what wants to emerge.
The group is not there to give you answers or tell you who to become. It is a place to practice being seen, being honest, listening deeply, and bringing more of yourself into the room. A place to be witnessed and challenged, to recognize what you carry, and to discover what becomes possible when you stop trying to do it all alone.
Because what becomes possible when we make room for ourselves within one another is still unfolding. The time is now. This is the great work of our lifetime.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Delia Brett
Delia Brett, Coach, Teacher, Facilitator, & Dance Artist
Delia Brett is a transformational coach, embodiment teacher, and yoga instructor with over 23 years of experience. A veteran dance artist and choreographer, she co-directed the interdisciplinary company MACHiNENOiSY for 17 years, creating boundary-pushing productions with youth and adult performers. She is the founder of Art Full Well Coaching and the East Van Wisdom School, and the owner of Green Room Yoga in Vancouver, BC. Delia blends somatics, creativity, and consciousness to help people dissolve stuck patterns, reclaim their power, and reconnect with the wisdom of their bodies. Her work invites others to turn life’s challenges into gateways for growth, clarity, and spiritual awakening.
