we do not have to love. we choose to love. - bell hooks
love is the work for which all other work is but preparation. - rainer maria rilke
At the heart and root of b*free is love. b*free has been reimagining rooted beliefs, stories and praxis around wellbeing, care and healing with leaders and teams since 2013. We’re deeply curious about what it means to be well, learn well, do well and create well together for ourselves, each other, the planetary, and future generations.
A.R.T. of WELLBEING CREATORSHIP*
In 2025 we bring to life the A.R.T. of Wellbeing Creatorship. Our aim is to practice and co-create the future of wellbeing right now.
Wellbeing is a lifelong journey, not a static outcome, nor the absence of pain, discomfort, grief or loss. Integral to a whole life, these challenges that are part of our wholeness carry intelligence to foster our adaptation and evolution itself. Wellbeing is more than health; it is holistic, touching all parts of our lives from our physical wellbeing to our social, mental, financial, environmental wellbeing and more. It is relational meaning it can’t happen solely individually. It arises through our relationships, with ourselves, each other and the planet. It encompasses collective and individual healing. It’s shaped by our choices & by what is beyond our choosing. We invite you to consider your own definition.
Creatorship is a co-creative journey of connecting to our agency and potential to expand and transform collective mental models of wellbeing, where they come from and the stories we tell that reinforce them in ourselves, our actions and practices, structures and systems. Creatorship liberates and enlivens the energy of A.R.T. which stands for Awareness, Responsibility and Trust.
A.R.T. is a developmental process of awakening and enacting three Inner A.R.T.s: Self—A.R.T., Relational A.R.T. and Collective A.R.T.
Self A.R.T. liberates Awareness, Responsibility, and Trust in ourselves.
Relational A.R.T. is Self-A.R.T. in practice in our relationships.
Communication through Listening
Collaboration through Presence
Generative Conflict and Co-Creation
Co-Creative Sensemaking, Decisionmaking and Storytelling in Uncertainty
Collective A.R.T. is Self and Relational A.R.T. in practice in collective spaces designed to reveal, attend to and enliven A.R.T. in the relational field of Inter-Independence where our individual and interdependent experiences co-exist.
*Coined by b*free, co-created by everything and everyone
HOW A.R.T. WORKS
Awareness invites us a into a new relationship with our patterns, their roots and the stories we tell. As we develop and expand our awareness, the interconnections between
wellbeing :<>: trauma :<>: care :<>: connection :<>: collaboration :<>: uncertainty :<>: conflict :<>: co-creation :<>: complexity :<>: leadership
become illuminated and we are equipped to now ask: How do these interconnected dimensions of our experience show up at all scales of life, in the self, the collective, and the planetary? What is embodied and patterned in our hearts and souls, heads and hands, ears and feet? Which patterns serve wellbeing? Which do not? Like songs on repeat, which patterns do we consciously and unconsciously re-create through stories, practices, relationships, structures and systems around and within us? Which patterns feel ready to become stronger, change, die, transform? What patterns want to be created anew?
Responsibility is the ability to respond consciously. It is Awareness enacted in practice. It equips to us to respond to the inquiries opened in awareness to be in more choiceful and creative relationship to our wellbeing habits, actions and practices, individually and together. Rather than only defaulting to what is familiar or comfortable, we can expand our set of choices and how we enact them. As we consistently practice Responsibility, we can begin to hear new feedback and signals from within ourselves, each other and the planet.
Trust in ourselves and each other is the practice of listening, being present with and integrating the lessons and messages we receive from this feedback. As we get in our responsibility reps!, our sense of trust changes, expands and deepens revealing new layers of possibility. The instruments of ourselves and our relationships do the same. We begin to sing new stories about wellbeing in ourselves, our relationships and with each other. The developmental feedback loop between awareness, responsibility and trust reshapes and reattunes us.
Like breath and fingers shaping and being shaped by the voice and song of the guitar…
trust creates and attunes our awareness :<>: awareness creates and attunes our responsibility :<>: responsibility creates and attunes our trust.
And we find new space, breath and capability. We liberate stores of energy that were captured by patterns we didn’t even realize we committed to. We find new voice, new heart, new art. We may even have a lot more fun! We may laugh more easily, not because we don’t feel pain, grief, loss or hurt, but because we now trust to dance and sing with it in new ways.
In attuning and reshaping patterns inhabited in the instruments of ourselves and our relationships, we may become so changed that we are Transformed.
HOW WE SERVE
Our work enlivens the A.R.T. of Wellbeing Creatorship in the people we work with. Our client-partners are cross-industry leaders and teams in nonprofits, social enterprise incubators, paradigm-shifting philanthropies and global purpose-driven companies including B-corps. We serve by:
facilitating transformative learning journeys to reimagine mental models, worldviews, language, images, narratives and practices embodied in our heads, hearts and hands around wellbeing, care and healing
A.R.T. of Curating Energy monthlong immersive experiences to catalyze collective wellbeing, healing, adaptive learning and co-creative action
1:1 and group coaching, workshops, & retreat facilitation rooting in wellbeing, care, healing
facilitating generative conflict, restoration and peacemaking
designing rituals, structures and practices of wellbeing and care in organizations.
APPROACH
TRANSDISCIPLINARY: ARTISTIC <—> SCIENTIFIC
Our approach transcends and includes knowledge and practice from research, science, rationality, lived experience, creative practices and the healing arts. We integrate:
Music, play, poetry, movement arts
Storytelling
Embodiment, trauma and psychosomatic healing arts
Neuroscience and adult development psychology
Narrative psychology and transpersonal psychology
Complexity theory
Ancient and modern psychospiritual wisdom
Adaptive leadership and leadership development
Restorative justice and conflict mediation.
PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
We are guided by 2 key principles:
1. Embody what we espouse: We aspire to embody and practice what we say we value in each aspect of how we relate to ourselves, each other, our client-partners and our co-creations. In ourselves, and in our values–driven client-partners, we see and feel the gap between believing, saying and doing. This is a key learning and healing edge, challenge and opportunity for all.
2. Listen deeply and create emergently: We learn and train with world-class researchers, teachers and mentors. We listen deeply, sense what is spoken, unspoken and present, but not addressed in the systems within, between and around us. We prototype new offerings and co-create spaces for dialogue and new stories to emerge. Always aimed at wellbeing, we adapt. Who and how we serve evolves over time:
2013 -2017
Immersive learning experiences, coaching and community for creatives, freelancers, solopreneurs and people leaving the workforce
2015-2024
Healing Leadership* coaching, culture transformation, advising and thought leadership (Workplace as HealingSpace*), retreat and un/conference design/facilitation, generative conflict and restorative peacemaking for nonprofits, philanthropies, values-driven cos/B-corps
2025 ~
The A.R.T. of Wellbeing Creatorship is the body of work that all of our services, described above in “Our Work,” now ground in.
*Healing Leadership is our framework for healing and wellbeing-centered leadership development to reimagine Workplaces as HealingSpaces.
PRACTICE THE FUTURE RIGHT NOW
Every moment is an opportunity to enact the creation of a world we seek to inhabit. We can choose, commit to and practice the future now.
SMALL IS BIG
A small step to practice the future is the creation of the future itself.
TRUST
We trust in the wholeness, wellbeing and creative potential that each person we work with embodies. We trust the wisdom of structure and emergence, both. We structure our work to create the integrity of a human spine, that is interconnected all the way through and carries us. We are simultaneously flexible, welcoming the intelligence* that weaves around and through us by listening, learning and responding, emergently.
*Collective Change Lab identifies 4 Intelligences: Earth, Ancestral, Love, Spirit
The We In US
Who are we? Learn more about our incredible transdisciplinary team of co-creators here.