Feedback from our Students

Mentoring

“Our one on one mentor time is akin to having the best heart to heart with your most insightful and loving friend over coffee. The takeaways are as plentiful as our laughs. (She also has a great sense of humor!) Jacqui has a knack for taking a thing, flipping it on its head and showing it to you from another angle that might otherwise never occur to you. I treasure the time I share with Jac and all I have and will continue to learn from her. She and The Broad Place have been a gift to my life.”

Elizabeth, USA

“I’m in my 50’s and have family with two adult kids. I’m the CEO of one of Australia’s largest agribusinesses, which is an incredibly rewarding job that demands a huge amount of me. I travel frequently and need to work across multiple countries, time zones, and manage a business that has lots of people, a lot of animals and even more land. I was unsure about learning to meditate, but Jacqui expertly guided me through learning Integrated Meditation with such flexibility that I managed to fit in 20 minutes twice a day, or close to it, and to not feel guilty when I didn’t. The impact was immediate, and I felt more connected, calmer and mindful. I’ve been meditating when traveling, every day at work and anywhere I can fit it in essentially. I have also been working with Jac one on one and have found her guidance through mentoring to be a gamechanger for me. As a leader and a person, she has helped me create the time and space to reflect and approach everything I do intentionally and with more empathy and presence. I would highly recommend learning Integrated Meditation and Mentoring with The Broad Place to anyone that wants to not just work at their peak performance but also be a kinder, more creative, compassionate person.”

Hugh Killen

“As an Executive in the Corporate world (COO of AACo when I started meditating) life can be stressful, add in a pandemic, an IVF journey, a few natural disasters and the desire to be at my best all the time, well something was going to break. Enter The Broad Place and Jacqui Lewis, a customised, tailored program to help me get balance, take the noise out of my head (manage my overachieving ego), to be kinder to myself and others and to bring clarity, creativity and yes, enable me to fit more into my already crazy schedule by adding 2 x 20 mins (another 40 mins) into my day. Sounds crazy hey… I completed the course online and like most things, threw myself into the routine of two twenty minute sessions everyday. Alongside this I completed a 6 month mentoring course with Jacqui which allowed me to deep dive into areas for self-development, to bring a little kindness to myself and to be a better human to my kids, my partner and my teams. At one stage, to help manage my ego and the stress of work alongside a healthy dose of imposter syndrome I had to have daily meetings with my ego… it was hilarious, and I felt like a complete nutter, but it worked. It has been a game changer and I wish someone had introduced me to meditation many years ago. It has made me happier, a better mother and partner (my husband will strongly attest to this) and a better human. I have shared this journey with many friends and colleagues who have now also taken up the opportunity with Jacqui to invest in a better life. One friend messaged the other day to say thanks and “I thought stress and frustration and anger were just (a big) part of life, but they’re not there when you have meditation in your back pocket…” It has worked differently for all, the only similar outcome is happiness, clarity and the opportunity to enjoy and be present. I will continue to meditate now forever as the benefits of being clear, creative, present and whole mean I am the best version of me and that I generally can get everything into my day as I don’t waste time stressing or obsessing over issues, other people etc. Thanks Jacqui and the Broad Place for helping make the world a better place.”

Anna Speer

General

“The Creativity, Clarity and Consciousness Workshop was perfectly timed to kickstart my 2018. I love that you pushed us to get serious about what is truly important and non-negotiable to us and that we must audit and edit to make sure that the things that make us a whole human being are taking centre stage in our lives. The workshop was a perfect mix of listening and interacting with other attendees. I loved hearing everyone’s experiences and commitments to themselves for the year ahead. Super motivating! The toolkits provided will be so valuable throughout the year to keep in check whether my fears are actually real or whether it is the ego trying to keep me down. As always I love how you fuse ancient knowledge with western science and provide real world and personal examples. I left the workshop feeling motivated, committed and with tools to ensure I am living a high grade life… and also full of delicious nutritious food and cake. Yum!”

Kirsty Smith

“To have a moment in life where you feel completely welcome, completely understood and embraced by those you don’t know even in the absence of words, is an indescribable gift. To experience such a place leaves one feeling humbled, gracious and honoured.
You will not find these spaces or opportunities often in life and with Jac and the Broad Place you will find something significant and lasting. With deep deep gratitude and love, thank you for the work you do.”

Helen Coutts

“The sessions so skillfully facilitated by Jac provided a safe and judgment free space for amazing growth both individually and as a community of like minded women. The practical tools I have learned are invaluable and enriched my life greatly. The ability for Jac to personally tailor nuanced content and NOT promote a ‘one size fits all’ approach is truly remarkable.”

Kathleen Williams

“Delving into the different archetypes helped me to make some overdue decisions, reignited my creativity and reminded me how much making can contribute to my happiness. Jac is a very special teacher – insightful, caring, engaging and funny – and I continue to reap the benefits from this course. So will you!”

Gabe Cramb

“I signed up at a time when I was feeling really blah. My self esteem felt hard to access and I could feel my mental health declining. It’s hard to put into words the power of being seen, heard and held in a respectful mature group of women, especially if you live alone. Jac’s ability to facilitate an online group in a gentle, grounded and compassionate way is so impressive. It is obvious how much preparation she gives to the sessions. The meditations and the questions she asked us to investigate within ourselves were really helpful. It felt so liberating to try on new ways of being me and allowed me to connect with a playful side of myself that I’d forgotten. I walked away a more confident woman with new practices and some very helpful avenues of inquiry for myself when that confidence falters again, which I know it will. I have no hesitation in recommending this course.”

Jody Vassallo

“The teachings that Jacqui shares are so helpful, and being able to delve into these with a supportive and sharing group of other women through the live calls and chat group creates a powerful energy. It has given me the encouragement to explore and utilise these tools and teachings in my day to day life. The blend of philosophy (drawing on many traditions like Zen, Vedic, Buddhism) as well as psychology, neuroscience, archetypes, guided meditations, group discussions, journalling and reflections keep the course dynamic and interesting.”

Louise Siverton

“I discovered The Broad Place after I resigned from my job last year to have a career break and some time to reset and reflect. I was feeling burnt out from a challenging few years in the public health sector, had lost my self confidence, and my inner critic voice was at an all time high, something I had never experienced before! I was looking to find my true self again. I really love Jac’s enthusiasm, passion, style, practical approach and humour, Jac really does keep it real! I now have the tools to face each and every part of my life with renewed energy and focus, including successfully and excitedly moving my career into a new direction! I find it easier to drop the thoughts in my life that no longer serve me and embrace what does with an open heart. Jac has provided a range of tools as well as her rich and evolving knowledge to fill my mind with confidence and wisdom like nothing I have ever experienced before. I highly recommend The Broad Place, it’s been life changing!”

Louise Hogan

“Burnt out and exhausted after a particularly difficult project, I read one of Jac’s letters at just the right moment. It led me to a series of one-on-one mentoring sessions with Jac that have provided clarity and changed my perspective and approach to work and self-care in the best possible way. Jac is a deep well of knowledge and a brilliant communicator, the perfect blend of substance, heart and enthusiasm with just the right amount of hilarious irreverence. I cannot recommend Jac’s mentoring highly enough. Do it!”

Student of The Broad Place

“The course was ground-breaking – the knowledge that was shared was a perfect mix of ancient tradition adapted for our present time, near-science, and tuns of inspiration. The practical side of the course was incredible too – very accessible and soft yet super profound. Just a few days into this new practice I’m experiencing great improvement in my day-to-day experience. The whole experience was also fun and an absolute delight to be taught by Jac who’s animated, entertaining and super-insightful all at once.”

Freya

“Over the last two years, I have had the privilege of being a student of Jacqui for Integrated Meditation, on retreat in India and most recently through private mentorship. Jacqui is a vast trove of knowledge and her manner of teaching is open and transparent, fiercely honest and loving. Our one on one mentor time is akin to having the best heart to heart with your most insightful and loving friend over coffee. The takeaways are as plentiful as our laughs. (She also has a great sense of humor!) Jacqui has a knack for taking a thing, flipping it on its head and showing it to you from another angle that might otherwise never occur to you. I treasure the time I share with Jac and all I have and will continue to learn from her. She and The Broad Place have been a gift to my life.”

Elizabeth, USA

“Learning with Jacqui exceeded my hopes. Jac is available, encouraging and kind, and has a real gift for fostering curiosity and inquiry while holding the space with a beautiful sense of play and joy. Her wealth of knowledge is staggering and all of her teaching is peppered with insight and wisdom. It was precisely the kind of teaching that my thirsty and enthusiastic mind needs.”

Nicole Chipperland

Integrated Meditation

“I took Jacqui’s Integrated Meditation Course and it was way beyond expectations – beautiful energy, high vibe, invaluable knowledge, incredible teaching skills and, most importantly, I learnt how to integrate 2x20minutes meditation into my daily schedule. And it’s safe to say it’s the very first time that I don’t feel any obligation or resistance towards it. I simply sit and meditate, with compassion and ease, I look forward to it. 100% worth the value and I have already taken on the next course – Enhance. Can not recommend it enough. Thank you Jacqui and The Broad Place!”

Mateja Naralocnik

“I discovered The Broad Place at a time in my life when I was feeling low. Like, really low. Was this all there really was? From my first meeting with Jac, I knew I was on the right path. She literally scraped me off the ground and helped me pull the pieces of my life back together. Learning meditation was just the beginning, but what an integral first step. I learnt that this twice daily discipline would give me the space I needed to further develop my true self. I now have the tools to face each and every part of my life head on. I have been able to drop the stories in my life that no longer serve me and embrace what does with love, heart and compassion. I couldn’t recommend The Broad Place highly enough – wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever you are – I promise you, life will be better.”

Kate Pascoe Squires

“It had long been a wish of mine to travel to the Broad Place in Palm Beach and learn the art of Vedic meditation with Jacqui. I finally made it – and the experience exceeded my expectations 💗

Thank you Jac for making me feel instantly welcome – and part of your Broad Place family. You are wise beyond your years and generous with your knowledge and learnings. Your enthusiasm and love for what you do is inspiring and heart felt. I am truely grateful to be counted among your students and look forward to seeing where this new skill takes me. In gratitude,”

Tess Kasper

Retreats

“I could not imagine a more idyllic environment for a meditation retreat than Byron Bay and the Atlantic. The setting, the vibes, the energy there was calm, serene, creative, blissful and beautiful. The food was nourishing and grounding and absolutely delicious. That alone would’ve been enough for an amazing retreat!! Enter The Broad Place who are some of the most kind, loving and compassionate people I have ever met. They facilitated the most inspiring retreat. I have wanting to learn formal meditation for so long and they taught it in such a way that it was not the least bit intimidating, it just felt like coming home. I have never felt more grateful that this opportunity was placed in my path. The way everything was planned flowed effortlessly and felt so supportive. I learned more than I possibly could have imagined. If there is any part of you that feels called to this, don’t hesitate. The Broad Place and Jac especially are endlessly patient, responsive, available, warm and inspiring. No matter what, this retreat will exceed all of your expectations.

Thank you all from the bottom of my grateful heart!!!!”

Zoe Howard

“Thank you so much for the incredible space and spirit to truly expand. You come and wave a wand with the right meaning and intentions around the wand to give us confidence to grow and be the self we wish to be. You are a Wizard Jacs. You make the thoughts feel actionable and real and with this we can make them more so. Thank you for being the Broad Place Wizard Jac”

Tara Riddell

“The Broad Place retreats have been a highlight of my spiritual journey the past few years, and I look forward to attending whenever I can. They’re little mini getaways for my mind and soul where I can decompress, fall apart and come back together again. I always leave feeling lighter, brighter, with more clarity and alignment. So many things make these retreats special – from Jac’s teachings and philosophies on life, the delicious and nurturing catering, and the collective supportive energy of other attendees who all have a story to share and contribution to make. Jac pours so much love into each of her events and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for purpose and meaning
”

Hazel Ip

“An entire day of guided introspection by The Broad Place’s nourishing (in ALL the ways) ways it a treat in itself. The bonus is all the takehomes that stay impregnated in your brain. Some smack you in between the eyes then and there, others trickle down and others are there planted for you when you might need to access them later.
What a day of true nourishment in every sense of the word”

Megan Morton

Meditation Teacher Training

“Studying mediation teacher training with Jac has been hugely insightful. The program is flexible and full of self exploration and inquiry. Jac’s knowledge is endless and deep and she is an incredibly authentic person with deep care for her students. It is a wonderful introduction to teaching and self practice and has been a joyful experience’.”

Alex Davids

“It has been an absolute pleasure to learn with Jac. The raw, real honest conversations have made the teacher training not only enjoyable but it has allowed for real transformation and the deepest learning environment. The freedom to explore such deep conversations takes both skill and courage to explore and Jac has made this look effortless. I can’t recommend this course highly enough.”

Jacinta Mcdonell

“The Meditation Teacher Training has been hugely transformative for me as a person, for my own practice and for the relationships with people around me. It’s strange because I can not point a finger at what exactly is different but there has been a huge shift in the way I am and the way I relate to myself and the world. Jacqui is one of the best teachers I have ever had a privilege to learn from – a well of knowledge, witty, humble, she really is a human in the best sense of the word. I could listen to her talking for hours. Technical support is also great, Shearry was always available for questions and solving technical issues. Thank you!“

Mateja Naraločnik

“Jacqui is, hands down, one of the best teachers I have worked with in any discipline. Her deep commitment to learning and self-inquiry shines through in her teaching. Combining wisdom from a number of different lineages – from Vedic to Zen, the 2023 Meditation Teacher Training program allowed me to take a dive into the unknown and into a space I had been deeply curious about for a number of years.

What made me take the plunge and train to be a teacher? I wanted to stop just dipping my toe into the process of self-inquiry, which had been grounded in a meditation practice that was unfocussed and irregular. But I wanted to dive head-first into an immersive experience that helped me to shine a light on what it means to exist in this world, and what it means to be me! The five month program taught me a lot about the different practices of meditation, the philosophy, the neuroscience – and techniques to share this with my future students.

And I knew Jacqui was the teacher for me because we both share the same thirst for knowledge (and Jac has a recommendation for a book or a technique or a teacher to further your knowledge on just about any topic you can throw at her!).“

Alicia Mollaun

“I participated in the Mediation Immersion and Meditation Teacher Training with Jacqui from July 2023 to January 2024. The immersion was such an expansive time, learning new techniques and sitting daily in the new experiences. It came at a very turbulent time in my life and it was so fortuitous to deepen and grow my resilience toolkit during that time. It was very profound.

The Teacher Training portion was expansive, but in very different ways. We dug in and looked at our egos, the promises and pitfalls of teaching, and journaled in thought provoking ways. Surprisingly this turned my experience of journaling from one of ‘I absolutely detest this’ to an understanding of how revealing and insightful it can be. That is no mean feat!

Learning with Jacqui exceeded my hopes. Jac is available, encouraging and kind, and has a real gift for fostering curiosity and inquiry while holding the space with a beautiful sense of play and joy. Her wealth of knowledge is staggering and all of her teaching is peppered with insight and wisdom. It was precisely the kind of teaching that my thirsty and enthusiastic mind needs. “

Thank you, thank you. Much love x – Nicole Chipperfield

“I started my meditation teacher training with a good dose of skepticism, mainly because I felt I was too new to meditation to be able to start teaching it. At the same time, I had a thirst for knowledge and wanted to deepen my practice so I thought a teacher training course would be able to satisfy at least part of that. I chose Jac’s course guided by a gut feeling and now that the course has ended I understood why. Jac is an exceptionally gifted teacher. Passionate, warm, authentic, and incredibly knowledgeable. Together with her teachings, she generously shared bits and pieces of her own life experiences making everything so much more relatable and fun. She truly walks the walk and you feel it. Her absolute disdain for hierarchy and dogma is refreshing and it made me understand that my fears are just limiting beliefs I put on myself. The act of sharing a life-changing practice such as meditation is a profoundly generous act rather than an expression of the ego and therefore all the thoughts of not being good enough, or not prepared enough, or not knowledgeable enough, crumble in front of such a simple and powerful truth. This is just the beginning of what I hope will be a very long and rich path ahead, and I want to thank Jac from the bottom of my heart for getting me started on it.

I am excited to see what’s next.”

Mariella Candela

“I recently completed the Meditation Teacher Training course for the second time with Jac from the broad place. I can honestly say that it was as amazing as the first time. Perhaps I was able to immerse myself a little deeper into the studies as I had also completed IM a few months prior, but I was able to go deeper into what had come up for me in those previous 12 months with teaching. More questions.

I was able to take much from Jac and my fellow students. Everyone has different questions about teaching styles, the techniques, limiting beliefs about teaching and what ‘showing up’ looks like, but it’s funny how the same questions resonate with us all.

And in her usual style, Jac was amazing, knowledgeable, hilarious and always her authentic and real self, which makes the whole learning experience so much more enjoyable. Did I mention hilarious? I laughed every live call.

If you are looking to learn from someone in relation to teaching meditation, then I can not recommend Jac and the broad place enough. You will most likely make life long connections and have an absolute blast along the way.”

Daniel Whiteley

“The teachings and exercises of the meditation teacher training were a joy and I did not want the course to end. Jac’s is a great storyteller and her teachings are both fun and insightful.

The diversity of the meditation teaching protocols allows freedom to develop your own meditation style and to help craft the right meditation practice for your students.

The admin support and online resources make the course very accessible and easy to follow along at your own pace.

I feel more confident to step forward as a meditation teacher after completing The Broad Place MTT.”

Sandy Kilgour

“The Broad Place MTT was one of the best gifts I have given myself. Over 6 months I deepened my meditation practice from something I used to ‘do’ to combat fatigue, to a practice that genuinely brings me into my heart and closer to ‘consciousness, clarity and creativity’, as Jac said it would.

Jac’s decades of direct experience with different ancient philosophies and practices, as well as her study in neuroscience shines through her teaching and her approach to teaching multi-modality. Learning different philosophies and practices like, concentration, contemplation, mantra and kriya was powerful in keeping me intellectually and spiritually engaged and is what makes this course so unique.

With humor, humility, and an unwavering commitment to her students and her own practice, Jac is an inspiring teacher who I will continue to work with for years to come… inc. India Retreat!

The other part of the course that I loved, was that even though it was online, I was able to build beautiful relationships with others in the group. Even after the course has ended, I still keep in contact with a few in my course and we have continued to support each other in our personal practice and our endeavours in teaching.”

Marisha Malcolm

Move from Chaos To Clarity – In Just 5 Days

Chaos To Clarity 5-Day Challenge