The Global Rise of Men’s Circles - And Where to Find One
Across the world, more men are gathering with intention, creating spaces for deeper conversation, reflection, accountability, and growth. What was once considered unusual, has become part of a wider growing cultural shift toward deeper connection, emotional maturity, accountability, and conscious community. For many men, these gatherings offer something increasingly valuable in modern life: the experience of being seen, heard, and supported within a circle of peers.
At Sacred Grounds CNX in Chiang Mai, we have witnessed how meaningful these spaces can become. Men from different countries and backgrounds often arrive carrying similar questions about purpose, relationships, direction, fatherhood, fulfillment, health, and identity. Beneath different walks of life, there is often a shared desire for connection, clarity, growth, and support. This growing interest in men’s circles reflects a broader movement happening around the world, combining ancient forms of gathering with modern approaches to personal growth, emotional intelligence, embodiment, and conscious masculinity.
Today, men’s circles exist in many forms:
Weekly local men’s groups
Wilderness immersions
Embodiment-based activities
Meditation circles
Fatherhood communities
Online Circles
Men’s Retreats
Each of them carries its own style and approach, yet all point toward a similar human need: meaningful connection and deeper growth.
Why Men’s Circles Are Growing Worldwide
In many traditional cultures, men developed through community. Knowledge, responsibility, accountability, values, and life experience were often shared across generations through mentorship, ritual, craft, storytelling, or communal living. Modern life has changed much of that structure. Many men today live highly connected digital lives while longing for much deeper human connection, grounded community and a deep sense of belonging. Work, ambition, family responsibilities, and constant stimulation can leave little room for honest reflection or supportive male friendships.
At the same time, conversations around masculinity have evolved significantly over the last decade. More men are exploring emotional awareness, nervous system health, mindfulness, embodiment, and relationship skills alongside traditional masculine qualities such as leadership, resilience, discipline, and purpose. This is one reason men’s circles have expanded so rapidly across different countries and cultures.
Men are seeking:
Spaces where they can speak openly
Communities that encourage growth
Relationships built on trust, accountability, and authenticity
Most men’s groups across the globe explore in their own ways emotional healing, spirituality, embodiment, and conscious relationships, combined with practical life integration and leadership. The growing diversity of men’s work reflects the reality that masculinity itself is multifaceted. Men enter this work through different doors and at different stages of life.
What Creates a Healthy Men’s Circle?
The quality of facilitation and group culture shapes the entire experience of a men’s circle. Strong circles tend to cultivate:
Undivided presence
Confidentiality
Consistency
Emotional honesty
Mutual respect
Accountability
Grounded leadership
In healthy men’s work spaces, participants are encouraged to speak from lived experience rather than performance or projection. The atmosphere supports both vulnerability and personal responsibility, allowing men to explore challenges while also developing clarity, strength, and self-awareness. Good facilitators guide the space with maturity and humility. They create structure while allowing genuine connection and insight to emerge organically through the group itself.
Consistency also plays an important role. Trust develops gradually through regular practice, shared experiences, and the willingness to continue showing up with honesty over time. For many men, the greatest value of a circle lies in discovering that meaningful brotherhood can exist alongside individuality, emotional depth, and personal growth.
Different Styles of Men’s Work Around the World
As men’s work has evolved globally, different approaches emerged. Each reflects distinct influences, philosophies, and methodologies. Many groups combine several of these:
Men’s Groups
These groups meet in circles that emphasize emotional awareness, relationship dynamics, trauma healing, communication skills, and mental health. These spaces may incorporate meditation, contemplative practices. Many men are drawn to the combination of sharing with self-inquiry, embodiment, and spiritual depth.
Embodiment-Based Men’s Work
These circles integrate practices such as breathwork, movement, yoga, martial arts, cold exposure, somatic awareness, and nervous system regulation. The focus often centers on helping men reconnect with the body, develop presence, and cultivate resilience.
Archetypal and Mythopoetic Work
Inspired by mythology, symbolism, rites of passage, and masculine archetypes, these circles explore themes such as purpose, shadow integration, leadership, maturity, and identity.
Wilderness and Initiatory Work
Nature-based experiences continue to play an important role in many men’s communities. Retreats involving silence, challenge, reflection, and immersion in the natural world often create powerful opportunities for perspective and transformation.
Fatherhood and Relationship Circles
Many men’s groups today focus specifically on conscious fatherhood, partnership, emotional communication, and family leadership. These circles support men in bringing greater presence and awareness into their closest relationships, as well as supporting some while strugling through separation, divorce and conflicting parenthood.
The richness of the modern men’s work movement comes partly from this diversity. Different men resonate with different approaches depending on personality, life stage, and personal needs.
Chiang Mai and the Growth of Conscious Community
Over the past decade, Chiang Mai has become an international hub for wellness, mindfulness, creativity, and conscious living. The city attracts people interested in:
Yoga
Meditation
Holistic health
Entrepreneurship
Healing arts
Spirituality,
Intentional community
Within this environment, spaces dedicated to authentic connection and personal growth have naturally expanded. Men living in or visiting Chiang Mai often find themselves drawn toward experiences that support deeper self-awareness, meaningful relationships, and grounded community.
At Sacred Grounds CNX, men’s circles are part of a broader vision centered around embodiment, presence, brotherhood, yoga, meditation, and conscious living. The intention is to create a welcoming environment where men can slow down, reconnect with themselves, and engage in sincere conversation within a supportive community.
Many participants discover that even simple practices such as sitting together, listening deeply, sharing honestly, breathing consciously, can create profound shifts in clarity, connection, and perspective.
Men’s Circles Around the World - A Living Directory
Below is a growing list of facilitators, organizations, and communities offering men’s circles and men’s work experiences, workshops and retreats around the world. Each carries its own unique culture, focus, and style of facilitation.
Asia
Malaysia
MyMasterMan - Kuala Lumpur
Focus: Guiding high-performing men to lead with clarity, strength, and purpose, through coaching, speaking, and transformational experiences.
Meetings: Men's circles, retreats, one-to-one coaching, webinars, and corporate programmes.
Website: MyMasterMan
Thailand
Sacred Grounds CNX - Hang Dong, Chiang mai
Focus: Grounded masculinity, embodiment, meditation, yoga, men’s circles, retreats.
Meetings: Weekly men’s circles, workshops, and retreats
Website: Sacred Grounds CNX
Australia
Outback Mind Foundation - Australia
Focus: To improve the mental health of regional Australian men through connection, education, acknowledgment, and acceptance. Prehabilitation rather than rehabilitation.
Meetings: Regular Men’s Circles and retreats
Website: Outback Mind Foundation
Europe
Portugal
Men’s Academy - Portugal / International & Online
Focus: Spaces of initiation, awareness and masculine maturity, supporting men in living with greater presence, responsibility and integrity.
Meetings: Men’s Retreats and Circles
Website: Men’s Academy
United Kingdom
Everyman - UK / International
Focus: “We put guys in rooms together or on trails, or around fires. The rest takes care of itself.”
Meetings: Field trips, workshops, and expeditions
Website: Everyman
Unmasked Man - UK
Focus: Movement of brothers actively discovering what it is to be a man and how to connect from an open undefended heart.
Meetings: Men's retreats, men's transformational coaching & leadership
Website: Unmasked Man
America
Canada
Wholesome Guide - Canada
Focus: Heal the boy within, embody mature masculinity, transform relationships.
Meetings: Courses, workshops, and retreats for men who are ready to improve their relationships, emotions, and lives.
Website: Wholesome Guide
United States
Sacred Sons - USA / International
Focus: embodiment, masculine initiation, ritual, brotherhood
Meetings: online and in-person gatherings
Website: Sacred Sons
The Mankind Project - USA / International
Focus: emotional maturity, accountability, leadership, men’s groups
Meetings: men’s groups worldwide (check the website for more info)
Website: The Mankind Project
Online Communities
Pillar Brotherhood
Focus: A 9-gate initiation for men who are done performing and ready to build something real. Daily practice. Weekly brotherhood. A structure that rewires how you show up.
Meetings: Monthly Online Men’s Circle
Website: Pillar Brotherhood
Rewilding Masculinity
Focus: helping men reclaim grounded, mature masculinity through embodiment, self-inquiry, brotherhood, and purposeful living.
Meetings: Free Monthly Online Men’s Circle, Men’s Retreats and Online Courses.
Website: Rewilding Masculinity
Whatsapp Group: Grounded Man Online Men’s Circle
(would you like your work to be listed here? send us a message with your info)
How to Choose the Right Men’s Circle
Choosing a men’s circle is ultimately a personal process. Different spaces resonate with different men depending on their needs, values, personality, and stage of life. A few qualities are often worth paying attention to:
Grounded Facilitation
Experienced facilitators tend to create spaces that feel both welcoming and structured. Their presence supports openness, clarity, and trust within the group. Participants tend to prefer facilitators that sit at their level, sharing and growing together, modeling vulnerability as strength and one of the highest signs of emotional maturity.
Consistency and Integrity
Healthy circles develop through regular practice and honest relationships over time. Consistency often creates deeper transformation than intensity alone.
Emotional Safety
Men tend to grow most effectively in spaces where honesty, confidentiality, and mutual respect are valued collectively.
Alignment of Values
Where as personal growth through self-reflection, responsibility and accountability is common in most circles, some circles emphasize spirituality, others embodiment, leadership, emotional healing, relationship or fatherhood. Finding a group aligned with your current stage of growth can make a significant difference.
Genuine Human Connection
Many men discover that the most meaningful circles are often the ones where conversation feels natural, grounded, and sincere.
Brotherhood Is Returning
The renewed interest in men’s circles and men’s work in general reflects something important about the times we are living in. Across cultures and generations, more men are recognizing the value of community, self-awareness, emotional maturity, embodiment, and authentic connection. Men’s work has become a meeting point between ancient wisdom and modern psychological understanding, offering practical spaces for reflection, growth, and healthy masculinity, through shared experience.
Sitting in circle is less not about “fixing” ourselves, but rather remembering qualities that already exist in men as archetypes of mature masculinity, beneath the speed and distraction of modern life:
Presence
Emotional honesty
Accountability
Resbonsibility
Self-leadership
Purpose
Direction
Courage
Compassion
Service
As this movement continues to grow on a global scale, it also continues to evolve. New forms of men’s work are emerging that integrate mindfulness, embodiment, self-leadership, spirituality, relational intelligence, and community in grounded and practical ways.
If you are based in Chiang Mai or visiting Northern Thailand, Sacred Grounds CNX hosts regular men’s circles, yoga classes, workshops, and retreats focused on healthy masculinity, meditation, embodiment, and authentic human connection.
