Men's Groups & Men's Work — New Zealand
Essentially Men
A New Zealand organisation offering the Men Being Real weekend workshop, one of the most established initiation experiences available in this country. Many men currently sitting in a men's group in New Zealand came through an Essentially Men workshop before or alongside joining a regular group. Visit website
ManKind Project NZ
The New Zealand arm of the global ManKind Project, offering the New Warrior Training Adventure weekend and ongoing iGroups for men wanting to continue deepening their work. One of the most structured and internationally connected men's work organisations available to NZ men. Visit website
BROS
A New Zealand men's community offering online and in-person men's groups, events, and connection for men across the country. BROS offers "Transformational Experiences in Brotherhood", their mission being "More men around more fires." Visit website
Canterbury Men's Centre
A long-established resource for men in Christchurch and the wider Canterbury region, offering support, information, and connection for men navigating a range of life challenges. Visit website
Men's Health & Wellbeing — New Zealand
Man Alive
A New Zealand men's organisation offering programmes and support for men looking to improve their wellbeing, relationships, and sense of purpose. Visit website
Mental Health Foundation NZ
New Zealand's leading mental health charity, providing information, resources, and advocacy for mental health and wellbeing across Aotearoa. Visit website
Men and Trauma NZ
A New Zealand organisation offering peer support groups and counselling specifically for men who have experienced trauma. Closely complementary to what men's groups offer, with a more focused approach for men dealing with serious trauma. Visit website
Loneliness NZ
A New Zealand charitable trust providing comprehensive information, self-help resources, and online counselling for people experiencing loneliness. Relevant for men navigating isolation, disconnection, or difficult life transitions — and for anyone wanting to better understand the role connection plays in wellbeing. Visit website
Let's End Loneliness
A New Zealand coalition of organisations working together to tackle loneliness and social isolation across Aotearoa. They provide information, advocacy, and resources for people experiencing loneliness, and actively welcome allied organisations to join their network. Visit website
Better Blokes
Better Blokes is a charitable trust providing free peer support for male survivors of sexual abuse, available by phone, text, or in person. Support is led by men who have walked a similar path, in a confidential, client-centred environment where you set the pace. They offer both individual and group peer support, available nationwide. Visit website
The Male Room
Based in Nelson, The Male Room offers peer support and practical help for men navigating mental health challenges, childhood trauma, and difficult life circumstances. As well as formal support services they provide a welcoming drop-in environment, and are part of the Tautoko Tāne Aotearoa national network for male survivors. Visit website
Tautoko Tāne Aotearoa
The national umbrella network for male survivors of sexual abuse in New Zealand, coordinating support services across eleven regions. If you or a man you know is looking for local support, their website is the best place to start. Better Blokes, The Male Room, and Men and Trauma are all member organisations. Visit website
SMART Recovery
An evidence-based alternative to 12-step programmes, SMART supports people dealing with any addictive behaviour — alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, food, internet use and more — through free peer-led group meetings and practical self-management tools. Visit website
Movember NZ
The most recognised men's health brand in New Zealand, raising awareness and funding for men's mental health, suicide prevention, and physical health. Visit website
MENZSHED New Zealand
A registered charity supporting a nationwide network of Men's Sheds — community spaces where men come together to work on projects, share skills, and enjoy good company. With sheds across all regions of New Zealand, it's a practical and social way for men to connect and combat isolation. Visit website
The Yarns Men
A Canterbury-based registered charity creating opportunities for men to connect through good conversation. They offer peer support through caring contacts and regular social events, with a mission to foster connection for working-age men who may be feeling isolated or disconnected. Visit website
Tough Talk
A New Zealand organisation focused on getting men talking honestly about what's happening in their lives, with a particular focus on mental health and wellbeing. Visit website
Rites of Passage & Initiation — New Zealand
Rites of Passage Foundation
A Golden Bay-based organisation working with young men and boys to restore the missing transition from adolescence to adulthood through land-based experiences and elder mentorship. Their programmes include Tracks, a five-day residential for boys 14 and over and their fathers, Rising Sons for boys 8-10, and adult programmes for men at other life transitions including the Good Men Make Tracks weekend. Visit website
The Ascent
A Tauranga-based organisation offering rites of passage programmes for boys aged 14–17, guided by a community of men. They run a fathers and sons weekend and a full five-day immersive programme, with a mission to make rites of passage a normal and accessible part of every boy's development. Visit website
Centre for the Great Turning
A New Zealand centre offering deep ecology, wilderness, and personal transformation programmes rooted in the work of Bill Plotkin, Joanna Macy and others. Relevant for men seeking nature-based initiation and a broader ecological perspective on personal growth. Visit website
Poutama
A five-day rites of passage programme for young men immersed in Te Ao Māori, based in Raglan. A significant and culturally grounded option for Māori men and young men seeking initiation rooted in indigenous tradition. Visit Facebook page
Fathers, Sons and Mentoring — New Zealand
Big Buddy
A New Zealand mentoring programme that has been matching carefully screened volunteer male mentors with boys aged 7 to 17 who don't have a father figure in their lives, for over 27 years. Currently active in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Wellington. Visit website
Kidz Need Dadz
A New Zealand charitable trust supporting fathers to stay connected with their children, with a particular focus on men navigating separation, parenting challenges, and family crisis. Active across Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch. Visit website
Men's Groups & Men's Work — Australia
The Men's Table
An Australian organisation helping men build meaningful male friendships and connection by creating safe, confidential spaces to share. Their model is closely aligned with what men's groups offer and they have been commissioned twice by the National Mental Health Commission to research the benefits of their approach. Visit website
Mens Wellbeing
An Australian not-for-profit offering men's groups, retreats, and their flagship Common Ground programme, a nine-week facilitated course helping men explore the issues and challenges they need to address. Active across Queensland and Victoria. Visit website
Bear Heart
Originally from New Zealand, now based in Melbourne, Bear Heart offers counseling, workshops, and men's work experiences rooted in deep connection to self and others. Visit website
Men's Work — International
ManKind Project International
The global organisation behind the New Warrior Training Adventure, with active communities in more than 40 countries. Relevant for New Zealand men who travel or relocate and want to continue men's work abroad. Visit website
Animas Valley Institute
Bill Plotkin's Colorado-based institute offering nature-based soul initiation programmes rooted in depth psychology and wilderness immersion. Plotkin's books Soulcraft and Wild Mind have influenced a generation of men's work facilitators worldwide. Visit website
The Good Men Project
A US-based online publication exploring what it means to be a good man in the modern world. A broad, accessible resource covering masculinity, relationships, mental health, and personal growth. Visit website
Further Reading
Organised roughly by theme. This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point drawn from books that have shaped men's work and are frequently referenced in circles across Aotearoa and internationally.
The mythopoetic tradition — where much of modern men's work began
Robert Bly — Iron John
The book that launched the modern men's movement. Bly uses the Grimm fairy tale of Iron John — the Wild Man figure who lives at the bottom of a lake — to explore a man's journey into deep masculinity, drawing on Jungian psychology, poetry, and mythology. Iron John and the Wild Man are one and the same: the instinctual, initiatory masculine energy that Bly argues modern men have been cut off from, and must find their way back to.
Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette — King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
A foundational Jungian framework for understanding the four archetypes of mature masculine energy. Directly influential on many men's group traditions including the ManKind Project.
Guy Corneau — Absent Fathers, Lost Sons
A psychoanalytic exploration of how a father's emotional absence shapes men, and what is required to reclaim the masculine initiation that was never received.
Sam Keen — Fire in the Belly
A wide-ranging exploration of what it means to be a man, written at the height of the mythopoetic movement. Keen argues for a masculine identity grounded in passion, purpose, and relationship rather than performance.
Depth psychology and the inner life
Carl Jung — The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
The foundational text behind much of men's work. Jung's exploration of archetypes, the shadow, and the collective unconscious underpins almost every contemporary approach to masculine psychology.
James Hollis — Under Saturn's Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men
A deeply thoughtful Jungian exploration of the wounds men carry and the work required to move beyond them. One of the most psychologically sophisticated books in the men's work space.
Robert A. Johnson — He: Understanding Masculine Psychology
A slim, accessible Jungian analysis of masculine development through the myth of Parsifal and the Holy Grail. A natural companion to Iron John.
Initiation, rites of passage, and soul work
Bill Plotkin — Soulcraft and Wild Mind
Two complementary books from the founder of the Animas Valley Institute. Soulcraft is an immersive guide to nature-based soul initiation drawing on depth psychology and wilderness experience. Wild Mind maps the human psyche through a Jungian and nature-based lens, offering a framework for understanding the healthy and wounded aspects of the self. Together they form one of the most complete bodies of work available on genuine initiation into adulthood.
Richard Rohr — Adam's Return
A Christian contemplative exploration of male initiation, drawing on cross-cultural rites of passage and the five universal truths that initiation teaches men. Accessible to men of all backgrounds.
Joseph Campbell — The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Campbell's mapping of the hero's journey across world mythology. The structural foundation behind much of how we understand initiation, transformation, and the stages of a man's life.
Nature, embodiment, and the living world
David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal
Two deeply original books exploring human perception and our entanglement with the animate earth. The Spell of the Sensuous is the foundational text, drawing on phenomenology and linguistics to argue that human consciousness is inseparable from the living world. Becoming Animal is a more accessible companion, exploring what it means to truly inhabit a body on a breathing, sensing planet. Both are essential reading for men's work that incorporates nature connection, embodied presence, and the Green Man tradition.
Trauma, the body, and healing
Gabor Maté — In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
An exploration of addiction as a response to unmet needs and unresolved trauma. Essential reading for anyone working with men carrying addiction or compulsive patterns.
Peter Levine — Waking the Tiger
A body-based approach to understanding and healing trauma. Relevant for men doing deeper work around past wounds and held emotion.
Relationships, communication, and men's mental health
Steve Biddulph — Manhood
An Australian psychologist's warm and accessible guide to men's lives, written for men who are ready to look honestly at themselves. Widely read in New Zealand and Australian men's circles and a natural entry point for men new to this territory.
M. Scott Peck — The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace
Peck's exploration of what genuine community requires — and why it is so rarely achieved. He maps the stages a group moves through on its way to true community, from pseudo-community and chaos to emptiness and finally real connection. Quietly relevant to anyone trying to build or sustain a men's group.
Terry Real — I Don't Want to Talk About It and The New Rules of Marriage
Two of the most important books in the men's health space, from a therapist who has spent decades working with men and couples. I Don't Want to Talk About It is a groundbreaking exploration of male depression, how it differs from depression in women, why it so often goes unrecognised, and what it takes to heal. The New Rules of Marriage is a practical guide to building genuinely equal and honest partnership. Together they address the relational work that men's groups consistently support men to do.
David Deida — The Way of the Superior Man and Blue Truth
David Deida writes about masculinity, intimacy, and the deeper dimensions of relationship. The Way of the Superior Man is his most widely read book, exploring how men can bring greater purpose, presence, and openness into their lives and relationships. Blue Truth goes deeper into the same territory, with a more spiritual and practice-oriented focus. Both books challenge men to stop settling for emotional numbness and to show up more fully — in relationship, in their work, and in themselves.
Gary Chapman — The Five Love Languages
A widely read and genuinely practical guide to understanding how people give and receive love differently. Useful for men who are working on their closest relationships and want a simple, accessible framework for improving connection and reducing conflict with a partner.
