About Judith

Previously a journalist, editor and travel writer, I’ve played the role of healer, mystic, shaman for more than 35 years.

I wince at those terms. They’re so often used with scant awareness. Yet I can’t do any better. Here’s what they mean:

The healer helps to return a person, place or community to wholeness, when there’s been fracture or dispersal. The mystic translates the overview into everyday life. The shaman embodies the forces of Nature.

This image perfectly expresses what’s so important to me, and to our foundation community - a vast natural world in relation to a relatively small human being.

(Yes, that is me perched on its root.) When we take care of any part of our shared environment, no matter how small, we're are also caring for that part of you and me that depends on so many other forms of life for our existence.

reluctant and invisible

I chose none of this healer, mystic, shaman business.

But I did have in my mid-30s extraordinary experiences that left me with few options. Own up, get on with it and live without limitation. So, I have.

Much of that with next to no fanfare. Yes, I’ve travelled, alone, to places that ‘spoke’ to me. A mountain sacred to the Kallawaya, the itinerant Andean tribe of healers. Into the Taklamakan Desert, north of the Tibetan plateau, to visit, apparently, an ancient Buddhist stupa. To places of revelation in the ‘Holy Land’, sometimes with distant gunfire. I hired the Great Pyramid, the better to understand its sound. But mostly I’ve lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way.

sound

I teach yoga with sound, because sound expresses the harmonics of the human body when in particular asanas or postures. I use my unusual vocal range to by-pass mind and emotion and directly accompany what’s disconnected, or ‘out of tune’, in the individual. Or to meet what’s so very beautiful.

Apparently, the sound might also heal. Meeting with vets on an African wildlife reserve, I was asked if I could help an injured wild lioness for whom they could do no more. She recovered. The sounds also brought two wild male lions at full gallop to the side of our jeep.

don't follow me

Anyone wanting to be rescued, or to follow, to be told what to do, will not realise their unique, individual self. And without that, there’s little chance of experiencing the quiet self-confidence that comes from a cheerful, ever-changing wholesomeness.

Instead of leading, I offer guidance. I encourage. I especially encourage people not to take themselves too seriously. Nor to dramatise the difficulties and challenges that inevitably arise in all lives. I encourage everyone to learn from others. To broaden awareness, knowledge, respect and compassion, the better to practice loving and caring.

playfulness

In my view we are sunk without it. It’s vital to our development in childhood. When we abandon it as adults, we limit our joy in small things. Play re-sets. It clears space for laughter and light-heartedness. I live this with perhaps sometimes infuriating freedom.

the adder

Wild things - wild creatures - sometimes hang out with me. Very likely I don’t much move the air. This summer a large, healthy female adder (male and female distinguishable by colour) would sun herself close by. Me on the garden bench. She about a metre away.

the personal stuff

I am partnered, have sons and grandchildren, and as far as I can tell, am greatly loved. I live part wild, part cultivated. The wild has me lurching about in the surf of a wintry sea, walking barefoot, and swinging from the odd tree. When life’s feeling too jam-packed, I stand on my head. I am 75.