On entering wild places. You learn, once you finally realise how precious it is, to tread upon this ancient altar, to step a little more gently, a little more naked, into the wild. You strip down to tender, not to show yourself off, or parade your furless body, but in order do less … More The Walk in The Woods
Yoga Barn, Bali: Another guru falls. Vampires and predators have been hiding in the yoga flock. I’ve been crying wolf for a while, and finally there are others speaking out. Sexual predation is not an anomaly out here in Yogaland. It is rife. Pyramid schemes, scams, misuse of persuasion, influence, yoga’s own gifts of siddhis … More Yoga Guru, or Sex Predator? ~ will the real Mark Whitwell please stand up!
What if… the 30 million people across the world who practice yoga were really an army, prepared quietly, and even unawares? What if… the 30 million of us who identify as yogis quietly stood up, rooted in the practice, and announced ourselves as Warriors, all around the Earth? This rage, it has been flickering. Trying … More 30 Million Rising ~ NOW is the time: an open letter to the world’s Yoga Community
Where are the true leaders of the yoga movement? Who are the Good men and women in the spirituality business? When will they rise with the jewels of the practice? And how can you tell if your Yoga Teacher is just another a blood-sucking vampire? The New York Times took a massive bite at the … More Invasion of the Yoga Vampires ~ who will save you from your yoga teacher?
She’s a Jealous, Angry, Bitter Menopausal Bitch ~ that’s the mantra the pretty young spirituality teachers began to chant, like wenches at a lynching, when I upset the Vampires of Yoganesia recently in Bali. A nasty business, but an important story, if you want to know the real enemies of good women, everywhere. I’m … More Once Was Beautiful
The business of body image, shame, spirituality and ideals have undermined our best women for decades. This is the story of how a perfect storm of chocolate cake, sorrow, fear, and an encounter with my own plump self overthrew the yogi curse and redeemed the Goddess who adores good and tubby women. At around 11.44am, … More The Goddess Curve ~ the beauty of being a little bit fat.
2019 in Ubud, Bali: The strange fruit of Yoga sours, bloats and swells on the vine as this town heaves with goddesses, shaman, healers, vampires, food addicts and scams – is it time? can we admit it yet? That there is a worm in the soul of our yoga story? Once upon a Time, on a … More Yoga in Ubud, Bali ~ The Worm in the Fruit
Head injuries, psychotic breaks, burns, sex abuse, eating disorders, suicide, molestation, pyramid schemes, fake shaman, predation, ostracism, bullying, porn and drugs… could Bali’s spirituality business be in crisis? Last week in Bali, Canadian spirituality entrepreneur Nik Wood sustained massive brain and head injuries in an ‘accident’ at a healing retreat led by Marcel Hof, of … More Becoming SuperToxic ~ has Bali’s ‘Spirituality Bubble’ gone bad?
I woke up in a bloodbath after an impromptu cervical biopsy in a luxury surgery in Sydney, Australia. I was supposed to be in safe surgical hands – but what happened in the gynecologist’s chair was an invitation to a spiritual adventure, not a medical one. When I took that road, I was to find … More Cold Knife Vs Blood Rose ~ the dread decisions of Cervical Cancer. Blood Rose Part III
Cancer diagnosis is a sudden, terrifying visa stamp to The Kingdom of The Sick. I took that journey. On the way I was faced with a labyrinth of dread options, strange people, murder stories, nightmares and flickers of hope and brightness that invited me to step in, let go, and fall deeper down the rabbithole. … More The Blood Rose ~ Cervical Cancer ~ the cave you fear to enter. Part II
In 2009 I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and given the choice of emergency radical hysterectomy and radiation – or death within five years. I didnt take the medicine. I ran. And ten years later I want to tell my story of how cancer saved my life and the gift of that terrifying adventure. To … More The Blood Rose ~ the strange gift of cervical cancer
Dread spells of freak wickedry boil and slither over in the corridors of power. There are enemies among us. Imaginations and endocrine systems of individuals, everywhere, are hijacked by a bitter chemistry of fear, sorrow, sickness, despair and addiction … yes friends, it’s wakey, wakey time again: and here is the News… ~ * ~ Whispers … More BEAST ~ oh yes, there is very much a hunt on for your mind!
As I was walking about in the forest, variously jubilant with the surprising honour of being in old growth wilderness, virtually untouched by the claws of man, or even the nasty vipers of ‘connectivity’, and at other times hunched and bitter over the battles and treasons that are this Age, upon us everywhere, I began … More The Book of Leaf
No, thank you, I don’t want another glass of your fancy shiraz While you lecture me on climate change And the horrors of plastic bags And cotton buds. I don’t really think your worm farm Proves much. And your aboriginal art collection Is a living piece of voodoo. Yes, it’s all so very worrying … More On trying to come home…
The way we’re telling this story… is adding the lethal dose of pain and grief, drip by drip, into all our cups, everywhere. Men are carrying the load for a culture weak with the labours of its awakening. But the pain in women everywhere was felt first, and in terrible degree, by our men… first … More Men Walking Wounded
Letters from Ubud: Dark things tread here…. how vampires, creeps and predators are feasting on the soul of the world – and why it actually matters. [Extracts from notes to editor: This mission has gone sideways. Things are derailed. The bad guys are winning. This story is a goddamn shambles! It’s A war zone out … More The Vampire in the Lotus
Part Two of the strange and unlikely story of my quest for freedom from addiction to creeps, weirdos and vampires of the yogic variety, in which I am apprenticed to a Junky Shaman and become the World’s first graduate of the Wild Dragon School in the elite Kung Fu of Magical Sobriety and the Beautiful Arts … More JuNky WiSdOm at the Wild Dragon School for Bewildefied Ladies
Has the Cinderella of the wonderful female power adventure escaped the ugly step-sisters of intimidation and exclusion, only to wander into a pit of vipers? Has Cinderella escaped the ugly sisters at all? T he idea that we live in a cosmos that is one giant vagina has certain limitations. It’s sister idea, right now, is … More Big Trouble in the Yoni-verse ~ walking in the shadow of the Empowered Woman
Weekly spellings in Ubud, Bali, are on offer for the rest of 2018. Come, stir your creative soup, discover the beauty of your true voice, meet other writers, free stuck stories and polish the powerful craft of beautiful writing. Most Mondays, 2pm – 5.30pm Email or ask here for all the info. All levels welcome. … More Magical Circles for Writers
The secret of the beauty way…. is that the pain that comes to slay you, is always the rough magic of the powerful hand that can raise you, up and graced by yonder light. Much of your pain is self-chosen It is the bitter potion By which the physician within you Heals your vision and … More A beautiful crack in the Earth…
My father died in the summer of 1984. At least, it was some time around then. There was no funeral. No grave. It was like nobody really noticed. My brother and I went to school that day, and the day after. Our father died on a rainy night in Sydney, and took his own body, … More Daddy’s Little Secret
So, you want to be a shaman? Or you think the one who advertises those ‘services’ has safe hands for your journey. Stop. Become still. Listen….. The beautiful truth of the wisdom way is that it can never be bought or sold. It will come to you, if it is your time, softly on featherfeet, … More So, you want to be a shaman…
Sting of dread jellyfish, creep of long-fingered yoni botherers, plague of Jedi gigolos and dangerous doses of frog venom…. becoming a whole woman is one magical adventure after another on the rosy quartz isle of Koh Phangan, deep in the Sea of Siam. *This is a fairystory, and it is not bite-sized. It is a … More Death by Frog on Koh Phangan… a woman’s quest to find her soul among the pussy hunters of strange Siam.
An ode to the grand and peculiar magic that awaits us all in the hard corners of our very darkest places. Poverty. My friend, Made,* has it. Made’s world is collapsing. We have been watching it, visibly, sinking into the sand, succumbing to wind and rain before our very eyes these last few days in … More Angels on a Knife-Edge ~ the island of the Gods loses the last of its Good Men
The first time he hit her, he did not leave bruises that could be touched. The second time, he did not leave a mark, but tore her clothes. There are many life-long advantages to a youth dedicated to Rugby. He had the strength to rip her library book clear in half. Cracked horizontally across the … More Beauty Vs Beastie – the dark intimacies of domestic violence.
The Earth, she has her own rites for the making of Earthlings, for the making of Good Women. In an Age where the precious cargo of our inheritance of story is confused, is under assault from the pornography of the market, the rage of the war machine and the dry tongues of our own despair, … More Beautifully, broken – the special damage of a Good Woman.
A real life fairy story from the strange streets of Ubud …. Gather up fair souls, and listen well upon the Wonderful Tale of The Dark Lords of Quiz Night at Ubud’s notorious Fly Cafe. The true story of a difficult path to wisdom, the villains along the way, and the secret of ordinary magic, fiercely guarded by the Cretins of … More Cretins of Quiz ~ the true Legend of the Dark Lords of the Fly Cafe.
One heaped spoonful of heartache, a splash of adoration, three pinches silence, crush of one depression, add a lashing of ecstasy, turn up the volume, hit it with rum and stir that baby well ~ poet Tanya Evanson’s recipe for life on Earth. Published November 2016, The Compulsive Reader, New York If poets tend toward the … More Wham! Bam! and a dose of Shazam! ~ the lady lives to JAM.
‘I’ve got work to do,’ he says. ‘Me and the other writers and song makers. We’ve got to clean up the story, get back to the land, let the dark stories in so we can pass on a better future to our grandchildren. If you want to say it’s too late, that the whole place is going to hell, well, tell that to your kids and see how it feels.’ … More An Absence of Stars – the Dark Art of telling Australia’s True Story.
A writer’s journey to the heart of their story, and the alchemical power of the beautifully written word ~ just 8 places, don’t miss out on the magic! November 2 ~ 7, 2016. US $380 in Ubud, on beautiful Bali. Non-residential, refreshments provided. Limited Places, book early to reserve a place. earlybirds welcome, US350 before October 15. … More WRITE OF PASSAGE ~ the powerful craft of beautiful writing. Nov 2 – 7th in Bali.
For a week now I’ve been in conversations with a bird. She is a small thing. A perky little honeybird who steals from Leonard Cohen … Oh darling, little, sleeping one, what if the wound is really the crack that lets the light come flooding in? I want to write the story of the soulbird and her magic. It may … More The Way the Light Gets in ~ song of the soulbird.
Aussie Tsunami surfer Ross Clarke Jones is a man who rides waves that eat surfers. He tells Jade Richardson why. It was standing on its haunches, biting at the sky. A swelling, growling wall of water; a snarling slice of sea. The biggest wave ever ridden; a freak wall of liquid thunder churned out by El Nino … More The Devil Inside
Bob came to mow the lawn yesterday. I saw him creep through the side gate while I was sorting out my shell collection. He slunk in hunched and filthy. His sticky white legs poking out of saggy King Gees. Bandy ankles thrust into ratty Blunstones, raw with mud and ash and spit from years of grubby labour. … More Good Men, Hurting… a message from the Jasmine King
Come with me for a moment, away from the roar of mad thinking and the crush of despair – there is a voice in the garden, a song in the rice field… I fled back to Bali with a face sucked dry by the Antarctic winds that gnaw on the bones of remote southwest … More Voices from the rice field… how Bali lost it all
A desperate flotilla,
our unquiet beds
strayed the wide back of night
as we, dreamless in Denmark,
alone in the undark,
bobbed fearful
in our silvery seas. … More One night, the moon – dreamless in Denmark
The moon
tiptoed like a fleet of silken fairies
across a busty chorus of cloud,
across the pretty lawn, doused in nightdew
and through a lattice of gum leaves … More The poet, by moonlight.
Lilium xx in her glass, brightly she furls and uncurls her long limbs, xxxxxxdusted xxxxxxwith tiny creatures xxxxxxof light. xx almost naked in the thin glow of this quiet table, beside the car keys and a flotsam of letters with plastic windows, she slow … More Lilium – in her glass, brightly.
The pin-up boy for conservation is now known as The Face of Extinction. Lonesome George stands pickled in New York while whispers surf the streets of his Galapagos home. Was the father of a never-born-generation killed by the scientists who ‘saved him’? Have conservationists wiped another species off the Earth? You hop a bus, ferry and … More The Face of Extinction – who killed Lonesome George? Galapagos diary # 3
If you’re on the path to peace, you’ll find out pretty quick that those be shark-infested waters! A guide for toe-dipping, the Curse of Darwin and who’s who in the spiritual zoo. Twenty years’ down the road less traveled and that gorgeous, lonely path is now some of the most fought-over real estate on the planet. … More Survival of the Sickest – the mess, the cause and how to fix it.
As ayahuasca tourism explodes into a frenzy of expensive retreats, gringo-shamanism, one-night love-ins, and do-it-yourself thrill-seeking across the planet – a shaman from the Amazon sends a postcard on which he writes, only this…. beware the kiss of the vine of death. If you were sick, I mean really – and abandoned on a sandbank in the Amazon -would … More The Bitter Cup: Ayahuasca – beware the hand that serves you
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