MORNING RITUAL, GROUNDED LIFE

Writing & meditation

ANS DOKTER

Ans Dokter is an avid traveller. She had plans to travel widely in 2020, before Covid-19 put a spanner in the works. She is the owner of Amani House in Hout Bay, an ecofriendly lodge for retreats, and this is where she hunkered down for the better part of the year.

To channel her frustration, she started a process of meditation and writing, eventually signing up for a writing process with Christel Janssen, an author, speaker, medium and acupuncture specialist who is based in Hawaii. ‘I’ve known her for quite some time,’ Ans says. ‘I attended a retreat she had arranged in Hawaii afew years ago, which is how I got into contact with her.’

The two of them work through Ans’s writing every day. ‘At 7am and at 7pm, we have a video call and connect with my writing,’ Ans says. ‘Amazingly, Ihad started out writing about my frustration, but when I was reading it back, I realised that I had begun to change my outlook. I started seeing that, when everything is part of the bigger plan and the bigger picture, it’s okay. From that moment, I became calmer and more of an