Who
Anél Hamersma is a communications specialist with a systemic lens, dedicated to cultivating the skills that make us profoundly human—deep listening, creativity, storytelling, and meaningful connection. She helps individuals and teams develop an ‘Ecology of Expression,’ a practice that fosters richer dialogue, clearer thinking, and a deeper sense of belonging. An award-winning speaker, she holds an honours degree in performance from the University of Cape Town and was named Toastmasters International Western Cape Champion for Public Speaking in 2018.
Anél’s career began in Corporate Theatre, designing theatrical interventions to address complex workplace challenges. She has collaborated with organizations across industries, including Old Mutual, De Beers, Media24, and the City of Tshwane. Beyond corporate settings, she facilitates transformative encounters with the Self, weaving together diverse modalities—art, storytelling, performance, and indigenous wisdom.
In 2001, she was initiated as a sangoma into the Ngonyama Lodge in Botswana, deepening her understanding of soul and its role in human expression. She explores ways to reconnect people with their ‘wild self’—the untamed, creative force that resists domestication. Rooted in the Slow Movement, wabi-sabi aesthetics, and deep ecology, her work invites participants to step beyond the constraints of modern life and into the leafy green depths of their own being.
Based in Cape Town, Anél leads workshops, lectures, and retreats that bridge ancient wisdom with contemporary communication, reminding us that in an increasingly inhuman world, re-membering our humanness may be the most vital act of all.
“Ah, not to be cut off,
Not through the slightest partition
Shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner - what is it?
If not the intensified sky,
Hurled through with birds and deep
With the winds of homecoming.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Singing the soul into Being
The Long and the Short of it
In 2001 I parted the broekie-lace curtains of my Afrikaanse Boer heritage and eloped with my ancestors to become a sangoma.
I wondered excitedly:
What might I find in Botswana? And what was this 'thwasa' business anyway?
What I found was something unexpected.
It was another way of life; one that was 'ensouled'.
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In his book 'Care of the Soul' Thomas Moore says:
"Soul is not a thing, but a quality or dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, genuineness, heart and personal substance."
The soul thrums in moments of abandon.
When you're dancing, or laughing, or really letting go in one way or another, the doors fly open and soul comes bouncing out, shaking its behind.
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It has a wild quality, natural and other.
This soul business was totally foreign to me... And somehow terribly familiar?
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What a marvelous upgrade to life!
Now I could move towards a direction that had nothing to do with winning, or the nagging perfectionism that had plagued me. Success meant something totally different now.
It was a healing balm for my weary soul.
But when I moved back to Cape Town soul felt overwhelmed and slowly slithered away into the cement cracks of the city.
At that point I began exploring ways to cultivate and incorporate this thing called 'soulfulness' into my modern, city-based world.
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For 99% of our race’s history being ensouled was our primary way of engaging with the world.
Now, as we increasingly communicate through screens and the speed of technological breakthroughs double daily, re-membering our own inner sense of humanness in an increasingly inhuman world may very well mean the difference between our survival and extinction.
