Kate Hennessy : Freelance Writer

Most tourists who visit Peru’s Sacred Valley will whip around its famed capital, Cusco, then beeline it for iconic Incan ruin, Machu Picchu. Both are wondrous sights and tourists looking for photographs and souvenirs will return home satisfied. But for seekers rather than sightseers, the Sacred Valley also offers ayahuasca: a potent, hallucinogenic, shamanic healing medicine.

My experience begins a month before Peru while visiting a friend in California. At a dinner party I mention I’m interested in shamanic healing. A guest says he’s just returned from an ayahuasca retreat in Iquitos in Peru’s Amazon jungle. Humid and buggy, Iquitos is the centre of Peru’s ‘psychedelic tourism’ boom but he warns me Iquitos is intense for first-timers.

“Go to the Sacred Valley. It’s gentler there.”

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You might be lucky enough to have felt it yourself. A connection with a place that’s both instant and profound. Maybe it’s the light, the culture, or the architecture. Whatever it is, you fit. For fashion designer Frances Carrington, this place was Dehli when she arrived in 1995. Denied her dream to do aid work in Africa, Frances was assigned a place by Australian Volunteers Abroad in India instead.

“I’d visited a friend in South Africa and I really wanted to return to work somewhere in Africa, anywhere! Arriving in Dehli was a real shock. The pollution was extreme and there were so many people. I didn’t know how to respond to the beggars, especially children or mothers with babies. I was wondering what I’d done, signing up to stay here for two years.”

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Observe all the men huffing and puffing in gyms today and it’s clear many are just as concerned about body image as women are believed to be. But could the activities lots of men enjoy, like weight-training or high-impact sports, have a perfect counterbalance in yoga? Yoga experts say ‘yes’. They also list reduced stress, deeper emotional insight, better life balance and less ego-related conflicts and worries as major benefits for men as well as greatly increased flexibility and strength. Sounds like the making of a dream man, right?

But men are much less likely to do yoga than women: around 90% of Australian yoga participants are women. Ironic, considering yoga was originally practiced in India exclusively by men.

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Wellbeing Magazine, January 2011

In a sparse, working-class home in Calgary, Canada, a mother is feeding formula to her newborn baby. ‘It’s best for the baby’. The mother is 20-years-old and this is her third child, a girl named Sherry. It’s 1967 and the formula is still laced with monosodium glutamate (MSG). Her first two babies were breastfed and later she returns to breastfeeding for her fourth. It’s cheaper that way.

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GATEWAY TO RUGGED DRAMA OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S KIMBERLEY REGION, BROOME IS FULL OF COLOUR AND CHARM. EVEN WHEN IT’S WET DURING ‘THE DRY’.

Legend has it that a couple travelling from Darwin to Perth were once debating where to do their laundry. ‘Derby or Broome?’ they mused. Years after deciding on Broome, the two blow-ins are still there, happily ensnared by the laid-back lifestyle in the stunning Western Australian town.

The self-guided beach walk at Eco Beach

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