Living in the Field of

Beauty

Discover how to build a life focused on the creation and experience of beauty.

Tuesdays 22 + 29 Sept, 6 + 13 + 20 Oct 2026 on Zoom

7pm-8:30pm SAST/ 12pm EST/ 9am PST/ 5pm UK

R2995 (International rate approx $180 USD) or R1995 (for South Africans)

Listen, are you breathing just a little
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver

You get up. Make the coffee.

Outside, the sky shakes out its wings and unfolds in all its morning splendour. You peer through the window, grateful it matches the weather report. You join the daily choreography, swiping and nodding. You say things like "Sure, sounds good!" with the calm authority of someone fluent in the performance. You pick up the kids and realise you can't even recall the drive. A rainbow appears.

"Look, kids, a rainbow!" you say, pointing to the sky. How nice. But it doesn't really touch you. It's more like a background screensaver, something to wade through on your way to your next meeting.

Sometimes you think back to your childhood, a time when the world felt stranger, more alive. That was a long time ago though. Rain is precipitation. Trees are oxygen machines. We've stopped seeing the world we actually live in. We've become very well-informed zombies.

What has happened to us?

We've become very good at knowing about the world while becoming strangely disconnected from experiencing it.

Beauty has been repackaged as something to purchase rather than perceive. It's been flattened into prettiness or perfection, leaving us hungry for something unnamed and largely forgotten. The soul needs beauty as the body needs food. Without it, something in us begins to starve.

What if Beauty can be a way of living?

To live in the field of beauty is to have learned a way of seeing that finds the world alive, addresses it, and is addressed in return. It's what happens when you stop trying to extract something from what's in front of you and start being genuinely available to it. This course teaches you that practice.

Over five weeks you'll learn a way of noticing that pulls you out of your head and into real contact with what's here.

What previous
participants say

Spending 5 Tuesdays with Anel was a privilege for me. She shares magical practical techniques to reconnect you to this mysterious beauty which surrounds our lives.

Anel has shared a life times worth of tools to hone my journey back toward a sense of magical beauty living inside and outside of me. This is no easy feat however shared with total presicion.
So inspiring and came just at the right time for me.

I am beyond grateful and will continue these practices.
Thank you Anel

- Juliet Wells

(Video: Angela Hough)

The Details

What to expect

Week One. After introducing the basic shape of the course, we explore what might be keeping beauty at bay, and I offer an exercise that will begin to dislodge it.
Week Two. This week we look at two different ways of meeting the world. This is the conceptual heart of the course, and we'll be weaving it into all the other sessions, expanding on it week by week. Beauty grows out of one of these ways, while the other can often be an obstacle to our capacity to meet beauty more fully.
Week Three. We consider the power of living into mystery, and how it relates to our capacity for wonder and awe. There is a way of holding the unknown that opens us rather than closes us, and this week explores what that asks of us.
Week Four. We take a deep dive into the three primary beauty practices. These are failproof ways of reconnecting with beauty in hard times, and on their own they would be worth the price of admission.
Week Five. In the sangoma tradition I was initiated into, healing is understood as rejoining what has come apart, and beauty lives in the care of that rejoining. This week asks what it might mean for you to be whole, and offers wholeness not as something to achieve but as a direction you can keep moving toward.

This is for you if:

You have the sense that something in your life has become a little flat.
You want to feel more awake to the world around you.
You miss the sense of wonder you had as a child.
You are interested in beauty as something deeper than aesthetics.
You want to recover a more intimate relationship with ordinary life.

Please Note:

This is not a course in aesthetics or art appreciation. Nor is it an intellectual breakdown of classical philosophy, though we will weave in some of these concepts as part of the practice itself.

The practical details

When: Five consecutive Tuesday evenings, starting 22 September 2026
Time: 7pm SAST (12pm EST, 9am PST, 5pm UK)
Duration: Weeks 1 and 5: two hours per session. Weeks 2, 3 and 4: ninety minutes per session
Where: Online via standing Zoom link.
Cost: R2995 (International rate approx $180 USD) or R1995 (for South Africans)
What you'll need: A small notebook you can tuck into your handbag.
Weekly time commitment: Allow 15 to 30 minutes daily for the practices. They are simple and nourishing rather than another obligation.

My name is Anél

Twenty-five years ago I was initiated as a sangoma in Botswana. That initiation introduced me to an older, deeper way of being in and relating to the world. It taught me that beauty isn't decorative or optional. It's relational. It's what happens when aliveness meets aliveness. It's how we know we're home.

For the past two decades I've woven together ritual, contemplative practice and creative work to help people gently break free from the tamed constraints of modern life.

This course is what I've learned about beauty, distilled into five weeks of actual practices you can use.

FAQ's

What is the Field of Beauty?

The Field of Beauty is a way of describing a particular quality of relationship with the world.

Most of the time, we move through life in a transactional mode. We look at things in terms of what they can do for us, what they mean, what they cost, where they need to take us next. Even beauty can become something we consume.

There is another way of being available to the world. I call it grace mode.

In grace mode, we encounter things without immediately needing to extract something from them. We notice the particularity of a tree, the sound of a voice, the quality of light in a room. We allow ourselves to be affected.

This changes the quality of our experience. The world begins to feel less like a collection of objects and more like something alive that we are participating in.

The Field of Beauty is the space that opens up when we develop this kind of attention.

It's a capacity you can cultivate, through small acts of noticing, receiving and responding.

Do I have to be an artist or creative person?
No. The course is about developing your capacity to notice, experience and respond to beauty. You don't need an artistic practice or any particular creative ability.

What if I miss a session?
All sessions are recorded and available for one month after the course ends.

Can I pay in installments?
Yes. Email me at anel.hamersma@gmail.com to arrange a payment plan. Full payment needs to be in by 22 September when we start.

How much time will I need each week?
Besides the 90-minute live session, allow 15-30 minutes daily for the weekly practice—simple contemplative exercises woven into everyday life.

Is this a religious or spiritual course?
The course draws on contemplative traditions and includes spiritual language, but it's not tied to any specific religion. It invites your own sense of meaning and the sacred.

Refund policy
You can withdraw for a full refund through the end of Week One. After that, the real work is underway and refunds aren't available.

What time zone are you in?
We run at 7pm SAST. That's 12pm EST, 9am PST, 5pm UK. If you're elsewhere, recordings will be available for those who can't join live.