I have a vibrant, strong and warm personality with a highly developed sense of humour, behind which is a serious, enquiring, thoughtful, caring and compassionate being. My wisdom and open heart have been shaped through the fires of deep suffering and unconsciousness earning me the peace, joy, power and light I experience today. I have a deep love and understanding of people.  Living inside this extrovert is a hermit who revels in solitude, nature, music, reading, meditation and reflection.

Please note that Natalia Baker will be taking a sabbatical year to write a book during 2011, but she will continue to teach weekend courses, mainly out of Cape Town, and do her public speaking engagements.

What does Natalia Baker do?

I see myself as opening doors, whereby those who pass through, take steps towards fulfilling their great potential.

Here are some of the ways I engage with the world:

• Facilitating a variety of courses,
• Public speaking (23 engagements in 2008),
• Leading retreats and a mystery school,
• Writing articles for publication in three journals,
• Running full moon meditations for the Cape Town public and
• Counselling when I have time.
• I have made 12 professionally recorded meditation CDs and plan two films and a book.
• SABC3’s Free Spirit used me as their resident book reviewer for many years and also made films about my life and work.
• Other recent television work includes features on Naturally You (DSTV Health Channel) and Journey to the Core (SABC3).

All this work fills me with passion and purpose, and gives me meaning and fulfilment. It succeeds many years as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

Natalia's Biography

Hi! I'm Natalia! Named Natasha. I thought Natasha would rush around with a rose in her teeth and thigh length black leather boots, so I changed my name to Natalia, which resonates with love and service. Love and service is what my life is about, coming out of much self-healing after many years. This is still on-going!

I realize we are in this immense system of growth and evolution and suspect it goes on forever. I choose to surrender and do what needs to be done on myself.

I started teaching metaphysics in 1989. Prior to that I had been a teacher and took up an academic career for 18 years, working at the University of Cape Town.I had a burning desire to find some “truth”, to know myself, to understand this perplexing life and how it works. Why the suffering? Why are we here? What drives us? What gives us meaning? No doubt questions you have asked yourself.

My academic CV was 36 pages but when I switched to teaching metaphysics it was like coming home. I feel passionate about it and it feels as though this is what I ultimately came to do with my life.

I was born in India at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains.Russian mother, English father. Very unsettled childhood: 8 schools in 5 different countries. My brothers and sisters were full, half, adopted and step! Travel, upheaval, much love but also much trauma, heartbreak and conflict, including sexual child abuse. I was lost. I only knew who I was in the most superficial social sense and had no philosophical or religious system to make sense of it.

Through all these years there was an inner light which beckoned me. I could not wait to get into bed at night because I saw visions of angels and illumined beings in the style of the paintings of the old masters, but they were always behind cloud formations. I knew things could be better and I was determined to reach that light.

My early career was varied. I studied music and drama and as a student at London University at the Central School of Speech and Drama, supported myself by working in a factory, being a postman, selling jewelry at Harrods, working as a farm hand. The best job was being an usherette at Covent Garden Opera House and being paid to see the likes of Fonteyn and Nureyev, Maria Callas and Tito Gobi. Incidentally Vanessa Redgrave, Albert Finney and Julie Christie were my contemporaries. O dear, now I have revealed too much!

After I qualified I continued to be immersed in variety: directing and writing plays, set design, doing a stint in a famous marionette company, broadcasting, writing music, folk and jazz singing (I used to sing in a jazz band), playing the piano and guitar and acting. I taught from Grade 1 through to 12 and at two teachers' training colleges and ended up lecturing at UCT.

For 18 years I was deeply involved in Life Line, an international telephone counseling service, as counselor, course facilitator, trainer, referral officer and ending up as Chairperson of Life Line Western Cape and National Vice-Chair. I wish I had the wisdom and understanding I have now for those responsibilities!

My current work has taken me all over South Africa, Zimbabwe, the UK, especially London, and Bahrain.

I was married for 30 years to a wonderful, warm, funny, weathered and grizzly man who described himself as “an old granadilla”! He died in 2000. I have a loving network of friends and family, including 3 delightful step-daughters, and I live on my own in a beautiful house on the water's edge in Marina da Gama, Cape Town.I love the garden. It is my sanity and hobby, as is music, calligraphy and reading. I am a very disciplined person so can get quite rigid with the day to day running of my life. It is a way of coping with the enormous workload, but I try to exercise and meditate daily for an hour each.

In 2008 I was invited to the Oneness University outside Chennai, India twice to do Level 1 and 2 courses. I am now a qualified Oneness Blessing Giver, actually a PDG which stands for Principle Deeksha Giver. I will be returning soon to do the trainer's course as the teaching here is so simple, accessible and profoundly wise. I love their flow, change, appropriateness in every moment. Nothing ever stays the same – and how can it in the energies of today? The last few cells which hold Piscean conditioning said these visits to India were rewards for all the work I have done over the years and were organized by spirit. It was an indescribable blessing to be spiritually fed in this way and gave me renewed vision and excitement.

We are in an extraordinary time on the planet, moving out of a dark cycle and into a Golden Age. The earth is moving from density into a higher frequency and the consequences of our actions return to us at lightening speed, as the light increases exponentially. No-one can hide anymore. Corruption, oppression, greed, atrocities, poverty are all revealed to be healed in the light. Apostasy is everywhere for the old structures of religions, institutions, methodologies cannot hold the higher frequencies. It may look as though things are getting worse but in reality, they are improving. There are victories of justice, peace, righteousness and care of the earth. There is an improvement in integrity. Yes, we still have a long way to go but the road is smoother.

For myself, I feel blessed to be part of this. In fact I have dedicated my life to assisting in this transition. And that does not mean that I think life is heavy. O ye, it has highs and lows, sadness and joy, abundance and lack. It's the way it's designed. I try to surrender to those swings and also jol a lot! How's that?