There is a pattern that appears everywhere in nature if you know how to look for it. At the start of 2025, I was given a six-week sabbatical from Londolozi. I spent some of it walking the beaches of Betty’s Bay, a tiny coastal town near Cape Town where I spent childhood summers. One morning, on the windiest of days with sand stinging my skin, I walked the long beach contemplating recent storms in my life. I glanced down and found a fossil in the sand – the spiral imprint of an ancient mollusc shell. There, with waves crashing and wind whipping around me, sat this quiet, patient spiral waiting. It sparked something inside me. I felt deeply connected to this shape, and a profound sense of divine comfort washed over me – a promise written into our very design. It stilled something within me.

Returning to the bush, I began to see spirals everywhere. In the curved sweep of a kudu’s horns reaching skyward. In the elephant’s trunk, that magnificent spiral of strength and tenderness. In a small whirlpool forming in the Sand River. In the Milky Way arcing above us on moonless nights, when you can see our galaxy for what it truly is – a spiral of stars, dust, and ancient light, turning slowly through the cosmos. Out here, far from the glow of cities, standing beneath it after an evening drive with the African night alive around you, you remember that you are standing on a planet that is itself spinning through this spiral, part of this great cosmic dance.

The spiral.

In sacred geometry, the spiral represents growth, evolution, and the cyclical nature of existence. Unlike a circle that returns to exactly where it began, the spiral moves through similar territory but at a different level – always expanding, always deepening. It is the pattern of galaxies and seashells, of DNA and weather systems, it reminds us of Source.

For nine years, Londolozi has been a sacred spiral to me. I arrived here in 2016, a year of drought.

The river was quiet then, reduced to scattered pools between stretches of exposed sand. I came from Cape Town as a massage therapist, trying to maintain the authenticity of what I believed to be a healing art, carrying what I thought wellness was supposed to be. I had left behind the polished veneer of a spa industry that had left me deeply disillusioned. I had lost faith that healing work could be about anything more than transaction, more than trend, more than the performance of care.

I came to Londolozi sceptical, not knowing whether they held wellness’s true intention. Having been exposed to many luxury establishments both abroad and in South Africa, I found that luxury offerings rarely go hand in hand with authentic care.

Within the first week on this sacred land, it was clear that here at Londolozi, space is given for healing to take place. Then in 2018, I was privileged to be part of the opening of the Healing House. I witnessed the deep intention placed by the owners in every design plan, sacred geometry and blueprinted crystals intentionally placed, the Healing House itself a window into the deep green heart of the wilderness. I put my all into stewarding this space with integrity.

Founder and owner Dave Varty gives all staff joining Londolozi the yellow ribbon talk. It’s a talk with many nuances, but I’ve always understood it as this: make your time count. Be where you feel most yourself, where you feel fulfilled. Be in your purpose. Time is precious, use it wisely. It was one of the many moments where I learned Londolozi was different.

But here’s what I’ve learned – purpose isn’t a straight line you walk once and you’re done. It’s not a destination you arrive at and plant your flag.

It’s a spiral.

When you stand at the centre of your spiral, you radiate outward. You magnetize the world around you. You move with grace and gratitude. There’s a resonance between who you are and what you do, between your gifts and how you offer them. Everything flows.

But life is cyclical, and none of us stay at the centre all the time.

Sometimes you spiral outward – frayed, feeling out of control, losing your grip on what once felt solid. The edges can be frightening places. You might feel like you’re coming apart, that the centrifugal force will fling you so far from yourself you’ll never find your way back.

Spiralling out is natural. It’s not a failure. It’s part of the pattern.

The Sand River floods and it dries up. Neither state is permanent. Both are necessary.

What matters is recognizing where you are in the spiral, seeing the signs, and taking the steps necessary to recentre, find stillness and regain momentum. What matters is having the right support around you – people who can see you even when you can’t see yourself, who understand that being off-centre doesn’t mean you’re broken, just that you’re in motion.

The Varty family saw something in me and cultivated it. They recognized that wellness wasn’t just an industry for me – it was a calling, a gift, something sacred. They gave me hope that the intention behind the work could genuinely be about caring for people, about creating spaces for healing rather than performing it. Owner and Creative Director Bronwyn Varty-Laburn has been my north star, always seeing me clearly, reflecting back my own gifts when I doubted them.

One of the principles I deeply appreciate about Londolozi is this: they want people to be in their purpose. They understand that when you’re not, it affects everything around you. A ranger who’s lost their passion for the bush guides differently. A therapist who’s forgotten why they massage is just going through motions. A camp manager who no longer sees the shared humanity of a guest loses the impetus to create an experience of surprise and homecoming. Londolozi creates space for people to recentre, recognizing that the whole is only as strong as the wholeness of its parts.

I remember standing on the yoga deck in those early days, speaking so quietly people had to lean in to hear me. I was often asked to speak louder. My voice was soft and shy, not something I owned. Teaching scared me. Speaking out loud in front of others felt like exposure.

But the yoga deck became a spiral of its own – each class a turn inward and outward, each season a deepening. Slowly, my voice found its resonance. I used to be asked to speak up, speak louder. Now people comment on the calm, soothing cadence of my voice. Now I can hear it.

I didn’t find a louder voice. I found my own voice. There’s a difference.

Some special memories and lessons I will take with me as gifts.

During lockdown, when the world contracted and everything felt uncertain, a small group of us found a joyous ritual in going down to the Sand River. We would slip into those sacred waters together – friends becoming family, the river holding us.

The river was flowing by then. The drought had broken. What had been dry sand and empty riverbeds had become flowing current and abundant again.

I dipped in that water and felt myself moving back toward centre after months of being flung outward by global chaos and personal uncertainty. The river taught me what the spiral already knew: nothing stays the same, everything flows, drought always gives way to rain eventually.

You just have to trust the pattern.

Once you start seeing spirals, you see them everywhere.

In the way a leopard moves through its territory—not in straight lines but in loops and curves, returning to favorite trees and kill sites but never in exactly the same way twice.

In the seasons that wheel through this land—summer to winter to summer again, each one familiar yet different, teaching the same lessons at deeper levels.

In relationships that grow not by linear progression but by circling back to conflicts and joys, going deeper each time, building trust in spirals.

In a marriage that began here, with Phil, my love, my partner in this sacred spiral. Meeting him was its own kind of returning to center—finding home in another person while learning to be more fully myself.

After nine years, I’m leaving Londolozi.

Nine. In numerology, nine is the number of completion, or culmination. It represents the end of a cycle before a new beginning. It is the final single digit, holding within it the wisdom of all the numbers that came before.

Not from the edges, not because I’m spiralling out and need to escape. I’m leaving from my centre. I’m leaving stronger, happier, content, and inspired.

This is what I want to share with you : sometimes the spiral requires you to step off one pattern and onto another. Not because the first one failed you, but because you’ve completed your revolutions there. You’ve learned what that spiral had to teach you. The centre you’ve found now calls you to carry it somewhere new.

I arrived here disillusioned with the wellness industry, my voice unsure, the river in drought.

I’m leaving with a renewed sense of sacred purpose, with a voice that brings rest, as the river flows abundant.

The spiral hasn’t ended. It’s just beginning a new turn.

To the Varty, Varty-Laburns, The Kane Bermans, Maclartys, Souchons and Goodman families that are like old leadwoods in this wilderness. To the Shangaan community whose hands carry us all  —thank you for showing me that business can have soul, that caring for people and caring for wild places are not separate endeavours but the same spiral seen from different angles. That being a part of the Londolozi Family is not just corporate language.

To this land, these animals, this river—thank you for being my greatest teachers. For showing me the pattern in everything. For holding my drought and my abundance with equal grace.

To everyone who has moved through this spiral with me—colleagues who became friends, friends who’ve become family. Guests who became soul connections, creatures who stopped and gifted me your presence—you have all left your marks on my centre. I carry you forward.

If you find yourself at the edges right now, know this: the spiral will bring you back around. Trust the pattern. Seek support. Take the steps, however small, toward your centre.

If you’re feeling lost in your purpose, remember: it’s not a straight line you’ve fallen off of. It’s a spiral, and spirals are meant to curve and turn. You’re not behind. You’re exactly where you need to be to make the next revolution.

And if you’re standing at your centre right now, radiating outward with grace and gratitude – honour that. Rest in it. Knowing it won’t last forever and that’s exactly as it should be. The spiral keeps turning.

Nine years ago, I arrived at Londolozi in drought, searching for water.

I’m leaving with rivers flowing through me.

I have learned what the river knows: that to flow is to both arrive and depart, to nourish and to journey onward—and that the riverbed remembers water even when it runs dry, trusting always that the rains will return.

The spiral continues. May these hands forever be in service to the highest and greatest good.

With profound love and gratitude,
Christina Fox