Sally Lewis doesn’t look like your average monk. For starters, she’s female. There’s no shaved head, flowing robes or sense of solitude or self-ascribed poverty. She lives with partner Greg Hopkinson, also a monk, in the South Island alpine paradise of Castle Hill.
Their stylish home is full of pocket-burning Kiwi art that has our photographer salivating with excitement. They love cooking up a storm on their Aga-style stove and entertaining friends. In the summer they head to the sunnier climes of Tauranga, to their holiday home.
In short, there’s nothing monk-like about Sally (56) at all.
But for the past seven years, she’s been an Ishaya, and along with Greg – whom she affectionately calls Hop – and her beloved canine Eddie, she meditates for around two hours a day. It’s a far cry from her former life as a corporate career woman.
But her transition to monkhood has, Sally says, been the ultimate achievement. And no one is more surprised than she is.
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“I thought meditation was for hippies,” she smiles. “But I realised I’d been looking for peace in all the wrong places.”
It was Sally’s relationship with Greg that – both directly and indirectly – led her to become a monk. The pair, who had both previously been married, met through mutual friends in 2005 when Sally was in her mid-40s, and dated for a year.
“Even though I loved Hop, being in a relationship felt like a struggle, so I decided to end it.”
Through psychotherapy, Sally discovered that her difficulty with relationships stemmed from the tragic death of her brother, who was killed in a car accident when she was nine years old.
“I went from a happy-go-lucky girl to having my world turned upside down,” she says. “It was hard to watch my family suffer. I decided love wasn’t safe. It hurts. Don’t let someone get too close because you might lose them.”
Seeking fulfilment through her career, she worked first as a biochemist, then a merchant banker before becoming a winery businesswoman.
“I portrayed myself as happy and successful – but inside, I was miserable. My dog was the only thing I could give unconditional love to – the kind of love that’s so intense it hurts your chest. That was a real motivation to open up and start finding a way to love.”
She tried self-help books and courses. But it was four more years until she found her answer. In that time, she and Greg kept in touch as friends.
Since their break-up, he too had been on a quest, and had found Ishaya Ascension.
“The universe works in magical ways, if you’re open to it,” smiles Sally. “He invited me away for the weekend and it was perfect timing. I could see the changes in him.”
Within weeks she attended a weekend Ishaya course.
“Immediately, I started to experience things,” she says. “We were given techniques for meditation, and by the end of the weekend I had the biggest smile on my face. I was the most peaceful I’d been in years. “I used to have a moment’s peace when I came home and sat down with a glass of wine, but I was managing it all the time.”
Sally, then 49, went on to do a six-month monk training course in Spain, and was given a new name: Aditi.
“My friends and family were worried I’d lost the plot,” she smiles. “But when I came back, my dad gave me a massive hug and said: ‘I’m so relieved! You’re just the same!’ I was – and yet the course had changed every aspect of life for me.”
So much so that Sally and Greg – with help from friends via crowdfunding site Indiegogo – have produced a movie, Choice. Set to screen in local cinemas, it reveals the transformative effects of meditation.
“We went out to our friends around the world looking for case studies, and got dozens of incredible ones back,” says Sally.
From kids at a Mexican foster school, to the pupils at the Cuban National Ballet School, to a dying woman and an ex-raver in England, everyone had a story. Visiting a Mexican prison – where a few years ago 44 prisoners were killed in a riot – was the most powerful experience.
“It was like walking into a meditation retreat,” marvels Sally.
“The peace was palpable. Change only happens when you are sick enough of your behaviour. If a maximum security jail in Mexico can be peaceful as a result of meditation then there is hope for us all. If someone goes away having watched this movie and it gives them the courage to change their life or spend more time in nature, that’s all we want. Everyone’s got their own path, but peace is something we can all have.”
Meditation, says Sally, is undoubtedly the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
“I’m 56 years old and I live life like I am six,” she says. “Not to be childish, but childlike. To be able to front up to life and love unconditionally means everything to me – it brings a tear to my eye.
“I worried I’d end up a zombie sitting on top of the mountain and I thought, ‘I don’t want that, I’d miss my pretty shoes!’ But all it’s done is make me, me.”
