Natalie Hynde is a British writer and wellness practitioner who brings a wide range of interests and skill-sets to her work.

An explorer of esoteric and occult topics, she became a student of linguistic philosophy and consciousness-alteration in her twenties.

After being involved in environment activism for many years, she began turning her attention more towards self-development practices such as yoga, tantra, TRE, meditation, ecstatic dance and magick. Yoga retreats followed, aswell as a strong interest in Gabrielle Roth’s 5 rhythms movement map.

Her first novel, The Lies and Tells of Compost Mckenzie, is an extraordinary satire of the fake protest movements dominating eco-Buddhist and anarchist peace activism, by one who has been in the thick of many influential groups. 

Hynde became involved in environment activism in 2013 after joining a local campaign in East Sussex to stop a bypass being built through ancient woodland, and she was adopted as ‘voice of a generation’ in the early days of the anti-fracking movement. She tells a fascinating inside story of its take-over by the Anarcho-Queer Pixies, a fictionalised version of the climate groups that ran things at that time. Miss Hynde shares her feelings about different mind-control techniques and covert undercover practices, and takes a strong position on the loss of autonomy, imagination and personal initiative that seem to come with adherence to a movement with a strong ideological bias. The author’s bizarre and often hilarious experiences are engrossing and the reader will identify with the dangers connected to group-think, and the obedient following of dogmas. The novel concludes with the lead character’s experiences of finding his own sense of a spiritual path after decades of conformity to what are effectively cults run by indoctrinated leaders.