FROM HOLLYWOOD TO THE HIMALAYAS

Sattva Soul’s Celine Wallace shares her extraordinary Ayurvedic health journey.

Celine Wallace was always a very active child, chasing a dream with big ambitions, and those ambitions led her to Hollywood, where she lived and worked as an actress and reality producer for more than a decade. It wasn’t until one day in her late twenties, after living on the hamster wheel of the Hollywood entertainment industry, that she began collapsing.

One morning she went to a Pilates class, opened her car door at 6am on Melrose Ave, West Hollywood, and blacked out as she fell to the floor. She woke up in Cedars Senai Hospital with a 10k ambulance bill and no insurance.

This then led her on a wild goose chase, trying to heal herself, where she went on a series of appointments from doctor to doctor, pharmaceutical prescription to prescription, leading from pill to pill.

“I had one pill to sleep and another pill to wake up, but my blackouts and seizures kept happening,” says Wallace.

Eventually, after a year of living in this cloudy fog of medications with no answers, she took her healing into her own hands and moved from Hollywood to the Himalayas, India, to heal her body.

“I met an Ayurvedic doctor, and she had the answers for all the symptoms I’d been experiencing. I had a severe Pitta Vikruti (imbalance) where my body was filled with inflammation and acidity, and my nervous system was dysregulated after years of living on little-no sleep, high-stress jobs, fuelled by fasting and ca eine, and my body was simply shutting down to protect itself,” she explains. “Within a month, the natural protocols I was on, like Ashwagandha to manage my cortisol, and new lifestyle choices, had me feeling back to my old self. I have never had another blackout or seizure since.”

With such a turnaround in her health it is not surprising that Wallace decided to train to be an Ayurveda practitioner.

“After healing, I felt a renewed sense of purpose beyond the Hollywood entertainment industry. It was a redirection that, through all my pain, I had gained so much wisdom about our innate bodily processes. So I decided to become an Ayurvedic practitioner to share this information with women before they reach burnout or have to fly to the other side of the world and get as sick as I did to find the answers.”

Wallace went on to study at Gurajat University in India. Then she followed her mentor Dr. Udara to Sri Lanka, where she is the head of the Department of Ayurveda for the Sri Lankan Government.

“Through her teachings, I learned how to make physical Dosha diagnoses of patients, prepare and do Panchakarma, create specific herbal remedy preparations, and study all the di erent Ayurvedic herbs and their purposes with her and local farmers on sustainable herbal farms,” Wallace explains.

Creating her own Ayurvedic supplements line followed, though the process was utterly organic.

On returning to LA and inspired by all she had learned, she wanted to share her wisdom with others and began teaching women’s wellness retreats between LA and Bali which she called Sattva Soul. Wallace wanted to create a women’s community for like-minded and inspired women to come together, learn tools to live a better quality of life, heal themselves and meet others on an evolutionary journey.

Sattva Soul was a global women’s retreat company for five years before it evolved into organic Ayurvedic supplements.

“Our guests at events or retreats always asked me about Ayurvedic herbs. I had experienced such pure forms of herbal preparations in South Asia, India, and Sri Lanka that I didn’t feel comfortable recommending anything on the market. So I would source raw products from the organic, sustainable farms I studied at to ensure they got the best quality and that the local farmers were supported.

“Eventually, my order list got too long to bring back in my suitcase, which led to us starting the company and using lab testing and professional manufacturing. I’m proud to say we still source all our raw ingredients from the farms I started with.”

The word ‘sattva’ means ‘balance’ in Sanskrit, and through her experience many years ago of being so out of balance, it resonated for Wallace.

“When we have a ‘balanced soul,’ our lives follow the natural cyclical rhythm of life, and everything that is for us falls into place, and everything that is not for us falls away. Only with resistance do we find ‘dis-ease’ or ama (toxins) that form in the mind/body,” she says.

As New Zealand’s first Ayurvedic practitioner brand, Sattva Soul is leading the way with organic, sustainable, lab-tested, and medicinal-grade premium products. It is beyond just a product, with Wallace, the founder, an Ayurvedic practitioner and someone who has experienced many of the issues customers experience.

“We back our products with retreats and events to create a community. By creating a community, we help our customers to feel empowered with a new self-health model that encourages self-health ownership, where health is transparent, accessible, and empowering!” she says. There’s also a Sattva Soul podcast on Apple and Spotify, where Wallace interviews thought leaders and health experts.

Sattva Soul’s Organic Ashwagandha, for stress and sleep, is its best-seller, which has sold out five times this last year.

“We’ve also launched two new products, our Organic Shatavari for hormones and vitality – a traditional Ayurvedic plant from the asparagus family, and an adaptogenic herb for pregnancy and to ease symptoms of menopause,” says Wallace. “And our second product is our Organic Triphala and Turmeric gut capsules, which are for digestion issues like bloating, slow metabolism, and calming gut acidity. As we all know, 95 per cent of our serotonin (happiness chemical) is produced in our gut, so if our gut isn’t happy, likelihood our brain isn’t happy either, so that is flying out to many grateful customers right now.”

For a list of stockists throughout New Zealand visit sattvasoul.co.nz