Spiritual Nutrition: Energetic medicine you can eat

Spiritual Nutrition is a concept brought to life by naturopath, reiki healer and proud dog mum, Catherine Saliba. Her mission is to connect people back to themselves through natural and energetic medicine.

Catherine's journey is "far from a straight line". In our interview, we learn about her entrepreneurial success story and her delicious Nourishing Treats, handmade with love.

Tell us about Spiritual Nutrition and how this unique journey began.

Spiritual Nutrition was born from a long journey back to my truest nature. It is all about leading from the heart and I create products, and offer services to help others connect back with themselves. This journey essentially began with my previous business: The Pantry Detox (TPD). I started TPD to share my Naturopathic knowledge, love of cooking and eating healthy food, as well as help others clean out their pantries and fill them with more nutritious options. I created four healthy vegan/gluten-free snacks in the form of protein balls to sell to my clients and online. However, while I was on this journey of advocating a healthy lifestyle, I had not been feeling well for quite some time.

Nourishing Treats

In August 2015, I discovered that I had a severe overgrowth of Strep in my gut that was causing chronic fatigue and anxiety, as well as a multitude of gastrointestinal issues and food allergies. After one month of treating the Strep with antibiotics and herbal medicine, I started feeling better but it was not enough to completely combat it.

I began to venture down the energetic medicine path, seeing a kinesiologist, a homeopath and a very intuitive osteopath. As I peeled back the layers, I discovered that I had walked a great distance away from myself. With the help of these practitioners, I began to find myself and come back into balance. With most major inner shifts like this, an outer shift begins to happen too. My long-term relationship and marriage began to slowly dismantle. I sadly found myself in a life that I didn't fit into anymore and realised that if I stayed, I couldn't continue to flourish and grow as my truest self.

By February 2017, my relationship was over and I knew in my heart that TPD was also coming to a close. I knew that if I was going to continue my life as an entrepreneur, my business had to evolve with me. By June 2017 I was ready to birth Spiritual Nutrition. The beginning of a very unique multidimensional business.

Tell us about your current range of edible, nourishing treats and what inspired you to create them.

The five Nourishing Treats are all organic, vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar free. They are handmade with a lot of love.

Having used energetic medicine so extensively on my healing journey, I knew that I needed to share my journey and this way of coming back to our truest nature with a wider audience.

So, I decided to infuse unique Australian Bush Flower Essences into the treats to support our emotional well-being. They offer a more multidimensional experience than your average protein ball, hence the name ‘Nourishing Treat’. Each treat is named after a crystal that emits energy aligned with the energy of the respective flower essences. These essences work with a specific chakra in your body to help bring about balance. They also come with an affirmation in each packet.

Nourishing Treats flavours include:

Carnelian (Strength): Cacao, coconut

Citrine (Vitality): Lemon, coconut

Cinnabar (Grounding): Apple, cinnamon

Ruby (Creativity): Peanut butter, strawberry

Aventurine (Clarity): Peppermint, cacao

You can buy them online here.

As a naturopath and energetic healer, what are your top 3 tips to leading a healthy, fulfilled life with purpose?

1. Choosing ourselves each and every day. Which means always checking in with our heart space and asking this simple question: “does choosing to do this or saying yes to this choose me or abandon me?”

2. Asking ourselves how we wish to feel so that we constantly align with what our soul needs most. This includes what we eat, who we hang out with, what we do for work, and so on.

3. Walking toward the things that we are resisting and most fearful of, and not cutting corners with our self- care.

You may look at these tips and think, “why hasn’t she mentioned anything about healthy eating and exercise?!” While both of those things are very important, if we are not doing the above, all the healthy eating and exercise will only help to a certain extent. It is our emotional well-being and the way in which we are caring for ourselves energetically that is the total game changer.

Walk us through a typical work day for you.

Oh, there is no ‘typical’ day in the life of an entrepreneur! Well, at least not for me. However, even though each day can be vastly different, I do have set rituals in place that I very rarely skip.

Each morning, as I am gently waking up, I lay still and take some deep conscious breaths in and out, do a heart expansion meditation and I talk with Spirit. This sets me up in a grounded, heart-centred energy so that I am open to receiving guidance and messages and I am constantly in flow to receive creative ideas.

I normally have set days making and delivering treats. I have days doing Sound and Reiki Healings and days doing space clearings at clients' houses.

I then have an evening ritual where I check in again with Spirit, give thanks for the day that I have experienced and check in with myself to find out if there is anything I need to go over and learn from the day.

What’s next on the agenda for Spiritual Nutrition?

As well as the Nourishing Treats, I have also launched five Australian Native Smudge Sticks that are made out of 100% Australian Native Plants. 10% of the profit made is donated to a charity called Red Dust who help to bring innovative health programs to remote indigenous communities in Australia. I would like these to be more accessible to people so I am currently looking for more stockists.

I have also recently released an Energetic Clearing Mist for the home and to use on our aura. This has a collection of essential oils and Australian Bush Flower Essences and it has been one of our most popular products to date. I plan on bringing out more mists in future and have a few other products in the pipeline that I’m not able to share just yet!

As well as Reiki and Sound Healing, I also clear and Reiki homes and businesses. To add to this offering, I am currently studying Flying Star Feng Shui so that I can map out spaces and know exactly where the positive and negative energy sits. This means I'll be able to arrange your home so that it is harmonised and balanced, fully supporting you. This will be an offering available In January 2020.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs in the health and well-being industry?

To trust in the process and the flow. Sometimes things take longer to evolve than we would like. Building the roots of your business is incredibly important. In today’s social media driven society, we can fall into the illusive trap and start to believe that the number of followers we have or likes we get = a successful business. That could not be any further from the truth. Building the roots of your business means getting really clear on your values, sticking to your values each day and constantly referring back to them and aligning all of your choices and decisions with those values.

There are a lot of people out there doing similar things but each one of us have something unique to offer just by being ourselves. Also, the more inner work we do on ourselves, the more that will infiltrate into our business and who we attract to our business. The clearer and brighter we are within, the more we will shine that energy through us and into our business.

As featured on Onya Magazine.