Welcome to Healthier With Elizabeth, the blog edition

stock image: woman in yellow knit jumper on green chair writing with a pen in a journal on her lap. And Vintage Health logo with purple borders

Hello and welcome 🌿✨💜

I’m Elizabeth, Naturopath and founder of Vintage Health, and the creator of the Vintage Health Crystal Essences Range, including the Choose Your Own Crystals (CYOC) system.

This blog is part of a multiplatform series called Healthier with Elizabeth, where the same wellness insights are shared across recordings, audio, and articles. Here, I share stories and reflections that weave together wellness, emotional wellbeing, and the beauty of everyday life. You’ll often find me exploring topics like sleep, stress, energy, and nourishment — all through the lens of Naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Crystal Essences — rooted in a deep respect for the body’s natural rhythms and ability to heal itself.

I’m a storyteller by nature. That means you might notice me wandering into what seems like a random story from my week, my family, past clients, or a memory, but there’s always a thread. Each story holds a perspective I’ve found helpful in my own healing and in supporting others.

This blog isn’t about perfection or doing wellness “right.” It’s about noticing the little things: the way you feel after that first cup of tea, how your body signals when it’s tired, or even how the inner voice that likes to grumble is really asking you to step inside and make space for what matters most.

Here, you can expect:
🌿 Personal reflections — on life, health, and finding balance in a modern world.
💎 Insights from my practice — shaped by naturopathy, TCM, Crystal Essence Healing, and the emotional layers of wellbeing.
✨ Stories behind the Crystal Essences — what inspired them, how they support emotional shifts, and real-life transformations they’ve inspired in me and others.
🍵 Conversations about rest, rhythm, and renewal — because healing isn’t a single event; it’s a series of small, conscious choices. It’s okay to take two steps forward and one back.

I love giving words to the unseen — like emotions, energy, and awareness — so they become something you can notice, relate to, and reflect on in your own life.

So, settle in with a cup of tea. Read slowly. Let what resonates land.

Again, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here 🌿✨💜

Looking for the Healthier with Elizabeth series? Visit the series hub here.

All episodes are available as written articles, YouTube videos, and podcast episodes:

Note: Articles on this blog are thoughtfully transformed transcripts of video and audio recordings, with minimal adaptation using AI to make them engaging and readable.

Here are links to the video and audio content:

Episode Eleven: Practical Structures for a Neurodivergent ADHD Household

woman with white pen writing on iPad, taking notes

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI. Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Hi everyone, today I wanted to share some structures I've put in place. This is just a random list for a family that is on the neurodivergent side.

In This Article:

• A Bit of Context
• The Cleaner
• Exercise Subscription
• Household Structures
• The Whiteboard Marker System
• Business Booking System
• Closing Thoughts

A Bit of Context

To give you context, I do have one child who has been officially diagnosed with ADHD. The other one, we're not going down the diagnosis pathway, but he certainly has a couple of nuances that sort of stand out in terms of his nervous system. From a family history perspective, I'm pretty sure they've got it from me. I haven't been diagnosed, but I certainly identify with a lot of the key markers that would be for ADHD. It runs in my family – I've got extended family who are diagnosed, and who have kids who are neurodivergent also.

So these are some of the things that I have found really, really good. I started really implementing this in the last couple of years. I took on examining our lives as a family, looking at where our weak spots are, where the issues that we constantly come up against are, and how we can make this better.

The Cleaner

The first one I want to speak about is that I have a cleaner who comes in twice a month, every second Saturday at the moment. This has been a game changer for a number of reasons.

Before we had our cleaner, my husband is the type who thinks that we could just get up and do four hours on a Saturday morning, clean the house from top to toe, and then get on with our lives. But I know I don't function like that. I also know the kids don't function like that, because we're just not going to do it.

I also know my energy waxes and wanes as a woman. I'm on a completely different cycle to a man – I'm not on a 24-hour cycle like my husband, I'm on a 28 or 30-day cycle. I also know, being neurodivergent, that if you try and make me do something and I'm just not in the energetic space, it's going to be painful.

So when I moved, I decided that I would get a professional cleaner. I went through an agency. We have a really great guy, he's a student. We agreed on two. He comes in for three hours now.

With the structure that we have in place, it's not a deep clean. It's actually probably more of a basic clean. It's vacuuming and mopping, wiping surfaces, cleaning the stove, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the toilets – that sort of thing. There's a section of the house that he doesn't even touch because it's a bit that we need to renovate.

But the way that this works for us is – and listen, they fought it at the beginning, but now everyone's on the same page – the kids know that on the Saturday our cleaner comes through, they need to pick up their rooms and they need to free up one of the surfaces in their rooms to be wiped down. So this can look however they want. I don't really care, but more often than not what they do is pick up everything off the floor and throw it on their bed. That means the cleaner can come through and sweep, vacuum, and then mop, because we have hardwood floors all through the house.

They have to nominate a surface, because they're very creative, crafty kids. They've got bits and pieces everywhere – Lego sets, paper, cardboard things, handmade weapons everywhere. They have to have a surface wiped.

This is a great structure for me too, because it resets me and the little piles that I might create as a neurodivergent person. That's my kind of thing – I'll get into a space, I'll create something, I'll be going through certain books, I'll be researching something, and then I'll put them down, I'm going to come back, and then the moment's gone. Then the piles are there and I might move on to something else.

To sort of manage that, this is where the cleaner is also useful, because I'm aware of when he's coming. I'm like, "Oh, I'm not going to start another little pile because in two days' time I'm going to have to put that away," or I put it away immediately. Doesn't mean I don't also pile stuff on my bed or in the office or whatever, but at least it's a structure.

And it's great because I'm going to be honest, I am not someone who would voluntarily vacuum and mop. In fact, if I was doing it, I would take it so personally and be much more grouchy with the kids if they ran in from the back yard and brought sand in and I'd just cleaned. I would get upset. So at least if someone else is doing it, I still get a bit cross with them, especially, and I say, "Well, I paid for this and you've just messed this up." However, I take it far less personally if they're just being kids. I can take it in my stride.

So that's the first structure. I know somebody might go, "Well, I can't afford a cleaner." I have sort of found that I will weigh up doing other things and go, "Actually, I'd rather have those three hours of cleaning every second week, and I will do my own nails," or "I'm going to stretch out my haircut or something."

Listen, I'm not judging anyone who doesn't. I know that self-care is a really important piece for mental health and wellbeing, and self-care looks different for everyone. But there are ways that I can justify freeing up this money and go, "Yeah, this is actually a priority for me."

Exercise Subscription

Which probably segues into the next one – a structure that I've put in place now. This one might work for some people and not for others, but I am on an exercise subscription with a Pilates and yoga studio. This means every week £50 is deducted from my account, but that enables me access to unlimited classes.

There are two pieces that are key here for me. One is it's a class, and they're so popular that you have to sign up in advance. It's not a "just rock up if I feel like it." I actually have to go into the system and book them. Now, when I've done that, it means I'm accountable. If I don't go, I get charged a cancellation fee or late fee. I'm also letting down my yoga instructor, my Pilates instructor, Lauren, who I love and I want to support her in her business.

The fact that it's a class and it's structured – I have built my schedule around dropping the kids off and picked certain classes around being able to get to these classes very reasonably.

So that's the first piece of it – I'm held accountable. But also, it gamifies it for me, because the more classes I go to, the cheaper the class. Right now, normally I do maybe six classes a week, and I choose the back-to-back. This is the other beautiful system about how Lauren's got this set up. We do a Pilates class and then we do a yoga class, and the yoga can be a very stretchy breathing class, or it can be a lot more movement and flows where you build up a sweat. And I'm okay with that. I love it, it's really great.

It took me a while to get to know the other people that go along, but now I've got some friends that I go with and we keep each other accountable. It's a point that I can go and say hi.

For example, I'm sitting in my car waiting for a class that will start at 9 o'clock. I also chose it in an area that's close to a regular structure in our lives. For me, it's one of my kids' schools – his high school. I'll drop him off. He has to be at school at a certain time, and then I come across and I'm ready for my 9 o'clock. In fact, look at me now – I'm recording a podcast episode and I know I have a little bit of space, so it's not rush, rush. That's the other piece.

Listen, if the timing of the classes was a bit rush, rush, I would be talking to my kid about dropping him off a bit earlier. That might be a whole other kettle of fish if you've got a child who's resistant, but my kid likes to go along and talk to his friends and socialise with his little bros. So that works for us – we might leave the house a little bit earlier to get him to school, and then I can come across and be ready for my 9 o'clock Pilates class.

Yeah, and not least enough, I've chosen a studio that has variety. Lauren's amazing. We cycle through different props – the circles, the balls, the bands. We have chairs, we have sticks or poles, we do dumbbells. We do a number of things, and that keeps it interesting for my neurodivergent brain as well.

So that's where an exercise subscription works for me. But I'm going to tell you, if I had a subscription to a gym where I had to go along and today has to be leg day or today has to be arms – forget it. I would be one of those people who's on the subscription and has all these emotions and embarrassment and doesn't want to go, and I would just have my bank account drained every month. I would have all of this guilt around it and it would be a really negative point of thinking.

So this is where I've set it up to empower me, to keep me accountable, and also to make it a little bit fun. How many classes can I get in this week? And then how much does that cost me per class? So that is a point that works for me. That's a structure that works for me.

Household Structures

Now, the rest of them are sort of more structures around the house. One of the things I have is what I call a wellness trolley. I'm a naturopath. I actually have a lot of herbs and supplements and different modalities around my house to fix X, Y, and Z, or for general health and wellbeing, or to detoxify my lymphatic system. The kids are sick, or someone's hurt themselves, and so I've got a lot of stuff.

To keep us on track, I have this trolley. I guess you could think of it like a drinks cart. When I was setting this up, I was like, "Ooh, this is a bit like those carts they have in the Mad Men offices where they have all their alcohol" – except having all the alcohol out would not be a good thing for me. What is nice is to have all my supplements, vitamins, and bottles out on this trolley.

We do have another set of stuff that sits on the kitchen bench, and that is people's everyday vitamins, tissue salts, whatever they're taking. So that helps me in terms of triggering my brain to take my supplements regularly. It also helps me if a kid comes to me and goes, "I've got a sore throat, what do I do?" And then I'm like, "Bam, bam, bam, here we go." So that works really well. It's out and I get to see it.

The other structure around the vitamins and minerals in our house is I have some over near my toothbrush. These are things that I obviously will probably take at night, so my magnesium's over there. But also, it's just that it's a habit that I'm definitely going to be brushing my teeth before I go to bed. So this is a habit where I know that there's stuff there that I've got to take, and I'm reminded to take it.

That's a big part of how I think we need to work as neurodivergent people. That's how it works for me and my kids – we do need visual reminders.

The Whiteboard Marker System

The other part of that is I have big kitchen tiles as a backsplash. They're sort of 50cm by 50cm squares. I have a whiteboard marker and that's where my lists are. That is where the grocery list goes – we write it on with the whiteboard marker. That is where I might write down a couple of things that need to be done that I keep forgetting. I can't put them in my notes in my phone. I'm hit and miss with a notebook – sometimes a notebook goes missing. But if that's sitting there when I go to the kettle in the morning and I see "I need to organise that and organise that" and "we need this stuff for dinner or what have you," that is a structure that works really well for me.

My friends come over and they laugh because there are all these notes and bits and pieces on the tiles. The cleaners know not to touch the list, but it's a really great structure.

Listen, I actually started using this when I lived in a share house in Thailand and I had a lot going on. I was studying and then working, and then I was just enjoying life in Thailand, in Bangkok. I started doing this on my bathroom mirror, so you can do this with a mirror as well. I even would put affirmations or bits and pieces. But what's nice is I'm not carrying around lots of pieces of paper. I make sure that when I leave the house, I take a photo of the list so I've got it on my phone, and then I know what I need when I go to Coles.

What can be helpful – sometimes I've updated the list and I've forgot to take a photo, and then I'll end up in Coles and I've gone, "Oh shoot." But at least I've got the list from maybe a couple of days ago, so I might not have everything, but I'm sort of reminded of the things that I have needed for a few days.

So that is a really great structure. Yeah, it's a whiteboard marker, so other than using the whiteboard marker and taking a few photos, I'm not making a mess, I'm not using lots of paper, and I'm not... it's a sustainable thing. We just wipe it off and then start again when we need to, and it's quite satisfying, the whole "tick it, tick it, wipe it off."

Okay, and the cleaner does the sort of... there's less I have to do in a way.

So that's another structure that has worked for me for years, even before I had children, but especially now.

Business Booking System

And then the last thing I wanted to talk about was specific to me as a solopreneur. I operate my own business. I work for myself. I have really structured my booking system so that I am in control of the amount of time and how available I am.

This is something that helps for me. I actually need to be really protective of my time, otherwise I feel overwhelmed. I just feel really exposed, I feel like my boundaries are out.

So what I've created is: if you're a new client and you're booking in cold and you haven't contacted me, you can actually only book in with me on a couple of days a week. If you're an existing client, they know they can text me and go, "Oh, do you have availability outside of what is in the booking system?" And then we can work with it. But I don't feel like it's a free-for-all. That is a structure that from a mental health perspective really, really works for me.

And then the other thing I've done is limit the times that I start on certain days so I can fit in my exercise classes, because those are really important to me and I book them four weeks in advance. So I know on a Thursday morning I'm not going to start seeing clients until 11:30 in the morning. That's what's available in the clinic and on my booking system, and that really protects my mental health, makes me feel taken care of, it calms me.

Closing Thoughts

All right guys, I'm actually about five minutes out from starting my exercise class, so I'm going to go. But that was all I really wanted to share today. Anyway, hope some of that helps. Let me know if it does. I would love to hear some of your structures you use that just keep you running – sort of points that create calmness in your world, help you function. Yeah, that would be awesome. Then we can all try them.

Okay, hope everyone's having a good day. Speak to you soon. Bye!

Episode Ten: Meet the Crystal Essences-Part three

Vintage Health Crystal Essence bottle dropping into french champagne glass with lemon slice

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI. Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back! We're wrapping up the crystal essences series with Total Love and Warrior, plus I'll cover the practical details on how to use these essences and tell you about the Choose Your Own Crystal system launching in 2026.

In This Article:

• Total Love
• Warrior
• How to Use the Essences
• Where to Purchase
• Choose Your Own Crystals (CYOC) System
• Using Intuition to Choose

Total Love

Right, next one—Total Love. Oh, this is a fun one! Total Love is about being able to recognize the love around you. It also helps you be very clear about what you want in terms of how love shows up in your life. I feel like as kids who grew up with Hallmark movies and just culture around us in general, we're very much trained to think that romantic love is the ultimate love—like we can't do anything without it. And then after that comes child-parent love if that's what you want, but we'll speak to that in a second.

Total Love is about reframing all of that. It's where you get to be very much present and happy and content with the love that you already have in your life—being able to recognize what's already there. And that can be your self-love. For some people, what they really need to work on is self-love. For other people, it's about their friendships, their relationships with their community, their pets. It's about just even the sun shining on you and feeling like you're being kissed by the universe. There's that piece to it.

Then there's also the piece where if you are seeking romantic love or you're trying to improve the romantic love you already have, it can be about shedding our expectations around what that love should look like. I mentioned the Hallmark movies we all grew up with—oh, we should have tall, dark and handsome, or what's the newest one? Like 6-foot finance bro and rich or something like that. That was floating around maybe 12 months ago. So anyway, if you have this checkbox of love, then it's very restricted and you might actually be missing out on the kind of love and the kind of partner or person around you that is going to give you what you need as a soul.

So, it's all about re-examining that. What you might want instead of tall, dark, and handsome is someone that actually makes you feel safe, or someone who is a real partner in your corner, or someone who makes you feel listened to. There's an emotional connection, a soul connection. There's chemistry there, but it's not necessarily what we think of as chemistry—it's like that companionship chemistry. That's how I frame Total Love—it frees you from these expectations of what romantic love might need to look like. And you know, it can also help you let go of the concept that you even need it. A lot of us don't.

I am married and I quite like my husband. He's a lovely guy. But you know, it's about being at peace where your idea of love, the love that you have in your day-to-day, might not look like what we've been trained has to look like in society.

And the final piece about Total Love, and this is a new discovery for me—I actually started using it like this a few months ago. I realized in my world I was doing, doing, doing and I was pushing ahead—I'll try this and I'll try that and blah blah blah. I hadn't stopped to ask myself and check in with my heart chakra about what it was that I really needed to do. What was going to make me feel alive? What was going to light my fire and keep me in line with my goals, my desires? I hadn't stopped and had that discussion. I just kept doing, doing, being, being, whatever.

So, I started taking Total Love and then was doing some self-reflection exercises where I would sink down into my heart chakra area and just have a little bit of a "hey, how you going?" Because I'd been ignoring that part of me. I was using Total Love to really get in touch with my heart, my spirit, and what do I want and what should I do to move forward that's going to keep me happy. That was an interesting discovery. I love these essences—there's always new layers coming out. I've had a lot of these blends around for some of them seven years or longer, and yeah, I keep discovering new things about them.

Warrior

All right. The next one after Total Love is Warrior. Now I have to be careful of my accent here—warrior, not worrying! When I lived in Canada, there were a few things I would say that people didn't understand when the vowels would come out. So this is not about worrying. This is about being a warrior. You are a strong person.

But really, if you're looking for a word to sum up Warrior, it is about hope. This is not the classic Disney warrior that's out there fighting battles and winning the damsel and all that sort of stuff. This one is about pushing forward when it's hard. It's about maintaining that hope. It's about keeping the faith. You've got things to deal with, you need a bit of power behind it. It can also be for those that are like the reluctant leader—you've been put in a position where you've got to keep moving, but it's feeling a little bit hopeless and we just want to reinvigorate you, keep you going, and really get you in touch with that sense of being hopeful.

And I know right now there's a lot going on in the world. I'm recording this in December 2025. It's tumultuous. People are feeling jaded and just overwrought. They've been overspent and thrown around and I'm noticing people are just resigned and feeling hopeless. So Warrior is really about reinvigorating that faith. Just keep the faith. Things are working out. Things are working in the background. It has flavors to some of the other essences like Gratitude, Abundance, Holding Space. But this one, yeah, we want to sum it up—it's about hope. And it's a nice one, too. It's not about pushing and being hard. It's just about keeping that faith.

And listen, if you need more descriptions, please go to the website.

How to Use the Essences

So, that's all of them! If you have any questions, please email me, let me know. And the way that you take them—I've discussed this in a previous episode, but just to sum it up: the drops you take in your water. You can shake about eight drops into your water bottle and sip on that throughout the day. Every time you have a sip, that's considered a dose. This is what happens in vibrational medicine—the more doses, the more sips or contact you have with it, the faster it's going to work.

If you don't like that format, or if you don't carry around a water bottle or you're going to forget it, you can do four drops in the morning—shake them into a little bit of water—and four drops in the evening. Get them in like that in a more intentional medicinal way. You're still going to get the effects.

And the nice thing about these pre-made blends is that you only take one at a time, but you can switch them up every 24 hours if you like. Sometimes, like when I was working with Total Love and opening my heart chakra, I was on that for a couple of weeks because I knew there was some deep work to do. But sometimes if I've got to go to a meeting and I'm not feeling super confident or not sort of sure of my words during that day, I'll take Speak Your Truth or Sassy Pants and I'll just take that in preparation.

I mean, today I'm on Holding Space and I'm spraying the spray. Now, that is the only one that you can use with other remedies—you can use the spray and one of the drop essences at the same time because the spray works a bit differently. But yeah, like today I'm on Holding Space and let's see how the day unfolds. I might not need it tomorrow because I've dealt with my issue and then I can choose another one.

Where to Purchase

If you would like to purchase any of these, you can go to the website vintagehealth.com.au. Go to the shop if you're interested in reading more about them. There's a snapshot page which lines them all up on the same page so you can go back and forth and compare. But if you're wanting a deep dive into each of the essences, you go into the shop to the place where you would purchase one and then you can read a lot more about how these are constructed, the kind of issues that you might be using them for, and go from there.

Choose Your Own Crystals (CYOC) System

Now the other piece about these—I'll just mention it. This entire system came out of another system or service I offer which is called Choose Your Own Crystals. So CYOC—it's where you are intuitively choosing what you need. The original system I offer with my clients in person and you can do this in a session with me online. And I am in 2026 launching an automated system where you and I don't need to deal with each other, but I get your personalized blend and I will post it out to you.

So, it's all about using your intuition to choose what you need. And it's not about being cerebral, knowing what the essence—what like, you know, say amethyst means or lapis lazuli means—and then choosing from there and making up a remedy that's pertinent to whatever issue you're trying to deal with. This one is about we let the crystals jump out and you choose them based on your intuition.

The personalised crystal essence is where this all came from. And then the reason the global essences, these pre-made blends came about was I was noticing that my clients doing the Choose Your Own system were coming up against these same concepts. So these have been intuited by me for those particular issues that clients have been dealing with. Then I put it out there and created a system where I was a surrogate for tapping into that global energy. I got in touch with the signature of what my clients were dealing with over a number of them and then came up with these blends.

So yeah, it's a beautiful system and I'm looking forward to speaking to you more about the CYO system in the new year. But for now, if you want to buy these, you can find them through the website like I said. And I encourage you to grab a few because there'll be certain issues that you might butt up against where you go, "Oh yeah, I'm always dealing with boundaries and then I can't speak out about what I need and then do you know what? I actually don't think I've gotten in touch with my heart chakra for a very long time." So, I'll go with Appropriate Boundaries, Speak Your Truth, and Total Love.

Using Intuition to Choose

One more thing about the pre-made blends: when you go to the website and go to the shop, you'll notice that there's a picture—let's say of Total Love. You go to Total Love, there's a picture of the bottle, and there's also a picture of a bunch of crystals. Those are the crystals that are in Total Love.

So, you can use your intuition if you're not sure which one to choose of the pre-made blends. You can go through and check the images of the crystals. You don't need to know the crystals, but you need to just observe how you feel looking at those. And this is what I'm actually experimenting with on TikTok and Instagram where I'm putting just the pictures of each blend—no names, no nothing—and just going, "All right, 1, 2, 3, which one calls to you?" And then I'll explain to you which one you've chosen and then that might make sense.

So, it's a pretty nice system. It also takes the guesswork out. It takes out anything about me trying to choose it for you because I know the essences or the crystals, or you being too cerebral. It's all about what your body is asking for because the signature of the crystal is jumping out at you.

So yeah, find me on my socials. Reach out to me, email, website. And I hope you're having a great day. Thanks so much for being here. I know this was a long one. All right, take care. Bye.

Episode Nine: Meet the Crystal Essences-Part Two

blue glass Vintage Health crystal essence bottle Powerhouse with yellow and red crystals

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth. In this episode, we're diving deep into six powerful crystal essences from the Vintage Health range. I'm actually using Holding Space today as I navigate some family drama, and I want to walk you through this essence along with Intuition, Powerhouse, Release, Sassy Pants, and Speak Your Truth.

In This Article:

• Holding Space
• Intuition
• Powerhouse
• Release
• Sassy Pants
• Speak Your Truth

Holding Space

Next we have Holding Space—and actually, this is the one I'm on today. I was dealing with a little bit of family drama this morning, so I've been spraying myself with the Grounding and Protection Spray and I've put Holding Space into my water.

For those just listening and not watching the video, you're missing out on seeing these beautiful shiny gold bottles catching the light. But you'll get a better look at them when you visit the website.

Holding Space has a couple of effects. I first created this one for myself as a therapist—I needed to get out of my own way so I could truly hold space for my clients.

The visual that comes to mind is this: imagine you're standing in an old-fashioned circus tent. There's the arena in the middle with spotlights shining down. As the client stands in the center taking themselves on and dealing with their own issues, I'm coaching them from the side. But the tent, the spotlight on them—it's all about me creating and holding a space where my stuff isn't in the arena. I'm not even in the arena with them. They are, along with their stuff, and we're working through it together.

Holding Space is really about being able to hold space for other people. You're coming to a point where you can really listen, but you're not listening through your own filters. You're not sitting there waiting and coming up with your formula for a response. You're actually just there. You can be with the uncomfortable. You can be with silences. You can be with the realizations that are happening in that other person's world. And any triggers you have? You just let them go.

This is a beautiful essence for therapists or anyone in a position where you're a sounding board or problem solver for people. But it's also perfect for your kids—holding space for your children is very much what this remedy is all about. It's a lovely one and I actually use it a lot, particularly when I'm feeling a bit triggered or tired but I've got work to do with other people. That work is not about me, it's about them.

But Holding Space works for yourself too. I'm using it today because I want to reflect on what's been said, what I need to do next, but I don't want to be in a reactive state. I want to sit and be comfortable with how I'm feeling. Honor how I'm feeling. Honor any reactions I'm having—because this is family, and sometimes those can be very old buttons being pressed, old triggers surfacing. I just want to be very clear when I eventually address the issue that I've given myself, my considerations, and my reactions enough time. So it really is about creating a break, a pause, to be able to take myself on in this moment.

Holding Space is a really beautiful essence. If you're put in a position where you're listening to other people, or you're trying to just listen to yourself and really understand your reactions and what's going on and be very clear, then this is a great one for you.

Intuition

Next up is Intuition. This one was originally called "Developing Your Intuition," but I shortened the name over the years—it's just easier and fits better on the label.

Intuition is really for those who are starting out in understanding the concept of their intuition and developing it. Working with intuition can be something that a lot of us have put away or buried. Maybe we didn't feel safe with it, or it scared us. We all have intuition, but it might be at different levels of how much we use it in our world. And we all have different messaging mechanisms—some people are very gut instinct based, others it's very much in their head. Your intuition can be a feeling, a smell—there are all different ways that we get these communications through.

This is a beautiful essence if you want to understand your library of messages and start tapping into that side of you. I promise you, when you turn on your intuition and then start to use it regularly, you never go back. It becomes this sixth sense—a tool for life where you get to trust and understand what it is you need. It's another way of making decisions where cerebral decisions and emotions are kind of removed once you understand it. But sometimes it takes a while—it's a muscle to develop. It might take time to understand what yours are.

This essence is really about tapping into that side and starting you on that journey, developing it for you. It can also be used by those of us who have been working with our intuition for a very long time. It just hones it. Sometimes things go a bit off track and you might question what happened—"Why didn't that work out in my favor? I thought I was going with my gut instinct and then it didn't work." Intuition can bring you back on track and help you explore those aspects if you're feeling uncertain.

I very much encourage any of you who are interested in developing this side of yourselves to try Intuition.

Powerhouse

Right, the next one is Powerhouse. Confidence in a bottle—that's what this is all about.

Powerhouse is about developing your confidence. It's about being able to trust yourself and trust in your reactions. If you're into the chakra system, it's very much about opening and developing your solar plexus—that powerpoint that sits between your rib cage and your navel. It's about turning that on. It's a cheerleader in a bottle for you.

There's not really much else I need to say about that. Confidence in a bottle is Powerhouse for you. I have confidence in what I just said is enough about Powerhouse!

Release

Next is Release. If you're living in a world where you're very much aware that there's something in your past—a trauma, an experience, or even just a memory that shaped how you now react and it's getting in the way, still there, very much stopping you from living a full life—Release might be the way to go for you.

Release actually used to be called "Releasing Unseen Trauma," but that was obviously very long and not very clear. This essence came out of a conversation with a very dear friend of mine, a very intuitive friend. We were talking about how we feel like we walk around with this baggage where we're reacting to the world like we've got trauma in our past, traumatic experiences, but we can't remember the trauma itself. And we realized—well, we don't really need to root around in our past or our subconscious and try to find a trauma and relive it. We can just acknowledge that for whatever reason, we're walking around like this and we want to release that. We want to feel safe in our worlds. We're not being stupid or going out and being irresponsible, but there's a piece there that it's time to let go. It's not serving us anymore. We're walking around reacting as if that danger or that feeling or that unsafe state—whatever it was—is still controlling us, and we're done with it.

This is where Release comes in. I'm using it with clients who are very much looking at their ancestral lines, looking at traumas that happened, addressing issues of epigenetics. For example, if their grandmother was in a very difficult situation and experienced trauma while pregnant with their mom—well, guess what? The egg that became you was inside your mom when grandma was pregnant with her. And so the energetics of that, the genetics, the epigenetics, gets passed on to you.

I've got people using Release who are really trying to be cycle breakers of trauma within their ancestral lines. It's a really nice one, a subtle therapy.

Now, just as a disclaimer: if you're using this to address real trauma, you obviously need other support. This is not going to be the only thing. I would certainly be seeking help elsewhere—it's not something to throw into every situation where you're trying to release trauma. But what Release is really about, and this goes for all the essences and is kind of the philosophy behind them, is this: sometimes it doesn't serve you to go and relive and kind of get to the bottom of everything and feel all the feelings again. Sometimes what helps is just to stand in this moment and go, "Yes, I acknowledge this happened. There was a lot of stuff around it." Hold space, and then ask yourself, "But now what do I do? Now I'm sitting here. I am who I am. I've got what I've got and I want to move forward from whatever was happening."

That's Release. I know that one got a bit heavy, and I hope that's clear. If you need more clarity, please go to the website and read more about it—it's been constructed in a way that's very succinct but also very straight to the point. I love this one. It's a beautiful blend.

Sassy Pants

Right, next one—Sassy Pants. This one is fun! Sassy Pants is Powerhouse and Speak Your Truth (which I'll get to next) combined in a bottle. It takes Powerhouse, the confidence building essence, to the next level. This is where you don't just want to walk around with quiet confidence or feeling strong in yourself—you actually need to speak some stuff, and it's not about being irresponsible. It's about being really clear that things are not okay, or that certain people need redirecting. There needs to be a reset and it's only going to come from you speaking your truth, but speaking it with some sass.

I love Sassy Pants. I'll be honest, I don't use it a lot personally. But it's a great one where there are thyroid issues. Both Speak Your Truth and Sassy Pants are excellent if your thyroid issues actually have an energetic origin—where you've been silenced. Maybe you grew up in a world where even as a child you were told to be seen and not heard. You were disempowered in terms of your opinions. You were gaslit and it's affecting you and the way you walk around now. You might still be having those issues, but Sassy Pants is really about going above and beyond when it's like, "No, it's time for me to really speak out and stand in a place of power."

It's a good one. I love Sassy Pants. It's fun actually to watch this one work with different clients because the confidence that comes through and the way their demeanor changes—they're really able to say, "You know what? I'm done." Or, "Yep, that person needed to hear what I had to say because they've been going on far too long." Or just having quick comebacks—Sassy Pants, man!

Speak Your Truth

And then we have Speak Your Truth. I did allude to this one. Speak Your Truth is slightly more subtle than Sassy Pants, but it really is about the communication aspect of life.

When I talk to my clients about what true authentic communication looks like, there are several aspects to it.

The first one is where I am speaking and you are listening. It's a two-way street, right? I'm speaking and feeling heard. You are speaking and feeling heard. We're having an open dialogue of communication.

Then there's speaking your truth with yourself. This one can tie into your intuition, but it can also tie into your heart chakra—what do you want? What are you understanding? So that's an open two-way channel. You're really getting clear on what you want. You're listening to your body's response and that's really open and flowing.

And then the final piece I speak to with Speak Your Truth or adequate communication is communicating with your higher self, your guides, your God or Allah, your angels, the universe—whatever that higher purpose or higher energy is for you, whatever you want to call it—having clear communication in that realm. That's where you put it out there. What do you want? Prayer, manifestation, talking to your spiritual tribe, and then they're hearing you and you're being very clear about what you want. But then you're also listening to the downloads. You're listening to the messages. You're getting the messages around you. It's not just coincidence—they're telling you what you need to do or where you need to go, your dreams, whatever.

So all three of those levels of communication can be thwarted, shut down, or unclear. And this is really what Speak Your Truth is about—getting very clear about all of those. Then you get to stand in this place: "Well, I know what I want. I know what I feel. I've been clear and direct about what I want in the real world. I've also been clear and direct in terms of my prayers or my conversations with the universe and my guides, and they're able to tell me and give me the signs so I know I'm on the right track and feeling good." And then you're also checking in with your intuition or your instinct and you're listening to your body's reactions. That's Speak Your Truth. It's a beautiful one.

When we start to look at physical manifestations of emotional, psychological, or spiritual issues, Speak Your Truth can very much reside in the throat chakra. Now, anything around the throat area can be—not always—sometimes it's just biochemical. Maybe there's something out of whack in what you're eating or how you're treating your body. But sometimes if we've addressed all of that and someone comes to me and they're telling me they've got a thyroid issue, and then they start to tell me about their life and their relationships, how life was as a child, how they feel in their marriage, how their kids treat them now—it can be very clear that while there's stuff to clean up on the physical level, we also want to address the emotional and spiritual side of this. That's where I might go, "Okay, Speak Your Truth might be the essence to put in here."

Episode Eight: Meet the Crystal Essences-Part One

Hand holding glass blue spray bottle

This piece originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth! Today we're running through all of the Vintage Health crystal essences in the global range—these are the pre-made blends. There are currently 13 drop blends available and one spray, and I'm going to walk you through each one so you can get a feel for what they address and who they might be for.

In This Article:

• Grounding and Protection (Spray)
• Abundance
• Appropriate Boundaries
• Balance
• Flow
• Gratitude

Grounding and Protection (Spray)

Let's start with the spray—Grounding and Protection. It's a really cool little device to have in your pocket for a number of reasons. I originally created it because I wanted to be able to clear my therapy room between clients, especially when there was some heavy energy lingering around. But I had this problem where I couldn't go and smudge with herbs or anything like that because I had some chemically sensitive clients. So this one is virtually an odourless spray. It does have a little bit of ethanol in it to preserve it, but that dissipates very quickly.

The idea with the spray is that you can use it as a room spray. You can also use it to clear yourself of negative energy. I actually this morning had a little bit of drama with family, but I was committed to making this recording. So, I've actually been using the spray myself just to clear. I've been spraying it over myself down the midline and just taking a deep breath and then being able to clear myself. It's really useful for that. If you have an argument with someone, but then you've got to get into another headspace, switch gears, you can use the Grounding and Protection Spray for that.

You can also use it as a monster spray. This one's interesting because for the kids that are a little bit sensitive or maybe they're seeing things that we adults don't see, this has a twofold effect. You give them the spray and they get autonomy. They get to have this sense of control. They can spray it under their bed or spray it in areas that they feel uncomfortable. It gives them that purpose, but at the same time it honours the fact that if they are seeing something in the unseen world, then there is a grounding protection component.

This is where I love this product for helping out little ones. I actually used it when my kids were little. We lived in Montreal and we lived in an apartment that overlooked an abandoned church—beautiful church, spires and everything—and it hadn't been used as a church for a while. We would walk around the neighbourhood and we would go past this church, but it scared the kids. So we took some of the Grounding and Protection Spray and we sprayed it around the perimeter of the church. It made them feel better. They weren't freaked out anymore and yeah, we could go along with our business. That's just an example of how we used it within our lives.

I've also had some feedback from clients where they've taken it along to holidays with the family, with family members that might be a little bit problematic in some of their views or have made my client feel uncomfortable. They've just taken the spray along, sprayed themselves, and then when that family member's maybe dropped some kind of inflammatory comment and then left the room, they've gone and sprayed the room or sprayed after that problematic family member. These are very specific examples of how it's been used, but yeah, it's a really good one.

It's a nice foray into crystal essences if you're not yet comfortable with maybe taking drops in your water—you want to know a little bit more before you start ingesting, which is fine. We use them all the time, but if you just want to give it a go, the spray is a nice way to go. So yeah, Grounding and Protection—switching gears, clearing yourself, clearing spaces, monster spray. You can put problematic family members in whatever category you want in terms of the monsters or not. No, I'm joking! But anyway, that's the spray.

Now, that comes in a 100ml format, which is the format that I keep in the office. And then it also comes in a 50ml format for sort of on the go if you need to clear yourself.

Abundance

Right. The next ones are the drops. I'll go in alphabetical order—just makes it a bit easier for me to keep track of what I'm talking about.

So the first one in the list is Abundance. Abundance is basically for those that feel like they're in a cycle of lack. They're lacking financially, spiritually, in love—they're just feeling like they can't get ahead. So, Abundance is about reprogramming that or refocusing yourself. You can sort of step back, evaluate what's going on, make some changes accordingly if you need to, but also it just shifts your perspective in terms of maybe there are things out there that you can be grateful for and thankful for. So there are abundances in your life.

It's also about getting off that hamster wheel of needing more to feel happy and alive, thinking that you have to push yourself harder, have more things, earn more money. It does reframe that part of your relationship to what abundance means. And yeah, it creates an element of thankfulness. So, anyway, that's Abundance for you.

Appropriate Boundaries

The next one is Appropriate Boundaries. This is actually one of my most popular ones. It is a game-changer for those of you who are people-pleasers, who have not actually figured out how to put yourself first, who have been giving way too much of yourselves in a way that is detrimental to you. So, Appropriate Boundaries has been brilliant. And I've got some really good case studies around that.

I'm thinking of a friend of mine in particular who's gorgeous and just gives too much of herself in her business, with her family, puts up with stuff. She was letting me know that when she started using—she actually used the Grounding and Protection Spray first and then was starting to use the drops, Appropriate Boundaries drops. But now she's really saying no. She's telling people that she's not putting up with that anymore. She's picking and choosing in her job as to who she works with. She's a consultant of sorts. So she was just putting up with clients that didn't appreciate her and didn't understand that their relationship with her, what she provides, is a service. That's a privilege. She's not a slave to them. So, yeah, she's going great guns. She's been able to talk with family members that have for so long taken her for granted.

So, anyway, that is Appropriate Boundaries. It is all about shifting that relationship to how much you're going to give of yourself. Now, it doesn't mean you become completely selfish, but really appropriate boundaries, being in balance, is being 50% selfish and 50% selfless. It's not about giving your all to everyone. And it's about reprioritising who gets your energy—it's about quality, not quantity in terms of giving yourself away. As an example, this friend of mine is really focussing now on her own family for Christmas and not necessarily worrying about toxic relatives around her that bring her down and just don't make her feel good, and she's thrilled. And I'm thrilled for her. So, anyway, that is Appropriate Boundaries. A brilliant one.

Balance

All right, the next one—Balance. So if you were to look for one word in terms of a target problem area to work on, it's overwhelm. Balance is for those who really struggle to create work-life balance, to create peace in their world. It creates space for you to really just take stock and not give, give. It's a little bit different to Appropriate Boundaries, where Appropriate Boundaries is really about those who are struggling to say no and to break old habits of people-pleasing. But Balance is really when you're in this state of overwhelm. You're feeling like you maybe need to be doing everything and being everywhere, but it's like you kind of can't get off the hamster wheel.

It doesn't have that servitude feel to it. It just has this—you're in such overwhelm and you don't know what to do and you're a bit like a deer in the headlights about it. So Balance is about stepping back, creating space to reflect. It's about addressing that overwhelm, bringing in peace, bringing in joy, bringing in priorities, and really inviting you to actually create your life as you want to see it, where you have ebbs and flows that are natural and you're not just constantly in this stress state of overwhelm. So that one's Balance.

Flow

Now the next one is Flow. Flow and Balance actually can be similar in the problem state that you're presenting with, but the difference is that Flow is for those who really struggle with the concept of surrender. And that might look like you have a bit of a control issue. Whereas Balance is when you're just so overwhelmed and you're a bit feeling like a wet noodle, Flow—there's more of a hard edge to it. You're a bit annoyed. You're a bit resentful. You're doing all the things and other people aren't doing what they need to and you feel like you can't stop, but it's because you need it done a certain way. I hope that distinction is clear.

So Flow encourages surrender. It encourages trust that things will work out. It enables you to step back so that other people can step in. And it might not look the way that you absolutely need it, but it's still going to get done and you come to terms with that. You accept that and it just creates space for you and peace and even enriching relationships because if you're not resentful, if you're stepping back, if other people are able to step in and help, they get to contribute. It depends—it depends on the people around you, there are a whole lot of factors around that—but that's how Flow works. For anyone that's feeling a bit resentful that they have to do all the things, it's inviting you to take a step back and surrender and just let things flow.

Gratitude

Next one is Gratitude. Gratitude really is for people walking around—for whatever reason, whatever life lessons and bits and pieces have got you to this point—you tend to walk around very cynical. Glass half-full. You're almost waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time. This might be justified. You might have had a lot of knockback in life. So it really is about getting to the bottom of that. And there's another essence I'm going to talk about—if you're actually really struggling with releasing some old scars, then that is probably the one you start with and then you step into Gratitude afterwards.

But for now, if you're the glass half-full, glass half-empty kind of people, then Gratitude is the one for you to try, or for people around you. This one is about people where it's really hard to see the joy and there is probably some joy there. I guess if you've ever journalled and you've done a gratitude journal, or you've ever just written a list—three things I'm thankful for in the day—but you do that repetitively, you start to train your brain to start to see the good in any situation. You start to feel like the universe is conspiring for you and not against you. But it becomes this innate feeling. That's what you're going to be aiming for when you're on the Gratitude essence.

So, yeah, there's not much more I can say about that one. But obviously with all of these, I'm just giving you a snapshot. There is much more information on the website. When you actually go into the shop to look deeply at these and you're going to purchase one, there is information around problem key areas that these address, the positive states that these are going to bring you into. It looks at the chakras, it looks at colours, it gives you a much deeper description in terms of the problem state it addresses, who it's for, and then what can you expect in terms of your journey on this essence. So yeah, just a snapshot today, but sometimes it's nice to be able to talk these through. You get a little bit more than just reading on a page.

Episode Seven: Crystal Essences 101-Why they are so important and Which ones to choose

Crystal Essence blue glass dropper bottles and spray, gold labels, marbled background

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth! This is part two of exploring the crystal essences range at Vintage Health. In part one, I spoke to the basics of what crystal essences are, where they come from, and how you might take them. Today I want to speak to the why—why I'm so drawn to this therapy—and also which ones you might choose.

In This Article:

• The Why: Emotional and Spiritual Health
• Which Ones: Two Offerings
• Choose Your Own Crystal (CYOC) System
• Pre-Made Blends (Global Essence Range)
• Next Steps

The Why: Emotional and Spiritual Health

As I progress in my career and work with more and more clients, I'm finding that so many people's health issues come back to an imbalance within the emotional, spiritual, or psychological realm. This is where I employ the crystal essences to really hone in and start transforming that from the get-go.

I've been working with crystal essences since 2017. If you want more information about the journey that led me to this therapy, you're welcome to visit my website. There's a page devoted to the essences. I'm—I'm going to say obsessed, but I'm just that happy with them as a therapy and as part of the service that I can offer.

What started out as me just experimenting—I mean to give you context, I'd actually been trained in flower essences. So that's a cousin to the crystal essences. They're all vibrational medicine. They all work very similarly. I've been trained in the West Australian living essences—they're a kit of about 88 desert essences that are specific to Western Australia. And I've also been trained in the Bach flowers, which is 34 odd essences from memory. Sorry, it's been a while since I've used the flower essences because I've just completely switched over to the crystal essences. They're working so well for me and my clients.

But the Bach flowers are probably arguably the most famous of the vibrational essences out there. You might have heard of Rescue Remedy. People use it for stress and emergencies. So that came from a kit of flowers that was developed by Dr. Bach in England, memory serves, 100 years ago now. So those are cousins of the crystal essences.

But really, the why comes down to this: I can fix you up physically. You can come in. I've got the naturopathy. I've got the Chinese medicine. I will put you on the massage table, balance your chi. We can look at your diet. We can put you on some herbs. We can really clean you up and have you feeling fabulous, get your energy back, all that sort of stuff. But there are more and more cases that I'm seeing—maybe this has always been like this, or maybe it's just the type of client I'm attracting, or maybe this is the reason that you even come to listen to this podcast—unless we address what may be underpinning that physical imbalance, a piece of the journey that led you to where you are right now where it has you come looking for someone like me to help you.

And that will often be something in the emotional realm, a fixed way of being or reacting, a decision you might have made in a time where you were in a crisis. You were in survival mode. You might have been a kid, just having to navigate certain people within your world and how to get through. You might have made these decisions. And that was protecting you back then, but actually what's happening is in the subconscious, you're still operating from that place of needing to survive from that decision that you made back then. But it may not be serving you anymore. Or it may have you in a state of imbalance, hypervigilance, or stress or paranoia. I'm just giving examples, but that then has an impact on you physically.

So we can go in and clean up the physical, but unless we go back and address some imbalance that's going on in the emotional or psychological or spiritual terrain, start to address that, then you will likely end up back where you were in terms of your physical state. This is where the crystal essences are really beautiful because they work on the subconscious level. You don't have to be running a subconscious programme to use them. You can be very aware of what's going on.

It might show up as you're constantly attracting the same kind of problematic person into your world or you're recurringly triggered by the same kind of person or situation in your life and you're just interested in—okay, this is having me stressed and then I don't sleep so well and I've kind of always got this knot in my stomach—and then we can start to unpack the emotional underpinnings to physical imbalances. And this would be health conditions. In Chinese medicine, we'll be looking at where you're out of balance from a Chinese perspective. In naturopathy, we'll be looking at it as well. So it all kind of ties together.

I really just want to drum it home that working on this level is so important, but also it is the why for me and the crystal essences, because this is where I've had some amazing results for people and their health. We've started to understand that the occurrence of your physical state probably wasn't the precipice, it wasn't the start of it. The start of it was 6 months earlier when that stressful occurrence happened, or even earlier than that.

It might make more sense to you when you listen to the next episodes because when we start to go through the Vintage Health pre-made blends—there are 13 of those and then there's a spray as well—when we start to look at the different themes that they cover, it might make more sense. The other shoe will drop in terms of what I'm saying because there'll be specific examples as to some of these underpinning emotional and mental decisions, fixed ways of being, states that are impacting you and your physical health.

So yeah, that is very much my why. And I'm so excited to be able to bring this therapy to more people because since I've been working with them in 2017, I'm going to say eight out of 10 of my clients would have experienced a crystal essence. Where it seems to come up—because it is, I'll be honest, one of the more woo woo offerings that I have—I've got some clients where this is just not their cup of tea and that's fine. But when I'm meeting someone new and they're coming in and we're having a consultation, I have to sort of figure out if they're a person that might be open to this therapy or not.

But where it becomes glaringly obvious is when they're coming in and telling me about these physical conditions, the issues that they're dealing with that they want help with. And then we start to explore what's going on in their lives, what their stress levels are like, what their relationships are like with other people. Do they feel supported? Do they feel trust? Do they feel like they've got a work-life balance? Do they give too much of themselves? Do they put themselves first? Do they only give 50%? Because actually being in balance is when you are 50% selfless and 50% selfish. But a lot of people, that's a foreign concept. We're told to give of ourselves, give everything, give 110% and put ourselves last. And it's quite damaging. Walking around like that, giving too much of yourself can be very much underpinning certain physical complaints.

Exhaustion, not sleeping properly, adrenal burnout, digestive complaints, even hormonal imbalances can all be part of this state of walking around and not putting yourself first or not being in balance when it comes to how much you give away of yourself. That's probably a better way to describe it. And then, when you listen to the next few episodes, there's an essence in the Vintage Health range called Appropriate Boundaries. And that's actually directly dealing with people-pleasing tendencies, people that have grown up thinking they have to be the perfect partner and parent and then child to their elderly parents and work colleague. Where do they fit on the list?

So I've just sort of drummed down one to give you a bit of an example, but please go and listen to the subsequent episodes that I've got coming up because those are really going to drill down for you which ones or what the issues are that are being dealt with, and therefore further illustrate my why as to how this is so important.

I really firmly believe that if you are taking on your health and well-being, you will get so far by balancing your nutrition and getting yourself to sleep properly and all this sort of stuff, balancing the hormones. But if we don't start looking at the emotional terrain from a health and wellness perspective, then yeah, you're just going to be out of whack again at some point physically. So that's really the why.

Which Ones: Two Offerings

And then which one. So there are two offerings that I have with the crystal essences. One is the pre-made blends—those ones you'll hear more about. And then the other one is what I call CYOC—Choose Your Own Crystal essence system.

Choose Your Own Crystal (CYOC) System

This is a personalised essence service that very much comes out of the philosophy of the crystal essences at Vintage Health, which is your intuition. So, you might be sitting here going, "Oh my gosh, which one do I choose?" Or, "How do you know?" If you listen to the previous episode, I said that I've got about 250 different crystals that I work with, crystal essences.

It's not up to me what you end up choosing if you go with a personalised blend because the process is all about having your intuition choose the medicine that you need. So, it's a really, really nice system and at some point I will put up some episodes in this Healthier with Elizabeth series that will walk you through the process.

But the nuts and bolts of the CYOC system is that you think about what it is you want to transform. Start to kind of put yourself in the state of the problem. So you could be sitting in the uncomfortable feelings, the grief, the sadness, the anger, the frustration. Or you might be able to flip that script and go, "Okay, I actually know where I need to be. I want to feel safe. I want to feel trust. I want to have joy in my life. I want to appreciate what's around me." So you might sit in either of those states. Either one will work.

And then you go and you view the crystals. So if you're in person seeing me, then the crystals are all laid out on several different trays and you just go along and have a look. But the online service that I'll be releasing in 2026—I've already started—it's an intuitive process where you're looking at each of the crystals as a picture. You can go through and you're going to still do the same thing where you don't need to know what the crystal does. You just need to know how it makes you feel. And that is your intuition kicking in and going, "Okay, this one actually has what we need. Let's put it in the list."

And you're choosing about seven, sometimes eight, but mostly just seven crystals, seven different essences. And then that is your personalised blend. And then that gets an empowering name that you also choose because that's really part of it. You're going to take this personalised essence for four to six weeks and that is about you really focussing on and dealing with that specific issue.

So that's the personalised side of it.

Pre-Made Blends (Global Essence Range)

And then there are the pre-made blends. So I call them the global essence range, Vintage Health global essence range. And that is because they are tackling human conditions or human emotions that I have recurringly seen in my family, friends, my clients, and then just observed in the world.

So those formulas were intuited by me in a surrogate situation where I sat with, for example Appropriate Boundaries,I sat with that feeling of being a doormat, of giving too much of myself, of being exhausted but also wanting to please, wanting to do the right thing, stepping way out of myself to give to someone else, but it left me disempowered. It left me tired and exhausted. I sat with that and then I did the choosing of the blend for that one. So, it was really intuition tapping into global consciousness. So, that was the choosing, that was the process behind the pre-made blend. So, it wasn't for me. It was for that energy signature, for everyone to be able to use.

I hope that makes sense. And yes, I'm very aware that sounds super woo woo. If you've got any questions, let me know. That's also how we roll here now. We combine the science and the woo because, you know, why not? Why not take from all these different types of therapies and live the best life that you can.

What's nice though is with the pre-made blends, you can read about them, you can understand them from the way they've been created. But I've also—when you go to the website and you go to the shop and you look at the essence, for example, Appropriate Boundaries, when you flip through the pictures, there's actually a picture of all the crystals that are in that blend. You can use those pictures to intuit which of the global essences, the pre-made blends, is the one for you.

What's nice about the pre-mades is because they're not tailored to you, they're tailored to an issue that you might be dealing with for a while, you can switch those out every 24 hours. For example, I'm on Holding Space at the moment. I'm dealing with a couple of things in my life. I've been taking Holding Space for the last 3 days. I'm coming to the end, I think, of dealing with the issue that I wanted to take on. And then I might put that down and I'll see tomorrow. I'll go and look at my bottles and go, "You know what? I'm attracted to Total Love today. I think I just want to get in touch with the signature of that essence."

And that's the nice thing about having the range—you can just use them when you need. There's one there called Powerhouse. Powerhouse is your cheerleader in a bottle. It's the confidence booster. If I have to go and deal with a situation where I just want to be standing in my full power, Powerhouse will be the one that I take that day.

But with the Choose Your Own, I recommend that you don't take any other vibrational medicine essences. So, no other flower essences, none of the other Vintage Health essences. You go with your personalised blend for 4 to 6 weeks because we're really focussing on you and a specific issue for you and we're kind of unpeeling the onion layers and we don't want anything else to muddy that. It'll be too much stimulation. You've got your seven crystals in your empowering blend and that's what you're taking in your water throughout the day.

Next Steps

So yeah, that's really the which in terms of—and that's a segue into the next three episodes which are going through all of the pre-made blends and then there's a little bit at the end that just sort of speaks to the CYOC system a little bit more.

So anyway, I think I've covered everything. If there are any questions though, you know where to reach me. Find me at the website. You can find me on my socials at Vintage Health. Otherwise, look forward to speaking to you soon. And yes, stay tuned so you can listen about each of the pre-made blends. And then yes, I'm so excited to be able to bring CYO to the global world where it's a much more automated process. You get to meet all the different crystals and I get to make up the personalised blends for you, post them out to you, and then the transformation begins. So stay tuned. All right, have a good day. Bye.

Episode Six: Crystal Essences 101

Crystal Essence blue glass dropper bottles or sprays with gold labels on marbled background

This piece originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth! Today marks the beginning of a mini-series on the Vintage Health crystal essences. Over the next five episodes, we're going to cover what crystal essences are, where they come from, when you might take them, how you use them, and why I'm so drawn to them for my clients. Let's dive into the basics.

In This Article:

• What Are Crystal Essences?
• Where Do They Come From?
• How You Use Them
• Using the Spray
• When Might You Take Them?

What Are Crystal Essences?

In a nutshell, crystal essences are drops or sprays where the energy of specific crystals is captured in liquid form. We're either applying the crystal essence to our energy field—with the sprays, you're spraying them down your body or using them as a room spray—or with the drops, you're putting them in your water and then drinking it.

These are creating emotional shifts. They're addressing fixed ways of being. They can help you with certain issues like stress and they just really create a fresh perspective. I very much work in a realm where if someone's coming to me with a physical complaint, sometimes it's a quick fix—let's correct you, get your nutrition on track, look at you from a Chinese medicine perspective, apply the naturopathic principles, and get you balanced.

But sometimes what's actually underneath is an emotional programme, a fixed way of being, a subconscious decision that was made a long time ago that's still running the show, and we want to address that. This is where the crystal essences come in because they're really working on the psychological and emotional, and for some people, spiritual terrain.

Where Do They Come From?

The line that I work with—I've made them. I have each of the crystals. Here's, for example, a piece of apophyllite. It's a beautiful crystal for anyone that's really trying to create space in their world for healing and healing for others. I actually have a lot of apophyllite around because I keep it in the therapy room so it can come into play when I'm working with my clients.

You have the crystal and then from there I'm making the essence. I use an indirect method. That means that the resulting crystal essence liquid has not actually come in contact with the crystal. I do that for safety reasons. Most crystals are fine, but there are some that are toxic or some that are mined out of the ground alongside other minerals that are toxic. So, just to be 100% sure that there is nothing in the essence that's going to be damaging to your health, I use an indirect method.

Once I've got the crystal essence, I have stock bottles. In my collection, I have apophyllite sitting there, amethyst sitting there—I have about 250 different essences at this point. And then from there, with the stock bottles, we can make up blends.

There are two options within Vintage Health. The one I'm going to speak to mostly today and in this series are the pre-made blends where I've put together seven or eight different essences. They cover a specific condition that I've noticed within my clients is constantly coming up. We'll speak to those in a few episodes' time.

But you can also make personalised essences and that's actually where I started out. Right now that's a service—you come and see me and we will come up with a personalised essence for you, then you're taking those drops in your water for 4 to 6 weeks. I'm actually hoping that come 2026 I'll be able to release that service to the wider population and you'll be able to do it online. More about that later, but anyway, that gives you an idea.

They're blends and they have the specific properties of each of the crystals in there, and then you're taking your drops or you're spraying them on you.

How You Use Them

This is an example of one of the ones that's available. This is the one I'm on today—Holding Space, which is a beautiful essence for just trying to create pauses when you've got things that you're trying to unpack, but you just want to be able to honour the process of sifting through your emotions or sifting through your reactions and really just getting clear on what it is you want for yourself.

Also, Holding Space is really nice to create space if you work with others and they're taking themselves on and they're dealing with things and you don't want to come from a reactive place. So, anyway, for whatever reason in my world at the moment, Holding Space is the one that I was called to today.

It's a dropper bottle. You're just going to shake a few drops into your water. Now, you can put it in a water bottle, you can put it in a jug, you can do whatever you like. But the main thing with vibrational medicine—because that's what this type of therapy is, crystal essences, flower essences, etc., that's the category you'd put them under—the main thing about them is that it's not about how much you put in your container of water. It's how often you sip on that throughout the day or how much contact you have.

So, it doesn't really follow the laws of dose dependency that we're really familiar with. You know, you take more, you get more of an effect. This one is about the more contact you have with it, the more doses you're getting and so the greater the effect. If I chug that whole glass in one go, that's considered one dose. But if I'm taking sips throughout the day, and I might come back to this 10 times before it's gone, that's considered 10 doses.

What's nice about this therapy is that it doesn't interact with anything. It doesn't interact with any medications. I haven't experienced it where it's gone overboard. Your body takes what it needs and then forgets the rest. But if you're really keen to try it on, get it into your system, then yeah, sip on it throughout the day and you'll get more effects.

Using the Spray

And then with a spray—the Grounding and Protection Spray is the current one available in the Vintage Health range. There are a number of ways you can use it, but this one you're not taking internally. You're making sure that the crystal essence is being sprayed either in your energy field or in a room that you're trying to clear.

If I want to ground and protect, this one's really great for shifting gears in the moment. You know, if I've gone from a situation where I'm a bit triggered and then I need to sit down with someone and give them my full attention, I will clear myself between incidences so I'm ready, I'm grounded, and I can do what I need to do. So yeah, that's a situation where it would be in my energy field.

I might also—if you're not watching but you're just listening—I'm sitting in the Vintage Health studio, so it's also a therapy room. If I've had a very heavy case or there are just lingering emotions, we've had to deal with a lot of stuff and I need to clear the space, I will spray this around the room. I might spray it over the massage table before I have my next client. So yeah, that's how you would use the sprays.

Now, they are odourless, the sprays, but you're very welcome to go and put essential oils or something in it. And to be honest, I have one in my toilet because we all need grounding and protection sometimes from whatever our bodies are expelling. But I have an essential oil in there and that just doubles as a room spray, but also helps to clear the energy after different family members have used the bathroom. So yeah, that's essentially how you use crystal essences.

When Might You Take Them?

When might you take them? Well, for anyone that's really wanting to optimise their health by taking on anything that's stuck in their emotional terrain. They might have noticed things like they're always triggered by the same kind of person, and they've started to notice patterns. They feel like they're in these cycles where something's running in the background and that's in control of you and your reactions and your emotions and how you feel about things, as opposed to you being in control of how you want to react.

Sometimes people want a fresh perspective on an issue. Sometimes people are looking for balance because they're exhausted and overwhelmed and they know something's got to change, but they just don't know where to start. You'll actually get more of an idea when you listen to the episodes about the different essences and what they address in the Vintage Health range because I really have designed those to take on recurring issues that I was noticing in my clients, in my family and friends, and just observing what's going on in the global sphere.

So anyway, do stay tuned for those because if you're still not quite sure when you might take these or who these are for, go and listen to those and I'm hoping that will become crystal clear—sorry, pardon the pun—as to how they work and who they might be for.

So I think that's it for this episode. I just really wanted to have a basic 101. I've told you what they are, where they come from, when you might take them, and how you might use them or who they might be for. I've covered everything for now. But if I've missed anything, please let me know.

The next episode though, I'm actually going to jump into and devote entirely to the why because I really want to illustrate why I was attracted to this therapy for my clients. I want to give you a few examples. And I'm at a place right now where I feel that if you're not addressing what's going on in the emotional psychological realm, then you're doing yourself a disservice if you're trying to take on your health and wellness. That will make a lot more sense in part two. But anyway, join me and I will speak to you soon. Bye.

Intro Episode Five: The Where & When of 'Healthier With Elizabeth'

clock with lady awake in bed

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth. Today's episode is all about the where and the when of this series—where you can find this content and when to expect new episodes.

In This Article:

• Where You Can Find This Content
• How to Contact Me
• When to Expect New Episodes

Where You Can Find This Content

So, you may be watching me on YouTube, or you may be listening to this on your favourite podcast channel. I actually in this moment have—and obviously if you're listening or watching, you're on these two different platforms—then I've succeeded in my plan to release this in both video and audio format. And if I get my act together and I don't find this experience too laborious, I will also recreate each piece of content as a blog article.

I'm doing this for accessibility reasons. I also know that we are all scattered over different platforms across the internet and I just want to make it really, really easy for people to get the information that I'm sharing with you.

Now, there are going to be times though where I'm not going to be able to bring myself to be in front of the camera. Today I had a client. I was dressed. I feel comfortable videoing. But there will be times where I've got something to share, but I'm just not going to get on camera to do it. So, in those instances, it will be a podcast. It will be recorded as audio and then when I release it as a video, you'll just get a picture to stare at whilst you listen.

So, apologies if that bothers you, but really I decided very early on in this that if I put parameters on myself where I have to have video, I have to have it perfect, I have to do this—I'm just not going to get the information out. So, I'm letting myself off the hook for being human. If you find that you've come to an episode and you're just seeing a thumbnail or something of the Healthier with Elizabeth podcast, then that just means I didn't get myself together enough that I wanted to go on camera. So, yeah, we'll see where this ends up.

How to Contact Me

Please reach out though if you have anything that you'd like to ask, anything that you'd like to share. I would love to hear if you end up in my inbox. Usually the best way to contact me is by email or via my website, which is www.vintagehealth.com.au (don't forget the .au!). I would love to hear where you've come from and where you found me. So, right now that's the where.

When to Expect New Episodes

Then the when—well, it dovetails into me letting myself off the hook for being human and just focussing on getting the information out. I've learnt that consistency isn't really my strong suit. I ebb and flow in terms of my energy, my cycles, my nervous system, my capacity to give.

So what that might mean then—I will not probably be sticking to a regimented release date for these pieces of content. What that might look like is when I'm really on fire, I might drop an episode, several episodes in a week. Or, you know, twice a month I might have four in a row and then I might take a break. But I don't want you to worry—it doesn't mean that I've dropped off the planet. It's more that for my brain, this is just part of honouring that ebb and that flow and my energy levels and my creative flow as well.

So that is the where and the when. But again, if you have any questions, just let me know. And yeah, look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye.

Intro Episode Four: the Why of Healthier With Elizabeth series

stock image: writing on an iPad

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth. Today I want to speak to the why—why for me, why for this podcast, and also why now. There are a couple of points here that I think are important to share with you.

In This Article:

• My 20-Year Journey
• Overcoming Past Obstacles
• A Commentary on AI and Authenticity
• Staying in My Lane

My 20-Year Journey

In terms of my why—next year is 2026. That will mark 20 years for me having finished the bulk of my studies, the main part that meant I could get going out into the world. Of those 20 years, I spent about five of them in research, population science, and also public health and emergencies. And the other 15 has really been about switching gears and going into naturopathy. In fact, I set up Vintage Health in March 2011. So yeah, when we hit March, I'll hit my 15-year anniversary with Vintage Health.

So, it just feels like it's time. I'm ready to speak to my experiences. I've learnt a lot along the way. As you know, I've got several different modalities that I primarily draw on—Chinese medicine, naturopathy, crystal essences—but there's also my research background and just the way I work. Anyway, all of that—I think it's time I'd like to put it together and be able to disseminate it. So this is a nice way to do it, because I'm covering different release mediums. Video and podcast platforms, and then as I've spoken before, I'll get my act together and put this all together in blog articles. So there's a written record of it.

I sort of feel that whoever wants to hear what I have to say, maybe try on some of the ideas and the experience that me and my clients and people have gone through, then you can access that information from whatever platform is comfortable for you.

Overcoming Past Obstacles

So yeah, I'm kind of in a phase of reflection I guess. Now, just to give you context though—this is probably the third time that I've seriously gone into the process of creating a podcast particularly. I was talking about it maybe back in 2015, I think. And then again, after we arrived here in Australia in 2021, I was sort of interested in picking that up again. But there were things that stopped me. And it's really personal development. I had a bit of fear before, analysis paralysis, a little bit paranoid about saying the wrong thing. I didn't want to be getting any noses out of joint. I wanted to try and get it all right. I guess perfectionism—all of this stuff was kicking in.

And I'm just at a point now—I think 2025 has really been an interesting year for me. I'm still reflecting on it and it sounds like it's a very interesting year for a lot of people as well, where we're letting go of certain old things and making way for 2026. If you're into numerology, 2026 is a year 1, whilst 2025 is a year 9, so it's the last year of a cycle. And then on top of that, we've just had the Chinese year of the snake. So the snake is about shedding, it's about transformation, and then we're heading into the Chinese year of the horse. That is about moving forwards and action and getting things going.

So it's really quite an interesting time to be creating and I'm really quite comfortable now with that. I'm ready. I'm ready to put this out there. I'm ready to do it imperfectly, which was really the only way that this was going to work for me. That's part of the imperfection—there are going to be bits and pieces that go on in my world, tracks that go past, bits and pieces.

This year I've really worked on myself and I've really looked at how I'm showing up in the world, how I want to move forwards, and it's a perfect time to do that. So yeah, podcast, video, disseminating what I know and sharing with people and hopefully helping other people with their health and wellness—that's my goal. So that's really the why.

A Commentary on AI and Authenticity

But there's another piece in terms of just a reflection or a commentary on the way the world is going right now, where AI is exploding—and I mean AI-generated content. You know, a couple of years ago, no one had heard about ChatGPT and now it's everywhere. And there's a lot of conversation in my circles around AI-generated content and how can you trust what you're reading? Even being able to tell that it's AI-generated—it's getting better and better. So it's going to get harder to tell what has been created by a person and really their experience in their life or what they have to say from their point of view, and what has been created by a chatbot.

And the other piece of that is we're now getting avatars coming out. People are looking to—I just watched a video the other day. It was advertised to me, it came on my algorithm. So clearly the internet knows what I'm looking at and what is of interest to me. But it was a man walking around and he'd turned himself into this beautiful girl, and it was pretty realistic. He was like, "Yeah, you can make this avatar, so you can attract whatever audience you want," etc. And I just—I'm still wrapping my head around that, but I'm also at this point in time not interested in joining in those changes.

And so what I'm trying to do is work in a way that is so imperfect, so authentic, that you definitely know that there is a person sitting and recording. And so that's why you're getting the ums and the ahs and I'm bumbling around and there are noises in the background. It's not going to be a perfect meeting. So if that is not of interest to you, if you need it to look pretty and you're going to be distracted by the way in which I disseminate information, then maybe I'm not the information source for you.

But if you are happy with that, if that actually is of interest to you, then yeah, I will be working from this kind of medium. It works for me and my nervous system and being able to just get things out and not overthink it and create in the moment. But it also works because I think in particular when it comes to health information, you really, really want to know that your source knows what they're talking about.

Staying in My Lane

So, I promise I'll stay in my lane because I'm not an expert, or I don't know about certain areas of health. I don't think anyone can be an expert in everything, but I'm certainly going to speak to my experiences, my point of view, the way that I've put together programmes and protocols and sort of melded different modalities to make healing and recovery and discovery about illnesses as quick and as transformational as possible for me and my clients. I will be speaking to that sort of experience.

So anyway, that's really the why for me. The why now, the why disseminating as a podcast and in the different mediums. The why it's going to be imperfect. But I hope that after all that, you're interested in joining me on this journey. So anyway, hope you have a good day and I'll speak to you soon. Bye for now.

Intro Episode Three: What to Expect from the 'Healthier With Elizabeth' series

plate of eggs and bacon, fresh spinach and tomato

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth! Today I want to speak about what you can expect from this series—the topics I'll cover, the modalities I'll draw from, and my approach to sharing information with you.

In This Article:

• Drawing on My Experience
• How I'll Cover Topics
• Modalities I'll Cover
• Herbs
• Supplements and Naturopathic Principles
• Nutrition
• Evidence-Based and Vintage Approaches
• Homeopathy
• Traditional Chinese Medicine and Bodywork
• Tissue Salts
• Crystal Essences
• My Personal Context

Drawing on My Experience

The type of topics I'm going to cover will very much draw on my experience as a naturopath in community and in private practice over the last almost 15 years now. I'll also be drawing on the different pieces of education and different modalities that I work with—some of which I've studied along the way but don't necessarily practise anymore, whilst others have just formed part of my journey.

For example, I have a master's in public health, but I don't work in research and public health so much anymore. It's useful though if I'm looking at research studies and trying to understand the data—I can draw on what I learnt there. I also have a background working in research, so I've had a peek behind the curtain of how research institutes work, how research and scientific methods are used to discover things. But what else goes into that? It's not a case of people just sitting around researching what they want. There's politics behind that. There's funding. There are lots of different pieces. So at some point I can speak to that experience as well.

Generally, I'll be covering pieces of information that are interesting to you and that you can apply to your everyday life. Most of the episodes—this is what I'm envisaging right now anyway, right at the beginning of creating this—are going to have a purpose that involves tips or tricks. There'll probably be a story or something leading into it and then I'll get into the tips and tricks and bits and pieces that I've found have worked for me. Sometimes they're quite personal.

I've actually gone ahead and started recording some of the regular episodes and there'll be things that are triggered in my life—interactions I've had with my kid or something like that—and then I'll speak to how I'm handling that, the things that I'm doing. But then I'll also talk to experiences with clients, more or less case studies, but obviously nothing identifying. This is all about trying to get ideas and bits and pieces out that are of use to you, the listener, the watcher if you're on YouTube, or the reader if you're on the blog.

How I'll Cover Topics

There will be times where I'll skim topics because I want to bring a whole lot of things in but then hone in on a particular piece. For example, Chinese medicine—you can create an entire career spanning decades and still not have mastered it. So, I'm not going to be disseminating a course that means you'll become an expert, but what I might want to do is hone in on a certain theory, tie it in with natural medicine, and then get to "well, how does that work for you?"

I'll try to break it down and curate it to make it really easy and smooth, but I might leave a whole lot out and just make it clear that what I'm taking is a tiny piece of the pie for that particular episode—because this is the bit that I want you to know. I hope that makes sense. It'll become a lot clearer as we go along.

But I also might go deep, might take some deep dives into concepts. There's so much I've found as someone who has come from a naturopathy background and then taken on a traditional Chinese medicine diploma and added that to my wheelhouse. Having that extra layer, I've just found it so useful and practical to understand certain health conditions or certain concepts that sometimes naturopathy hasn't been able to touch, and vice versa. There are elements of naturopathy that I find cover health concepts in a way that enhances the Chinese medicine approach.

So yeah, that's the kind of way that I'll be working. And I've only just mentioned naturopathy and Chinese medicine. You know, my great love is Crystal Essences actually, and vibrational medicine. So, that's going to be layered on top as well. Anyway, lots of different things to talk about.

Modalities I'll Cover

What I might do is list some of the areas or modalities that I'll speak from, because some of you will be interested in some modalities whilst others won't be of interest to you. So, this is sort of a scratch list of what kind of knowledge you can expect.

As I said, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, crystal essences, vibrational medicine—that includes things like flower essences, which are a big part of how I work.

Herbs

I'll also be talking to western herbs. I speak to Chinese herbs as well, but particularly the patented formulas. So, that's where I tend to work—as opposed to single herbs, there are a few that I work with. But yeah, I work more with single western herbs. As part of my life journey when I was living in Montreal and studying Chinese medicine, the school that I was at—Setsuko, brilliant school by the way if you're in the West Island NDG area in Montreal and you're interested in studying natural medicine or Chinese medicine—that's the school to go to.

Anyway, they also had a herbalist come through and take us on herb walks, which was just brilliant. Like, it was actually weeds that we were looking at, most of them, but medicinal weeds—dandelion, motherwort, St. John's wort. We had burdock. We had all these sorts of different weeds that you would just see growing in parks or in forests, but you know, take them, turn them into tinctures, turn them into teas. Obviously don't take them if you're not supposed to be picking in that area, but anyway, my experience with herbs was very much expanded in those years when I was studying there because I went from just knowing conceptually the herb in the bottle.

In fact, my teacher, when I told her why I was there—I wanted to understand the herb and meet the herb—she said, "Oh, we call you a bottle herbalist." And I was like, "Yeah, I am." I can tell you this is an adaptogen. This does this. This does that. But would I be able to tell you where that herb is and what it looks like and how it grows? No. So that's what I wanted to learn, and I did. It was really great. Montreal is such a lush environment for wildcrafted herbs. In North America, it's a really gorgeous place to be. I just had so much fun understanding herbs and I'll talk to you about some of the herb walks I used to do in our neighbourhood and the experiences with my kids. So that's where, for example, I might go deep into a particular modality—western herbs as an example.

Supplements and Naturopathic Principles

I'll cover the naturopathic lifestyle principles. I do work with some supplements, pills and potions like that, but I am moving away from that. I just find I'm not necessarily interested in these very overprocessed, extracted supplement formulas that have a lot of pieces in them. I'd much prefer to go with a tincture of an entire herb or whatever that's going to settle within the body and not ask the body to do a lot of absorbing and processing and transforming. So, to give you an idea, I don't really go with these fandangled clinical formulations that have come from a lab.

Some of them are great, I'm sure, and there are naturopaths out there, health professionals out there, who work that way and get great results. But for me, I come from a different approach. We'll get more into that later.

Nutrition

Now, nutrition is an interesting one because I went through university. I did a degree at Curtin University, a nutrition degree—basically three years. Then there was an option to go on and do a year of dietetics to become a dietician. I'm just telling you that because I've got the basics of a dietician's background. I went on and did health promotion and public health instead of dietetics. But just to give you that concept, I've got the very science-based nutrition course and then I have nutrition through naturopathy and Chinese medicine.

So, I'm going to bring all of those pieces in and speak from those different points of view when it comes to food and your body and how you can practically hone in on these different ideas and just try them out if you want. Talk to your health professional, see if they're going to work for you, but otherwise try them out.

Evidence-Based and Vintage Approaches

Where I want to emphasise, I guess, is that I'm going to be looking at evidence-based approaches, but I'm also going to be looking at vintage approaches, old knowledge. There's a lot of value in those. And funnily enough, you sometimes find that science has just discovered this amazing new thing and you'll go back to a hippie nutrition and herb and naturopathy book from the 70s and they've already spoken about it there.

So, not everything—it's sometimes nice to have it backed up and proven through the scientific lens, but I don't necessarily find that if you're completely evidence-based, it's of use to health and healing. That's a whole other kettle of fish. But anyway, just letting you know that we'll be looking from multiple perspectives.

Homeopathy

I also like to use homeopathy quite regularly. I'm particularly attracted to a kind of homeopathy that's called isopathy or tautopathy, where if you've had a reaction to something in particular—let's say it's a medication or a stressor—then we take that particular element and it's potentised in a homeopathic formulation, and then we're calming your body's reaction down using that substance. I'll speak a lot more to that, but I've had some great results with that form of homeopathy. I do use a bit of the traditional Hahnemann's approach, but I seem to work more with that other side of it. I'll explain more about that later.

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Bodywork

And yeah, traditional Chinese medicine. As part of my course and as part of the way people see me, if you see me in person you'll get the health consultation and then you'll get some bodywork, acupressure usually. So that is like acupuncture but no needles—we're pressing the same meridian points, we're moving the chi, we're addressing imbalances, and yeah, it's really, really effective.

When I work with people online and I'm not able to give them any bodywork as part of our work, I encourage them to go and get bodywork—acupuncture or something that's going to move the chi and the energy as well. Bowen, Reiki, shiatsu. I want people to be getting that bodywork as we make changes to their diet and lifestyle to get them back on track with their health. That's how important it is to me—I see it work so beautifully and fast as well when you're already doing the bodywork to encourage the changes that you're making to assimilate.

Tissue Salts

Yeah, I also have—tissue salts. So, Schuessler tissue salts, cell salts—that's a big part of the way that I work. Those are micro minerals. They're at a molecular level. They work best when you take them under the tongue so they absorb straight into the bloodstream via the mouth. So they're not going into the digestive system and trying to compete with other nutrients there. No, you get them straight in and they're so tiny that they go in beautifully.

I'll talk to how I use those with clients. There are practitioners out there where that's all they do, and they do facial diagnosis as well where they can look at you and go, "Ah, you're deficient in this mineral, and this is also reflecting in your health and your wellness and your disease states. So let's give you that mineral for three months and see how you go." I'll speak to those. They're really, really cool and again they work really nicely with my philosophies around working at a more minute level, at the vibrational level, at the energy level, at the molecular level, to influence the health and wellness of the body.

Crystal Essences

And oh yeah, finally my great love, Crystal Essences. So these help with the emotional and psychological terrain. They connect you to your spirit. I'm a big believer that we can fix you up physically. I can balance you. I can throw that herb in. I can get you sleeping. I can get your nervous system under control. We can work with your diet and lifestyle. But if there's an emotional block or a fixed way of being, a subconscious programming, something that you picked up in childhood and it's still influencing the way that you approach the world, the way that you react to different people or different situations, and that's related to your journey of going out of health or going out of balance—we can help you out physically, but unless we transform that side of it, you'll probably just end up where you were.

So this is where working on the emotional terrain, the spiritual and psychological terrain, is really, really helpful. There are lots of therapies out there that can do this, but for me, I like to throw in the Crystal Essences. The Vintage Health Crystal Essences is a tool that I've created. I'll speak more to that, but essentially I work from the place of you intuitively or instinctually know what you need. And so we're using that side of your knowledge to decide which Crystal Essences or which blends are right for you. I'll walk you through the process. You don't have to get this one right, but I work differently to other therapists who might work with these vibrational medicines like flower essences or crystal essences, where often we're schooled in learning the essence and then we hear the client's needs and then we decide which essence is going to fit the picture—and that can work beautifully.

But that approach can work really well. I like the way that I do it where my interpretation, my experiences, are not clouding the choosing of the crystal essence process. I'll speak more to that, but yeah, it's a very intuitive-based process working with the Vintage Health Crystal Essences.

My Personal Context

And then other than that, I tie all of this up within a context of sharing about my life, my personal experiences. You know, I'm a mum. I'm married. I've been married to my beloved for about 15 years. We've lived in a couple of different locations around the world. We actually met in Asia. Then we went and did just over a decade in Canada and then about four years ago we moved here to Western Australia. So there's much to explore and to speak of, and speak of with a purpose.

So that's what I want you to come away with—anytime if I start a story and you're like "where is she going with this?"—I promise you there'll be a purpose. Everything that I talk to will be covered in my storytelling way and it's often a spare-moment approach. Having the neuro-sparkly side means that I need to keep myself interested. I also will have the most ideas and cohesive ideas and putting it all together for you in the moment if I can just stop.

Which is also why you'll find some of this information might only be audio. I'll be recording just before I'm going into a yoga class because I've just thought of something or done something or had an experience. So, I'll be sitting in my car and recording the audio. I'll still disseminate that information on YouTube, but you'll find that you'll be staring at a thumbnail of Healthier with Elizabeth, the advertising thumbnail. It won't necessarily be me on video, but for these first few intro episodes, I really was committed to videoing them so you can see me and get to know me and see if I'm someone that you want to follow and hear more from.

So, I think that's it. Any questions, let me know. You can email me at elizabeth@vintagehealth.com.au. There's a contact form through my website which is vintagehealth.com.au. I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, and I'm on a podcast platform. So, there are different ways that you can certainly reach out. If you've got any questions, if there are any particular topics that you'd like me to cover, I'd love to hear. And yeah, subscribe wherever you are to the series Healthier with Elizabeth. Okay, bye for now.

Intro Episode Two: Who Is "Healthier with Elizabeth" For?

stock image: warm and cosy hands holding a cup of tea

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome to Healthier with Elizabeth! I'm thrilled to finally bring this series to life. If you're reading this, you might be wondering whether this content is right for you. Let me explain who will benefit most from joining me on this journey.

In This Article:

• My Background & Approach
• Who Will Benefit From This Series?
• Health Topics I'll Cover
• Empowerment Through Understanding
• Being Open to the "Woo Woo"
• My Communication Style
• Join Me on This Journey

My Background & Approach

As a Naturopath, Nutritionist, Taditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner, and Crystal Essence Practitioner, I bring multiple perspectives to health and wellness. My formal education includes a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition, a Bachelor of Health Science in Complementary Medicine, and a Masters in Public Health. This means I can speak from a science-based perspective when needed.

However, what I'm really learning as I get further into my career and work with different clients is that health isn't black and white. There are times where what's really needed is internal reflection and working with modalities that might be more on the emotional or spiritual side. Evidence-based medicine can fit to advise a population, but it might not necessarily fit my individual client and their specific health needs.

Who Will Benefit From This Series?

This series is for people who would like to learn about health and wellness and are open to it coming from multiple perspectives. If you're willing to explore different modalities and approaches, you'll find value here.

If there are any types of therapies I talk about that are triggering to you, that's actually really good information. Ask yourself: why am I triggered? If I'm speaking about something, it means I've tried it, had success with it, and there are other people in the world using it. Be curious about your reactions.

Important Disclaimer: Please do not take what I say as anything but educational information only. Any changes you're wanting to try on should be taken back to your own health professionals—your team that knows you and your health and needs best. Don't make any changes until they've given you the okay. Nothing I say here is designed to be used for anything other than information only. Please do not take it as diagnosis or the basis of any treatment. There will be things I might talk about—for example, different herbs—that you would not take if you're on certain medications, or changes that might aggravate you and not help you in your journey to health.

Health Topics I'll Cover

You may have health issues yourself, and there will be certain topics I'm really drawn to that I've either had issues with or have had lots of success working with clients.

One of my specialties is sleep. I look at lifestyle and conventional ideas around sleep, but then I bring in Chinese medicine and it's just mind-blowing how you add that extra layer. We can really get to the bottom of what the underlying issue is as to why you're not sleeping. What do your insomnia or sleeplessness patterns really look like? Then we target our approach and we can help you with that. At some point I will disseminate more information specifically about sleep and how I've worked with people.

Other topics include sleep issues, energy issues, digestion, stress, and overwhelm. I've just turned 44 and I'm noticing some changes in my life, my body, my hormones, and my tolerance levels. I don't handle stress as well as I used to, and I'm far more intolerant to things that never used to bother me. Navigating these changes in our bodies is something I will definitely talk about.

Empowerment Through Understanding

This series is also for people who really want to reframe their life and their approach to health. I'll be sharing tips and tricks—some things you may need to go to a health professional for support with, and other things you can just do yourself. There's so much that I've come across, tried, worked or not worked, and I'd really just like to help people to help themselves.

If you're empowered by understanding your health journey—what led you down the path to particular health issues or conditions—and you want to understand that from a perspective of curiosity, this is for you. It's never about blame. It's never about victim blaming. I find that a big problem: "Oh, you did this and so therefore this is why you're sick." No, no, no. We're coming at it from a place of empowerment and curiosity.

For example: "This particular health condition runs in my family. Is that because of genetic predisposition?" It might be. Or maybe it's because we all eat the same. Or maybe because we all handle stress the same way. Maybe it's a combination of everything. Maybe it's something else. This is where empowerment and understanding can sometimes be part of bringing you back to balance. That's what I'm offering by bringing in a whole lot of different modalities, different thoughts, and different ways to operate.

Being Open to the "Woo Woo"

You're going to have to be open to the woo woo. This is funny because I used to really struggle with this side of me. I have my science background, and I wanted to speak from a place of credibility. But in my world I'm using a lot of therapies that won't fall within the scientific model, but they're working.

Things like crystal essences—you will hear me speak a lot about that. I've actually created an approach with crystal essences within my business that's a little bit different to how you might normally work with vibrational medicine. I sell a range of pre-made blends, which I'll speak more about later.

A big part of the way I work: You'll come and see me. We'll work on your diet. We'll balance you from a Chinese medicine perspective. We're going to approach naturopathic lifestyle principles. We're going to reduce your stress. We're going to have you let go of certain things. We're going to have you put boundaries in place. And then if it's very much a spirit case—what I call a spirit case—or there's something running in the background, a program or a fixed way of being or relating to life, people, yourself, or how you must approach things, I'm going to bring in a crystal essence and say, "Right, we need to flip this. We need to shift your perspective and have this program not be in control. We want you to be back in control."

That may not make any sense right now, but I will certainly talk more about this. I promise.

My Communication Style

As you can tell, I'm a little bit of a storyteller. I do ramble a little bit. I come from the neurodiverse side of the nervous system spectrum. I'm not diagnosed, but there is ADD/ADHD that runs very deeply within my family—within cousins, and I've got a child who's diagnosed. So you will hear me kind of telling stories and going off on tangents, but it's all because there's a purpose. I promise.

I will try my very best to create notes before each episode where I have bullet points to keep me on track and getting back to my purpose. Because I will tell stories. I will share experiences and it'll be a bit like—you know who it makes me think of? The nanny, or in Legally Blonde that courtroom scene at the end where she starts telling a story about her sorority sister's curls and everyone's like "what is this about?" And then she brings it home with the message that is pertinent to the case. That's how I operate. I will bring it home. I promise.

I find that because I'm great at telling stories and rambling, but also have the neurodiversity going on, I sometimes lose my focus. But that's okay. If you're okay with that, if you can handle that, just put me on in the background. Even if you're watching me on a YouTube video, just put me on and do some dishes and just listen.

Join Me on This Journey

I'm really excited that I've finally set this in motion. Healthier with Elizabeth is a thing! You can find me at my website and wherever you're listening—whether it be YouTube or a podcast series. At some point you may be reading the transcription. I'll clean it all up and turn it into blog posts on my website.

Please join me. Hope you're having a good day. Take care!

Intro Episode One: Welcome to the Healthier With Elizabeth (HWE) series

blonde woman, blue eyes, slightly smiling, turquoise jacket, white t-shirt, crystal pendant

This article originates from a recorded talk by Elizabeth and has been carefully transformed into an interactive blog article with the support of AI.

Links to the original YouTube video and Spotify episode are included below.

Welcome to the very first episode of Healthier with Elizabeth! I'm thrilled to officially launch this content creation project across multiple mediums—video, podcast, and blog. Let me introduce myself and give you a glimpse into who I am and what you can expect from this series.

In This Article:

• Who I Am
• My Personal Life
• Format and Approach
• Connect With Me

Who I Am

So, let me start with the basics. I'm Elizabeth, a Naturopath, Nutritionist, and Crystal Essences Practitioner with a background in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). My practice is called Vintage Health.

I've been in private practice for almost 15 years now. I've also worked as a community Naturopath in a busy little health food shop in Canada for about eight or nine years—I learnt a lot there. But if you're good with accents, you'll know that I'm Australian. I'll share more about my journey and how I even ended up in Canada at a later date, but I just wanted to say Hi for now.

Currently, I work privately with clients on a range of issues. I bring in all the modalities I've just mentioned and then some. I tend to specialise in things like insomnia and sleep issues. I also work with energy issues, hormones, and I cover the gamut in terms of clientele—I work with kids, older people, women, men, on various different issues. I also work with digestive issues and I've even done a little bit of healing on animals. So, I'm going to bring all of this experience into the Healthier with Elizabeth series.

My Personal Life

Well, I'm a mum. I've got two boys—they're currently 10 and 13. We are on the neuro-sparkly side of the nervous system gamut. In particular, ADD and ADHD runs through my crew. So, you may find that if I go off on a bit of a tangent or talk a million miles a minute, that'll be my operating system coming through. But yeah, it's great. I don't mind it. I actually see a lot more positives than I do problems. I just have to make sure I manage my energy.

As I go along, I'm going to talk to you in these intro episodes about who this podcast will be for, where and when. I'll probably explain particularly as part of the "when" that consistency is not my strong suit, but I want to be continuous. So anyway, we'll get into that in another episode.

For now, I'm married to my beloved and we've been married for almost 15 years. I'll share about him and us and just how inspired I am by being married to this man. And I have two cats—Pearl and Jose. They're joys in my life and really a fun little part of our family.

I'm a plant mum. I love my pot plants. I love my garden. I've collected herbs in the past, so I'll reflect on some of my adventures. That was more in Canada. We're now in Western Australia and the collection ecosystem here is a little bit different. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it's not necessarily as abundant as I found collecting different medicinal herbs in Montreal. But anyway, I'll speak to that later.

And yeah, I think that's really about it. I will tell you about the "why" as well—that'll be one of the episodes and that will really cover more about my journey and why I've decided to release this series, Healthier with Elizabeth, now.

Format and Approach

Just so you know, I won't be doing massive long episodes. And if you're coming across this on YouTube and sometimes it's me in a video and sometimes it's just a static picture, that's because I didn't get my act together and I didn't feel like being in front of the camera, but I didn't want to let that stop me from getting the information out.

My general format will likely be this: I'll be inspired in the moment to share something about what I've discovered, what a client and I have been dealing with, what I've been dealing with in my personal life, what I've noticed in the universe, what I've noticed with my friends. I'll write myself a few bullet points, and then I'll just press record. So really trying to make this as easy to disseminate as possible—the focus is on getting the information out in whatever imperfect form it will be in.

Connect With Me

So well, I hope you decide to subscribe wherever you are. Whether you found me on a podcast or video, I hope you'll follow along. If you've got any questions, you can find me at my website: www.vintagehealth.com.au (don't forget the .au!). There's a contact form through there or you can just email me at info@vintagehealth.com.au.

All right. Thanks so much for being here and I look forward to speaking to you soon. Bye for now.