Retreatment Botanics Managing Director and co-founder, Trudi Jaye, has always had a passion for wellness, nutrition and skincare.
Enlisting the help of Olivia Newton-John, Trudi established an entirely natural, vegan, palm oil free, planet-friendly skincare range, that proves that natural ingredients and visible results aren't mutually exclusive, and also takes a holistic approach to beauty by reminding us to surrender our stress, relax our emotions, inspire our spirit, and to love and appreciate our bodies.
We caught up with Trudi during her Wholefoods Cleanse to chat all things health and wellness.
What do you think is key to living a happy and healthy life?
While I have definitely found a few ‘keys’ to living a happy life, I do truly believe that happiness throughout life will ebb and flow. Life is a journey, an evolution, where we continually grow, evolve and come back to what really matters. These gentle reminders guide me daily:.
- Live in alignment with your higher self and your truth.
- Do what you love and connect with your creative flow.
- Live in the present moment, practising mindfulness and living with awareness.
- Practice gratitude each and every day, especially upon waking and before sleep.
- Let go of perfection - you’ll never achieve it.
- Surround yourself with nature, animals and loved ones.
- Eat clean, nutritious meals - healthy foods feed our body, mind and soul.
- Give to others in need.
- Accept and love yourself.
How do you look after your health and well-being?
Looking after my health and wellbeing means nurturing all aspects of my body, mind and soul. When I focus on all these habits together, I feel so much more balanced.
- Eat clean, nutritious foods.
- Daily movement - I’m obsessed with the KAAIAA workout - it has given me a renewed sense of clarity, focus and energy.
- Meditation - I like to mix this up, and practice a variety of meditation styles; mindfulness, visualisation, spiritual, and loving-kindness.
- Breath work - I find this practice so centring and invigorating.
- Skin wellness - I nurture my skin topically using our Retreatment Botanics products and incorporate skin superfoods into my diet to promote glowing skin from the inside out.
How do you connect with the community?
I’m surrounded by so many special communities, from the local Northern Rivers community that I connect with at the local market, to the health and wellness community that I’m immersed in as a part of my work! I’ve formed so many special connections within the business community too - through events, social media and catch-ups when travelling. Running a business and keeping up with everything outside of it can certainly be challenging, but nurturing the connections within these communities keeps me inspired and helps me stay centred.
Does spirituality play a role in your life?
Absolutely… Spirituality has always been a strong part of my life journey. Listening to my intuition and tapping into this inner guidance has always led to a better outcome, often beyond what I ever imagined was possible.
How has your health and wellness journey changed or evolved in recent years?
Over recent years I’ve become a lot more serious and intentional about creating a daily self-care ritual. I realised this isn’t a luxury or something that’s done only when I have extra time - it’s a non-negotiable. Running a business is all-consuming and it wouldn’t be true to say I’ve mastered the balance - I know how easy it is to push self-care to the bottom of the list when getting urgent deadlines across the line. But from experience, health and mental clarity always suffer as a result.
Setting up daily wellness habits really helps keep me on track. Going to bed early and getting up at 5am makes an enormous difference to prepping my day for success. Incorporating mindfulness, movement, nutrient dense food and supplements into my morning ritual means I’m more energised and clear for the day.
Even with the best intentions and habits in place, there are inevitably periods when life gets hectic and you have to stop, realign and reset. For me, this was in March after quite an intense start to the year. I embarked on the 3 day Wholefoods Cleanse journey with Sol Cleanse.
The incredibly colourful juices and salads were bursting with lifeforce and vibrancy - it inspired me to re-embrace my healthy habits and renew. I loved that the salads sustained me to get through my hectic working days. P.S, I’m still using the gorgeous little Sol Cleanse jars to house my bulk nuts and seeds.
What does sustainability mean to you? What tips do you have?
Ahh, sustainability has become such a multi-faceted concept, with so many people interpreting it differently. For me, sustainability means to live in harmony with nature, to conserve our resources and to be kind to our environment and its living creatures. Living our kindest, healthiest and most mindful life that will support diversity and nurture future generations of people, animals and plant species on mother earth.
I’m extremely passionate about discovering new out-of-the-box solutions to common environmental challenges. When developing the Retreatment Botanics skincare range, I was determined to drive innovation by creating the world's first ever spa quality, high-performance skincare that’s free from palm oil and its often hidden derivatives!
Palm oil production has a devastating impact on our environment and living inhabitants. The plantations or “green deserts” are rapidly wiping out rainforests, taking away the natural habitats of our beautiful endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers, elephants, rhinos and other endangered wildlife. Palm oil deforestation is also the cause of excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
My tips:
- Don’t feel the pressure to be perfect in creating a sustainable lifestyle - having the pressure is daunting and can be a barrier to doing anything or taking action.
- See it as an ever evolving process - always aiming to do better, one step, one action at a time. Everytime you make a sustainable choice, it feels good, gets easier and creates pathways to adding in more everyday habits.
- Find ways to create and instil habits into daily life that are easy, quick, seamless and therefore more achievable. For example - set up easy access recycling bins in a convenient spot (including in the bathroom), meal planning, visit your farmers market for local, seasonal produce and hang your reusable grocery bags by the door.
- Purchase goods from sustainable, ethical businesses where possible - one example that inspires me is the Biome stores which were recently honoured with the 2022 Top Sustainable Retailer in Australia award by Power Retail.
- Support slow and ethical fashion brands. The Northern Rivers has an amazing sustainable label called Daughters of India (located around the corner from our HQ). Some of my other favourites are Nomad the Label, Free the Label, Lu-Ciee and Ena Pelly.
- Choose and swap in nutrient dense plant-based meals (plant-based food uses less natural resources and is less taxing on the environment). If you struggle, just start with one meat-free day a week and build on that!
