I was flattered when asked to write my story. It’s one of being broken, picking up the pieces, and learning to put myself back together again. I think every woman has experienced that in some way, shape, or form, and so I share my experience in the hopes it may help another woman who needs it.
My name is Celine Wallace; I’m an Ayurvedic Practitioner who was once an actress in Hollywood. I was always a girl chasing a dream of doing or being something bigger than myself. That dream led me to Hollywood, where I lived and worked as an actress for over a decade. In my mid-20’s, my body gave out beneath me after five years on the Hollywood hamster wheel of grinding, hustling, and living a continuously stressed and anxious life.
I wasn’t sleeping, was constantly on edge about my ever-growing workload, and caffeinated up to the eyeballs to function every day. I was only just surviving – trying to get through castings, early call times, and get in my ridiculous HIIT workouts everyday – as my agent would say ‘to keep my waistline within the Hollywood measurements.’ I had become a shell of a human being.
Maybe you know the feeling? The feeling of operating outside your body, like one day you look around at your life and you don’t even know whose life you’re living? Then one day, I started collapsing out of nowhere; at 6am one morning, I got out of the car at my Melrose Ave gym in West Hollywood and passed out on the pavement. I woke up in the hospital with no idea what had happened and a $10k bill on top of it all because I had no insurance. It was at that moment I knew something had to change. My doctor had me on a cocktail of pills – sleeping pills to shut off and uppers to wake up, and another pill for anxiety because I was so anxious about all the pills I was taking; it was laughable.
I was walking around in a fog of unanswered questions about why my body was shutting down, and whenever I asked my doctor what was causing these blackouts, the only answer became, ‘take this pill for this symptom. It will help.’ But the question remained unanswered – ‘why is this happening?’
After a year of living in this nightmare and more collapses, I took my health into my own hands and moved from Hollywood to the Himalayas in India, giving my life up as I knew it to heal my body. It was in India, in an Ashram in the mountains, that I came across an Ayurvedic Doctor. As I sat with her having a consultation, all the questions I had that were once confusing or unanswered made sense in one moment.
You know those conversations with someone where you resonate so deeply you can feel it in your bones? She diagnosed me with a severe Pitta Vikruti (fire elemental) Imbalance. A Pitta imbalance is when the body goes into a nervous system overload and shuts down because it is trying to process the toxic excess acidity, inflammation, and chronic adrenal fatigue with nowhere to go.
She gave me a series of herbs and lists of foods to eat, including mindfulness practices to help dispel this heat from my mind and body and balance my Agni (internal inflammation.) Within a few weeks, I felt like myself again. I could hardly believe it!
After months of searching for answers with multiple Western doctors, I finally could understand my body after one session with an Ayurvedic doctor – all the information I was seeking to heal was there. It’s funny that Ayurveda means, in Sanskrit, the Science of life, and I know from my own experience that that is true.
Everything I ate or did added heat to my body; from fasting, or living off multiple coffees a day followed by alcohol, like wine, to wind down in the evening and combined with eating hot and spicy foods during the day with hot sauce on everything to burn more calories, then working out to an insane level of fatigue and taking on more and more mental work. Whenever I was tired, I did the opposite of rest – I had another coffee, went for a run or took a pill to keep learning lines and do anything but what my body was craving – stillness.
From this realization and moment of healing myself, I decided to help other women heal their bodies and have access to this knowledge without having to fly to the other side of the world or be at death’s door to find it! I studied in India and then Sri Lanka to become an Ayurvedic Practitioner, and I began a company called Sattva Soul, meaning Balanced Soul, in Sanskrit.
I wanted to bring Ayurvedic medicinal quality organic herbs to the West and offer women’s retreats and consultations so they could have a new perspective on health. One that empowered a model of self-health and empowered healing, knowing that we have the power to heal our bodies, but first, we must create a safe environment for them to heal within.
We now have Sattva Soul women’s health retreats and supplements in LA, NZ, and Bali. Our Ayurvedic organic supplements are medicinal grade – the same herbs from the same farms as I took on my health journey. They are all lab tested and curated for symptoms like adrenal fatigue, anxiety, sleep, gut health, and hormones and are in stores throughout NZ and America, like Health Post, Amazon, and online with Sattva Soul.
To this date, I have worked with thousands of burnt-out women like myself who feel purposeless, adrenally fatigued, their hormones out of balance, or their nervous systems dysregulated. I see myself in all of them, and I have seen them breathe new life into a healthier, and happier version of themselves. Much like myself when I came across Ayurveda!
If any of this resonates with you, I created an Ayurvedic practitioner evaluation for free at our website – Sattvasoul.co.nz so you can find out what your Ayurvedic Vikruti (imbalance) is.
