Newsletter No. 6 (January 2025) - First Step #2025
Hello! It’s been a really long time since I’ve written on Welluvia - 4 years exactly. A smoothie recipe, an occasional refresh and re-upload of certain yearly guides - but outside of that - not much!
Since my last proper set of articles in December 2020 I’ve been thinking here and there how to approach getting back on here. I wanted to write about new things I had discovered or was interested in trying, but didn’t know how to start writing on here again without beginning the same writing routine I had in the past. Originally when I started Welluvia I had set out to write a few articles a month on new wellness topics, recipes or skincare that I had discovered that I wanted to talk about.
However, as I started to get more into 2020, I found myself writing multiple articles a week, opening an online wellness store, doing music mixes, creating products, constant website design refreshes and more in-depth guides and interviews, and as much as I enjoyed this, it became my full-time job. By the time December rolled around and I was working full-time, I found myself coming home after a long day only to sit at my computer to try and finish those comprehensive ‘Welluvia Gift Guides’ by a certain deadline I gave myself. I was up late for nights on end then working the next day and ultimately became burnt out and resentful. The amount of content I had given myself to churn out became a bit too much and in the new year I decided to take a step back.
I considered closing the website down permanently, changing the concept entirely, or just leaving it as an online archive. In the end, I left it here to sit for a while - I closed the online store and streamlined some of the landing pages so the articles were easier to find and read. Every now and again I would update an article and re-upload it, just to keep something new appearing on the website. This wasn’t really new information though, and I did find myself constantly coming across new things that I wanted to discuss on Welluvia but didn’t really know a way to start back up. Even this newsletter, for example, I originally started writing in August 2023, and am only now finishing it off to share on the 1st of January 2025. So that brings me to now…
I decided to write this newsletter on why the blog stopped, what I’ve been up to, but more importantly, what are some of the things I’ve been doing and learnt about in the past 2 years that I wanted to share.
What’s News?
Pretty much immediately after I stopped posting to Welluvia at the start of 2021, I started working more with my sister on her jewellery business. I started doing the marketing and photography for her collections, and creating mixes to accompany the new releases. I started doing more fashion photography again and entered a new relationship with someone early 2022. I moved interstate with them towards the end of 2022 and have spent more time on my photography practice, recently shooting two weddings for Vogue and a tour diary for a musician. My parents recently moved to Ikaria, which almost felt like a full circle moment as Ikaria is one of the blue zones, and the blue zone diet is one of the first articles I wrote about on here. Throughout this period I’ve come into contact with so many interesting people, and have learnt so many new things that have helped my wellbeing and life and brought me to where I am today. I’m excited to discuss these new discoveries but firstly…
Something Old
Matcha. I’m still drinking matcha daily. As one of my original articles on here, I’m finding the same results as before. Longer lasting energy, no coffee crash or anxiety jitters. You can read where I first wrote about this here.
Energy Clearing. Coming into my new apartment, I’m obsessed with palo santo smudging and bringing out the tuning fork. These are both things I’ve spoken about on Welluvia before (Palo Santo, Tuning Forks), and it continues to be worthwhile. Palo Santo I use in the mornings to clear out the energy from the day before, or whenever I’ve done a big clean in my apartment and want to reset the environment. The tuning fork I use when I have work to do, or feel myself disconnecting and need a bit of recalibration and refocusing.
Water Filtering Binchotan Charcoal. I love binchotan charcoal. I learnt about it a few years ago from a Marie Kondo guide and have had them in all our carafes and water bottles since. We used to stock the Morihata ones on here and those are definitely my favourite. By keeping binchotan in your water it naturally removes contaminants, heavy metals, chlorine and other chemicals while adding healthy minerals to your water as well. We also recently installed our hydrogenating alkalising water filter after nearly 2 years of having it sitting in the box in our study. Looking forward to discussing that further in the future!
Japanese Foot Patches. I’ve spoken about these once on here in my Winter Guide (and stocked them at one point), but love them so much I really could’ve written an entire article on them. You stick them on your feet when you go to bed and they absorb the toxins from your body while you sleep. It’s important to drink lots of water before bed as the process dehydrates the body.
I’ve been looking back at some of my older articles and really wanted to re-share three in particular-
On Dealing With Regret, Emotional Rebirth and Seasonal Cleansing
The Power of Words and Masaru Emoto’s Experiments on Water (This is still my most popular article to date).
As expected, reading some of my old work was making me cringe, but at the same time I was happy that with what I wrote with my own perspective and voice, especially now when everything is so saturated with AI and ChatGPT.
Something New
With a lot of time passing, I’ve been learning and trying new things. Here are some of the things I haven’t spoken about on Welluvia yet that I wanted to share.
Hypnotherapy. The most significant thing that I started in the past few years and haven’t spoken about prior on the website is hypnotherapy. I started casually smoking a bit more in 2021 more than I would’ve liked and was prompted to visit a hypnotherapist to help with the situation. Very quickly I found out I didn’t have a problem with stopping smoking all together but started a very interesting and rewarding introspective journey into essentially, feeling better about myself and my life. I won’t say too much here as I hope to speak more in detail about this on here in the near future but it’s definitely a modality I can’t praise enough.
Coconut Pulling and Tongue Scraping. I got Invisalign in 2022 to finally rid me of my camel teeth, and since then it’s been even more important than ever for me to focus on my oral health. I actually started doing both of these things while I was writing for Welluvia in 2020 but never got around to talking about them then. I’ve been trying to ‘coconut pull’ every morning before eating or drinking anything. It’s an Ayurvedic remedy to clean the mouth, teeth and gums and has definitely helped to remove that morning mouth feeling. Another Ayurvedic technique I’ve been doing to help with oral health is tongue scraping. I used to stock them on Welluvia and have since been doing it in both the morning and night. It involves gentle scraping the tongue surface with a tongue scraper, removing toxins, improving digestion and aiding in keeping the mouth free from bacteria.
Vitamin B12 Injections. One of the first articles I wanted to write for on here was about vitamin injections. I had spoken to people that had had them and was interested in researching more. Time passed and I never really got around to it, however, after a blood test last year, my results had shown that my Vitamin B12 was shockingly low. I was promptly prescribed with injections of B12 to be taken over the month. I had spoken to people who had similar experiences and was told that it would feel like I’ve had “50 coffees” or that I would be “focused”, “energetic” and in a “really good mood”. So when I had my first injection and noticed myself feeling sluggish and tired, I was mildly confused. I had the second and third and the symptoms were worse after each time. On the third one I felt completely out of it - my body was tired and I felt like I was walking around like a zombie. After a quick consult with my naturopath, it turned out you needed to be prescribed a certain B12 depending on your body. The one my GP had prescribed me was completely wrong for me and had actually turned toxic in my liver - OOPS! Needless to say I haven’t seen that GP since and brought my B12 levels up using a supplement that was appropriate for my body type.
& To Come…
Moving forward with Welluvia I plan to add a movie list here and there, a recipe, a newsletter like this (but more compact), and more on topics worth talking about in article form. There’s a few things I wanted to discuss in here today but feel like I could flesh out more of an article on them - halotherapy, anti-candida diet, activated charcoal and volcanic ash as a supplement, coffee colonics, mouth taping… etc.
I made a Multi-Algae Popcorn recipe today that I’ll be sharing on here in the next couple of days too… stay tuned!
Happy new years, and welcome back to Welluvia! <3
With wellness,
Aleksandar
Header image by Juergen Teller.
