Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lemia Astarabadi & Joshua Bowser. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Lemia Astarabadi &, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?
This is a story that can be extremely triggering for those who love animals, so please advise before reading on…
We own an aromatherapy company called “Sacred Scents Aromatherapy”, and we have created our own training course that teaches how to safely and effectively use plant medicine for mental, emotional, and physical healing. We were teaching the Level 1 course from our home, and one student drove up from a distance and planned to stay with us for one night between the two days of the course. We had a dog at the time, and didn’t realize until she arrived that she was allergic to dogs. We had over 100 plant essences and nut oils in the course to help her get through the weekend, so we addressed the allergy symptoms as they came up with aromatherapy, and were able to keep them under control during the course. During the night, we woke up with her a few times to apply essences to her allergy symptoms, and she was eventually able to sleep through the rest of the night. The next day of the course, we were all eating lunch together and someone asked the girl if she ever had a dog. She said she did, but it was a very sad story. We all asked her to share her story and was shocked to find out that she had a dog that she loved very much. One day, the dog was barking all morning and the noise was upsetting her father. He yelled at the dog to stop barking several times, as she was playing outside with her dog who was excited and playing with her. After her father had enough of the incessant barking, he went back into the house for a while. When he came out, he had a rifle in his hand and shot her dog in the face right in front of her. We all gasped to hear how horrible this was for her to witness. She cried and mourned her dog’s death for a long time, and her father never apologized for what he did that day. She had been carrying this horrific story in her heart for all of these years, and it was apparent that it had taken a toll on her health. As she told the story to the training group, she was met with tears, hugs, and a ton of caring support. We all processed together how this experience had still affected her to this day. We all agreed that it definitely contributed to her allergies, or “agitations”, in regards to animals – and specifically dogs. We anointed her heart with essences for healing and forgiveness and went along with our day together in the course. Someone noticed hours later that her sinus attacks has stopped completely. For the rest of the day and into the evening, she never had another allergy attack from our dog. To this day, she has not had severe allergic reactions to dogs since telling her childhood story to our training group. The students observed how the plants opened her heart to both remember and share this experience that was deep in her heart like an open wound. Her strength and courage to talk about this painful experience led to her ability to heal herself of her long-term allergies. This was a deep lesson for all of us about how scent, memory, and trauma are linked together, and that we can heal long-term or chronic health issues when we are able to link our traumatic events to our current living experiences. Her healing journey was deeply heartwarming to everyone in the course, and it left a powerful impression on us all. We share this story in all of our training courses to this day.
Lemia Astarabadi &, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are a married couple who have been working together in Holistic Health for the last twenty years. We both started in education, and found each other in massage school, seeking a new path for our lives. Each of us came to holistic health through our own personal traumas, and it was in the process of self-healing that we found our true calling. Between the two of us, we have experienced childhood sexual abuse, divorce, and even the loss of a child. Those traumatic experiences led both of us to Hawaii for healing. Joshua spent two months on the Island soul searching and working locally, and Lemia spent two months on the Island learning Lomi Lomi Massage directly from a Kahuna elder. We came together on the mainland and started playing music, practicing tandem and couples massages, and teaching massage therapy. We started recording our songs onto albums and incorporating the wisdom we were learning into the lyrics of our songs. Eventually, we became yoga instructors and then yoga teacher trainers, and we started teaching live music yoga classes weekly. Another student in our teacher training introduced medicinal aromatherapy back into our lives in a new way that we hadn’t experienced before, and we began using it regularly to support our health and wellbeing. We learned about and practiced aromatherapy for well over a decade before starting our own business. During this time, Lemia began learning about how to become a birth doula and got certified to practice doula work in Southern California. After years of personal experiences, we had painful lessons to learn from working with both the yoga and aromatherapy communities. The yoga world presented false prophets that misused power to financially, emotionally, sexually, and energetically abuse and take advantage of followers. The aromatherapy world was filled with manipulation and lies about the sources of plants, as well as the quality and purity of the essential oils. These tough lessons led us to pulling away from these communities and focusing more on our own work. We started sourcing our own plants from farmers and suppliers around the world, and eventually started our own aromatherapy company. Today, we focus on sharing breath work, live music chanting, and movement in larger events during the equinox, solstice, full moon, and new moon phases. We created a breath work training course as well as an aromatherapy course that we teach several times a year, and have created other training materials to support people on their holistic health and wellness journeys. Today, we consult clients and offer aromatherapy suggestions for self-healing, practice massage therapy, teach classes and trainings, play and record music locally, help new families as a Birth Doula, marry couples as their wedding officiants, teach nutrition and share vegan baked goods and recipes, and practice numerology and planetary astrology. We work with local yoga studios, cafes, and markets to share our classes, products, and baked goods, and we truly Love helping people back to their hearts to follow their truths, passions, and dreams fearlessly. We have learned powerful lessons that have empowered us to focus on the present moment, forgiving the past, and embracing the gifts that only show up in the here and now. We are honored to live in San Clemente and share our gifts with the community here, and we also enjoy traveling around the world to teach and help others. As a couple, we feel we offer a balanced and harmonious approach to self-care, self-healing, and the empowering journey back to self-Love.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Our field of Holistic Health is saturated with “healers and gurus”, practitioners, and teachers. Most people in this field have more than one career, and supplement their income from other jobs. There are some influencers and famous faces in this field, and they each have a specific angle under the holistic health umbrella that has become their specialty in helping others. The most successful Holistic Health Practitioners, Aromatherapists, Yoga Instructors, Birth Doulas, Nutritionists, and Planetary Astrologists absolutely love what they do, and have been studying and practicing in their trade for many years. They are humble, honest, authentic, and have a great amount of integrity, or they have been able to create the illusion that they are these things to the public eye. They are fair in their pricing, offer great services and products, and have wonderful organization skills that allow for greater consistency in their offerings and/or postings for social media content. What sets one practitioner apart from another is their life experiences. The teachers and practitioners who walk their talk, practice what they preach, and believe in what they share with others are in the highest demand. They are able to offer depth in their work because of their personal experiences. In this modern age of Holistic Health, it is easy to see through teachers and practitioners who haven’t practiced or tested what they are teaching before they share it with the world. The more experience we have in helping people, the greater capacity we hold in understanding what to do and choosing the best pathway of support for our clients. Passion, integrity, and experience drive all those in the Holistic Health field toward success and prosperity.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
We have always believed in word-of-mouth growth. We have met our students and clients in the live music yoga classes and concerts we have shared over the years, at festivals, at local markets, and through online referrals. All of our massage clients either met us personally before getting a massage, or were referred by another client. We have collected emails from students and clients in all of our offerings, and provide them with a weekly newsletter filled with poetry, quotes, articles, ancient wisdom, astrology, numerology, and so much more. Our newsletter has consistently gone out every week, without missing one week for over 17 years. People find us through our website, but we have never paid to get our web address more favorable views over other similar sites. We are on Facebook and Instagram only, but we have never purchased ads or followers on either site. Organic and natural growth, in our opinions, has helped us to build a consistent base with clients who stay with us, and help us spread the good word about our work. We recently were awarded by the City of San Clemente for all of the positive reviews we had in 2024, and we feel so honored to have made a healing impact on our local community. It is in our experience that people are attracted to, and find, those who can help them the most. We do not believe in competition because we know that every person is unique and has something special to share that is different than everyone else. We are honored and grateful to be able to do the work we do, and have the opportunity to follow our hearts and our dreams every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ramaholisticcare.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ramaholisticcare/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RaMaHolisticCare/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramaholisticcaretcgssa
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ramaholisticcare2247
- Other: https://www.theconsciousgroove.com/
https://www.ramaholisticcare.com/shop-sacred-scents-aromatherapy
https://www.instagram.com/sacredscentsaromatherapy/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/theconsciousgroove/?hl=en
