A health crisis made Jahzeel Quallo take a new approach to wellbeing. Tracey Gibbons’s change was a more gradual one that began with her introduction to yoga.

Years later they are on a similar entrepreneurial path, as owners of businesses that promote an holistic approach as the best way to achieve wellness.

It’s knowledge they will be sharing in Dockyard on Sunday as part of the Living Green Expo. Hosted by Greenrock, the event is a chance for the public to learn more about businesses that offer “natural, holistic, sustainable and environmentally friendly products and services”.

As the owner of Organic Orgone Body, a store in Sandys that sells alkaline herbal medicine, Jahzeel was thrilled that the expo gave him an opportunity to “enlighten more people about the fact that herbs are for healing”.

“[I also wanted] to give more insight on how to live in terms of being more natural – eating raw foods, incorporating herbs into your diet and your lifestyle to bring about a change of healing and strengthening the body for prolonged life,” he said.

“We've been conditioned and programmed to think a certain way and believe a certain way is the only way that things are done.”

Tracey, who is a yoga therapist, guides clients “into healing by balancing mind, body and spirit” through a series of postures, meditation and breath work.

It’s part of a bespoke programme she offers through Heaven and Earth Creative Healing Solutions, the private studio she created in her Paget home.

“I have been a yoga practitioner since about 2012. I used to be a teacher and while I was teaching, I was kind of dabbling, I guess, in the yogic lifestyle,” she said.

“Yogic lifestyle to me, it's not just doing yoga it’s changing your whole mindset.”

She opened Heaven and Earth Creative Healing Solutions about a year ago.

Tracey teaches yoga therapy, is an Ayurvedic wellness coach and a certified accessible yoga instructor, trained to teach yoga to “people who you don't usually see in the yoga studio”.

“The difference between yoga therapy and a typical yoga class is when you go into a yoga class, you will see all the people doing the same thing and with yoga therapy it's a bespoke programme,” she explained.

People with backaches, joint problems or any similar health issues can have them considered “from an emotional point of view, looking at the root cause”.

“For example, if a person has a lower back issue, they're concerned about financial worries; if a person is having issues with their heart, lungs or breath, that's usually to do with grief and sadness.

“I think that people don't really understand that by the time the body presents a physical issue it’s because the emotions have not been dealt with, seen, expressed. And so that settles in the body in a specific area, depending on which emotion that person is not dealing with.”

From her first yoga class as a drop-in student Tracey understood that it was “more than just a space where people stretch”.

“I wanted to make sure the way that I offered yoga to a client was going to be from a healing point. It had to be holistic healing.

“It's more than just a class where you stretch out your hips because you went running the day before. That's not what it's for.”

It’s a different understanding that many people had when she started yoga classes back in 2000.

“People weren't understanding that yoga is only half of the tradition that the Indian holistic community offers. Ayurveda and yoga go together to heal a person and yoga was brought over to the west, kind of ignoring the other half of it, which is Ayurveda. I was just kind of led by source I guess you could say, to delve into this road of healing.

“What we're trying to do is get people to stop outsourcing their health and to become agencies for their own selves. Instead of going to a doctor, sit down and say, ‘What is my body trying to tell me?’”

It was about a decade ago that Jahzeel embarked on a “herbalist lifestyle” after he began suffering from a “major pain” in his lower abdomen that he attributes to a problem with his colon.

“I went to visit the doctors and they couldn't help me so I ended up healing myself,” he said.

“I started taking herbs and fasting with fasting being the major part of it that brought about my healing. I became more enlightened to the body healing itself and the herbs being able to assist that process.”

Unable to work for about a year, he began studying the teachings of self-proclaimed herbalist Alfredo Bowman whose celebrity clients included Michael Jackson and John Travolta, and holistic health practitioners Llaila Afrika, Arnold Ehret and many others.

“Just studying their works, I put the practice to use and basically once I healed myself, I started to implement the herbal products at my store.”

What had been a DVD store has “slowly transitioned” into Organic Orgone Body over the past eight years. Clients have access to “the true power of alkaline herbal therapy with herbalist Jahzeel”.

“I would say from about 2012 the table has kind of shifted for a lot of people in terms of people becoming more enlightened.

“I would say that was around the time I kind of got enlightened myself – to a change in life in how we've been living and what we've been exposed to,” he said.

“That change, that enlightenment, kind of put me on my path, and I would say definitely over the years, I've seen a lot more interest in natural living and people trying to heal themselves with the herbal way as opposed to the allopathic community, the standard way of using prescriptions to heal themselves.”

Organic Orgone Body primarily sells organic herbs of the kind promoted by Alfredo Bowman, who called himself Dr Sebi.

“We also deal with holistic health. So meditation, sound therapy, yoga and different things like that, we would advise our customers to take part in to have a holistic approach to healing themselves.”

Both Tracey and Jahzeel are appreciate of all that the Living Green Expo is offering to them as business owners and to the wider community.

“It's taken a while I think for Bermuda as a whole [to embrace green businesses],” Tracey said. “I think there is also a pocket of holistic practitioners that people don't know about.”

Green beauty products weren’t readily available in Bermuda ten years ago,“ she added.

“Now you can go downtown and find a store to get products to wash your hair or your skin,” she said. “I think people are becoming more aware of what's going on.”

• The Living Green Expo will take place on Sunday from 10am until 6pm at The Shed in Dockyard. For more information, visitgreenrock.org/events/living-green-expo. Organic Orgone Body is onInstagram and Facebook. For more information, visitwww.orgonebody.comor for consultations: orgonebody@hotmail.com or 234-3737. Heaven and Earth Creative Healing Solutions is on Facebook and on Instagram: hvnandearth. Book an appointment at 747-2517