By Elke Finley
If you like natural skin and healing products, you may want to check out Nature’s Medicine Made by Yulia salves and oils next time you come into the Co-op. Yulia Kochubievsky is the maker of these products.
Wanting to leave the rat race and the big city to live instead in a quiet community in nature, Yulia and her husband came to look at places for sale on Cortes Island in February 2018. After their rental home was put on the market shortly after they returned to Vancouver, they made up their minds and decided to buy the first place they had looked at on Cortes. They have been living in their new home in Whaletown since last summer.
Yulia’s interest in natural medicine led her to take a course in herbal medicine seven years ago. The course was very experiential, and a big part of the class was the actual making of nature-based medicine. She ended up making her own salves and oils because, in Yulia’s words, “it is very potent and useful medicine.” She started out slowly by selling her products in the Yoga Centre and Raw Food Cafe in Vancouver a couple of years ago while still working full-time as a computer programmer. Yulia’s passion for herbs and plant-based medicine may well have originated from one of her biggest and earliest health crisis in her own life, where conventional medicine failed to heal or bring relief.
One of Yulia’s favourite remedies is the Balm of Gilead salve. In the course that she took in Vancouver, they often met outdoors and had a particular plant that they concentrated on. Meditation with the living plant, harvesting, and learning about the plant as well as the making of the medicine is what created her close relationship to Cottonwood. It was one of the earliest plants that they studied and Yulia felt a very strong connection to this tree. Its potent medicine is found in her Balm of Gilead salve. The aroma of the resin of the buds of the leaves is appreciated by many. Yulia always harvests this medicine herself. She explains that it produces a very aromatic oil, which is energetically like a mother’s hug. If you simply rub it on your heart, you can feel this energy. It is also a powerful disinfectant and antibiotic and is good for the lungs and coughs. You can rub it on your chest and back and it helps clear the lungs.
For her products, she chooses herbs and plants that are versatile, powerful, and easy to explain to customers. All of her products are plant-infused and some have essential oils as well. You can find the following products made by Yulia in the wellness section of the Co-op: Soothing Salve, Balm of Gilead Healing Remedy, Eczema Relief, Creamy Cedar, Nourishing Butter, Chocolate Lip Balm, Sugar Butter Scrub, Bay Rum Aftershave, Cedar Oil Bath & Body Oil, Flower of the Sun, Lavender & Rose Face & Body Oil and Sweet Dreams Linen Mist.
If this has sparked your curiosity, come take a look!
