Australian wellness brands honouring the cultural roots of products and practices
words by Nicholene Canisius
From gua sha to matcha, to Ayurvedic hair oiling.
The Western wellness and beauty industry often toes a fine line between cultural appropriation and appreciation. But what’s the difference between the two? Appreciating a culture boils down to having a genuine desire to learn and understand the cultural origins and significance of a practice. Cultural appropriation involves cherry-picking what looks ‘cool’ from a cultural practice, without learning about or acknowledging its roots.
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As someone with South Asian heritage, if I saw someone who just got henna done from a street market and they have no clue about where it comes from, I would probably think: ‘cultural appropriation’. They’ve adopted an element of my culture as a mere accessory. I feel the same way when I’m scrolling TikTok and see the generation-spanning Ayurvedic practice of naval oiling reduced to a ‘weight loss hack’.
The new season of The White Lotus paints an accurate picture of how cultural appropriation appears in wellness tourism. Concepts like ‘health mentors’, ‘digital detoxing’ and ‘stress management therapy’ are just some examples of how traditional and spiritual practices in Asia are diluted by Western-owned resorts to be palatable to rich white people.
The global wellness industry (now worth 6.3 trillion US dollars) is built on the wisdom of people of colour, while often ignoring and excluding them. For instance, yoga is an ancient practice that originated in the Indus Valley (now modern-day India and Pakistan), but when I do a quick YouTube search for yoga, the top results are videos of white women in Lululemon. When Western-owned corporations are profiting off practices that originate from minority cultures, we need to stop and consider who benefits from that wealth. Most of the time, it’s not the community where the practice began.
But as we become less tolerant of brands appropriating other cultures, we’re seeing new brands emerge with a meaningful and authentic connection to Indigenous practices, prompting us to learn more. Choosing to support these companies is an easy way to show appreciation in a way that aligns with our values. Below, I’ve curated a list of Australian wellness businesses honouring the traditional roots of their products and practices.
Junglo
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Junglo founder, Diya Shahaney, created her skincare brand to be “a love letter to South Asian culture.” While Ayurveda is getting increasingly popular on social media, its representation in the wellness space is often misrepresented, or divorced from its cultural roots.
Seeing this gap, Diya wanted to share the rich history and stories behind the Indigenous ingredients used in wellness routines. “South Asian wellness rituals are often seen as outdated or repackaged for the West. With Junglo, I wanted to reclaim the narrative and showcase our practices in a way that authentically represents our culture today,” she says.
Junglo’s skincare range includes Indian-native ingredients passed down through generations of women in Diya’s family. A personal favourite of mine is the Indian Harvest oil: a blend of 12 Ayurvedic nut, seed and plant oils that sink right into your skin. Think of it as golden hour in a bottle.
Miou Matcha
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Matcha (green tea powder) has gone from being elusive to being available almost everywhere: in iced lattes, smoothies, energy drinks, protein bars, even Kourtney Kardashian’s vitamin gummies. The commodification of matcha has sparked conversations about cultural appropriation and whether the traditional origins of the tea are being forgotten. The popularity has also resulted in a shortage of Matcha supply, which is only harvested once a year in Japan.
“The history of tea in Japan stretches back centuries and is deeply woven into the country’s culture and traditions,” says founder of Miou Matcha, Naomi Kebble. “Despite its global popularity, matcha production remains a meticulous craft, involving handpicking the tea leaves and taking an hour to grind just 40 grams with a stone mill.”
Melbourne-based Naomi launched Miou Matcha to share the same premium quality matcha from her grandparents’ tea shop in Fukuoka. The brand sells premium ceremonial Matcha from Japan and matcha sets with all the essentials you need, so you can start brewing authentic matcha at home.
Just Shea
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Founded in Sydney by West African-born Adama Kamara, Just Shea was inspired by her family tradition of using shea butter to heal and moisturise the skin. A focal point of the business is featuring native-to-Africa ingredients to showcase African beauty products and practices that are often overlooked.
“Africa is such a diverse continent, rich in culture and history but sadly the popularised narrative doesn’t reflect this,” says Adama. “With each product, I want people to learn about the ingredients that are unique to the continent, their benefits to our skin and how they were used traditionally.”
One of the brand’s best-sellers is the Shea Body Balm, made with ethically-sourced shea butter and African oils like Marula and Baobab. Adama is also committed to empowering women in West Africa, as shea crop cultivation provides a crucial source of income for women in rural Sub-Saharan Africa.
Lowanna skincare
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Indigenous-owned skincare brand, Lowanna, garnered huge success when it first launched in 2020, due to its focus on native ingredients that have been used by Indigenous Australians since time immemorial.
Founder Sinead Vandenbroek created the brand as a way to embrace her Narungga heritage and encourage people to ethically enjoy native botanicals like Kakadu Plum, Lemon Myrtle and Ylang Ylang. The minimalist collection includes skincare staples such as cleaners, moisturisers, clay masks and eye creams. Every ingredient has an extensive write-up on Lowanna’s website, helping to educate consumers about the healing power of native plants.
Yoga by Satvir Gill
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Melbourne-based Satvir Gill is a psychologist and yoga teacher who integrates spiritual teachings from her South Asian heritage into her yoga classes at Green Monday Studios in Carlton. Her 60-minute practice includes breathwork exercises and a Vinyasa flow, finished off with a deep rest in Savasana.
Passionate about creating a yoga space where BIPOC people can feel a sense of belonging and safety, Satvir offers weekly BIPOC yoga classes. “These classes not only offer cultural safety but additional layers of inclusivity of other marginalised identities related to body and ability,” says Satvir.
Phos Rituals
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After seeing a lack of authentic South Asian representation in the wellness industry, Poornima Fernando founded Phos Rituals, a skincare brand that aims to reflect modern-day South Asian and Ayurvedic wellness practices. “I want to create a space where the South Asian diaspora like myself can feel seen and accurately represented,” says Poornima.
Phos Rituals offers a wide variety of skincare and hair products from face creams and hair oils to beauty tools like daily scalp massagers. Try the Sneha hair oil infused with rosemary, lavender and vitamin E, it’s designed to help promote hair growth and strengthen your hair.
Zove Beauty
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Drawing on the ‘less is more’ skincare philosophy her parents instilled in her in Malaysia, Adeline Yeak founded the Melbourne-based gua sha brand Zove Beauty in 2018. While the facial tool only started appearing all over our TikTok FYP in recent years, it’s one of the oldest forms of traditional Chinese medicine and was initially used to treat heatstroke and colds. Now, gua shas are commonly used to release muscle tension and support blood circulation.
Zove uses 100 per cent genuine crystal, quartz and jade to make its tools, and you can feel the difference. The natural cooling effect of the stones helps to counteract the warming effect of the technique. As a bonus, the brand has a beauty blog dedicated to educating consumers about the benefits of gua sha and face rollers, helping combat the cultural appropriation of the ‘newly discovered’ facial tools on social media.
To discover more Indigenous-owned beauty, head here.
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