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You can find the Body and Soul Apothecary booth by its gentle scent alone. Follow that enigmatic smell and you’ll quickly stumble upon one of the more eclectic companies present at Morgan Hill’s farmers market.
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“The whole goal of the project is to connect people to the earth—to more natural remedies—and to their own healing powers,” owner Lisa Marie Haley says. “For a lot of us, we haven’t had it in our families for a while. It’s been lost a little bit.”
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Haley is an energy healer who utilizes certain tools to promote and restore her clients’ health and emotional well-being. One of those tools is Reiki, an alternative healing therapy that originates from Japan and is administered by “laying on hands” to transfer energy from the healer to the patient through a time-honored process.
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Body and Soul Apothecary is a company that provides not only Reiki healing and training, but other methods of energy healing like essential oils, body care products, handmade jewelry and gemstones. Haley’s line of products is focused on chakra-based medicine, a form of healing that is foreign to most people.
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“I want to educate people,” Haley says. “I want to put tools in their hands that help them reconnect to the earth and their own ability to understand their bodies and heal.”
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Popular items in her line are the Calm and the Love essential oil sprays, soaps and scrubs. Calm is for the crown chakra and it has Haley’s homemade lavender essential oil. Love is for the heart chakra. It’s made from distilled Hawaiian flowers sent by Haley’s mother in Hawaii.
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After 10 years of heading her own yoga studio in Palo Alto, Haley was eager to create new and lesser-known healing products and services for the general public through repurposing older methods.
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“I started getting into essential oils and distilling my own a couple years ago. It took me a couple years to get that ready to go to market because of the amount of plants,” Haley says.
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Haley is skilled in the multi-layered world of alternative medicine and healing therapies. Growing up, her grandmother was an herbalist and her mother was a Reiki healer.
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“I feel like it’s in my blood,” Haley says. “It was neat to be exposed to all of that and also have them to fall back on to train me and to have it be a part of my daily life.”
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She says the response to her business in Morgan Hill has been extremely positive and uplifting for her.
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“It’s like getting a big hug. It’s nice to have the community want to know more and discover more. It’s been nothing but wonderful people who already understand a fair amount of it—or are at least curious about it.”
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Haley is also in the beginning stages of starting a healing community, where she’ll provide access to a Reiki healing circle and hopefully a self-sustaining source of support and holistic health for the community of Morgan Hill.
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“Ultimately, I feel that starting these energy healing communities would be a wonderful thing if I could do that in every farmer’s market that I show up at,” Haley says. “I see it being lots of different nodes or hubs of people who are interested in learning these types of things. I would feel so much satisfaction.”
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Look for Body and Soul Apothecary online at bodyandsoulapothecary.com or twice a month at Morgan Hill’s farmers market.
I want to put tools in their hands that help them reconnect to the earth and their own ability to understand their bodies and heal.
