About me

Hello, I'm Natalie, founder of Heal Oasis Ayurvedic Wellness Clinic in Derbyshire, and Derby's only qualified Ayurvedic Health Practitioner and Marmapuncturist.

I help people restore their health, energy and wellbeing using the ancient, holistic wisdom of Ayurveda, one of the world's oldest systems of healing. Whether you're navigating chronic illness, exhaustion, or simply feel that something is out of balance, my goal is to find the root cause and give your body what it needs to heal.

My passion for natural health didn't start with a course or a qualification. It started in childhood - with my dad, a juicer, and a story that stopped doctors in their tracks.

My Story

My dad was a joiner. Not a doctor. Just a man who loved my mum and wouldn't take no for an answer.

I was about five years old when she was first diagnosed. I didn't understand what terminal meant. I just knew she was very ill, that my dad was fighting for her, and that somehow she came back.

It wasn't until I was around twelve that he sat me down and told me the full story. He gave me a book to read - World Without Cancer by G. Edward Griffin. I've never looked at health the same way since.

My dad had read about non-drug cancer therapies years before her diagnosis, he had always been someone who thought for himself. When the diagnosis came, he spoke to his friend Eric, who with his wife Marion ran a health food shop in Ilkeston. Eric had spotted a small advertisement in a health magazine for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre and showed it to my dad.

My dad rang them straight away. They told him she would need to come to Bristol, but she was bedridden and in constant pain, and that seemed impossible. The hospital agreed to give her a single dose of radiotherapy, just enough to shrink the tumour on her spine so she could get out of bed and make the journey. She took only that one dose, the full course of treatment would eventually have killed her, and my parents travelled to Bristol, where they stayed for two weeks, learning the full Gerson protocol and coming home with everything they needed.

Around nine months later, she was cancer free. Her GP closed his surgery early to come to the house and see for himself that she was still alive.

The cancer came back years later, very aggressive, spreading to every organ. She was admitted to hospital for what everyone understood to be end of life care. But my dad asked to try Gerson again. The oncologist said yes. He juiced in the hospital kitchen. Her supplements, including laetrile, were kept at her bedside, on prescription. Four weeks later she walked out of hospital. A few months after that, the oncologist rang my dad to say the tests showed no cancer anywhere in her body.

She passed away when it returned a third time. She hadn't stayed on the protocol. These things are complicated, and I've made my peace with that.

But what my dad did - with a juicer, a library book, and a refusal to give up, has never left me. It's why I spent years pointing people toward natural health whenever someone got a bad diagnosis. It's why in my 40s I finally trained properly in Ayurveda. And it's why I now sit with clients in Derby who are navigating cancer, chronic illness, and exhaustion.

The body, when properly supported, can do things that stop doctors in their tracks. I know this because my dad taught me so at twelve years old, with a book in my hands.

Tara Internatational Retreat Centre, Etwall

Twelve Years in a Buddhist Retreat Centre

Those twelve years shaped me profoundly. I taught meditation, study groups and ran weekend retreats, but more than the teaching, it was the daily orientation of my life toward something beyond myself that left the deepest mark.

Kadampa Buddhism places enormous emphasis on taking your spiritual practice out into the world for the benefit of others, on genuinely dedicating your life to relieving suffering. You can't live that way for twelve years without it becoming part of who you are.

That's what brought me to Ayurveda, and it's what brings me to the clinic every day. When someone comes to me with chronic illness, exhaustion, or a diagnosis that has left them frightened, I'm not just a practitioner offering treatments. I'm someone whose deepest wish is to help free them from their suffering. That intention, I believe, changes the quality of the work.

My Training

It wasn't until my 40s that I followed the calling to train formally in Ayurveda. The more immediate reason came during the COVID era - a time when I, like many others, became deeply aware of how little public health conversation focused on natural immunity, nutrition, lifestyle and preventative wellness.

It felt clear to me that the most empowering thing I could do was train professionally in a system that helps people build genuine, long-term resilience.

Diploma in Ayurvedic Lifestyle & Nutrition (DipALN) ~ with Distinction Ayurveda Institute UK, under Dr. Deepika Rodrigo, a highly respected Ayurvedic Physician and Clinical Director of the Ayurvedic Clinic in London. With 25 years of teaching experience, including senior lecturer posts at the College of Ayurveda, Westminster University and Middlesex University, Dr. Rodrigo has trained many of today's leading Ayurvedic specialists. She is known for her ability to bridge classical Ayurvedic teachings with the health challenges of modern life, and invests an extraordinary number of face-to-face hours with her students.

Myself and fellow Marmapuncture students with Dr Godagama

Diploma in Marmapuncture (DipMarmaP, LicMP) British Institute of Marmapuncture, under Dr. Simi Godagama.

I came to marmapuncture through a personal connection. I had been taking my father to see Dr. Shantha Godagama, one of the most senior and respected Ayurvedic physicians in the UK, and the man who first brought Ayurveda to Britain in 1979. In our conversations, Dr. Godagama consistently encouraged me to study marmapuncture. He was passionate about its ability to produce profound results and relieve pain and suffering.
On his advice, I enrolled in the Diploma course taught by his daughter who continues his work and lineage, Dr. Simi Godagama.

It is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Dr. Shantha Godagama is, in my view, one of the great pioneers of natural medicine in the UK, a man of extraordinary knowledge, compassion and quiet dedication who has spent his life bringing the wisdom of Ayurveda to people who needed it, long before it was fashionable to do so. I feel genuinely honoured to have been guided by him.

It also matters to me that Dr. Godagama is Buddhist. When I began studying Ayurveda I was still living at the retreat centre, still very much under the Kadampa view that the mind is everything (which ultimately it is), that working on the body was almost beside the point. Ayurveda gently turned that around for me. Here was a tradition teaching that the body profoundly affects the quality of the mind! that The right diet, the right rhythm of life, the right care for your physical self creates the conditions in which the mind can flourish.

And then there is this: Ayurveda's deepest aim is not simply to treat illness. It is to give people a longer, healthier life so that they have more time and energy to walk their own path - to fulfil their dharma, whatever that may be. For me, that is not a contradiction of my Buddhist life. It is an expression of it. My dharma, I have come to understand, is to help others with their health, to give them the vitality to keep going, to keep seeking, to have more time for what truly matters.

Ayurvedic Massage Therapy Diploma Tri-Dosha Academy, under Sunita Passi.

I first met Sunita when I was looking for shirodhara training, wanting to add a physical therapy to complement my health consultations. I did the course and always hoped to find my way back to her orbit.

Two years later the opportunity came. Sunita was looking for people to work on a Tri-Dosha stand at John Lewis and I jumped at it, knowing it was a chance to reconnect. Over lunch that day we started talking about bringing the Tri-Dosha home party concept to life, and she invited me to head it up.

Sunita is someone I now count as a genuine friend, and I find her endlessly inspiring. Her spirituality, her depth of knowledge and her passionate commitment to making Ayurveda accessible to everyone, not just those who already know to look for it, is something I deeply admire. She has built something beautiful with Tri-Dosha and I feel privileged to be part of spreading that work further.

I am also currently training as a session leader in The Passi Method, a programme Sunita has developed that weaves Ayurvedic wisdom into a practical, step-by-step framework for self-awareness and healing. The aim is to bring this work into organisations and, all being well, into the NHS, making Ayurvedic principles available to people who might never otherwise encounter them. It feels like a natural extension of everything I believe about this work and who it should be reaching.

I am a member of the Association of Ayurvedic Professionals UK and continue to deepen my studies in traditional Panchakarma and clinical Ayurveda.

Diploma in Marmapuncture (DipMarmaP, LicMP) British Institute of Marmapuncture, under Dr. Simi Godagama.

I came to marmapuncture through a personal connection. I had been taking my father to see Dr. Shantha Godagama — one of the most senior and respected Ayurvedic physicians in the UK, and the man who first brought Ayurveda to Britain in 1979. In our conversations, Dr. Godagama consistently encouraged me to study marmapuncture. He was passionate about its ability to produce profound results without reliance on herbal medicines, which aren't always fully regulated in the UK. On his advice, I enrolled in the Diploma course taught by his daughter, Dr. Simi Godagama.

It is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Dr. Shantha Godagama is, in my view, one of the great pioneers of natural medicine in the UK — a man of extraordinary knowledge, compassion and quiet dedication who has spent his life bringing the wisdom of Ayurveda to people who needed it, long before it was fashionable to do so. I feel genuinely honoured to have been guided by him.