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Twelve years ago, Doreen Doucette opened her business Anjali Ayurveda N.S. Holistic Treatment Centre & Apothecary. She was excited to open a clinic where she could bring her teachings and training to Yarmouth and surrounding areas, focusing on reflexology and Ayurveda, which she had studied in India.
Doucette, who was born and raised in Argyle, and where she continues to live, wanted people in the area to experience this form of practice.
Today, Doucette has downsized her practice, from a beautiful three-storey Victorian home that she had transformed into a clinic, to her tiny, rustic, warm and cosy apothecary in the woods. Now, her primary focus is herbals, tinctures, and natural skin care products.
Doucette said three years ago she never would have expected her change in business focus.
“Sometimes, we get the things we most want, by just letting it happen as it is intended and not forced,” says Doucette.
“I still practice reflexology, and a few select Ayurveda treatments, but everyone now refers to my business as the Eleanor Autumn Apothecary,” says Doucette.
The reason being is that when she purchased the Victorian home in Yarmouth to set up her practice, many people said the house needed its own name.
Her grandmother, Eleanor, who, unbeknownst to Doucette until her passing, held an interest in many natural healing modalities. Doucette’s granddaughter, Autumn, enjoys helping her make the oils, lotions, and tinctures she sells. The name Eleanor Autumn therefore became the natural choice, explains Doucette.
It’s the name her clients remember.
Originally, Doucette began her journey with the intention of opening a clinic and introducing Ayurveda to Yarmouth and the Tri Counties. She obtained her doctorate of natural medicine in 2011, became a certified reflexologist and then started her studies in Ayurveda. She travelled to India twice for clinical studies.
On her second trip to India, she learned to make many of their traditional healing oils and medications.
“Although I thoroughly enjoyed these days spent at the Medicine Hut, preparing herbs with stone mortar and pestle, over an open fire in the almost 30-degree heat of India, upon my return home I thought, while in India, they didn’t use one of our western herbs in any of their formulations. They used only what was available in India,” says Doucette.
She said she knew the herbs that people have grown up with are the herbs that will most easily and effectively help bodies to heal. That began her studies into western herbalism.
Lifelong interest
Since an early age, Doucette always had an interest in medicine. She is interested in how medicine is made, what it is made from and what it does to a person. It’s another reason she became a nurse, studied pharmacology, and worked in the medical field for more than 20 years.
“I have now returned to the basis of medicine,” says Doucette. “It’s back to the basics — to nature.”
When making her products, Doucette strives to locate the herbs that grow naturally in the area. This may involve going out on her horse and foraging for wild grown herbs such as St. John’s wort, bear berry, yarrow, arnica, mugwort, or red maple.
“The most beautiful times foraging have been while riding my horse,” she says.
“My husband gifted me with a beautiful set of saddle bags and so many times, we come home from a relaxing trail ride full of herbs, grown naturally, in our own back yard,” she says.
She then takes the herbs and dries them, powders them, infuses them, tinctures them, decocts them and then adds what is needed to a specific cream, lotion, oil, tea, or tincture.
She says the best part is knowing that there are no chemicals, pesticides, or fertilizers in any of her products.
Trial and error
When Doucette wanted to make a skin care cream — “because who doesn’t want beautiful, youthful looking skin?” — she was having difficulty finding a local ingredient that contained collagen.
The massage therapist that was working from her clinic at the time told Doucette about a capsule that he was selling. It was derived from a locally produced sea cucumber. She began to research this sea creature and was surprised by the collagen benefits it provided, not only for internal purposes, but for external purposes as well. She contacted the manufacturer of the sea cucumber powder, and he gave her some of their powder to see if she could successfully incorporate it into the formula for the nighttime collagen facial cream.
Once Doucette was confident of the formulation and had been using it herself for a time, she let some clients try it. The response was amazing, she says.
Now, that collagen nighttime face cream is being produced under their private label and being marketed in several countries. The collagen night cream can be purchased under the private label name, from Bêche Neutraceuticals.
The most popular skin care item that Doucette makes is still this nighttime collagen face cream with sea cucumber, while the most popular tincture/capsule product she makes is for Lyme disease.
“I have successfully treated, and continue to treat, so many people, dogs, and horses all over the province, as well as many people in Ontario and Quebec with my herbal protocol for Lyme disease,” says Doucette.
She is currently the only recognized Lyme consultant under the Buhner Lyme Protocol in Canada.
Doucette also has a couple more skin care products in the works. To add to her current facial serum of snow mushroom with hyaluronic acid, she will formulate it with Alpine rose stem cells from Switzerland and an herbal ingredient that is derived from hibiscus and simulates Botox, but is in topical form and not injectable.
The inspiration for these products, she says, mostly comes from her clients. They will say something that they wish they had or could find, and it seems to create a little spark. Then, she is off to see if she can create or find what it is they are looking for. Other times, ideas will come from her grandchildren when they are sick.
In the future, Doucette would like to continue her herbal studies and increase the variety of tinctures and capsules that she makes. She would also like to have an evening a month for people to gather at the apothecary to learn about different herbs.
She would like to teach the origins and folklore of herbs and how to make a healing oil, tincture or a simple salve. She would like to help many more people learn the benefits of natural medicine, how it can be used as a preventative measure as well as having very potent healing properties.
This, in turn, would lessen the burden on our current health care system that is in a dire situation, she says.
Eleanor Autumn products can be viewed and purchased via dmurphydoucette.com or directly from her at the apothecary. Visiting the apothecary is by appointment only.
This content was originally published here.
