Move Over Kale, Here Comes Kelp!

What benefits can we get from kelp?

First of all kelp isn’t a new commodity. People have been harvesting and gathering seaweed for centuries. Some of us are just becoming aware of its incredible value for our health. One tablespoon of dried kelp contains between one-half milligram and 35 mg of iron! This iron also has a measurable amount of vitamin C that increases the bioavailability of the iron. Kelp contains alginic acid, which protects the plants from bacteria where it grows, and in the body it can reduce radiation exposure and help with the prevention of heavy metals being absorbed in our bodies.

Kelp is the largest source of Iodine. Iodine is critical in supporting our hormones that are made in our thyroid gland. Most of us are deficient in iodine; it is a key component in regulating the thyroid to produce healthy hair, skin and nails. It also is essential for bone health, brain metabolism and our energy levels. Kelp has high amounts of calcium, magnesium, potassium along with antioxidants and phytonutrients, amino acids, omega-3 fatty acids too. 

Now you know why we are so excited to use this amazing, beautiful plant in our product line BECOME. It is food thru the skin to nourish the body, feels amazing, smells luscious and it’s like giving the body a drink of minerals. 

Hippocrates Wellness introduces BECOME, the new line of organic and wild-crafted personal care products from LifeGive™.  BECOME features pure and luxurious ingredients that utilize the healing properties of seawater and seaweeds to nourish your hair, skin and body.

Marty Landau and Elise Goldstein describe their inspiration and journey while creating the BECOME line. Their unified knowledge and passion birthed a line of products that feed the body through the skin. This is not another line of beauty products; BECOME is a way of life.

How did the BECOME project come into your life?

ML: Well, I really have my parents to thank for bringing me into the beauty industry, and also bringing me to HHI. When I was 15 years old, my mother enrolled me in beauty school. Over the years I had my own salon and I pursued further training in Paris. After I had my two children, I became really interested in wellness, opened a spa, and went to Canada to learn about energy medicine. I was integrating that wellness piece into my spa in Pittsburgh, when one day I got a phone call from my mother that my father had a stroke. I spent the first three nights in intensive care with him and realized that my life needed to change. So I became a caregiver for the last 6 years of my parents’ lives - and that brought me to Florida. When I was going through the medical scene with my parents, I just knew that it wasn’t the right way. I was in search of an alternative, more holistic way of making them comfortable, safe, happy during the last part of their lives. I heard Brian Clement speak and when he mentioned the health educator program, I couldn’t wait to sign up. The next year I went through the course, and the day I graduated, Hippocrates offered me a position in guest services.

I adored working with the guests, but I knew I had a lot of skills that weren’t being used. So I put together a business plan to open a new HHI salon. Anna and Brian loved it. Once we opened, I started looking for really clean products to use, and I couldn’t find anything that I felt confident with, so I said to Anna that I thought we should formulate are own product line. She immediately agreed. The very first two pieces were the shampoo and conditioner - it took us 18 months to actually get the right formulation. And then from there, we need a skin line and that led to a body line…so now we have launched the first 24 products, and have plans to add 12 more in the beginning of 2017.

Can you say a little bit about what you mean by a ‘clean product’?

ML: The skin is the largest breathing organ in the body, so it’s important that whatever we put on it is really safe. I wanted to create something free of mineral oils, parabens, sulfates, sulfides, artificial additives and all of the other chemicals that we all know are so dangerous. I wanted the line to be healthy and healing, not just cosmetic - that was the most important thing. We can actually support the digestive system, the immune system and other internal systems through what is absorbed by the skin.

After working in the spa industry, I had some knowledge about the power of seawater and seaweed because I saw directly the benefits that people had from it, so we started with this as our foundation - the oldest living organism on the planet, algae. There are so many products out there that work beautifully, but aren’t healthy. And on the other side, also so many healthy products that simply don’t really work. I was determined to fix this. Once I realized that we really needed a full personal care line, I began thinking about how to move forward, and I knew that Elise had experience, not only as an artist, but also in branding within the luxury industry. So I went directly to her and that’s how we’ve really moved forward. She brought her own voice to the project.

Elise, tell us about your arrival into this picture.

EG: Sure! So, the beauty industry isn’t my ‘home territory’. My research for the last 15 years has been centered on “Intra-personal communication”, the study of how people speak to themselves. I’m really interested in inner-dialogue and how this inner-dialogue influences people’s everyday lives, their vision of the world, and of themselves. I was working mainly as an artist and a therapist, but also as a creative consultant in the luxury market when Marty invited me into the project as the Brand Manager. Hippocrates has such a special atmosphere and by spending time on campus with Marty, I had a kind of epiphany. I realized that when people touch their hair, body, skin as they apply these products, they make a gesture of love directly towards themselves. It might seem simple, but that changed everything for me. Just think about how powerful it is : in the morning, when we first wake up, these products are often the first thing that we encounter as we prepare for our day, and sometimes the last thing we encounter before sleep. This was no longer just about launching a product line, this was an opportunity to get deeply, intimately involved with people’s experience of their own bodies. Especially when people are facing a health challenge or in recovery, the body can feel like an adversary. I wanted this line to be like a companion to people as they make friends with their body; a way to communicate care and appreciation to their own ecosystem.

Can you talk about how you thought through the brand identity of this line and how it fits

with the HHI philosophy?

EG: So the only thing we really knew in advance, is that we were building a concept line under the brand of LifeGive, which so far has been a line of nutritional supplements. Traditionally, we are taught to think about supplementation like this - you take a capsule, you swallow it, and this gives you the things that you’re not getting through your food. But with the formulations involved in each of these products, we can clearly show people that this is another way to supplement your nutritional intake. BECOME nourishes your body through your skin. And this gave me a wave of inspiration in terms of the names and the branding of this line. I asked, “What are people bringing into their bodies through their mind when they look at a product label?” That’s going into their system too! This is another source of nourishment or toxicity! Thanks to the research of Dr. Emoto on the impact of energetic reverberation on water crystals, we know that positivity and negativity in terms of language, sound and music, are reflected in the molecular structure of actual physical matter. When water is exposed to something harmonious, supportive or loving, it develops these perfectly symmetrical, intricate, gorgeous geometries. And when it’s exposed to something negative, discouraging or aggressive, the molecular structure looks like… a mess!

I am firmly against the cultural norms that are created by the beauty industry, this pressure that is put on everyone - especially women, but really everyone - to engage in a kind of artificiality around looks. But everyone has the capacity to be beautiful when their system is balanced, and when they have joy in their lives. So this was my platform when I started thinking about the names. Hippocrates itself is based so strongly on the narrative of transformation. When people go to HHI, they have this experience of being totally immersed in a new way of thinking, a new attitude about health and the body. That’s why its called the life transformation program. It’s a turning point.

The word BECOME marks this turning point. It’s like a cocoon or a chrysalis. We’re always becoming something else. And it’s up to us to decide what influences what we want to become and how we go about transforming ourselves. We want BECOME to offer a really sweet, loving, energetic experience to support these daily rituals of self-care.

Discover the BECOME product line here.

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