For Kamalaya Naturopath Samantha Van Dort, alternatives to conventional medicine became a professional calling when she was just a teenager, working in a pharmacy near her home in Melbourne, Australia.
“It was an old-fashioned pharmacy, one where they actually prepare remedies and medicines” she recalls. “That’s where I realized that some drugs actually make people worse and not better, while the people who took herbs and vitamins got better and didn’t come back.”
But Sam had also been introduced to naturopathy as a child, when her Sri Lankan father shunned the antibiotics-orientated treatment of Western doctors and took his family instead to Melbourne’s first naturopath. Her focus on health continued through high school at the pharmacy and then intensified at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, where she earned her bachelors degree in psychology and psychophysiology. This further developed her awareness of alternative practices to health and healing and of the body’s own healing capabilities.
After graduating Sam researched herbs, diet and various natural philosophies of healing whilst she worked throughout Asia. On returning home to Melbourne she enrolled at the Southern School of Natural Therapies, where she earned a further bachelors degree in Health Science Naturopathy.
In 2005 Sam worked in her own naturopathic clinic, South Yarra Natural Therapies, whilst also consulting for the First Step Drug & Alcohol Rehabilitation Clinic. In 2008, she accepted a consulting position in Ipoh, Malaysia, working with a not-for-profit women’s group to provide counseling and nutrition consultations.
Sam came to Kamalaya from Malaysia early this year, and now applies a diverse approach that takes into account nutrition, diet, herbal medicine, homeopathy, and, of course, counseling.
“With every client, you’re a counselor as well, and my goal is to listen to each person so that I can help them to find the right ways to heal themselves,” she says. “If you stimulate the body in the right ways, it can cure itself, and it’s such a wonderful thing when that happens.”
Sam provides initial wellness consultations at the Wellness Centre, and is also available for private counseling focused on nutrition, diet and herbal medicine. To book a session with Sam, please contact the Wellness Reception at extension 1700.
