FF 09: ‘Balancing a busy family life’ with naturopath Melinda Carbis-Reilly

Flourishing Families

Mums often struggle to balance Mum-life with everyday life. In this podcast, Dorte Bladt discusses finding a healthier balance with Newcastle Naturopath, Melinda Carbis-Reilly.
Melinda, a local dynamo, mother of 5, gym owner and naturopath talks to us about how she helps busy Mums and families get a healthier balance in their lives.
Intro: Flourishing Families with Dr. Dorte Bladt, the Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive.
Dorte Bladt: I’d like to welcome Melinda Carbis-Reilly to our podcast today. Thank you for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: Thanks for having me. I am the owner of Redhead Wellness Sanctuary – I’m a naturopath there. I’m also a fitness and Pilates instructor. My latest babies are my books. I’ve written a book called The Natural Path and that one is aimed for families. It’s more of a reference guide to keep it up in your medicine cupboard and when your kid has an earache or you have a tummy bug, you get it out, you flip to that page and there’s some nice home remedies there for you to get stuck into so you don’t have to race off to the doctors at midnight if it’s not necessary. Sometimes it is.
Dorte Bladt: That sounds good.
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: The other book I wrote was Diggin’ Your Dark Side. That one is more to help people that are a bit challenged with stress, mental health issues, like depression and anxiety, or possibly suffering from addictions as well. So that book is based on my life when I went through a bit of a depressive state when I set up my business, ironically, in wellness is when I hit my absolute bottom with adrenal fatigue and things, so I just shared all the tools I learnt from that in there.
Dorte Bladt: Wow. That sounds like it’s built on experience. That’s always interesting to read.
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: Oh, makes a complete difference to textbooks when you actually experience it.
Dorte Bladt: Totally. And you remember it for a lifetime.
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: Yes.
Dorte Bladt: So you say that you are a fitness instructor.
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: Yes.
Dorte Bladt: Yes. What sort of fitness are you looking at?
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: I do love my classes. That’s what I’ve stuck to now. I used to do a lot of rehabilitation and physical therapy back when I first started in the industry, especially with my Pilates. I was very much into that. But now I really like the group fitness because everyone is happy when they walk in the room. They’re ready to go hard and then go home. So I do love my strength and cardio and spins, probably one of my favourites as well.
Dorte Bladt: You also have your naturopathy side of things. What do you specialise in? What’s your favourite?
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: My favourite is probably gut health, I must say. I do love working with the gut because, as a typical naturopath, we believe that’s where it all starts. But I also love helping Mums and kids. That is a big passion and that’s where most of my clients lie. I find that a lot of kiddies come in that have immune problems and they have gut problems as well. I’m seeing a lot of kids with anxiety which is quite concerning, really, and the Mums are stressed. Mums are worried. Mums are busy so I like to help them get on top of that and their stress levels.
Dorte Bladt: If you have a child with anxiety that comes into your office, what would you look at? How would you address that kid?
Melinda Carbis-Reilly: We really as naturopaths like to look at it quite holistically, so we will look at from the ground up. We’ll look at their physical health; we’ll want to know how they’...