Wellness winners

SEVERAL local businesses took home awards at the 2024 Spa & Wellness Awards held at Crystalbrook Byron resort this week.

Mullumbimby-based Mukti Organics won the People’s Choice Award for best skincare product. It was also runner-up in the best hair care category.

Retreatment Botanics, which was co-founded by Olivia Newton-John in the Byron Bay hinterland, was named best holistic skin care product. Its other co-founder, Trudi Jaye, was runner-up in the Ambassador for Change category.

Trudi and her team of skin scientists have developed the world’s first spa-quality certified Palm Oil Free skincare brand, helping to protect endangered wildlife, orangutans and precious rainforests, minimising harm and impact to the environment. 

The recently renovated integrative wellness centre The Health Lodge in Byron Bay was also named the best wellness centre.

Mullumbimby-based BeeAlive received the gong for best wellness product for its bee healing huts, in which people lie in a bed in a small, hexagonal-shaped cabin and experience the healing power of bees humming from a hive below.

The awards were launched by spa consultant, speaker and author Kris Abbey in 2022.

The ceremony was held at the end of a two-day Wellness Summit, which brought together more than 100 wellness businesspeople and practitioners from around the country.

It featured sessions with wellness industry leaders including gold medal-winning Olympian Dr Lauren Burns, Aro Ha Wellness Retreat’s co-founder Damian Chaparro, and Australia’s leading wellness professor Dr Marc Cohen.

People who attended the summit had the opportunity to experience more than a dozen immersive wellness experiences, including contrast therapy, guided meditations, red light therapy and a cutting-edge wellness check to determine both biological and cognitive age, and take part in pre- and post- tours.

“It was wonderful to bring the changemakers in the wellness industry together in such a calm, inviting setting,” Ms Abbey said.