Hello, I am Raji.

I help overworked, anxious, tired people in Canberra feel like themselves again, by looking at the whole of them: body and mind, together.

I am a naturopath and a counsellor with more than ten years of clinical experience, and I currently lead the ACT chapter of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Most of the people I see have spent years being looked at in pieces, a blood result here, a thought pattern there, a meal plan somewhere else, and they arrive worn out from being the one holding it all together. My work is to put the pieces back in one place. To look at your energy, your sleep, your stress, your blood work, your symptoms, your story and your body as the single connected system they have always been, and to help you start, gently, from exactly where you are.

Apart from paying the bills, this practice exists because I have watched too many people fall through the gap between the GP, the psychologist and the dietitian, and come out the other side feeling like no one ever saw the whole of them.

I want you to leave my room feeling lighter than when you came in. More hopeful. Empowered. Energised. Equipped. More capable. By the end of our time together in the clinic, I want the thing that feels enormous in your life to feel a little smaller and a lot more doable. There is a saying in my language that service to people is service to something larger than yourself, and that is honestly how I feel about this work. I get as much as I give. Every person's story sends me back to my own life with more gratitude.

The hard work behind the warmth

Warmth without rigour is just niceness, so here is the training underneath it.

I qualified first as a naturopath: years of biochemistry, physiology, nutrition, herbal medicine and clinical work. I am a member of the Australian Natural Therapists Association (ANTA). Then I trained as a counsellor, because I kept meeting people in clinic who needed more than a herb and a meal plan. They needed someone to sit with them in the mud, as they say. I am a member of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA). I am also a trained mindfulness and meditation teacher, and those tools sit quietly inside everything I do.

The hardest part was never the biochemistry. It was the counselling. Learning to stop talking. Learning to hold a silence. Learning to listen with compassion and without any judgement. Learning that sometimes the most healing thing is not another recommendation or piece of advice, but being heard. This is how I practise as a naturopath, too. I am looking to help the whole person heal and feel heard.

These days I am completing my accreditation in lifestyle medicine, and I lead the ACT chapter of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine, which is something I am genuinely excited about. Lifestyle medicine gives me the evidence-based scaffolding, the six pillars, that ties the physical, the emotional and the behavioural together.

"Counselling and naturopathy are the perfect combination. One without the other is incomplete. This is what an integrated way of looking at a client really means: trying to understand everything that is going on for them."

What this can look like

A woman in her mid-fifties came to me with no energy at all. She was sleeping until late morning, living mostly on packaged food in front of the television, and feeling completely flat. We did not start with a diet or a long list of supplements. We started with sleep, with a little movement, with talking, and with the gentlest nudges between sessions. Over the months that followed, with very little in the way of herbs, she began to laugh again, to move again, to feel something other than exhausted. I was almost surprised myself. Details have been changed to protect privacy, and every person's response is different. But that is the kind of slow, sustainable shift this work is built for.

What people tell me

One more thing

I am not very businesslike, and I have made my peace with that. I am generous with my time and with what I give. I have a slightly spiritual leaning that I bring into my work, mostly as hope and gratitude rather than anything heavier.

"Each patient carries his own doctor within. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work." – Albert Schweitzer

That is how I see my role. If you are looking for someone who will rush you, diagnose you and discharge you, I am probably not your person. If you are looking for someone who will sit with the whole of you, kindly, and help you find your way back to your own energy, then I would love to meet you.

Mental health and substance use conditions are now the second largest contributor to Australia's total disease burden at around 15 percent, behind only cancer (RACGP newsGP, reporting the AIHW Australian Burden of Disease Study, 2023). The need for whole-person care has never been clearer.