The skin reflects how we live – and it’s always communicating.
For over two decades, I worked as a hands-on as a holistic skin health practitioner. My business became niche, supporting people with persistent and complex skin conditions using holistic, natural approaches. I worked directly with skin every day – observing how it responded to products, food, stress, environment, and life itself.
But clinical work was only the beginning.
Over time, I began to notice that skin patterns were changing. Breakouts were becoming more reactive, layered, and less predictable – even when people were doing “all the right things.”
To understand why, I went deeper.
HOW MY APPROACH EVOLVED
My studies were never linear. Each one was initiated by what the skin itself was asking for.
To make sense of what I was seeing, building on my foundation as a natural skin and spa therapist I studied and integrated multiple lenses that now inform how I work:
- Mind–body physiology, and how unprocessed stress and experience show up through the skin
- Advanced Dermal Therapies – diving deeper into skin science and new technologies
- Herbalism and traditional medicine systems, which view skin as an expression of internal balance
- Formulation and topical chemistry, and how actives, ingredients and natural constituents interact with the skin & body for results
- Health Sciences, it turned out I had a passion for biochemistry.
- Nervous system regulation, stress response
- Food as medicine, not just nutrition
- Environmental health, land regeneration, and soil systems, recognising the parallel between ecological and biological health
Each lens offered part of the picture.
Because the skin doesn’t break out in isolation.
It responds to the systems it lives within.
MY CLINICAL BACKGROUND
I owned and operated my own busy holistic skin and body clinic, where I also:
- Custom-blended fresh skincare for clients
- Formulated natural, professional-grade skin and body treatments
- Designed therapeutic body treatments for corporate clients
- Worked with mind–body therapies for busy professionals
- Supported clients who wanted natural options and a deeper understanding of their choices
Over time, understanding an individuals skin patterns – rather than just symptoms – became one of my core strengths. People began seeking me out when they wanted to understand why their skin was behaving the way it was before escalating treatment.
WHEN PATTERNS BECAME CLEAR
As I worked more holistically, it became increasingly important to understand not just how to support the skin, but why it was becoming imbalanced in the first place.
Clear patterns began to emerge – patterns shaped by the reality we now live in, where the body is exposed to levels and combinations of stressors it has never encountered before. A new approach was needed, so I designed one based on my own data that I collected over the years. This has become the KD-SI framework.
Within the last eight years however, I have seen a steady rise in what I call complex skin patterns – layered presentations that don’t respond to single solutions or simplified advice.
At the same time, online conversations about skin became increasingly narrow and fixed around narratives that didn’t align with what I was seeing on real skin.
That disconnect concerned me deeply.
WHY I SHIFTED MY WORK
In mid-2025, I made the decision to step away from my clinic to focus fully on research and education.
That work led to the development of KD-SI™ and The Holistic Skin Detective – frameworks designed to help people step back, recognise patterns, and understand what their skin is communicating before reaching for stronger interventions.
Today, my work focuses on:
- Education through podcasts and online programs
- Online consultations for those wanting to explore their own unique root causes more deeply
- Supporting people to make calmer, more informed decisions about their skin
I don’t approach skin as something to fix.
I approach it as information – and when it’s understood in context, the path forward becomes much clearer.
.
