Michelle Brass

How Zea started with Michelle

Long before Zea existed, Michelle was running a naturopathic clinic and selling essential oils at markets around Tasmania. Customers kept asking her for one oil the family had never heard of: Kunzea.

She went looking. What she found was more than twenty years of Australian research into Kunzea ambigua and the compounds inside its oil, and almost nobody using it commercially. So the family started testing it, and Michelle began using it with clients in her clinic who were living with long-term pain.

"The customer feedback and the results we started to see were remarkable."

In 2016 her son Hayden turned that family project into a business. Ten years on, that same oil is the active ingredient in Kunzea Pain Relief Cream, which is registered with the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods as a listed medicine (AUST L 360 331), and Zea is a Certified B Corporation.

Michelle still does what she did at those first markets. She talks to customers, listens to what is actually going on, and trials new formulations with the people who will use them.

Research and product development

Michelle does not just write about the range, she formulates parts of it. Her role at Zea spans naturopathy, product development and account management, and the product development side started with Kunzea itself.

Kunzea

Michelle is the reason Zea works with Kunzea at all. She found the research, sourced the oil, and spent years using it with clients before it became a product. That work is what sits underneath Kunzea Pain Relief Cream.

The Zea Essentials Lifestyle Blends

Michelle formulated the Lifestyle Blends range: ten pure essential oil blends built for a specific purpose rather than a scent profile. Balance, Breathe Easy, Calming, Clarity, Connected, Heaven Scent, Immunity, Meditation, Nirvana and Stress Relief. The same formulations carry through into the therapeutic roll ons and aromatherapy mists.

Testing with real clients

Michelle's development process is not done in isolation. She trials formulations with the clients she sees, and adjusts based on what they report back. It is slower than a brief and a lab, and it is the reason the blends do what they say on the label.

How Michelle approaches health

Michelle practises integratively. In more than three decades of clinical work she has used and recommended both traditional and conventional approaches, because she does not think you have to pick a side. Her view is that natural therapies work best alongside good medical care, not instead of it.

Three things shape the advice she gives:

Start with the whole person, not the symptom

Pain, poor sleep and low energy rarely sit on their own. Michelle's training in nutrition, herbal medicine and iridology means she looks at sleep, stress, movement and diet before reaching for anything else.

Be specific about what an oil can and cannot do

Michelle writes about essential oils the way she talks about them in clinic: what the oil is, where it comes from, what it is traditionally used for, and how to use it safely. She has written openly about why she does not recommend ingesting essential oils and how to tell a quality oil from a poor one.

Australian natives first

Michelle is particularly interested in Australian native oils: Kunzea, Coastal Tea Tree, Lemon Myrtle, Eucalyptus. They are grown here, they are distinctive, and in the case of Kunzea Oil there is nothing else quite like it.

Articles by Michelle

Michelle has written more than 40 articles for the Zea Journal. Here is a starting point, grouped by what people usually come looking for.