30 Jun Important News from Daniela at tonika health
30 Jun 2020
This time it is Daniela writing to you from tonika health. I hope you are doing well and are finding your (new?) routine in this changing world.
Personally, I have certainly done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks and months. So today I have an announcement: As of the end of this financial year, I will resign as the manager of tonika health and officially hand over the reins of the business to our acupuncturist Peter, who has been working as part of our team for a year and a half already. I will still be looking after my existing patients – so I am definitely not out of the world! But running the business is quite a separate, big job and it is time for me to create head space to focus on other projects now.
I certainly am proud of what we have built at tonika health over the last seventeen years and it has been an amazing and humbling experience to be trusted by so many amazing people with their health and wellbeing. In fact, this feels like family! I certainly hope that you will support Peter and the entire tonika health team well into the future, especially after such challenging times.
So why the decision? Let me reach out a fair bit to explain. While my life story may appear like a string of distinct chapters, there are constants that have shaped my decisions: a passion for creating a change for the better and a love for nature, wildlife and travel.
As most of you are aware, I am originally from Germany where I worked in TV, mostly as a producer for animal programs. In that role, I was inexplicably fortunate to spend nearly a decade traveling the world: captivated by the ever-fascinating Africa, exploring distant valleys in the Himalayas, filming hunter gatherer tribes deep in the interior of Borneo, roaming various deserts of the planet or travelling frozen fjords in Greenland on dog sled. I have seen a lot of beauty of our natural world – and a lot of threats to it.
Eventually I was offered an incredible opportunity as an executive of a national broadcaster. I had great plans of making TV better and fairer – but instead I mainly managed to burn out spectacularly in only a few years (which may have had a lot to do with a certain well known Australian media mogul buying the broadcaster I worked for at the time.) I broke up with TV and my previous life, moved to Sydney with only one suitcase in hand and retrained as a health professional.
With Australia, I was sure I had indeed found the Lucky Country: an astonishing combination of a free, prosperous, democratic society uniquely coexisting with a rich natural world and rare remaining true wilderness! And educating people about the healing power of nature, our body’s incredible design, our innate ability for health? Heaven.
Sadly, over the last twenty years, be it as a concerned citizen, volunteer wildlife carer or adopted parent for two rescue dingoes, I have also seen Australia become one of the most reckless countries in the world in squandering its natural riches: a world leader in species extinction, a main climate threat, an international deforestation hotspot.
While I still love what I do at tonika health, I need to follow my heart and focus on the things I fear we are about to lose. I have a number of volunteer roles and projects with organisations as varied as The Wilderness Society, Taronga Conservation Society or Centennial Park which all revolve around protecting and hopefully regenerating nature and will certainly keep me busy. Yet I am also making this decision with a tear in one eye: tonika health is a much loved child of mine. But I still know it is the right decision for me now.
I am sure there will be a chance in a hopefully not too distant post-COVID future to mark the occasion with a little get-together at tonika health. I would love to share a glass with you then. Please, in the meantime and hopefully for a long time to come, I would truly appreciate if you could support Peter and the rest of the team with your ongoing loyalty.
With much gratitude for the journey all of you and tonika health offered me for the last 17 years,
Daniela
