My name is Helen Barnett, welcome to my blog!
This blog post is to tell the ‘birth story’ of my business name HB Healthy, with a few side-stories on the way!
The current situation
As I write this part of this blog post (which is a re-jig of a story once told on my old website), it’s after midnight on a sticky night nearing the end of August 2025. I’m in Mexico sitting on the bed feeling far from sleepy, because despite all the meditation and ‘healthy’ living, sometimes something will keep you up at night when you feel you need to solve it (well it will me at least!).
Although it’s a rare occurrence nowadays (because I guess all the Yoga and meditation has actually helped), but in this moment there is something churning in my mind which does not permit me to sleep: finding the solution to just being told by the person who has been building a new website for me (where you are hopefully reading this), that they are not going to finish the job, the result being that if I wish to proceed, I will need to find somebody else willing to do it (probably from scratch), at very short notice.
The new website was a crucial cog in the booking process for some new offerings I am launching at the time of writing, but clearly life has other plans right now!
So instead of getting my knickers in a sweaty twist, I am taking some deep breaths, drawing on all my tools, and while sleep still evades me, channelling that slightly nervous energy into something creative. The good news is, that if you are reading this, then the website has been finished (as I write by who and when remains a mystery, but they say that it’s the mystery which keeps life interesting).
The back story
Here’s the (long) back story: HB Healthy is the business name I birthed back in 2017. It encompasses multidimensional healthy living: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and is nowadays the culmination of my lived personal and professional experiences, to help you cultivate a healthier relationship with yourself, and your health!
You get to decide whether writing blog posts at 1am is a part of a ‘healthy lifestyle’. Whether or not that is true for you, I do believe that transparency is key: if I told you that strict early nights and no screens before bed ‘ever’, was the solution to all your ills, I’d be lying, and a hypocrite, because I only preach what I actually practice (or have practiced!). Sometimes that is messy and inconsistent, but forgiving yourself through those moments is in my opinion waaaaaaaaay ‘healthier’ than rigidity, which may cause you to mentally beat yourself up if you slip from a desired ‘perfect’ schedule once in a while. So here I am writing in the small hours, in what is my version of healthy right now.
This blog post is to give you an introduction to the background around the ‘birth story’ of this business name back in 2017, why I chose it, why it holds meaning for me, and the path to where I am now. Firstly though, let’s clear something up…
Why is your business name different to the website address?
You might have noticed that my actual name (Helen Barnett) is the website address around here, rather than the business HB Healthy? If you did notice that then well done on your attention to detail, and if you didn’t, well I’m going to tell you the story anyway.
It’s kind of a funny story…
The name HB Healthy is a keeper for me as a business name (until it isn’t!). Perhaps I’m slightly attached to it (even though ‘non-attachment’ to everything has been an ongoing life goal since all the mediation started!). I’ll get to the why’s of it in the story below.
But I do really want to tell you about the ‘mismatch’ between domain and business name.
How it all started
I started working in this vast arena of natural health in 2010. Prior to that I’d done some time working for the NHS* in different office-type jobs, alongside various health professionals.
*(Side note for anyone who doesn’t know: the ‘NHS’ is an umbrella term for the National Health Service e.g. public healthcare system in the United Kingdom).
This work gave a great insight into the dysfunction of the NHS system at that time, despite the good intentions of the people on the ground who genuinely seemed to care and want to help.
What I noticed was that they were stuck in a system which in many cases seemed to be slowly squeezing them dry of their caring natures and desire to make a difference, under swamps of paperwork which had become ‘required’ to tick target boxes, while grey suited (and faced) managers, employed specifically for this purpose, looked over them to ensure that they completed these tasks.
This insight is a least in part what propelled me on with the intention to try and make some difference to people’s health, and so after a long road to get there I was just out of herb school (otherwise known as university), with a degree in health sciences / herbal medicine, and various massage / reflexology qualifications acquired during the previous 6 years.
I was raring to go!
Also, fresh back from travelling, which had taken me to Thailand where I’d lived in a bamboo hut sleeping on a straw mattress on the floor (with a chunky straw pillow) in a tribal village in the mountains, to further study traditional Thai Yoga massage.
That was my first trip outside Europe, and only second solo travel ever. There we woke at 5am to meditate on a mountainside before classes began (this was my first introduction to daily meditation practice: sitting on the floor on a mountainside trying to stay still for one hour, while dogs play-fought and rolled in my lap – not sure whether I should stop them rolling on me or whether that would mean I wasn’t meditating properly and that I should probably just stick it out and not move). The alarm clock which woke us so early was unmissable, a giant speaker system which blasted loud Thai music throughout the entire village.
There were pigs and chickens running around everywhere, one main tap in the middle of the village where everyone went to fill their water, which seemed to be a meeting point for children to play (where in the world don’t children love playing with water?), and with a speaker system which worked well at top volume crackling out these morning wake up anthems.
This experience was life-changing and planted many seeds for me which changed the trajectory of my life (that’s another story, probably for another blog!).
In 2010 I was ‘highly qualified’, full of ‘information’, and so eager to start sharing what I had learned, I was almost bursting with enthusiasm! Overexcited with a thousand ideas, and an equal lack of actual experience (despite 100’s of hours of ‘clinical experience’ which I clung dearly to in those early days as most new medical herbalists do. In my case to feel ‘validated’ in a society which at that time was keen to slay down anything which threatened the status quo of ‘modern medicine and healthcare’ as we know it).
I knew, surely, that I was going to be a very ‘professional practitioner’ of these various modalities for which I had so many certificates (and had worked so hard for). This need for professionalism was at least in part to make a point about how valid I and what I offered was. I was stepping into the theatre of becoming a ‘practitioner’, which is exactly what we did at university as soon as we put on our white clinic coats during all those hours of clinical training!
So off I went seeking out assistance in preparing business cards and a giant leaflet to demonstrate my worthiness to any potential clients (who back then was basically anyone and everyone!).
I had dreams bigger than my giant leaflet (many of which have either come true, evolved, or dissolved completely just as the need for a leaflet of any size has).
In the beginning years I had a major case of what I now know to be ‘imposter syndrome’. I constantly felt that I was a fraud (despite all the certificates and information I was slowly integrating into knowledge), and that somebody was going to ‘find me out’ for not being good enough!
Despite this, I never actually felt competitive with colleagues. From the outset the philosophy for me was always that the right people will find the right practitioner, rather than a sense of ownership over clients. My wish was and still is that people find what will help them most, and if that’s not what I offer then I’m happy for them to go to what will better serve them.
The imposter syndrome was still strong! I felt constantly like I didn’t know enough, and thought that I was not as ‘good’ as the other Thai Massage practitioners, or the other herbalists…and maybe I wasn’t!
What I was good at was being me, which is now unashamedly infused into everything I offer, along with a LOT of integration of what I’ve practiced and how I work to be the ever evolving being right where I am now.
There is no façade of professionalism that I’m trying to hide behind anymore, I am what you get.
Sure, my values include that I do uphold professional boundaries around client confidentiality and ethical practices. But there is no ‘professional’ me that is very different from the me you will find in most walks of life. So I might laugh, or cry, or crack a joke, or show you my joy (but hopefully all only at an appropriate moment in our journey together).
Back to those shaky beginnings of my walk along this professional path: after hours of brainstorming and playing around with loads of options for a business name, I just went with ‘Helen Barnett Holistic Healthcare’.
Nothing else really stuck.
I felt ‘professional’ with my name on the business card over the symbol I used as a logo then set onto a fern background, it was like a badge of honour for the hours I had slayed away studying to become ‘qualified’ (it was mountains of hours over five long years, and I do not discredit this as having helped establish the foundations for where I am now).
Somewhere along the way after a lot of perfectionist procrastination, I made a website.
The domain was simply my name ‘.co.uk’ (‘.com’ was unavailable at the time even though it’s what I really wanted).
Jumping forward to 2021: things had changed massively in many respects, I had become much clearer on who I was and what my business was about (I think lockdown did that for a lot of people!), and since my things had evolved, it felt like the right time for a new logo. I no longer wanted to hide behind the little badge of honour which had held me strong for so long in feeling ‘professional’, I wanted a logo which truly represented more of who I am and what I offer.
I’ve come to learn and accept that the way I work both with clients, business, and personal life, is through connection with people I know, and it was no different with the new logo.
After seeing a business card pinned up on the notice board in a shared therapy space I worked from: I loved the logo on it so much that I reached out to find out who had designed it. That’s how I was introduced to the brother of somebody I knew (a lovely guy named Ed).
On being told by his sister that Ed was also an organic vegetable farmer as well as a graphic designer, I felt reassured that he was probably the right person to work with, before we’d even spoken. We were put in contact, he turned out to be humble yet witty, down to earth, and to me the perfect candidate to design a logo – which proved to be true as he pretty much nailed it first time with a few minor tweaks.
When that logo design was in process, I was starting to think about a new website domain to move towards a ‘.com’ as I was increasingly spending less time in the UK. It also seemed like a good time maybe even create a whole new website (and you know the story with that so far!).
Anyway, in 2021 when I was working with Ed on the logo design, I had searched for the availability of the domain ‘hbhealthy dot com’ to match the business name, which is where the funny part of the story comes in.
The thing is that at that time the domain name I wanted turned out to be some sort of Chinese porn site (who knows why that domain had been chosen!).
This was not the kind of ‘domain’ I wanted to be working in, and put me off taking on any variation of a ‘hbhealthy’ domain ‘just in case’ a slip of the fingers took the prospective browser to the wrong website (in either direction this might be hazardous). This was something I was particularly eager to avoid, since at that time Thai Massage was still a big part of the menu of my offerings (and ‘extras’ were not!).
If you’re a massage therapist of any sort, it’s probably that like me, you are familiar with the certain type of enquiry you might sometimes receive, which very often goes along the lines of a phone call with questions about the type of massage you offer, and ‘is it full body’, to which you might offer a description of what the massage you offer involves, techniques, outcomes, etc, to which the enquirer will reiterate their original question, now with more emphasis, “but is it FULL BODY”?
The interpretation of which I will leave to your imagination!
On one of these calls when I asked for clarity on what they meant by ‘full body’, the caller was bold enough to ask whether it comes with a ‘happy ending’.
Although most of my massage clients left very happy, that was not the sort of happy ending I offered and so was keen to avoid any association with anything that might create a mixed message around this!
Another example of this kind of scenario is when I started out in 2010, so fresh and eager, that I took advice on promoting my business from a therapist who was near to retirement age and ran a therapy space I attempted to work from for a while (it didn’t work out). She advised me to write a small article about what I offered and have it published in the local newspaper, with a nice picture of myself. Even though I had my doubts about doing this, I went ahead anyway (haha!).
I posed for a photo in front of a flowering bush in the garden, my face grimacing with the most ‘professional’ looking smile I could muster.
Now let’s take pause here to acknowledge what a wonderful thing hindsight is. Today, knowing myself far better, I can see clearly that advice from that person was never going to be the correct advice for me (take note friends, not all advice is good advice, even when well intentioned!).
Needless-to-say, the only enquiry I received directly from that local gazette newspaper article, was as awkward as the false smile on my face as I stood in front of that flowering bush: a phone call from a withheld number, on the end of the line was a man asking me to look at his penis. I just hope nobody except my Nanny kept that article for their newspaper clippings collection!
I didn’t do that kind of advertising again – and referred the mystery caller on to a male herbalist to check his penis (in my most professional manner!), just in case his enquiry was genuine.
With this early day experience probably dancing somewhere in the back of my subconscious mind, accompanied by the overriding awareness of the occasional ‘full body / happy ending’ requests, overthinking began: I couldn’t get the domain I wanted, should I also change my business name all-together now to avoid adding to these kinds of associations?
I had a conversation with Ed about this on the phone, since he was in the midst of designing the new logo and incorporating the business name.
Ed’s simple response was: “Well they say sex sells”.
This was the point at which it became clear to me that Ed was witty (as well as humble). I instantly trusted his grounded yet humerus response and received it as an indication that I probably need not worry about this detail for now and might well be overthinking it: let’s make light of it.
We laughed. My perspective shifted.
It was one of those moments where the world can seemingly instantaneously start spinning the opposite way (from spirally back to moving in the ‘right direction’ again).
On reflection it was really a reminder of what is now one of my biggest ongoing lessons: ‘don’t take life so seriously’.
If the business name was good for me, keep it, the domain will work itself out (which it has).
Helenbarnett.com became available not too long later, so I decided to go with that. And when I last checked the other domain didn’t seem to be any kind of porn site anymore either (feel free to check for yourself haha!).
So it all worked out in the end (and no sleep was lost over that!).
The story of the name (and why I’m so attached to it!)
HB Healthy is the business name which slowly emerged and was ‘birthed’ in 2017 (when I started to write it down), which coinciding with a significant death the same year.
The choice was simple for me: the word healthy means ‘wholeness’.
To be healthy, whole and complete does not always translate to the absence of physical disease, but relates to our sense of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wholeness, our ability to connect with and support this natural inner state of ‘being whole’.
You can also see in the word: ‘heal’ ‘thy’ = heal thy self.
There is so much power in knowing the possibility of this exists.
Feeling disempowered is often a big part of the experience for people going through modern health care systems, and when already faced with health challenges of any degree, this can take its toll.
I’ve seen it first hand during those precious 500+ clinic hours at herb school. For some of those hours I was lucky enough to be in a dermatology clinic in a hospital, where a medical herbalist also worked. The eager herbal medicine students got to observe both settings, the herbal and the NHS side of things.
I don’t remember much about the herbal clinic (except being amazed that it existed within a real NHS hospital, and being fascinated over and over again by its success stories!).
The nurse and consultant session that I sat in on though, still sticks with me today.
It was a prime example of how disempowering and disparate the healthcare system can be for its patients. How it does not permit the practitioner to see the person as a ‘whole’ but will break them down into pieces and push them around, never really getting a clear and holistic picture of their health.
There was an elderly lady attending that clinic, who had a rash all over her shins. It was red, angry-looking, and covered large parts of the shin area on the front of her lower legs. She expressed her frustration as it kept her awake at night and the incessant itching accompanied by a lack of sleep was massively impacting the quality of her life. She looked to be quite distressed by it and the creams they had given her were not helping (it was still there).
She was explaining this to the nurse, and how she felt that the rash was linked to the heart medication she was taking as it had started after she started taking it (warfarin, a blood thinner, which to give context, can be life-saving).
This elderly woman expressed her concerns and theory to the nurse and said that she was thinking of stopping taking the medication, because the skin issue was impacting the quality of her life so much that she would try anything.
The nurse’s response was: “no, you have to keep taking that medication or you’ll die”. That was the only response she received to her distress and concerns.
Now it might be true, if she stopped taking warfarin she might die, it is a strong blood thinning medication which you don’t want to mess around with. What is also true is that one of its known side-effects is a skin rash (mild apparently, but there was nothing mild looking about that rash).
As the lady persisted, the nurse called a consultant in, who asked the woman who had prescribed her the warfarin. He then told her that she should go back to speak to that doctor and meanwhile continue using the cream they were giving her (which she had already explained wasn’t working for her!).
No doubt, these professionals were following protocol, and was probably the correct procedure, since it is always best to consult a doctor (ideally the one who prescribed a medicine) before stopping taking it. But it also demonstrated how fragmented the healthcare system can be, and how disempowering it might feel for patients, especially when they are brashly threatened with death, rather than offered any sort of compassion or understanding.
For that elderly lady and her legs, the cycle would have continued, of referral and waiting and referral, meanwhile the quality of life declining, perhaps until the next major health ‘crisis’.
Feeling unheard and defeated as this elderly lady might have felt, is probably going to be deflating at best.
Feeling disempowered is detrimental to health!
How the journey of someone’s health is navigated with whichever ‘professionals’ are guiding them, the relationships between those humans, the decisions along the way, and with the journey itself, can be vital in how it turns out for that person.
Back to the original story: the name HB Healthy came to me in the months before my dad passed away in 2017.
We did not know (consciously at least!), that dad was going to suddenly leave his physical form that Christmas, but the timing of the seeds for this name arriving seemed to be aligned with this significant event which is at least part of the reason I feel some attachment to the name.
My Dad was known by many as ‘JB’ (for his initials), so in some sense I took the HB part of the business name from that, it was simple.
I started by putting this name in the email footer amongst all the business information without saying anything to anyone about it. Just to get a feel for it being there.
The strange thing about this is that the last email thread with Dad happened during the weeks leading to his passing. Our email exchanges were usually very infrequent (like a few times a year maybe), but in those weeks before his passing they had been unusually frequent.
Him being his usual observant (and interested) self, had seen the new addition in the email footer and commented that he liked the new business name / ‘tagline’.
Always a big source of impartial support and guidance, I took his feedback as a seal of approval (and loved that he had even noticed that subtle change at the bottom of the email!), so the idea for the new name stayed!
Alongside the simplicity of my initials, there was also an element of playfulness to the new name. Some friends used to call me ‘H’, and so the name ‘HB Healthy’ was a playful reminder to myself to ‘be healthy’!
The significance of this runs deeper than just a play on words, and relates to a personal journey with health.
What is healthy?
The definition of health and what is deemed ‘healthy’ holds different meaning for everyone, but what I have learnt is that it is not only what you do in life that creates health, but also ‘how’ you do it (just like with the nurse delivering the news to that elderly woman that if she stopped her medication she would die!).
It was towards the end of 2011 (so not long into this new era of ‘professionalism’), when ‘thought’ I was pretty healthy, but in fact ended up having although not serious, what was for me a fairly major health crisis, in that it impacted my life and left me for some time completely unable to do most of the things I enjoyed doing (working as much as I wanted to, attending Yoga classes, exercising, seeing friends, travelling, etc, etc), and with just about enough stamina left to sometimes work at minimum capacity to keep things bobbing along.
In total this went on for over a year and included a surgery which took several weeks of laying down to recover from.
Initially, I felt embarrassed about being unwell, as though I had ‘failed’, and on some level let the side down! I was at the beginnings of my profession as a self-employed ‘health practitioner’. Surely, I should be the picture of health. I felt I was letting clients down by not being able to offer many appointments and needing to take a lot of time off, and that I was not living up to the image of what I was offering. I was also aware that I was letting my employer down, and worried I might lose my part-time-job who had already cut my hours by 1/3 while I was off sick, which came as a huge financial blow!
During this period of ill-health meditation practice took on a whole new meaning (because sitting or laying down was literally all I was capable of at times, I spent most of my time alone, and there was not so much space for thinking either!).
With this meditation a lot of realisations came, and as I was on another downward spiral after thinking I had been getting better, I began to ask myself one question:
“If this is going to be it, and I can’t change the situation, what can I change to make it better?”
The answer was my mind!
I had to adapt my mindset around what was happening, because if it was happening anyway then how I thought about it would be the biggest thing I had control over.
That was the turning point, where now I can see that the whole experience turned into a beautiful opportunity for learning, for personal growth, as I began to reflect on and reassess many aspects of life, including my mindset.
I truly believe that this shift in mindset was a significant factor in my health improving again (and the professional psychological support I also sought out to help shift my mindset and gain perspective).
I began to realise that prior to becoming unwell, I was doing many things which are considered ‘healthy’, but in a very unhealthy way!
I was exercising regularly (probably too much, including too much Yoga asana to the point of having a shoulder injury!), I was eating vegetables and other healthy foods (probably too little and completely at random, with meals not taking priority!), I was meditating every day (probably too rigidly as another thing I was ‘squeezing into the schedule and feeling disappointed with myself if I missed one!), I was working doing what I loved (probably too hard, sometimes all night, without giving myself proper days off, saying ‘yes’ to everything, when I really paid attention I realised that working ‘so hard’ probably also gave me a feeling of being ‘important‘!).
Overall, I was really excited about life, but with very little balance or grounded-ness. I was running at everything top speed, sometimes in what felt like a thousand directions, with a whole lot of adrenalin!
On reflection, I see it as no wonder that I ended up unwell and am grateful to my body for the wakeup call!
I now believe this experience of ill-health ripened me into a much better and more compassionate practitioner and human being. I am glad it happened!
I feel that the word heal-thy represents ‘healing thyself’. This reflects that we all have this innate healing ability within us, this capacity to be whole (regardless of what challenges life brings), sometimes we just need a nudge for it to be set in motion.
This is what I offer in the many formats that my work now transmits (group containers, 1:1 programmes, retreats, and writing), a little support along the way on your own self-healing journey to improve your relationship with your health.
I simply help you remember how to reconnect with the wholeness of your being. How to love yourself truly and deeply, as you navigate whatever life brings your way, transform the shitty bits into gold dust, and remember that the joy frequency is always there for you when you want to tune in!
Being healthy gets a new definition, it becomes second nature: sustainable for you in the ever-evolving landscape of your life, and not just any life, but a healthy vibrant life you love!
Thank you so much for being here!
Thanks also for reading the story so far! I really appreciate you reading this blog and would like to take this moment to welcome you to the community!
I will do my best to respond to any messages I receive and would love to hear your stories of a ‘healthy life’ (however that looks!).
Reach out to learn more about working together (and see current offerings below).
I am excited to share the journey with you!
Wishing you a healthy, joyful, and peaceful life!
Much love,
Helen
P.S. Side note: it is now the beginning of October 2025, and clearly since you’re here reading this, the new website now exists!
It was created by the wonderful Margot (link below) who has been a delight to work with. In-keeping with my ‘theme’ she was introduced to me by somebody I met in Mexico, who I was talking to about my story of the website and how to solve it.
They say that a problem shared is a problem halved, and it literally was, by talking it through I was connected with the person who became the solution.
Margot was efficient, easy to work with, responsive to feedback and got the job done (beautifully I think!), all at short notice.
Another example of how when things aren’t going how you ‘expected’, they are still going exactly how they are supposed to. I am happy it worked out this way and that I got to connect with and work with Margot, I would highly recommend her.
Thank you Margot!
Find Margot here: https://studiommooy.com/
Current Offerings
Ways you can currently work with me include:
Wild Heart Tender Soul: Group Immersion (online)
(October – December 2025)
Holistic Health Embodiment: 1:1 Programme (online)
(12 weeks)
India Yoga Retreat: Journey of a Lifetime!
(19 – 28 January 2026, India)
