Hi I'm Sophie
I didn't find SALT. I lived my way to it.
"For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt things deeply.
As a child, I was riddled with anxiety. I was emotional, often desperate to stay home, and in and out of doctors and hospitals with stomach problems that nobody seemed quite able to explain. And yet, alongside all of that, I was active & curious. I loved sports. I loved being outside and I felt everything - sometimes more than I knew what to do with.
Even then, there was a pull towards somewhere else.
At secondary school, I became obsessed with Australia. I filled notebooks with thoughts about it and watched Australian soaps religiously. I couldn’t have explained why I felt so drawn there.
I just did.
That feeling of being called somewhere became a thread throughout my life.
At college, I went through experiences that brought a lot of emotion and grief that I didn't yet know how to process. Art became one of the places I could put it. I painted oceans and the earth, often incorporating things I'd collected from them.
Without realising it, I was already turning towards the natural world to help me express what I couldn't put into words.
At university I studied photography and started my own business. I created a project exploring our relationship with diagnoses and medication, questioning what happens when we suppress symptoms without looking deeper at the person underneath.
And still, Australia was calling.
So between my second and third year, I finally went."
The places that opened my eyes
"Australia changed something in me.
I travelled through the country and eventually took part in an Aboriginal trek that opened my eyes to the relationship between people, land, plants and healing in a way I'd never experienced before.
I remember standing in a cave listening to an Elder speak about a teenage girl who had fallen pregnant and didn't know what to do.
Tears began to stream.
Not because I was sobbing, but because something in me was releasing.
It felt as though he was speaking directly to a part of me that had been waiting years to be heard.
I returned home with a wealth of knowledge, photographs and a completely different perspective. My photography continued to explore people, landscapes and connection to place. I even wrote my university dissertation around photography of Aboriginal people and the painful history surrounding their treatment.
Then came South America.
What was supposed to be four months became nearly six. I travelled through incredible places, spent time around indigenous cultures and sacred lands, visited the salt flats and stayed at a salt hotel.
Again, I found myself drawn towards the land.
Towards ancient knowledge.
Towards ways of living that seemed to hold a different relationship with nature and the body.
I'd also begun my spiritual journey, starting meditation classes and courses and becoming increasingly curious about what existed beyond the purely physical.
But life wasn't always peaceful.
There were years where I lost myself. I drank too much. I struggled to regulate my emotions. I moved from place to place, took different jobs and kept going.
And yet, somehow, the elements kept finding me."
Water
"I then moved to Australia for 2.5 years, I travelled and lived by the beach and eventually worked cleaning yachts in the marinas surrounding Fremantle & Perth.
There was something about the water.
I couldn't explain it then, but I felt better near it.
My travels had me bartending in Bolivia, partying in Thailand, visiting Indonesia, road-tripping New Zealand, teaching English in Vietnam, holidaying in Spain, Iceland, Italy, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands, and eventually I found myself in France, as a driver in the Alps working at a high end ski resort.
There were long days, hard graft, snowboarding, travelling between Switzerland and France, and even a trip to Rio for Carnival.
I was always moving.
Then COVID arrived.
The world stopped, and I was sent home.
Home was the one place I hadn't planned to go."
Coming Home
"During lockdown, I worked nights and slept through much of the day. After years of travelling and moving, I was finally still.
I began my Reiki journey, and slowly the past started to resurface.
There was a lot of healing to do. A lot of hurt and confusion. I began to understand how much I had been carrying and running from, including the experience of not feeling seen or protected.
When lockdown lifted, my instinct was to leave again.
I travelled to Mexico, intending to continue onwards to Central America and eventually work on yachts.
But four months in, everything began to unravel.
A relationship ended. My grandad passed away. Panic attacks became a part of my everyday life.
I spent five weeks volunteering at an animal shelter, and honestly, I think those animals healed me more than I helped them.
Then, whilst volunteering on Holbox Island, something changed.
I felt a calling home.
Not to another country.
Home.
Three weeks after arriving back in the UK, something I'd carried quietly for years finally came into the light.
I went straight into therapy.
And slowly, something shifted.
I realised I didn't have to carry it alone anymore.
I didn't have to hide.
Simply sharing it with a counsellor made home feel bearable. I wasn't scared to walk the streets anymore.
A weight had been lifted."
Learning to live differently
"Healing didn't happen overnight.
But gradually, I started to discover what safety, slowness and connection actually felt like.
I spent a summer in Greece working as a stewardess on a yacht, surrounded by the ocean.
Water again.
This time, I experienced it differently.
I came home needing time to process everything. I found a four-day-a-week job working with natural ingredients and essential oils. I started spending more time hiking and camping. I was in a new relationship.
I needed safety.
I needed slow days.
And then something else happened.
I started exercising consistently for the first time in my life.
I was blown away by the relationship between movement, heat, energy and my mental health.
For the first time, I began to understand that I could work through emotions physically.
I didn't always have to think my way out of how I felt.
I could move.
I could breathe.
I could create heat.
I could sweat.
I could let energy move through me.
I became fascinated by Fire not simply as heat, but as an energy that can help us process, transform and release. The sauna became a weekly ritual.
The body was becoming part of my healing in a completely different way.
Travel had always meant more to me than seeing somewhere new. So much of my life had been spent outdoors, walking through landscapes, swimming in oceans, living beside beaches, working around marinas, hiking through mountains, camping and exploring places that made me feel small in the best possible way.
Nature became a place where I could breathe.
And these days, hiking is still a huge part of my life.
I set myself challenges. I walk further, climb higher, push myself physically and spend as much time as I can outside.
There is something about putting one foot in front of the other, being surrounded by the elements and feeling my body work that brings me back to myself.
I think that's what has changed.
For a long time, movement was a way of getting away.
Now, movement is a way of coming home."
The five elements
"Looking back, I realise the elements had been with me all along.
Water in the oceans, beaches and yachts.
Earth in the landscapes, mountains, plants and sacred lands that shaped my travels.
Fire in heat, exercise, energy and transformation.
Air in breath, movement, freedom and the space to see things differently.
And then there is SALT.
In alchemy, SALT represents the body; the physical vessel that interacts with the four elements.
That idea stopped me in my tracks.
Because maybe this was the missing piece.
For years I'd been searching outwardly. Travelling. Photographing. Exploring. Learning. Running. Healing.
And all along, the place I needed to come back to was my body."
So, what is SALT?
"At one point, I sat down and wrote everything I'd learnt and experienced across my life: the skills I'd gathered, the jobs I'd had, the places I'd travelled, photography, natural ingredients, skincare, fitness, the elements, spirituality and, perhaps most importantly, kindness.
And there it was.
SALT.
Not just a brand. A way of life.
For me, living by the elements means becoming more in tune with my mind, body and soul and learning to listen to what I need. Sometimes I need the grounding of Earth, sometimes the flow of Water, sometimes the heat and transformation of Fire, sometimes the space and breath of Air, and sometimes I simply need to come back to myself.
There is no perfect balance. There is only listening, responding and realigning.
That is what SALT means to me, and now my mission is to help more people discover it for themselves.
To reconnect with their bodies, spend more time in nature, work with the elements rather than against them, slow down enough to listen, move when they need movement, rest when they need rest and create space for healing.
Ultimately, it's about feeling more at home in yourself."
