Meet Anna Bazarnaya

We recently connected with Anna Bazarnaya and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anna , really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

From a young age, I’ve been sensitive to the energy and emotions of others, and I’ve always tried to help them feel better. I used to practice energy healing through my hands unknowingly and felt a connection to the world of spirits, which sometimes scared me. I’ve always loved nature and animals and believed that nature is alive, with all creatures having souls and personalities communicating with us. Another interest of mine has been in medicine, understanding the causes and effects of diseases, and solving medical cases.

Growing up in post-Soviet Union Russia, I couldn’t find a profession combining my natural gifts and passion. Throughout my school and teenage years, I had to suppress my sensitivity and forget about my connection with nature. However, in 2011, while working as a graphic designer and suffering from anxiety, back pain, and burnout, I turned to alternative healing methods. I started taking aromatherapy and botanical skincare formulations classes and did my yoga teacher training. After experiencing adrenal burnout, I went through a mid-life crisis and felt a calling to move and live in pristine nature.

In 2015, I moved to the small fisherman village of Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. There, I completed a course on plant spirit herbalism and delved deeply into psychological aromatherapy, distillation, and flower essence therapy. Nature opened up fully to me, with plants communicating and appearing in my dreams. I began matching the energy and archetype of plants to imbalances that I could sense in people. I started making flower essences, distilling plants for hydrosols and essential oils, and creating blends for emotional healing.

The natural surroundings of Costa Rica became a powerful place for my inner child healing process and shadow work. I found support in nature’s healing power, blending flower essences and essential oils for my own needs catalyzing the healing process. I was amazed by their potency without causing addictions and side effects like Western Medicine. I began sharing my formulas with friends and later clients, consistently proving their effectiveness. after a few years my favorite formulas turned into my products. Since then, my purpose has been to spread the word about these healing modalities and restore the human connection with Mother Nature. I aim to reintroduce ancient knowledge and practices of healing with the energy and chemistry of plants, crystals, and elements of nature.

Many people have lost touch with nature, leading to feelings of isolation, depression, and loneliness. I aim to help as many people as possible reconnect with nature and feel like a part of the Universe. By recognizing nature’s aliveness and viewing it as a living apothecary, I hope to inspire a shift that will combat ecological destruction and the widespread epidemics of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I founded my company, Maitri Verde, in 2017 while living in Costa Rica; now, I am located on the Central Coast of California, working with local plants and land, which inspired me to celebrate this shift by changing my name to Maitri Botanicals. What interests me most is the work in communication with plants – listening to the subtle messages they send me when I do clients’ diagnostics, or they come to me as a beautiful synergy that wants to come to reality as my next formula. I also sense how various energies wish to be weaved together to create the most potent blends; for example, I combine essential oil, crystals, flower essences, botanical extracts, water from power places of Earth, and plant and animal spirits that become guardians of the blend. Nature is such a brilliant creator – it creates, adjusts, and modifies, and her creations live in their unique self-expression and beautiful harmony and symbiosis with each other. I found endless inspiration in watching and learning from nature and wishing for such a harmonious society for people. You see, plant energetics and aromatic molecules don’t “cure” or “modify” people to fit into a particular standard; the opposite – they remove all limiting beliefs, masks, and other adaptive mechanisms so we people can be who they really are underneath it all. And live unrestricted, fully accepting their True Self and uniqueness, with all gifts and quirkiness. I plan to teach more self-empowering classes and show people how to use essential oils and flower essences daily for healing, natural beauty, and energy clearing. Soon, I will announce a year-long “Journey to True Self,” where every month will have its healing theme, and we will work on all aspects of our personality, from self-love to ancestral healing. I am also excited to expand my practice of creating unique, tailor-made signature botanical perfumes for my private clients and all-natural scents for their homes based on their personality, natal chart, and emotional healing needs.

Working with plants is always an art and science. What always fascinates me is the intriguing complexity of the plant’s chemistry and energetics. For example, the same species of thyme will produce three dramatically different essential oils depending on where it grows geographically. Everything affects the plant and its healing ability: climate, soil, humidity, AND the way it is grown, harvested, and distilled. Plants have memory simply because the water inside has memory – the plants that were loved and hand-harvested will produce a dramatically more potent oil, at least on an energetic level, than those commercially grown and harvested mainly for profit.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Learn from the best in your area. Find a real master/teacher and follow him until you feel saturated and satisfied. Your soul will let you know when you got everything you had to get from that teacher, then part ways. It’s so important to keep growing as a person and as an expert. Sometimes you overgrow your teachers and perfect their ways.
2. First learn the rules and master what others discovered before you. Then run the knowledge through the prism of your personality. Experiment and break the rules if you find a better or your unique way of working with those knowledge. That is what makes you authentic.
3. Follow your heart and intuition even when you have no idea how to make your dreams and vision a reality. Listen to advices but still follow your heart and intuition because history is full of examples when people rejected new ideas or visions that decade later would become a new norm.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I want to partner with clothing, furnishings and decorative accessories brands that focus on sustainability and use of all natural materials and sustainable packaging to partner on bringing all-natural products for home and body into people’s homes and lives. I want to make unique candles, diffusers, cleaning products that are not just pure in ingredients but also healing for emotions and can clear the energy of their homes and their bodies.

I believe in the effect of synergy and combining techniques, practices and modalities. I am looking for collaborations with yoga studios and instructors, massage therapists, chiropractors, energy healers as well as psychologists and psychotherapist to bring the healing power of plants to assist in emotional healing, release childhood and generational trauma, and help manage stress, anxiety and depression.

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