Meet the Founder of Mana Living Vera Powles

At that time Vera was working on a project in melanoma treatment and stumbled across a lot of research on how our lifestyle actually affects how our DNA expresses itself. ‘Bearing in mind at that time we knew that diet was important, as well as exercise, but the importance of factors such as sleep wasn’t talked about as much,’ she explains. ‘Today, people know that all aspects of our health are very important. I thought that was really fascinating and I wanted to share that so I stayed within the scientific realm after studying, but I also wanted to share what I’d learned so I got a certification with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to make sure I could gain the health coaching skills I needed to apply my knowledge in a way that was much easier to digest. That’s when Mana Living was born.’

Vera’s personal development in health, and what she’d learned, inspired her to learn more about holistic health and she founded Mana Living in 2018, backed by her scientific knowledge. She describes her business as ‘a 360-degree approach to wellbeing’. Vera developed a Six Pillars of Wellness framework which includes diet, exercise, sleep, stress, emotions and spirituality.

‘Everything we do should fall within some of those pillars,’ she explains. ‘We do in-person events, but we also have an online platform [Live Beautifully], which has just celebrated its first anniversary, and is a paid membership which includes content on all of those six pillars.’ The pillars remain the basis of Vera’s coaching programmes and (with the addition of habit and behaviour change) are the focus of her book Live Well – a 30-day programme to change your lifestyle and build habits that last. ‘I feel like it’s become a true reflection of my own lifestyle,’ she adds.

In 2021, Vera became a Women’s Sharing Circles Leader to support women of all ages and backgrounds in their emotional health and healing, and then became a vinyasa yoga teacher. ‘Yoga is something I’ve been doing for the last 15 years and I wanted to be able to share that with my clients as well,’ she says. Mana Living’s yoga classes include Body & Soul Flow at Karma Collective every Saturday, which focuses on building strength and increasing flexibility, and Sunday Slow Flow & Sound on the last Sunday of each month at Full Circle Brew Co, aimed at helping you release physical tension and calm the mind.

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Her advice to budding entrepreneurs is ‘don’t give up’ and ‘ask for help’. ‘I feel like for so long I didn’t know how to ask for help, but talking to someone who has a certain area of expertise makes you realise that your advocates, and the people that’ll help with your business, will come from a variety of places. People will support you, and even better, they might have a solution for you.

‘It’s not easy to find the support, but once you do you realise there’s quite a lot of expertise in the area. One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about building Mana Living is how many people I’ve met. I studied in Edinburgh so when I moved to Newcastle I didn’t know anyone. Now if I go out for a coffee, I’ll see at least five people I know, whether that’s other business owners or clients. I certainly found lots of support from other business owners too. No one really gatekeeps anything, so if they find something they think is helpful for you they’ll share it. We’ve just developed a balancing room spray and we were contacting businesses who have similar products for advice – everyone is just so supportive. 

‘There’re always going to be difficult days when you’re running a business but it really is our clients and those we’ve met – our community – that keeps me going every day. They are just the most incredible people. They’re very friendly but such advocates for our business as well. They really believe in it and they’re happy to share the changes it’s made to their lives and what they’ve learned.’

Sustainability is key to Mana Living’s offering. ‘It’s probably one of the reasons why we don’t have a lot of physical products, and with what we do have we always try to make sure we can develop those locally,’ Vera says. ‘For example, with our new room spray, we developed that with Diya Wellness, who is from the North East. When we do an event, we try to keep single-use waste to a minimum. We focus a lot on plant-based nutrition and we try to keep our events and classes as local to the North East as possible.’ 

Vera puts a good work-life balance down to sustainability too. ‘Everything you do needs to be sustainable and you have to be able to maintain it,’ she says. ‘It’s better for your own consistency if you try to have a routine that’s really adaptable to your work-life and family-life as opposed to, for example, trying to do a one-hour routine each morning if you have morning meetings. I try to be as realistic as I can. You can only keep something going in the long-run if you make it really approachable, simple and sustainable. It’s also about knowing that every day is going to be a little bit different, so if you can’t give 100 percent on a certain day, there’s more to come.’