Anita Nath recently launched Om Home, a beauty platform honoring South Asian beauty. A visionary with a background in marketing, digital strategy, and retail, she founded Om Home to encourage self-love and empower individuals to embrace their cultural identity in an easy-to-navigate virtual shopping environment. With a career spanning two decades, Nath served as a strategy consultant for Amazon and also worked at IBM, American Express, BT Financial Group, and Suncorp Group. Her experience across India, Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, and the U.S. has equipped her with a global perspective and deep industry knowledge. Her goal with Om Home is to reshape the global perception of South Asian beauty, celebrating its rich heritage. Here, she shares her wellness insights.
What does wellness mean to you?
It is the ongoing pursuit of physical and mental health.
What are your favorite things to do to maintain your personal wellbeing?
Booking a hotel once a quarter for two to three nights. Being a mum, self-care is difficult to come by, and I’m one of those people who gives everything of myself to the people that I love, which means that my kids get every morsel of me. Physically stepping away forces me to focus on myself.
Is there a specific fitness activity that you love and why?
Walking. Putting on a pair of headphones with some chill-out music and taking a walk calms me down.
What is your favorite healthy food, and do you have a favorite way of preparing it?
I love the cassava rotis I make at home. I combine cassava flour with nutritional yeast, kesuri methi, garlic powder, onion powder, and a bit of water. I knead it into a dough, then make small rotis with it. I either eat them by themselves, or I use it how I would use any other roti.
What is your favorite healthy beverage (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), and do you have any insider tips for preparing it?
Lemon water in the morning. Ayurvedic teachings recommend a warm, strong bitter drink in the morning after waking to jumpstart your body and mind.
What is your greatest wellness achievement?
Prioritizing people with positive energy in my life and only allowing them into my inner circle.
What person in wellness do you most admire and why?
Two people pop into my head. One, Radhi Shetty. She values the things that I relate highly to—family, kindness, mind and body nourishment, and enjoyment in the little things—and two, Seema Anand. Her focus is on sexual health, the de-stigmatization of passion, and embracing the beauty in our unedited history and culture.
What is the best piece of wellness advice you have ever received and from whom?
Never speak to yourself in a negative way, not even in your own mind. Your brain cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not and will start believing the negative things that are said even if they are not true. I don’t remember who told me this.
What do you think is the most exciting wellness innovation you have recently discovered?
The Theragun mini. I discovered this during my second pregnancy when I was not able to get regular massages and in quite a lot of pain. It helped with reducing the swelling in my legs and allowed me the first nights of peaceful sleep in months.
What is your idea of balanced healthy happiness?
Finding time for myself each month. Every day is a lot of physical and mental strain. Balance means time needed for my body and mind to recover.
What do you think is the most overused word or words in wellness?
Yoga. This word gets overused and misused to extreme levels. Fundamentally, yoga focuses on breathwork. If you go to a yoga class or instructor where the first few weeks and months are anything except breathwork in a simple seated position, then you’re not at a yoga class.
Do you have a secret health or wellness tip you would like to share?
I frequently struggle to switch off at bedtime because my days are so intense. I do a breathing practice before going to bed, which helps my body calm down and induces drowsiness. Close one nostril with your finger and take one slow deep inhale through your nose for 10 seconds, then breathe out for 10 seconds through the other nostril. Do not open your mouth. Breathing out of your mouth is never recommended when doing breathwork.
What is your favorite place for a healthy vacation or escape?
If I am by myself, any location that has warm weather, in a hotel that has a balcony and is near a walking track or park.
Is there a particular wellness company or brand that truly impresses you with their efforts and why?
Calm. I love how they create a variety of elements that focus on mental wellbeing. I have even gotten my kids hooked on some of their products.
What is your favorite self-care routine?
Body oil scrubs. If I can get my hands on Umm Skincare’s body scrub, then I’ll use that. However, if I don’t have it on-hand, then I combine fine brown sugar with coconut oil. I spend a few minutes scrubbing my skin with this before turning the water on in the shower to take it off. It saves me a lot of time getting ready, as I don’t need to moisturize afterwards, and it leaves my skin feeling amazing.
What is your go-to for de-stressing?
Avoiding TV, turning on some chill music, lighting up some candles, having a home-cooked dinner, then sitting down to a good book.
What aspect of your wellbeing do you struggle with the most, or would most like to improve?
Honestly, being a parent has completely changed how my body and mind approaches wellbeing. Time and energy are extremely limited, and life changes each year that your children grow, which means that a wellness solution in the first year will look completely different in the second year, and so on.
What wellness-related books or authors do you recommend, and why?
Any book where you learn something new is recommended. Life is meant to be lived by continuously learning and exploring.
How do you celebrate small victories?
Celebrating it with my husband. He’s my best friend, so I always want to share them with him.
What brings you joy?
Being surrounded by loved ones.
