WHO IS SHIFT INTEGRATED WELLNESS: THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE BUSINESSMay 26, 2021NewsShift Integrated Health – Owner, Natalie Yu
Written by Stacy Thomas
Photo by Angela Bliss
She loves extreme sports. She’s perfectly at home on a mountaintop sipping drinks with friends, zipping up logging roads on a dirt bike with her husband or scaling cliff faces. But the one rule for Shift Integrated Health clinic owner Natalie Yu?
Don’t look down.
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. I do all the extreme sports, but I’m terrified of heights,” says Yu. Not that that’s stopped her from doing what she loves; when she was a student of Chinese medicine in the Kootenays, she tried rock climbing with the specific hope of conquering her fear. “I wanted to kind of figure that fear out. I thought that if I understood falling better, it could help. But rock climbing made it worse.”
She still climbs—“It’s better when there’s a rope,”—but as the new owner of an integrated health clinic with over 14 practitioners, as well as a, being a new mother with an under-one baby at home, there hasn’t been too much time for extracurriculars lately.
“Being a mother and being a business owner at the same time, it’s full-on,” Yu says. “It’s hard – I’m so grateful for my manager [Jane Thomas] for steering the ship and helping me manage those decisions.”
Having the right people around her has been essential to the success of her business, Yu says. She purchased the clinic from Susan Chapelle, who originally built the clinic, and is honoured to carry on that torch. “Having met her and talked to her, I think that she’s such a great pioneer in many different ways for women in business, so it was an honour to take on that legacy after her and continue a wellness clinic.”
But it hasn’t been an easy transition for her, from a solo acupuncturist with her own practice in North Vancouver, to the single owner of a large, busy clinic.
She purchased the clinic and rebranded it as Shift – Squamish Integrated Health in July of 2019.
“It was a lot of learning, and then having covid hit at the time that it did, it was really quite difficult, because we were just starting to tread water and keep our heads above water and we’re just getting into a really good groove, and then covid shut our doors. It was really quite tough.”
But they persevered, doing online sessions, home deliveries and optimizing the closure to inject some feng shui into the clinic by renovating and moving the front doors so they invite a view of the Chief and better energy flow. What’s next for the clinic? Yu’s big goal right now is getting a full-time community acupuncture practice running by the end of the summer, to increase accessibility for all. Now that they’re reopened with safety protocols, Yu can focus on the patients again, providing holistic healthcare through a collective mindset towards care.
“As much as I think Chinese medicine is amazing, I think it also needs other modalities to support different clients in different ways,” she says. “We’re very lucky in Squamish; we have the most amazing group of practitioners here in town, in every clinic.”
Shift Integrated Health – Owner, Natalie Yu
Written by Stacy Thomas
Photo by Angela Bliss
She loves extreme sports. She’s perfectly at home on a mountaintop sipping drinks with friends, zipping up logging roads on a dirt bike with her husband or scaling cliff faces. But the one rule for Shift Integrated Health clinic owner Natalie Yu?
Don’t look down.
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. I do all the extreme sports, but I’m terrified of heights,” says Yu. Not that that’s stopped her from doing what she loves; when she was a student of Chinese medicine in the Kootenays, she tried rock climbing with the specific hope of conquering her fear. “I wanted to kind of figure that fear out. I thought that if I understood falling better, it could help. But rock climbing made it worse.”
She still climbs—“It’s better when there’s a rope,”—but as the new owner of an integrated health clinic with over 14 practitioners, as well as a, being a new mother with an under-one baby at home, there hasn’t been too much time for extracurriculars lately.
“Being a mother and being a business owner at the same time, it’s full-on,” Yu says. “It’s hard – I’m so grateful for my manager [Jane Thomas] for steering the ship and helping me manage those decisions.”
Having the right people around her has been essential to the success of her business, Yu says. She purchased the clinic from Susan Chapelle, who originally built the clinic, and is honoured to carry on that torch. “Having met her and talked to her, I think that she’s such a great pioneer in many different ways for women in business, so it was an honour to take on that legacy after her and continue a wellness clinic.”
But it hasn’t been an easy transition for her, from a solo acupuncturist with her own practice in North Vancouver, to the single owner of a large, busy clinic.
She purchased the clinic and rebranded it as Shift – Squamish Integrated Health in July of 2019.
“It was a lot of learning, and then having covid hit at the time that it did, it was really quite difficult, because we were just starting to tread water and keep our heads above water and we’re just getting into a really good groove, and then covid shut our doors. It was really quite tough.”
But they persevered, doing online sessions, home deliveries and optimizing the closure to inject some feng shui into the clinic by renovating and moving the front doors so they invite a view of the Chief and better energy flow. What’s next for the clinic? Yu’s big goal right now is getting a full-time community acupuncture practice running by the end of the summer, to increase accessibility for all. Now that they’re reopened with safety protocols, Yu can focus on the patients again, providing holistic healthcare through a collective mindset towards care.
“As much as I think Chinese medicine is amazing, I think it also needs other modalities to support different clients in different ways,” she says. “We’re very lucky in Squamish; we have the most amazing group of practitioners here in town, in every clinic.”
