Urban Juve honors hemp’s potential by honoring Ayurvedic practices
My dining companion, Sandi Lesueur, President of Urban Juve and Director of Brand Development at The Yield Growth Corp., knows a thing or two about integrating cannabis into a time-honored tradition. Urban Juve is a skincare line based in Ayurvedic medicine, a holistic system developed over 3,000 years ago in India.
Urban Juve’s inclusion of cannabis (hemp root oil, to be exact) in their skincare products stems from their Ayurvedic approach, not as part of a trend. Hemp root has been used medicinally in the Ayurvedic tradition to help treat illnesses like gout and as an aphrodisiac, while today’s science shows promise for whole cannabis root preparations to treat inflammation and malignant conditions.
Bhavna Solecki, Vedic Science of Ayurveda scholar and 30-year practitioner, and Director of Products for Urban Juve.
Each one of Urban Juve’s products are a collaboration between Bhavna Soecki, a 30-year Ayurvedic practitioner with clients like George Michael, Anjelica Huston, and David Beckham, and cutting-edge scientific research. One of the central tenets of Ayurvedic practice, according to Soecki, is working together in a large community. Alongside her Ayurveda-practicing colleagues in Canada and India, Soecki and her team have adapted today’s technologies to create a modern day Ayurvedic processing technique for hemp root oil.
“This year,” Leseuer explained, “we brought in a top-tier chemical engineer to review all the literature to identify Ayurvedic processing methods from the classical text to create new, state of art technology using the modern method of extraction to scale up while maintaining the traditional Ayurvedic. This is a patent-pending process. It not only distinguishes our brand as unique, but it also underscores the quality we deliver.”
Like Chef J, Urban Juve carefully crafts their cannabis from seed-to-production From face moisturizers to anti-aging serums, Urban Juve’s products are composed with attention to the traditional Ayurvedic method, which teaches that everything in the universe is connected through its Doshas—or energy types.
While there are many CBD-infused skin care lines out there where cannabis is the star, Urban Juve’s approach to cannabis through the ancient Ayurvedic teachings makes it part of a holistic approach to skin health and life more broadly. As part of that holistic approach, Urban Juve is supporting female entrepreneurs in their hometown of Vancouver, and giving back to the community by helping the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit that provides advocacy, housing, services, and opportunities for the marginalized citizens of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
In the Ayurvedic teachings, all of these things are connected to each other. So it’s no surprise that Leseuer saw connections between her work and Chef J’s cooking, including the care taken with the natural ingredients and the balance in both the recipes and the skincare formulas that allow the cannabis to reach its highest potential.
For many consumers, marijuana and hemp are newly legalized substances. Consumers are sold on the novelty of the cannabis experience. As time goes by and the novelty wears off, it will be the approach of Chef J and Lesueur that wins out: integrating cannabis into everyday life—eating, skin care, etc.—to show that it is one part of a broader way of living.
While these products and experiences are considered luxury for now, their approach will further help push cannabis towards mainstream acceptance as consumers see them as not extraordinary because of the cannabis, but in spite of it.
A Forbes Adventure: Field trip, cannabis-infused lunch, and discovery
My dining companion, Sandi Lesueur, President of Urban Juve and Director of Brand Development at The Yield Growth Corp., knows a thing or two about integrating cannabis into a time-honored tradition. Urban Juve is a skincare line based in Ayurvedic medicine, a holistic system developed over 3,000 years ago in India.
Urban Juve’s inclusion of cannabis (hemp root oil, to be exact) in their skincare products stems from their Ayurvedic approach, not as part of a trend. Hemp root has been used medicinally in the Ayurvedic tradition to help treat illnesses like gout and as an aphrodisiac, while today’s science shows promise for whole cannabis root preparations to treat inflammation and malignant conditions.
Bhavna Solecki, Vedic Science of Ayurveda scholar and 30-year practitioner, and Director of Products for Urban Juve.
Each one of Urban Juve’s products are a collaboration between Bhavna Soecki, a 30-year Ayurvedic practitioner with clients like George Michael, Anjelica Huston, and David Beckham, and cutting-edge scientific research. One of the central tenets of Ayurvedic practice, according to Soecki, is working together in a large community. Alongside her Ayurveda-practicing colleagues in Canada and India, Soecki and her team have adapted today’s technologies to create a modern day Ayurvedic processing technique for hemp root oil.
“This year,” Leseuer explained, “we brought in a top-tier chemical engineer to review all the literature to identify Ayurvedic processing methods from the classical text to create new, state of art technology using the modern method of extraction to scale up while maintaining the traditional Ayurvedic. This is a patent-pending process. It not only distinguishes our brand as unique, but it also underscores the quality we deliver.”
Like Chef J, Urban Juve carefully crafts their cannabis from seed-to-production From face moisturizers to anti-aging serums, Urban Juve’s products are composed with attention to the traditional Ayurvedic method, which teaches that everything in the universe is connected through its Doshas—or energy types.
While there are many CBD-infused skin care lines out there where cannabis is the star, Urban Juve’s approach to cannabis through the ancient Ayurvedic teachings makes it part of a holistic approach to skin health and life more broadly. As part of that holistic approach, Urban Juve is supporting female entrepreneurs in their hometown of Vancouver, and giving back to the community by helping the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit that provides advocacy, housing, services, and opportunities for the marginalized citizens of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
In the Ayurvedic teachings, all of these things are connected to each other. So it’s no surprise that Leseuer saw connections between her work and Chef J’s cooking, including the care taken with the natural ingredients and the balance in both the recipes and the skincare formulas that allow the cannabis to reach its highest potential.
For many consumers, marijuana and hemp are newly legalized substances. Consumers are sold on the novelty of the cannabis experience. As time goes by and the novelty wears off, it will be the approach of Chef J and Lesueur that wins out: integrating cannabis into everyday life—eating, skin care, etc.—to show that it is one part of a broader way of living.
While these products and experiences are considered luxury for now, their approach will further help push cannabis towards mainstream acceptance as consumers see them as not extraordinary because of the cannabis, but in spite of it.
A Forbes Adventure: Field trip, cannabis-infused lunch, and discovery
