What You Missed At Green Queen RELEASE Vol.1: Change Your Life With CBD – An Evening of Empowered Wellbeing

Change Your Life With CBD, Vol.1 of our brand new Green Queen RELEASE Series was a huge success. It exceeded our expectations in every way, from bringing a community of people together to delve into a truly impactful wellbeing solution to ushering away our stresses with Breathwork and nourishing our souls with connecting conversations. We left the night feeling revitalised, positive and warm, armed with new knowledge about how to better take care of our mind, body and soul. 

Green Queen RELEASE is more than just another “wellness” event. We’re creating safe spaces to empower wellbeing. Below we share the evening’s highlights and the vision behind our new Mind Body Soul series . 

Green Queen founder Sonalie Figueiras is passionate about offering readers an alternative to the superficial noise that pervades social media and leaves many people unsure of how to navigate the now complex world of health & wellness.  

At the core of our RELEASE series mission is to introduce our Green Queen community to natural innovative wellbeing tools, and create a safe space for guests to explore these solutions by featuring trustworthy experts that enable the audience to gain a deeper understanding of why and how to use such tools in daily life.

Like with of all Green Queen events, we choose to work with partners that share our values and who are working to make a positive impact on the community, our health, and the planet – all of which come together to symbolise the core of what Green Queen stands for. This is why we opted to worth with Moksa as our venue, a slow beauty salon founded by Peishu Nien in the heart of Central that echoes our commitment to wellness and the environment.

A beautiful space fitted with eco-friendly materials that exude a chill Bali beach vibe, Moksa is a pamper spot where all the products are natural and organic, not to mention that they are the only Hong Kong nail bar working with 9-free French eco nail polish brand Manucurist– the brand also has a 7-free gel nail polish offering.

For RELEASE, Moksa prepared a few surprises. Upon arrival, guests were welcomed with a refreshing slow blended juice (Nien believes in retaining all the beneficial fruit fibre and minimizing food waste)- on the menu were the Immunity Juice containing ginger and citrus, and the Green Juice, a blend of spinach, pear and celery.

Over at the mix and match treatment bar, our Release attendees were invited to design their own hand or body scrub from natural plant ingredients such as virgin olive oil, sesame oil, ground coffee beans, rice powder, fresh ginger root and essential oils, which Nien mixed personally for every guest in take-home glass jars. One of Moksa’s core philosophies is to eschew plastic and to offer bulk ingredients as a way to minimise packaging. It goes without saying that we’re on board for that.

Before the main act, all about the healing and life-changing potential of CBD or cannabidiol, guests were invited to release the stress and worries of their day with an empowering, cleansing Breathworks session by Aigul Safiullina, Green Queen’s Events Manager and certified Breathwork coach and founder of Respira.

We Hong Kongers are some of the more stressed people on earth and it is with this in mind that Green Queen founder Figueiras thought to incorporate a relatively new-to-Hong Kong practice before hosting the fireside chat aboout CBD in order to truly open up the room and ensure that guests felt ready to learn and receive new information in a stress-free environment without the regular distractions. It’s a testament to Aigul’s powerful and soothing session that during the next hour, not a single guest reached for their phone.

During the 20 minute session, Aigul guided guests through different breathing and meditation techniques and shared how these can help cleanse our physical body, as well as our mind and soul. We finished with several rounds of 4:8 breathing, which helped open us up fo the knowledge sharing that followed. 4:8 is an exercise that became legendary when Soviet cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov used the technique to calm himself and the team when he encountered an emergency when he led a 1979 space mission.

Green Queen was honoured to feature Denise Tam, co-founder of Heavens Please, a Hong Kong-based CBD lifestyle platform that curates the best imported CBD skincare and lifestyle products and works with local brands to introduce CBD into their offering (hello, CBD chocolate!).

In an intimate fireside chat, guests had the opportunity to dive deep into a topic that on the one hand has become a hugely popular buzzword, while on the other remains shrouded in myths and misconceptions. Not to mention that many people feel uncomfortable talking openly about.

Throughout the interview with Denise, led by our Green Queen founder Sonalie Figueiras, we learned all about what CBD aka cannabidiol is, how it is completely different to the psychoactive compound THC, and the many benefits that can be reaped by using CBD as a tool in our wellness arsenal A true expert on CBD in Hong Kong, Denise stole the show with her wealth of knowledge about the regulations, the products and the compound itself. On top of running Heavens Please, Denise is also a spiritual teacher herself who studies the healing power of plants and herbs. She generously and candidly about her own past struggles with anxiety and depression and how CBD helped change her life thanks to its healing, relaxing and calming qualities. 

Extending beyond being an enhancer that can calm, relieve pain and stress in our daily lives, Denise broke down all the additional advantages of the plant compound to showcase its flexibility. Referencing a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, she spoke of CBD being an effective treatment for epilepsy patients and supporting the treatment of those with Alzheimer’s, cancer, psychosis and Parkinson’s disease, without bringing about any adverse health outcomes, psychoactive effects and or inducing dependency. 

Not only did she outline the variation in formats of CBD, from oils and tinctures for oral ingestion to topical skincare and body creams and the health issues related with vaping, she tackled 20 questions from the audience with ease. These included explaining in depth the adaptogenic qualities of the compound, which helps different individuals with different conditions. This makes CBD unlike any prescribed medication – it is all about supporting wellness, which we can personally adjust, from the format to dosage, to target the right areas and suit our individual needs.

When asked about the potential for CBD to aid cancer patients going through chemotherapy treatment, Denise explained that as long as the individual can ingest grapefruit, CBD is safe. This is because grapefruit juice can block the metabolisation of some chemotherapy drugs, and CBD usually interacts with the same enzymes in the liver. So if grapefruit is a yes, then CBD is also a yes. 

The evening was catered by Green Queen favourite TREEHOUSE and our guests enjoyed freshly made vegan wraps. A true leader of Hong Kong’s plant-based dining and health community, TREEHOUSE founder Christian Mongendre explained his food philosophy and introduced his signature 36-hour fermented sourdough wraps, a first in Hong Kong, as well as his commitment to sourcing organic, locally grown produce as much as possible and his passion for creating recipes that celebrate plant-based cuisine and take inspiration from his many travels with flavours from Tel Aviv to Tokyo.

Guests were also treated to a Hong Kong first: CBD cupcakes! Not only were the bite sized chocolate delights made by The Cakery delicious and stress-relieving thanks to the addition of CBD provided by Heavens Please, they were also vegan, organic, gluten-free, and free from refined sugar. Basically cupcakes you can feel seriously good about. We’re already planning our next order.

Fresh, plant-based & organic: the ethos the food partners we chose were the perfect framing to a Mind, Body, Soul evening designed to present guests with the most avant-garde naturals solutions to enhance their wellbeing and help release stress and anxiety. We can’t wait for Vol.2 – 2020 can’t come fast enough.

Still have more questions about CBD? Find out more in Green Queen’s comprehensive guide to CBD, and our exclusive interview with Denise and Terry of Heavens Please, where they talk all about dosing, where to buy CBD and what brands to choose.

If you joined us for our first RELEASE event, we hope you had as empowering time as we did. To stay up to date about on everything Green Queen and to make sure you never miss out on future RELEASE events, make sure to follow Green Queen and sign up to our newsletter.

All images courtesy of Green Queen.