Welcome to Real Talk! My new monthly series where I sit down with a founder who's building something that actually matters. Not because they spotted a gap in the market or followed a trend, but because they have a stand. A belief they won't compromise on. A read on the cultural moment that most brands are too polite, or too afraid, to say out loud.
This isn't your typical founder feature. No growth hacks. No "5 tips for scaling." Just honest conversations about what it takes to build a world when you refuse to play by the industry's rules.
This month: Natalia Uliasz on toxic optimisation, nervous system truth, and what it actually takes to build a sanctuary in the age of algorithmic self-improvement.
In this conversation
💛 When wellness stopped supporting her and started stressing her, and the moment that changed everything
💛 Why your nervous system doesn't care about your routine (and what it actually responds to instead)
💛 What founders need to understand about building sanctuaries, not adding more pressure
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Natalia Uliasz
Natalia created Medytuliasz, a meditation practice and community, not because she saw a market opportunity. But because she has a belief: Wellness should give you peace, not another reason to feel inadequate. That's her line. That's what she won't cross. That clarity is what makes medytuliasz a world, not just a product.
I wanted to understand how she got here. What she's learned about what women actually need versus what we're being sold. How she reads the culture. What it means to build from conviction in an industry built on insecurity.
And most importantly: What changes when you stop performing peace and start building the conditions for it.
This is that conversation.
When wellness becomes another thing you fail at
Natalia's journey into wellness began where so many of us start: with a body that was being judged. From age 15, she worked as a model, travelling on contracts, walking into casting rooms filled with beautiful women, all being measured against impossible standards.
"I grew up in a world full of comparison," she tells me, calling from Bali where she now splits her time between Poland. "On castings, there was always someone with shinier hair, someone taller, someone with more beautiful skin. Sometimes someone else got the job not because you weren't good enough, but because the client wanted a brunette instead of you."
But sport saved her. Movement became her anchor, not for aesthetics, but for sanity. "I was always motivated by sport. It was always in my life. And I think that saved me, because this industry is also full of parties, you can fall into bad company, and life can go a different direction."
I ask her when wellness stopped supporting her and started stressing her instead.
She pauses. "The first time I felt that was when I didn't have time for it and didn't have energy for it. The first situation that comes to mind is when I miscarried."
Her voice softens. "I had always been at the gym five times a week. I remember coming back from Bali, I had so many projects, and for three months, I did nothing for myself. And I constantly felt like I was failing, because I'm doing nothing for myself. But I just didn't have the fuel. My body was exhausted, mentally I was exhausted, I was going through my own personal tragedy."
This is the moment that breaks so many of us. When life demands more than we have. When the wellness routine that's supposed to sustain us becomes another item on the list of ways we're not measuring up.
"I blamed myself for not being at training, for not doing this, not doing that. But I simply didn't have the fuel for it then. And I think that was the first moment when I had to, how should I say it, come back to myself. To take care of sleeping well, eating well, just the fundamentals. And only later start taking care of other things."
The nervous system doesn't care about your routine
This realisation led Natalia deeper into understanding what actually creates calm versus what performs it. She's been part of a meditation group for five years now, "I treat it a bit like therapy, but through meditation we get to know ourselves, work through patterns from our parents, behaviours, and so on."
These workshops taught her something crucial: you have to verify your needs every single day.
"One day you might have energy for everything and do everything. Another day you just need to rest. And even if you planned big things, it just won't work. It's the same in life, creating a vision for your life, well, that vision is for right now. In a year it will need an upgrade and verification based on the situation we're in after that year."
This is where her Instagram post came from, the one about the nervous system not differentiating between yoga-calm and safety-calm.
"I think it came not from books but from life. And only later did I find confirmation that, in fact, if I'm doing everything right, yoga, breathing, smoothies, and so on, then I should be relaxed and my body should feel calm. But actually, the body responds more to a sense of safety than to these things, which are often just an image."
She leans forward slightly. "I saw that the nervous system doesn't calm down from techniques, but from safety. That it doesn't need to protect me. That it simply feels safe on its own, maybe in a safe relationship, in a safe space, in a safe home."
"Of course, yoga and meditation and all these things are great tools to help with this, especially if you do them regularly. Because then you can really catch those thoughts that aren't needed, or sometimes we like to keep them in our heads. But doing it regularly, and just seeing 'oh, my thoughts went there again, stop, I don't want to go there', that's already huge progress in meditation."
She smiles. "I know meditation is difficult for many people precisely because of this 'how do I sit and not think? How do I sit when my thoughts are going crazy, I can't calm them?' After some time, it will come. You'll see: 'oh no, I drifted away again, back to the breath.' So these are definitely great tools, but they're meant to help us get to that feeling of safety and to that peace."
Wellness as aesthetic vs. wellness as experience
When I ask Natalia why social media drives toxic wellness, her answer is immediate.
"I think first of all, wellness has become an aesthetic rather than an experience. That's the first thing. And what's toxic on social media is that peace is shown as an ideal image, not as a lived experience. But our nervous system doesn't respond to aesthetics - it responds to feeling."
She continues, "I also think social media causes this comparison. We scroll, and we don't see everything that's actually happening, we only see that ideal image. We don't know what's really going on there. For example, I never talked about my miscarriage on social media either."
"We see the image and it often causes this microstress in us, 'why isn't it working for me when it's working for others?' I think there's also this sense of control, how we're supposed to be, because others are. To measure, track, count our sleep. That it all becomes numbers. We check: 'I slept well here, I slept badly here, oh I slept badly today so I'm definitely going to have a bad day,' because that's what the ring or watch or something shows us."
She shakes her head slightly. "On one hand, these are great technologies and tools, but on the other hand, there are also downsides, when the watch shows us something is wrong, it means we're already doing everything wrong and nothing will work out for us. So definitely things like that."
The pressure is real and quantified. In Poland, 28% of women report daily stress. Women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. And the role of wellness culture in this picture? Complex.
"Women have many roles," Natalia says simply. "Often our role is businesswoman, mother, partner, taking care of the home, and we still have to take care of ourselves to be attractive somewhere, in the home, for a partner, or just for ourselves. That's a lot of pressure women put on themselves."
She pauses, "We also just need to give ourselves space sometimes, that today I'm only a mother. Not put on that pressure that we have to be perfect at everything, ideal, because it's not possible. It's just not possible to combine all of that."
Creating space instead of adding pressure
This understanding is what led Natalia to create Medytuliasz. But the origin story isn't what you'd expect.
"It was very spontaneous for me. Once I went on a modelling contract to Los Angeles, and there I went to yoga, there was already this fashion for meditation, and I also went to acting school where every class started with meditation."
She was going through a breakup at the time, navigating major life changes. "And thanks to that meditation, I started to understand myself. I started to hear myself. I started to hear that, damn, I didn't want that at all, I was doing it because he wanted it, because he said it was good for me, for example."
"I just started to understand and be aware that my feelings are my feelings and I can want something different than others. And I also remember listening to a podcast about the Five Love Languages, and there was something about acts of service. And I thought about it not only in a romantic context but in a life context."
Living in Bali deepened this. "Here, there's Hinduism, and every Balinese person wakes up every morning and does a ceremony in the place where they live. They give these small offerings on a bamboo leaf, bow, pray, light incense every day in their home. It's gratitude for being able to be here, to use this land, etc."
"So I thought to myself: my act of service for the world, which I do completely selflessly and get nothing from, will be this meditation that I'll lead on the medytuliasz group. I get nothing from it. I just felt like it's something I can give to the world on my own."
The timing mattered too. "I felt that maybe people in Poland are slowly ready for this, although I think we still need a bit more time. Because in Poland, for some people in some circles, meditation might still be associated with shamanism, with pipes in ears and some mushrooms, and not as a tool for simply regulating your emotions."
Medytuliasz is intentionally simple: live meditations, 10-15 minutes, designed for beginners. "My intention was to create meditation for people who are just starting their meditation journey, so that it would be very simple, understandable, not with vocabulary that's very spiritual, but just to breathe, to feel good after it."
The topics are everyday: gratitude, dealing with feedback, chaos, reacting to jealousy, and anger. "There are various meditations, and just briefly, but I have hope, at least, that people who do meditation with me will feel a bit lighter, nicer."
And the short format is intentional. "It's also teaching us; it gives us less pressure. Because I think having hour-long meditations when someone's never done it before, you can feel that pressure again of 'I have to do something.' But even a minute of breathing, like when you do a one-minute reel, 'hey, one minute of breathing', it's like, wow, the difference."
What founders need to understand
When I ask Natalia what she'd tell other wellness founders, her answer cuts through all the noise.
"I think, as you say, it's a nice period now to do things that show we don't have to be perfect. That shows wellness doesn't have to be based on perfect mornings or some discipline. To take that pressure off us. Maybe show that imperfections are okay. That what you're selling, that the message is more important than what you're selling."
She emphasises: "Also, not feeling pressure that this is another product that will add pressure, that you have to be some way. But this is another product that will allow you to be as you are. But maybe with this product, encourage you or motivate you for some development or dedicating time to this wellness in a good form."
"I think also products that show we're enough. That let's just see what we can do to feel safer or better or calmer. And I also think it's worth thinking about in these businesses: does what you're creating give more peace or more control? Or, for example, does it show the whole process or just the end result? Or, for example, is there space for exhaustion, chaos, cycles, breaks? Or is it just another added pressure?"
She pauses, then adds: "Wellness is a product from many, many industries, so it also depends on what someone creates. But I think authenticity sells much better now than perfectionism."
Real sisterhood in an age of performance
The statistics about women supporting each other are sobering. Despite the "girl power" trend on social media, research shows women are actually more prone to jealousy when a friend or peer succeeds than men are. And it starts young, girls as young as 11 show this pattern.
"My observations are that this was also a trend on social media, but I wouldn't say I saw that much of it, that women really supported each other that strongly. Quite the opposite, I would say," Natalia admits.
The research backs her up: when a woman's friend succeeds, there's often an undercurrent of envy. But when a man's friend succeeds, it's all celebration. "That's very interesting how this culture develops early. So that's why I think conversations, supporting each other, and having space for women where it's okay, we're not rivals, we actually need to stick together, sisterhood is the power. That's true."
How do we actually support each other in rejecting the pressure of perfection?
"I think definitely by normalising imperfections. Definitely by stopping comparing ourselves and not comparing others. Supporting rest and not just action. And this is also something I noticed after COVID, there was this pressure and trend during COVID of 'I have no time for anything, I have so much going on, so much to do, so many projects' and so on."
She laughs a bit. "I noticed some of my friends fell into this thing where they constantly said they had so many projects, but, for example, they knew all the TikTok gossip. That it was a trend to feel better mentally by having these projects, maybe after that calmer time during COVID, when there were fewer of them. And nobody gave themselves space to say 'today I won't do anything.'"
"Because that already made the person feel like 'so that means I'm useless, I'm doing nothing, I don't know, maybe nobody wants me at work' and so on. So everyone walked around saying, 'I have no time for anything because I'm doing so much.' So I think it's nice that now it's reversed. Because I also see the tendency in American podcasts that when someone does too much, it doesn't speak well of them at all."
She smiles. "That they can't make space for themselves for that break, for that rest. And I think also what you said, creating safe spaces for conversations with specialists. Sharing our difficult situations or worries, or what comes out for me. Or as you said, 'let's suck together today', that can also be. So it seems to me that removing this mask of perfection and showing that everyone has a super day sometimes, but everyone has a shitty day sometimes too."
What peace actually looks like
My last question is simple: What does real peace look like for you today?
Natalia doesn't hesitate. "For me, real peace is the absence of internal rushing. And I generally feel I have that peace now, but I also build it in myself every day with small things. Like giving myself space that today, okay, at 8pm I'm going to bed because I just feel like I have to."
"And I think also not absolute silence, but sometimes I like to sit in silence, that it doesn't have to be perfect conditions, but just a moment when I can simply relax. I think also a sense of safety, these relationships I'm in, this atmosphere I have at home with my partner. I think things like that."
She continues: "That sometimes it can hurt more but be more true. That I don't have to meet all expectations at once. That I can just sometimes, for me, peace is that I can be myself in the space of my home, where if I feel like crying, I can cry, if I feel like shouting, I can shout, if I feel like doing nothing, I can also do nothing. And that's great."
It's the most ungram-mable definition of peace I've heard. And that's exactly why it's real.
The editor's note: what founders can learn about having a stand
Here's what this conversation reveals about building brand worlds: You can't build a universe without a belief system.
Natalia didn't create medytuliasz because she saw a gap in the market. She created it because she has a stand: Wellness should give you peace, not another reason to feel inadequate. That's a belief. That's non-negotiable. That's what turns a product into a world.
And she understood the cultural moment. She saw what the data now confirms, 28% of Polish women report daily stress, twice as likely as men to experience depression, 92% feeling pressure to conform to beauty standards. But more than that, she felt it. She lived through modelling's comparison culture. She experienced wellness becoming another performance metric. She recognised the exhaustion of optimisation.
This is what separates director brands from funnel brands: They don't just respond to trends, they take a stand on what's wrong and build the alternative.
The wellness industry has sold us optimisation when what we actually need is space. It's sold us control when we need acceptance. It's sold us performance when we need presence. Practice like Medytuliasz succeeds because Natalia is willing to say this out loud. To stand against the pressure. To build for what people actually need, not what's trending on their feed.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: If you're building a wellness or beauty brand and you can't articulate what you refuse to do, what belief you won't compromise on, you're not building a world. You're building a product line.
Natalia's stand is clear: No more pressure disguised as self-care. No more aesthetics masquerading as experience. No more performing peace when what we need is to build the conditions for it, safety, connection, permission to be exactly where we are.
That clarity is what creates gravity. It's what makes people orbit your brand instead of just transacting with it. Because they don't just want your product, they want to believe what you believe.
And perhaps most importantly: brands with a stand attract community, not just customers. People who say "let's suck together today." People who normalise rest. People who remind us that comparison, even to our best friends, is the thief of peace. That's what happens when you stop selling and start standing for something.
Next week: The practical playbook. Twelve principles for building your brand universe in 2026, with case studies from the brands rewriting the rules, plus a look at what's coming next that you need to know.
But for now, ask yourself: Are you performing peace, or building the conditions for it?
Let's stay connected
Hi! I'm Paula Ironside, and I'm so glad you made it here. I'm the founder of Hunter & Florence (my newly launched baby 💛), a strategic brand consultancy based in Oslo, working with wellness and beauty founders across Europe.
My thing? Helping brands build with cultural intelligence and authentic positioning, structure and soul, not cookie-cutter DTC formulas.
Every week, I'm publishing deep dives like this one: cultural frameworks, brand strategy breakdowns, positioning tools you can actually use. If you want these insights delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe below.
And if you're a founder or work in this space, genuinely, send me a DM. I'd love to hear your story, your ideas, or explore ways we could collaborate. Community first, always.
Have a lovely day
xx P
