Our founder Rysia (pronounced Reesha) began her journey back in Poland where she was raised in a time when natural healing and home remedies were the main form of medicine. Her mother relied on traditional practices like cuppings, for better circulation or pneumonia and ate traditional mushroom soups, which today are considered medicinal mushrooms. Chicken soups and pickled veggies for a healthy microbiome, as it boosts the immune system.

In her family and culture, they drank lots of herbal teas, each one for a different purpose. Visiting the hot springs was not only a traditional practice, but a natural form of alignment and rebalancing while detoxifying the body, in order to increase immunity. Every mother was taught this as it was handed down from generation to generation. Enemas, were historically used when someone got sick as the fever would cause constipation. It was rare that people were just constipated for no reason. They also used enemas to help flush out parasites.

They didn't have organic vs conventional crops. They only had crops, and they weren't sprayed with pesticides. Their “Best food practices” were eating. Their crops were dense with minerals as their soils were. That made the food taste pungent with natural flavors and in turn, made everyone's bodies run like a well oiled machine.

Natural remedies and protocols are part of traditional holistic healing and functional medicine today. These naturopathic remedies and protocols are being sought out by more and more people as they are trying to be proactive in their health journey. Many of them looking for lifestyle bio hacks.

These early experiences shaped Rysia’s passion for whole-body wellness. She believed wholeheartedly there was a gut-brain connection between the digestive tract, brain and the microbiome. Dense nutritional foods and the elimination of toxins were part and parcel of her belief system.

She grew up eating what we now call healing foods or superfoods—like bone broth, medicinal mushroom soup, lacto-cultured dairy like kefir, cultured buttermilk and fermented vegetables like pickles and sauerkraut—everyday staples that naturally supported gut health and immune function.

After moving to the U.S. in the 1960s, Rysia became one of the first certified Colon Hydrotherapists in Los Angeles. Inspired by the wisdom of Hippocrates—"All disease begins in the gut"—she dedicated her life to gut health through colonics, digestive education and the power of detoxification.

She later opened The Total Health Connection in Beverly Hills, where she served a wide range of clients, including celebrities, and coined the phrase: “Don’t ignore your gut feeling”, as she was an intuitive that believed that listening to our intuition is central to being guided by the light.

Rysia also taught colon hydrotherapy internationally, becoming a respected name in natural wellness circles in Los Angeles and around the world.

Today, her legacy lives on through The Best Colonics, our Santa Monica-based colonic location, where her mission of helping people feel better through specializing in colonics with a kind, empathetic and compassionate perspective is key, while servicing our customers by giving them the attention they deserve.