For Dr. Erika Buckley-Strobel, owner of Aqua Vitalis Naturopathic on 11th Street S. in Golden, working from home provides a great work-life balance.
Buckley Strobel opened his first practice after graduating as a naturopathic doctor in 2004 and has been self-employed ever since. Originally from Newfoundland, Buckley Strobel moved to Ontario where he grew up, went to school and opened his first naturopathic doctor’s practice.
She met and married her husband, Joachim, and they decided to move west together, as he could get a similar job without the hour-and-a-half commute.
They moved to Golden for the skiing, and the house came up for sale at just the right time.
With a side entrance and perfect office space downstairs, Buckley Strobel transformed the area into offices and treatment space.
“Now that we have a little boy, I can’t think of anywhere else,” she said, adding that Golden is the perfect place to raise her son, Sebastian.
One of the things that attracted her to naturopathic medicine was the opportunity to sit down and get to know her patients and work together to find the root cause of their problems.
“I’ve always been interested in medicine and always thought about going into medicine,” she said. “I really appreciated being able to spend an hour with patients and really get to know them.”
Working from home has its perks, Buckley-Stroebel said, because it lets you schedule child care around your own work hours, choose your own days off and see patients when it suits you.
“Working for yourself makes work-life balance a little easier,” Buckley Strobel says.
As the community continues to age, Buckley-Strobel sees a need to care for the older adults in her community. She recently completed her advanced certification in Gerontology from Selkirk College to meet the physical, social, environmental, cognitive and spiritual needs of older adults. She also offers acupuncture and nutritional approaches to seniors.
“We have a great health care system in our community,” she said, “and as our population ages, there will definitely be needs.”
Buckley-Strobel also provides botanical therapy, nutrition, acupuncture, hydrotherapy and homeopathy services part-time at Element Therapeutics.
Aqua Vitalis Naturopathy offers acupuncture, Oriental medicine, botanical therapy, clinical nutrition, homeopathic medicine, hydrotherapy, soft and hard tissue adjustments, prevention and lifestyle modifications, etc. An overview of these services can be found on her website.
Aqua Vitalis Naturopathic is located at 1309 11th Street S. For more information, call Dr. Buckley-Strobel at 250-344-4983 or visit www.aquavitalis.ca
