We were lucky to catch up with Nikki Fielding recently and have shared our conversation below.
Nikki, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience is in large part thanks to my family and being raised to know my own strength and that “this too shall pass.” Pain, suffering, and feelings are temporary despite the huge importance to honor, validate, and process them. I was severely tested in my late teens with a traumatic combination of events starting with my mother’s near fatal accident that left her in a medically induced coma for two weeks, followed by a college friend’s suicide 3 days later, and 6 weeks later my own traumatic accident. I went from a college freshman experiencing freedom and the transition to adulthood for the first time in a significant way to extended stays in the hospital with physical therapy 5 days/week being one of my only opportunities to connect with the world. During the first 3 months I was not permitted to have my feet below hip level at any time…in my wheelchair, while driving, even while attending to nature’s call. After tasting the freedom of living alone I was again living with my parents as I had multiple surgeries to regain use of my feet. I was left with permanent mobility limitations (some may refer to this as a disability).
This combination of grief, physical, emotional, and mental pain and suffering was unlike any challenge I’d faced previously based on the intensity of so many difficult things at once. Complicated by the fact that I was heavily medicated to manage pain as I recovered from shattering both feet and the surgeries to repair them and place hardware. In the past I would have kept myself busy. But now I had to learn to attempt to deal with these feelings while nearly completely immobile and numbed on prescription medication. I turned to magazines first as reading was challenging. Once my dosage had decreased, I fell deeply into my love of books and exploring Spiritual principles and belief systems. I began to practice meditation although I didn’t have a deep connection to it at that time. Instead of even trying to still the mind, I simply focused on my breath and would count on the inhale and exhale if my focus drifted.
One thing I’ll always be grateful for is that from the very beginning I held the vision of myself healed. I was told I may never walk again and eventually that I would walk but it was unlikely it would be possible without the aid of a walker or cane. I had always been a very active person who enjoyed multiple physical movement practices including swimming, horseback riding, dance, rowing crew, running, weights, and more. And I immediately decided I would walk again. I would be active. And I wouldn’t need ongoing aid. I even decided I would wear high heels again because, as I put it to my doctor then, “some outfits simply won’t do without heels.”
Instead of focusing on what I’d lost and how do I go on without it – I set my intention and energy to ensuring I wouldn’t have to. I poured myself into physical therapy and keeping up with my home exercises. I held the belief that I was healing and would be able to live an active life again. I chose to return to school a semester early to live in a handicap accessible dorm with a reduced course load to accommodate physical therapy 3 times per week.
I made some powerful choices for my healing and some disempowering ones that I would learn from and be able to make wiser choices later in my healing journey. But above all, I learned the true strength of our human Spirit. And what a powerful combination faith, belief, and community/family support are.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As a result of my own spiritual awakening after my accident, I entered a decades long healing journey. I experienced a C. diff infection as a result of IV antibiotics that destroyed my gut health. Throughout the next several years I experienced health challenge after health challenge including thyroid and hormonal imbalances, a potentially fatal blood clot in my splenic artery, a debilitating chronic neurological pain condition, a blood disorder, and auto-immune disorders. Finally fed up with the lack of answers from our western medical system, I turned to holistic and ancestral wisdom for my healing. I do want to highlight the incredible doctors I worked with throughout this time and that I would likely not have survived some of these issues without their expertise. However, they were unable to treat the whole. I had an established meditation and yoga practice by this time and credit them with being the gateway that led to my healing. To find the root of what was causing these concerns. I learned it was adrenal fatigue and that chronic stress combined with ongoing use of antibiotics and other prescription medications had destroyed my gut biome. Our gut is responsible for our immune health and plays a significant role in our mental health as our hormones are produced in this region.
I leaned into holistic and herbal remedies educating myself on diet & nutrition, physical movement and alignment practices, supplements, and a variety of modalities to detox the body. While this led to improvements with my physical health – it also wasn’t enough. I wasn’t addressing the emotional and spiritual root of my dis-eases. I began to seriously study energy healing in multiple traditions and lineages as well as turned to ancestral and earth-based medicines including psilocybin to repair the neural pathways in my brain as a result of C-PTSD, Kambo to detoxify the body and clear candida overgrowth, heavy metal overload, and other toxins, and ayahuasca, Bufo, and huachuma for assistance with healing from childhood and adult sexual trauma.
Finally I’d found my healing, my freedom, and my purpose. In my practice I work with a variety of modalities as a Medicine Woman and Integration & Embodiment Coach. Teaching others to believe in their healing as well as provide practical steps to transform their reality and get out of the head – and into the body. Our bodies’ wisdom is so powerful. All of the answers we need lie within us – we simply need others at times as guides and reminders on our path to remembering who we are and healing the dis-eases we may have unconsciously agreed to.
I’m extremely honored to be holding a huachuma ceremony as well as a Kambo and Bufo ceremony locally in St. Petersburg, FL in December and January respectively in partnership with my teachers. I’m also extremely passionate about making all of these tools and knowledge more accessible on a larger scale by serving as a bridge between the healers, wellness practitioners, and coaches and Corporate America. My background with decades spent in Corporate America helping companies build high performing sales teams as a manager and independent consultant, running the B2B division for a Corporate Wellness Vendor, and acquiring my health & life insurance license has granted an extensive knowledge of how decisions are made and who and what is involved in bringing in wellness programs to corporate environments. I’m deeply honored to guide others to Bring Their Magic to the Mainstream (my program name) to serve with their gifts on a wider scale.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three qualities that were most impactful in my journey are: Tenacity, Curiosity, and Faith. Despite so many challenges, obstacles, and setbacks I learned to remain resolute that the right people, resources, and opportunities that were meant for me couldn’t be stopped. My challenges weren’t rejection but redirection. Embracing a tenacious approach to seeking answers and refusing to give up when they weren’t readily available fueled my courage and conviction that divine healing was meant for me. It was my birthright, and I would not give up on myself. I learned to be curious and listen more than I speak. Ask questions. Seek information. To do my own research and educate myself on the process and influences behind research studies so I could better navigate that landscape. And above all I leaned more and more deeply into my faith. Into trust in a plan greater than myself and into holding the vision of myself both fully healed and living the life of my dreams – lovingly co-created with the Divine. I encourage those going through their own awakening and healing journey to cling to their faith. We ARE what we believe…do your beliefs serve you? Using that faith as a guiding light and trusting your intuition to discern your truth. Do you believe that the exact people, circumstances, and resources will come to you as you are ready to receive them? Are you open to receive? Where can you be a student and view everyone and everything as a teacher – choosing curiosity over reactivity when challenged by another’s beliefs? Do you desire your healing with conviction? Are you willing to take the action required to radically transform your physical, emotional mental, and spiritual well-being? Why or why not? Like all things in life we get what we give…and you deserve to give yourself your very best.
How would you describe your ideal client?
My ideal client is one of the following:
1. Women seeking to deepen their connection to their womb space and heal the shame, blame, trauma, and judgment that is stored in this energy center. Women who are ready to live from the womb and embrace the cyclical and seasonal nature of life as well as ready to dive into deep shadow work and alchemy through the divine and dark feminine archetypes to reclaim their power.
2. A person seeking physical, emotional, or mental healing who has not received their desired results through traditional western medicine or therapy. Who may “know” in their mental realm the answers…but hasn’t made the shift to “being” about it. Those who are ready to work with or learn more about ancestral medicines through multiple lenses – indigenous, ayurvedic, chines medicine, and allopathic and how these tools combined with medical bio-hacking and nutrition can radically transform health.
3. Healers, coaches, and wellness practitioners with active offerings who are feeling called to serve Corporate America. Perhaps they are unclear how to navigate the world of HR, benefits, and wellness programs or what roles are involved in the final buying decisions for these programs. People who may have vast experience in the B2C space but are challenged by the disconnect in language used for these offers vs. the B2B space and how to secure strategic partnerships, referral partners, and craft high impact sales and marketing materials.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nikkifielding.com
- Instagram: @nfielding03
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikki.fielding.5
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nikkifielding
Image Credits
Lucilla Elena & Robert Atkins Taylor
