Warning, this is a long one, so be sure you are sitting comfortably and have a cup of tea and some biscuits at the ready! ;)
INTRODUCTION
“Adversity is the first path to truth” - Lord Byron -
The above quote could not ring more true to me! If we had not been through the hardships, the heartbreaks and hitting rock bottom, we would not be who we are today. I know for sure that I would not have risen to the person I have become if I had not been blessed with all the highs and more importantly, the lows in my life.
From facing teen traumas and past life fears, to suffering heartbreak and loss, holistic healing therapies have helped me to eventually embrace my fears by going within and doing the hard, inner work. In doing so, I have accepted and forgiven myself and others, which has truly helped to set me free.
As I started to do the healing work and began to find my true authentic self, I realised I had been hiding from my true spiritual side. I had looked for meaning and happiness by leading an earthly life, living for material gain and social media approval. The realisation that I had lost sight of what mattered most caused a huge shift in me. This shift created a knowing that there was more to life than the small, safe, earthly existence I had sought refuge in.
Although very hard at times, once on this spiritual roller-coaster of self-discovery I found that with every low came a massive high. From volunteering in Africa, to travelling the world, I was able to explore many forms of Holistic Healing Therapies and thereby start the process of discovering who I really am.
No spiritual journey is ever a smooth ride and mine, like most others, has been somewhat of a white-knuckle ride at times. I really believe that the best Healers are those who have been to the darkest places and are able to truly understand and empathise with what their clients are going through. That being said, before you are able to heal others, it’s worth ensuring that you have done the hard healing work yourself so your triggers don’t trip you up while you are working with your clients. This does not, however, mean you will not be bitten on the butt by a trigger every now and then but it does mean you will be best equipped to deal with these situations as and when they arise.
I feel there can be no more rewarding job in the world, but also no job with a tougher qualification process (Special Forces Selection may have been easier than this! 😉).
The Journey
So, lets head back to the start of my spiritual journey. I have always had a spiritual side but after a terrifying experience in my teens and the subsequent fear I attached to this, I went on to shut myself off from that side for many years to come.
It took a life changing revelation 8 years later to kickstart my first proper awakening and nudge me along my spiritual journey, which eventually led me to do my Reiki Masters and to start my course at the Holistic Healing College (HHC) in London.
This awakening happened on a beach in the Dominican Republic shortly after finding out that the supposed “love of my life” was having an affair. The moment I found out was heart crushing and much like the Fresh Prince of Belair, my life got flipped-turned upside down. I know now that everything happens for a reason and without this life changing heartache, I would still be lost in an unfulfilling and vacuous life. But at the time, I was utterly devastated.
Even in the darkest times though, there will always be a ray of light to show you the way. To help me on my journey, an Angel was sent to me on that holiday. He came in the form of a middle aged, Speedo wearing German man called Andreas. I will never be able to thank him and his wife enough for the love and kindness they showed me. He was a healer and spent hours upon hours healing me with energy healing techniques at the time I needed it most. This was my first experience with Holistic Therapies and gave me a glimpse of the healing powers these techniques hold.
It was after one of these sessions, five days after my life as I knew it had literally been turned on its head, that I found myself walking alone down the beach. I was wandering aimlessly, lost in my thoughts and emotions when out of nowhere, I felt electric current running from my scalp all the way down to my feet! It was as though everything became clear for the first time and I knew everything would be okay.
The day after this revelation I was sat with my feet in sea, still in shock at what had happened, when I had the thought pop in to my mind which said, ‘you will be a healer one day!’. I laughed and shrugged it off as I was still not ready to accept who I really was or my true calling but the seed had been sown, whether I knew it or not.
That being said, this awakening, just as most spiritual shifts, took its time to really integrate as I was just not ready to accept my calling at that time. It did, however, give me the strength to leave the man I still loved but who had so carelessly shattered my life. Piecing my broken heart back together took many years and was a long and hard road but so worth it in the end.
“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things and only the wise can see them” - Paulo Coelho -
Andreas’ last words to me before I left were ‘you will always be okay and you are only going up and up in this world’. Some people you meet will touch your heart, even through the briefest of encounters. He is a part of my story and someone I could never thank enough. I believe we will always have Angels sent when we need them the most in either spiritual or physical form (though Speedos are optional I believe).
Becoming my authentic self has been realising and subsequently releasing years of pain that I had subconsciously held onto. Although I had seen a glimpse of my true self on that beach, I still went through a good few years of needing approval and reassurance and not trusting in myself. Deep down I knew it was not the real me but, like far too many young women in their 20’s these days, I still craved the social media ‘likes’ and spent my time editing pictures. The only shadow side I would have ever considered addressing at this time, was the shadow under my chin in a selfie!
Behind editing unflattering pictures, the selfies with full makeup, the gym body and artificial likes, I had become lost again in who I really was. My self-worth was based on my image and had become more important than what I had to offer. This left me with a nagging feeling that something was wrong.
“I was so busy looking out, rather than going within.”
I believed for many years after the split with my first love that I was somehow the one to blame, despite his affair and bad behaviour. I was blindsided and believed it was all my fault….it is only after years of punishing myself for what had gone wrong that I realised he had actually been gaslighting me. He made me question my perception of events and blame myself for any issues in the relationship. This left me confused, anxious, lacking in self-worth and unable to trust myself or others – I guess you can say I truly was blinded by love!
I can see now that I took the blame for the breakdown of my first relationship and went on believing this for the next few years and, in the process of healing my heart, I built an impenetrable emotional wall to protect me from being hurt again. It is also apparent that I went on living my empty earthly life and attracting the same character of man until enough was enough. It took the life shaking event of facing skin cancer to spur me into action. I strongly believe this cancer was all the trapped negative emotions and energy in my body that needed to escape which I had buried so deep. I knew something had to change.
I bit the bullet and, with the help of Holistic Therapies, began the process of opening up and doing the inner work in order to clear the pent up energy and emotion I had been holding on to. First though, I had to make the decision to change my perception of life.
This led me to volunteer in Africa and subsequently travel the world where I discovered who I truly was away from the distractions of home. It was on these travels, having left my old materialistic life behind, that I found my authentic self and never turned back. It was as if the spiritual seed that had laid dormant since experiencing my shift on that beach all those years before had finally started to grow and blossom.
Travelling the world alone helped me find union within myself and began the process of finding self love. When I did start to let go of the past pain, the universe gifted me with my Mr Right, even if it did take me 9 months to realise as once that emotional wall goes up its hard for us to see over it. But I got there in the end and boy am I pleased I did!
If it wasn’t for these series of events and facing up to my shadow side, I would have never met the true love of my life and subsequently joined Holistic Healing College (HHC) to fulfil my true calling as a Healer. These life changing events, along with many insightful and painful healing sessions, have seen me slowly step into the truest version of myself.
“Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself”
REALISING MY POTENTIAL AT THE HHC
HHC has helped me dig deeper than I ever thought possible. I now believe that the trauma we carry within us may not only come from traumas in this life but can be carried forward down ancestral lines and also from past lives.
Every new skill I have learnt at the HHC has helped me on my own healing journey. It has enabled me to face and release fears and traumas which have laid dormant since I was a teenager and even those I never realised I had from past lives. This in turn has given me the first-hand experience and skills to enable me to attract and serve my tribe in the best way possible.
Like most of us on this spiritual journey, I am an empath and I discovered that it is essential to create a barrier for yourselves, along with understanding that not everything is for us to take on and carry with us.
Even as a little girl, before I had even heard the term ‘empath’, my dad and I used to watch David Attenborough. I both loved and hated his programmes all at once. The beauty of the natural world would always take my breath away but I would also cry hysterically when one animal would kill another. My dad once told me, ‘Stacie my darling, it’s all the cycle of life in the animal world’. I knew this to be true but could not help but feel into the pain of that dying animal and could not understand why.
All the little things I used to deeply feel I now understand was me being a very strong empath but at such a young age I had no understanding of creating a barrier to protect myself. I can feel emotional pain and I had no understanding of putting my barrier up and being able to separate the difference between others feelings and my own. I subconsciously put a coat of others emotional energy on and carried it as my own without even realising I was doing so for many, many years.
The best way I can explain being an empath is every time you take on someone else’s emotional energy it is like slipping on a thick, damp, woollen, floor length coat. The more energy you take on, the wetter the material becomes. Unless you realise what is happening, you will continue to have this coat on your back until the wool is soaking wet, weighting you down, suffocating you.
I wore this energy coat for years until I realised, through the teachings at the college and doing the hard inner work, that actually this coat was never mine to put on or to carry in the first place.
I now believe that thoughts create energy and it is this energy we continue to hold onto that can create suffering. Should we inadvertently take on the negative energy of others, or unknowingly continue to carry our own negative energy from this life and past life experiences, we become encapsulated in a toxic shroud which can be very difficult to shake, especially if we are unable to identify where this negativity originated. I strongly believe that this may be a big contributor to much of the anxiety felt in society today.
“So many years of education, yet no one taught us how to clear our chakras and out grow toxic relationships with ourselves and others.”
Which brings me on to entities and intrusive thoughts. I feel these are far more common issues than we have ever realised and can take many forms with many possible explanations of why they occur. As a teenager I had an experience that was so traumatic that it caused me to close off completely from my spiritual side for many years. I now have clarity and a new level of understanding that we should not be slaves to our thoughts as we can in fact control them.
So, how best to describe entities and intrusive thoughts? Well, imagine a record skipping over and over again in your head. The spoken words are in your voice but they are not your words. They are negative, awful, horrendous at times and they are unrelenting in their repetition in your mind. You know they are not your thoughts and you fight it as hard and for as long as you can but the longer this skipping record persists, the more it wears you down, until you begin to question your very sanity.
At the time I couldn’t comprehend as to ‘why me’ and ‘why I was a targeted by this’. I was a happy, outgoing girl with not a care in the world and then out of nowhere, I thought I was losing my mind. Now, later in life I understand what it means to be an empath and without adequate protection I was open to malevolent outside energy.
I am also from a generation of over thinking women. I once heard a lady say, when asked as to the reason why humans over think, that it is, “because if something happens to shock or change your energy, your mind says ‘something’s broken here, lets fix it!’”. So instead of saying or thinking ‘this crap I’m hearing is not mine’, I asked why I was having these negative thoughts and the more I questioned, the more I felt into the thoughts, the further I fed the fear.
I also realise now that, along with having tendencies towards over thinking, I may possibly have some symptoms of OCD. OCD can actually come in 4 forms, one of which is called Rumination/Intrusive Thoughts where you experience repetitive thoughts and words which feel as they are not your own!
Despite evolving over millions of years, part of our mind is still governed by our inner chimp and that monkey part of the mind is always on alert for the next sign of danger. In order to protect us, our brain pumps out negative, fear driven thoughts into our subconscious to keep us on high alert. I can’t remember the last time my tribe and I had to be ready to fight off a tiger (not in this life anyway) but I guess you can never be too cautious..... 😉. I therefore believe this continued state of unease created by our inbuilt fight or flight mechanism is in part responsible for anxious behaviours in society today.
So, why do I believe I experienced these intrusive thoughts? The Soul Plan Module was a revelation and answered so many questions about myself and, as a dominate 9/9, I am a strong channel to the spiritual side. As a teenager I was exploring this spiritual side and was messing with things my young mind was unprepared for. I now recognise that opening up on full moons, not closing down properly and smoking something which took me on a bad trip, all opened me up to whole new world that I wasn’t ready for. As the thoughts grew stronger, I fed the fear so that the energy (the coat) wrapped tighter around my shoulders became heavier and heavier which took its toll on me.
I certainly have more of a pull towards the spiritual explanation of what happened to me but I am also open minded to the scientific explanation and strongly believe there can be a crossover between the two. I believe that no matter the ‘name’ you attach to these experiences, the key is to be able go back into your heart space as a way of escaping the cage you have created in your mind.
From my experience with Holistic Healing, I now have the tools to move my emotions from my over analysing brain and into my body, where I can truly feel what is mine and what is not. I am so excited to show my clients how they too can achieve this and the freedom they will experience. Once we can create trust in our true thoughts and not those created by the primate part of our minds, we can begin to understand that there is nothing to fear.
“Don’t be ashamed of your story it will inspire others.”
It took a lot for me to bring myself back and I managed this by subconsciously shutting down part of me in order to protect myself. By doing so, I now know and understand that I let that buried trauma affect me for years in little ways without even realising. Every time I heard of bad things happening, whether that be on the news, films or whilst being out with friends, a part of me was weighed down by that energy and added to the weight I carried (the coat). I now understand that this energy was never mine to carry and understand the process of lifting that energetic weight and creating protection.
"be patient and tough someday this pain will be useful for you.” – Ovid -
Things happens for a reason and I came out of this encounter, aside from being a little emotionally scarred, stronger and more resilient than I could have ever imagined previously. A year after, my mum had a brain haemorrhage and fell into a coma, shortly followed by my 8 year old nephew having a series of strokes. The old me would have been a mess but the strength I had found within myself to pull through the prior events, allowed me to remain positive and a rock for myself and my family throughout this period.
I still carry that mental resilience but after years of holding onto my fear I was ready to let that go once and for all. The HHC gave me the tools to complete the inner work I needed and as this process unfolded I had this wonderful revelation, like all my Christmas came at once. I cried, I released, I smiled ear to ear as this pain and fear I once carried all started to come to the surface and fade away. The journey to this place was not all rainbows and unicorns but I am so pleased I faced my fears now.
“If we don't clear the energy we will continue to create it or be triggered by it until we do.”
I was once told you’ve lived many life’s and what comes with many life’s is both good and bad memories. I had always felt into this concept very strongly so Advanced Hypnotherapy was a great course for me. Not only did I get the opportunity to do a past life regression and Soul Retrieval with Blue, the founder of the HHC, but I was able to let go and understand on a whole new level of how I was feeling at the time.
After I went through the past life regression with Blue, he explained that sometimes we must go back and forgive ourselves and others for the memories we bring back with us to this lifetime and be thankful for the positive lessons learned in that life time. When I deeply thought into this, I realised that of course we must release and heal all past journeys and lessons, both good and bad, because without them, how would we have evolved to who we are today.
Even down to ancestral lines I believe using Hypnotherapy can clear so much more inherited emotional baggage than our minds could ever comprehend. When we forgive, clear and release, we can then heal. My understanding now is that if I hadn’t of looked deeper within and faced my deeper fears, I would have carried a false belief that I had been fully healed and never truly released everything that was holding me back. I would have lived with that in my subconscious until the next trigger arose. I released years of emotional energy that I held trapped inside and freed myself from pain that wasn’t mine to hold any longer in this life time.
“You will always fear what you don’t understand”
I am now able to understand when a trigger comes up and address the underlying issues. Lets face it, no matter how painful the feelings maybe around a trigger, how would we grow without understanding why they have arisen and address the underlying root cause. I am now also able to recognise the difference between others energetic coats, my own and also those of my past lives. I can now let these feelings go with acceptance, forgiveness and light and love.
I have loved every single module of the HHC in a different way and I believe I have been able to take a piece away from each one which has enabled me to create a style of healing which I feel resonates very strongly with me. I feel this method I am creating will help my clients go within and do their inner work and in turn, set themselves free just as I have on my journey. I was considering calling it the ‘Nickless Technique’ but my other half says that sounds like something that requires no underwear…so maybe not 😉.
WHAT DOES HOLISTIC HEALING MEAN TO ME?
Well, to me, Holistic Healing means doing the inner work behind the earthly day today mundane life, using whatever combination of Holistic Therapies best serve that purpose at that given moment. There is so much light and love below the surface that once we confront the darkness it means we can forgive, heal and accept but most of all, it means setting ourselves free.
I see Healing much like having that bad tattoo removed – tattoos, much like past trauma, leaves a scar that runs deep. Much like past trauma, you will carry that tattoo with you always…until you decide to go through the painful process of removal.
Getting the tattoo in the first place stings and hurts like mad, but slowly, and in time, that fades and all you are left with is a reminder of a time and a place, even an event maybe, which you carry with you for the rest of your life. You may not notice this every day, but every now and then you will be triggered and it will bring back all the memories and feelings associated with that inking.
There may be a time, however, where that tattoo, much like an emotional memory, no longer serves a purpose, and you make the decision to have it removed. The ink, both physically and metaphorically, runs deep and the removal will take time. Each session hurts and stings just like it did when you first had the tattoo but slowly, after time, the image fades, until you no longer carry around that reminder and you are able to move forward ready to make new memories without attachment to the past.
Some may choose to get a cover-up to hide the past but beneath the new ink, the same ink still lies dormant – this is what I call burying. Even though you have covered this, the original ink may still resurface and when you see what you once tried to cover, you have the choice to face it or bury once it again.
“For there is no wound deep enough that love cannot heal“
I once feared facing my traumas from this life and past lives and I buried that fear for years because I did not understand what they were or how to deal with them. Now, I understand where they came from and I forgive myself and my mind for carrying the energy for so long. I know now that my life purpose is to help others to overcome similar fears and achieve the happiness that is just out of sight for them at present.
“Life is a Classroom and we are here to learn.”
Along this journey I have forgiven myself and others as well as accepting and understanding that every moment that's happened is for my own learning. I thank every single event for happening, as I release and heal, for without these nuggets of gold, I wouldn't have been able to step into my power and find my purpose as my authentic self. This has in turn given me the opportunity to be of service to others, so I can spread my message and the lessons I have learnt.
We are all on separate paths and there will always be storms, no matter where, when or who we are. I have learnt that it’s not so much about the storm but how we handle the storm when it hits that is important. I am therefore truly grateful and blessed for my journey so far, the good, the bad AND especially the ugly.
Helping others gives me a feeling that is hard to explain but I can only equate it to the feeling of handing over a million pounds to someone that needed and deserved it most and sharing in their relief and happiness. It is something bigger than yourself that can bring pure, undiluted joy and happiness.
I believe we all have our unique path and gifts which will all unfold as we get deeper into our work and the HHC has allowed me to step into mine. I feel we are our own niche and the people who need you the most will find you, much as I have found those that have helped me along my journey.
“His journey led to his destiny.” - The Alchemist -
Stacie Nickless
2021