SWIHA Blog

If you could get a glimpse at your past lives, would you? Would you be brave enough to face the struggles and triumphs, the pain and the glory, the tears and the laughter of another you? And if you could bear witness to the past, would you change how you live your current life knowing that another lay before you?

Sometimes, the journey leads us to a destination we never could have expected. For Nickole Swensen, it was that unanticipated curve in the path that led her to her true purpose: a life of healing, though certainly not as she had planned it...

“I originally went to SWIHA to study holistic nutrition,” Nickole confides. “I was fascinated with the way food impacts our bodies and wanted to share my love of food with future clients. I was really interested in learning more about ways to heal and help others that would use all the elements—mind, body, and spirit.”

Yet, it was in the midst of her nutritional studies in SWIHA’s Mind-Body Wellness program that Nickole learned about auriculotherapy for the first time. Immediately, she was hooked. “I found it amazingly powerful, so I started using it on myself and my family,” she says. “The energy and knowledge that instructor Cheryl Speen brought to my auriculotherapy class was unbelievable. I actually loved her class so much that I took it twice—just for fun!”

Courtney Long knew three things. First, that she had a big mission in life; second, that she wanted to help; and third, that she simply didn’t know how! As a child, she felt restless in the world, always sensing that her fine-tuned sensitivity, her desire for the solitude of the outdoors, and her “weirdness” made her different from the other kids in Lambertville, Michigan.

Before SWIHA, Carrie Guthrie-Gray was doing a job that would frighten most people to death: drawing blood. As a phlebotomist working for the same company for 15 years, she had great pay, great bonuses, and paid time off. Yet, despite the nobility of performing a service that is critical to the diagnosis and treatment of health conditions, Carrie found herself bored by performing the same task day-in and day-out with little variation.

“When working in the medical field, you are only allowed to spend a certain amount of time with each patient,” Carrie reflects. “It was like moving cattle. I was unable to connect with people, or if I did connect with someone, I had to usher them out of the room shortly after. When I worked in the oncology department, there were many occasions when I was the first person that the patient saw after being diagnosed with cancer, and they would literally start bawling in my chair. I wanted to spend more time with them. I wanted to listen and hold space for them, yet I wasn’t able to do it in that setting. It broke my heart. It was draining the life out of me to be so pulled to hold space, yet not allowed to do so.”

The year was 2000, and Lisa Grunwald—who now goes by the name Gullveig—was facing her first year of college in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The stress of the transition from high school kid to university student was weighing heavily on her, and her normal anxiety had suddenly escalated to a whole new level. Some days, it got so bad that she would have dozens of panic attacks a day. To top it off, she suddenly developed lockjaw, a frightening condition which keeps the mouth from opening and functioning properly…

Like so many graduates, Leah Baguet’s path to holistic wellness began with a journey. She was surrounded by stress at her job, working through a series of medical challenges, and coping with the premature death of a close family member.

So, what makes Leah’s journey so different? Well, it was a literal one!

“I realized that life is just too short,” Leah shares. “I decided to quit my full-time job and travel the world with my husband. Upon returning, I didn’t want to go back to the regular hustle and bustle of a 9 to 5 job. That’s when SWIHA came into my life.”

For Jason Taylor, life before SWIHA felts like a numbers game. On the surface, he appeared to be a successful executive chef and restaurant manager. He had a “never say die” attitude—one which guided his spirit as he overcame addiction, abuse, and homelessness. Yet, despite the difficult hurdles he had surpassed and the assistance of many kind people along the way, Jason had still not dealt with the root of his pain.

For many people, the first day of school can be filled with unexpected surprises. That certainly was the case for Tamara Lucero, who found herself in quite a messy situation when she stopped at her local gas station on the way to campus.

“As the fuel pumped and filled my tank, I began to daydream what my first day of class would be like,” she remembers. “As I stared off into the clouds, I suddenly heard what sounded like water running. I looked down and realized that the gas pump had malfunctioned and soaked me in gasoline—from my shirt to my socks!”

Deena Gregory has always been a “seeker”—a woman with a self-described “natural curiosity about self and spirit” who in quiet moments often found herself gazing upward at the night sky with a deep sense of awe. Yet, after years of looking to institutions—from organized religion to the halls of academia—for the answers that could only be found within, Deena got caught in a spiritual drought, convinced that there was nothing else bigger “out there” than the humdrum of everyday human life.

“With a new reliance on my own thinking came what the Buddha referred to as ‘Dukkha,’ or suffering,” she explains. “I have always been hailed as a ‘critical thinker.’ Now I laugh and say, ‘Yes, as soon as I start thinking, things get critical!’”

For Kris Vaughan, a career as an herbalist was born out of a mother’s worst nightmare: the illness of her youngest daughter, who had developed severe stomach issues at the age of seven, yet who could find no answers or relief from her pediatrician.

“We spent nine months putting her through every invasive test imaginable, only to be handed antacids and told, ‘Sorry, we don’t know what’s wrong,’” Kris recounts. A friend recommended some natural herbal remedies for the girl, and although Kris found herself questioning their validity, her daughter was miraculously pain-free within three days of taking them—and has remained so ever since. “It made me realize that I was missing something huge,” Kris says. “I needed to do some research as to why these herbs worked, and that research brought me to SWIHA and the Western Herbalism program.”