We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nichole Kuechle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nichole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.
I was young and knew what I wanted. At 20 I began working with moms and practitioners as a neuromuscular therapist and birth doula. It was important to me to find an appropriate channel for my need to nurture and educate. Creating and growing a community wasn’t without its challenges, though each obstacle provided a stepping stone for what came next.
The biggest challenges to establishing a practice are identifying who you serve, knowing who you are, and what you provide. It’s easy to seek out training and then turn around to offer those sessions, however, it takes something to identify your values and make sure they align with what you’ve learned and with what you’re offering and see to it that you attract the very person who needs it. Getting stuck in one particular way of doing things may work for some, though I find more and more practitioners are looking to serve from the heart, and that means innovating and creating, and being able to step away from the safety net and take some risks. Honor your finances and needs by providing the comfort of the safety net in terms of a dedicated number of hours that will render you the revenue needed beyond just surviving. Create this as a part time gig so you have time to develop yourself outside of that, providing yourself with growth and an inquiry into what’s next.
Nichole, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
For 26 years I’ve been serving practitioners and moms in the holistic health industry. I was led in this direction by being unsatisfied with the way my mom’s healthcare was managed during her cancer diagnosis and treatment when I was in high school. I sought out to change the way clients or patients are listened to, heard, and supported. My goal became to find the root causes to their concerns and ailments while providing lifestyle modifications and real time solutions, thus avoiding the scary diagnoses that come when toxicity and pathogens build up. I’ve spent the last 13 years refining the muscle testing I learned at the age of 20 through additional training and practice. What makes my heart leap is watching those I mentor “get it” when working through understanding a concept. It lights me up when they make a connection for themselves that will influence how they work with clients moving forward.
Developing my work into teaching and mentoring was born from practitioners saying, “how did you figure that out”, and “how did you KNOW that?”
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I’ve always taken seriously the techniques and modalities I’ve learned and studied over the years. Even when it comes to general health information, such as vegetables being good for everybody. With muscle testing we’re able to find out which foods are inflammatory for the body, so we know what to eliminate or rotate through a client’s diet.
Years ago I had a client who ate quite well and whose main complaint was that her belly would bloat to that of a woman 5 months pregnant. Having had three children, she could attest to how “pregnant” she would feel. I had perused her food journal countless times to no avail. One day I realized something she ate EVERY DAY was carrots. When I asked her to remove carrots from her diet, she couldn’t take me seriously, so I requested she bring in the carrots she had from home. She came with her bag of inorganic baby carrots, and with the muscle test, she tested weak. She could feel the muscle test, though couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that carrots bothered her.
I then asked her to bring in organic carrots, and she came in with large carrots, though non organic. These tested poorly as well. I finally directed her to our local co-op to purchase large organic carrots with the green tops still intact and dirt on the tips of the carrots. She brought those in and they still tested as weak for her. The DAY she removed carrots from her diet, there was no more bloating.
Being willing to unlearn as a practitioner is imperative to the success of our clients. If we are able to be vulnerable, so will they.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
One thing I think to myself daily around the work I do is to Just Keep Listening. I can’t tell you the number of people who turn to the holistic healthcare field because they’re not being heard within the medical community. And if they’re not being heard, they’re definitely not feeling supported.
When we listen deeply and are willing to just keep looking into our clients health stories and concerns, it’s fascinating what gets uncovered.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.myhealthybeginning.com
- Instagram: myhealthybeginning
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/myhealthybeginning
Image Credits
Parks Photography