It's not the dream... it's the dreaming

    Think of a life as divided into two halves. Before and then after a life altering event. What ties those two halves together, is the person who has travelled from one to the next. In 2010 such a moment arrived for Nikki when she sat holding her father’s hand in the dark before dawn, and witnessed his passing into whatever comes after this life. He’d had a short and heartbreaking battle with cancer, long enough certainly to tie up loose ends and say all the things that mattered, but too short for the people he loved and who loved him. That moment of his death, though devastating, was somehow also profoundly spiritual; flavoured with the sacred, beautiful in the honour of being with him as he laboured into the next world, terrible in how unjust it was to lose a man who took up so much space in her life and her heart, and it altered Nikki in a way she could not hide from. Altered her in a way that no longer made it possible to hide from herself. 

Before this moment her life was an example of stuck-ness. Of unwillingness to take the risk, or do the thing that scared her, and of fear dictating so many decisions because failure was so often heartbreaking and painful. After that moment she ventured into a new way of being. One where she realized she had nothing to lose because she’d yet to be brave enough to build something worth fighting for in the first place. In that room, on a quiet morning, with her father dying and then gone, it seemed so foolish to be afraid of so much when the most terrifying truth was also the most certain. No matter what she did with her life, it would come to an inevitable end, and so what if she chose to live it courageously and with a sense, finally, of following her heart and a kind of destiny within that had always been calling her. What if she finally chose to risk something.

The next few years were filled with change and the painful arc of transformation towards a more spiritual, grounded and joyful life. One free from addiction, apathy and fear. One where Nikki stopped worrying about the failures that may come, or a past littered with depression, uncertainty, and a lack of self-love, and simply began to trust herself and her path. Among drastic changes in habit and lifestyle she joined a yoga studio where she very quickly realized she’d found a calling in not only the practice of yoga, but where her gift for teaching, training and mentoring could thrive; and over the next few years would pursue teaching on the eventual road to being a teacher of teachers as well. As she healed and found hope, she found her voice again, and she began a practice of sharing her writing on Instagram. Each post was an offering. To the truth of herself. Her most beautiful writing, but without attachment, as she wasn’t allowed to save or keep any of it. Her early failings as a writer had broken her heart, now she needed to remind herself she was a writer because it was true, not because the world had affirmed it for her. She needed to learn to write without attachment. Without holding on so tight that there was no room for anything but fear and worry.

What she learned as she began to trust herself and her path and to relax into her gifts and abilities is that with enough hard work, dedication and passion you can cultivate abundance. While her career as a Yoga Teacher began to take off, her online writing circle led her to her publisher, Shana Thornton of Thorncraft Publishing and between 2018 and 2021 she released A Momentary Darkness and The Beginning’s End, the first two novels in her sci-fi/fantasy series Awake While Dreaming. In 2022 her first short film A Walk In The Sun premiered at the Atlantic International Film Festival while at the festival that same year she won the RBC Pitch Development Prize for her first finished feature film The Space Between. She is determined through her storytelling to carve a path for herself and has a number of projects in the works including her next novel, another feature length film and a number of tv pilots for limited series based on her early work.

The more she wrote, the more she developed as a yoga teacher who could both hold space for transformation and teach classes grounded in the philosophical and spiritual roots of yoga, while also weaving a story with sequencing and words so that people liken her classes to having undertaken a kind of journey. A fiery and powerful teacher, Nikki has gained a reputation for teaching accessible and yet challenging classes, where people can discover in their own time what they are capable of, all centered around energy and breath, and often featuring meditation as a tool to truly carry the practice out of the studio and into the world. 

She has become a passionate advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion practices in yoga, fitness and wellness spaces and has expanded her work as a Certified Integral Facilitator to include talks, workshops and trainings in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion both within and beyond wellness spaces. All of her talks and trainings are rooted in the beauty and truth of her own struggle, and she weaves her own story into what she teaches and speaks about to impact and inspire. She has become a leader in the yoga community for this work and though she once found herself alone in yoga spaces as a woman of colour she now sees a number of culturally and ethnically diverse people in her rooms, in fitness and yoga spaces around the city, and most importantly at the front of rooms leading and teaching as well. If her legacy in the community could be anything it would be that because of her influence, leadership and impact, yoga spaces in Halifax became more diverse and inclusive and the industry more equitable. 

Whether she is teaching, writing, delivering workshops or working in community, Nikki brings her creative voice, enthusiasm for collaboration, and unwavering passion to everything she does.