Meet Hilary Nicholls
Perspectives on Healing
I will never forget how I first met Hilary Nicholls—the energy healer who leads our free quarterly Circle of Light guided meditations to connect with the energies of each new season in community.
Twelve years ago, I ran into a friend who was in the midst of a heartbreaking family tragedy. But instead of appearing pained and exhausted, my friend was literally glowing. I actually saw a halo of light around her. Spellbound, I gushed, “You look so beautiful! In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look as beautiful as you do right now.”
She looked at me and said: “I just had an incredible session with a woman named Hilary Nicholls. She wouldn’t let me pay her, but she told me I would be sending someone to her. I think that someone is meant to be you.”
No questions asked, I made an appointment and showed up at Hilary’s office soon after, knowing absolutely nothing about her or her work. Expecting to meet a wise elder, I was surprised to be greeted by a pretty, dark-haired young woman with a big, open smile. “But you’re so young!” I blurted out. She asked how old I thought she was. “Close to thirty?” I guessed.
“Fifty-two,” she replied. And I awkwardly entered her treatment room.
Hilary asked if there was something that I wanted to work on. I told her that my biggest fear was that my son was entering his junior year in high school and would soon be playing varsity football as the starting running back. I’d struggled with overwhelming fear during his football games for years, and I didn’t think I could endure the jump to varsity. How could kids be allowed to play a game that had an ambulance waiting on site?
That first session with Hilary was truly magical. She helped me access the energy of a golden jaguar, did some neuro-reprogramming that incorporated the use of orange colored glasses, intuited my son’s destiny and explained why football was an important part of preparing him for future success, and much more. I left there without any anxiety about his upcoming opening day scrimmage and was actually able to enjoy the football-filled next two years.
I’ve worked with Hilary one-on-one for a decade, and have had dozens of remarkable experiences. Now, we’ve become collaborators, and I’m thrilled to have this venue to share her with you. It was a great pleasure to interview her and learn more about her personal journey.
Myra: When I describe your work, I often say that the way you help people shift their energy is like switching channels from a news station covering the horrors of war to a beautiful nature show. I’ve worked with many healers, and most have a very specific modality. Your approach is very eclectic. You don’t call yourself a medium, but you can talk to spirits. You don’t claim to be psychic, but you sense truth. How did this all begin?
Hilary: My very first memory is from when I was two-and-a-half years old. I had strabismus in both eyes (“lazy eye”), and it was decided that I would have surgery on both eyes at once. I remember waking up from the surgery, groggy from the anesthesia, unable to see because both my eyes were patched. My arms were tied down.
My parents weren’t there. I was just learning language and had recently been toilet trained. Suddenly, I was in a diaper and I couldn’t sit up to go to the bathroom. I felt the primal fear of a trapped animal. I didn’t know why I couldn’t move. All I knew was that I was immobile and couldn’t see.
Then I felt the soothing touch of the doctor’s hand, and a wash of warmth went through my body. In a very gentle voice he said, “If you’re a very good girl and you don’t touch your bandages, I will untie your arms.” I nodded my head and he untied my arms. As I lay there very still, I felt an instant affinity with the doctor, who was a true healer. Soon, I began to calm down. I was in the same hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut where I’d been born, and this felt almost like emerging into the world once again.
I spent a full week in the hospital recovering with my eyes bandaged shut. I believe that an inner perception that we all have the potential to access was activated during that time as a survival mechanism. I could see energetic silhouettes through my bandages, and feel the energetic impression of the doctor whenever he came in the room. There was a “bad” nurse who snapped at me to stop crying when she gave me a shot, and a “good” nurse who had an incredibly sweet energy field around her. I trained on her like a little orphan duckling, always seeking out her energy.
My mother came during visiting hours and stroked my hair. My dad was away traveling for work, and my mother didn’t bring my siblings, so as not to scare or upset them.
Hilary at age 7, reading to her 2-year-old sister, Lorna
Some close family friends brought me a music ball. I rolled it around in my crib and played with the energy of the sounds. Even with my eyes bandaged, I could see the colors. When they finally removed my bandages and I saw the ball, I realized I already knew exactly what it looked like. When I could finally see the “good” nurse and the “bad” nurse, I recognized them by their energy silhouettes.
Since then, I’ve always been able to read what I call the “emotional weather patterns” around and within people. Those intuitive abilities have never left me. As a child, I took them for granted. I didn’t know it was a gift until I was a teenager.
Myra: That’s an amazing story that also breaks my heart. Do you feel you’ve worked through the trauma of that time?
Hilary: I had to face a lot of fears. I was scared of the dark until I was sixteen and started to meditate. I had to get over an aversion to needles when getting a shot, studying acupuncture, and learning to draw blood in chiropractic school. I think one reason why I am so good with phobias is that I have so much compassion and empathy because I’ve had so many of them myself.
Myra: You are very good working with fear. Before I began my deep trauma healing work recently, you were the only one who could help me with it.
I’m curious: What if that experience hadn’t happened to you as a child? Do you think your gifts would have come another way?
Hilary: Yes, I think this was meant to happen to me. If I’d been born into an indigenous culture, this would have emerged during an initiation—a rite of passage where young people to get in touch with their natural gifts and learn to express them. Whoever they are inside will come out. It’s already evident, but rites of passage make that known and celebrated. In our culture, we just have to find our own way, which is much more challenging.
Myra: Were there any other major spiritual breakthroughs in your life between that experience in the hospital and when you began to practice as a healer?
Hilary: Yes. One day when I was seventeen, I was relaxing on my bed after reading some beautiful poetry, and I suddenly had a very powerful experience where it felt as if my consciousness was expanding beyond my body. It was if a giant book of knowledge had been opened—there was all this knowledge at my energetic fingertips, infinite possibilities. I was liberated from all my programming about who I was that limited me. I felt completely open, non-judgmental, and free. I was never the same after that.
That’s when I became aware of having angelic presences, which I call my guardian angel or inner guide. Sometimes this guide would firmly point me in a direction that my personality didn’t want to choose, especially when it came to my career, but I always trusted it.
Myra: When I was working on Quest for Eternal Sunshine, you were able to tune into my father’s energy to help me decipher what he truly meant by some of his more confusing pieces of philosophy. How did you do that?
Hilary: The soul itself is like your consciousness—there’s an individual signature, a feeling that you get in your heart. It registers when you think of a loved one. We’re so visual normally, and we automatically identify and label everything. But when you take a way the visuals, it’s just the energy, and each person has their own essence. It’s almost like every heart is a specific flower with a unique scent. There’s no one else that has that specific fragrance—that feeling that is just your father.
I recently worked with a client who had a strong desire to heal something that had happened with her father, who had since passed away. Her father answered the call and wanted her to know that he was present. “My goodness,” I told her, “he’s talking a blue streak in Italian.” She was stunned, “He always spoke in Italian and very rapidly.” Then I heard the nickname he called her and I did my best to pronounce it the way he was pronouncing it. She sat straight up off the table and said, “That is my dad! It’s such an unusual nickname and he’s the only person who ever called me that.”
Myra: Wow. How did you do that?
Hilary: Our brain is like a television set. It’s a receiver of information. Information is energy, and what we see and experience is how we process that energetic information. The energy of the human soul is there before a person is born, while a person, and after the person dies. We are tuning to that specific channel and I happen to have a very flexible antenna. If you think of an old-fashioned television set where you move the antenna in a certain direction to pick up a wavelength so it can be received, it’s like that and I can pick up on a lot of channels. With my client’s experience of her father, I was able to tune in and serve as the connecting bridge. It’s both an honor and a privilege.
You can experience Hilary’s beautiful work directly by attending our free quarterly Circle of Light nature-based guided meditations.
More resources from Hilary:
Well-Being Begins with Self Care
For information on private healing sessions with Hilary, please contact her at hilarynicholls@att.net or visit her website.
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