Breaking Patterns

Skye Nicholson
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Mental Health
  • Daily

What if some of the things we’ve accepted as “normal” are actually keeping us stuck? Breaking Patterns is about noticing the patterns that shape our lives—and getting curious about what might be possible instead. Join wellness educator and writer Skye Nicholson for candid conversations exploring wellbeing, creativity, nervous system health, grief, spirituality, identity, work, and the wonderfully messy experience of being human. Get curious. Notice the pattern. Imagine what else is possible.

  1. 20h ago

    Can Wonder Help Us Get Unstuck?

    When was the last time something stopped you in your tracks and made you say, "Wow"? In this solo episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye explores something that's been showing up again and again in her work around creativity, stress resilience, and personal growth: wonder. Inspired by a keynote from Katina Bajaj at the Wellness Alliance Summit and her recent reading of Jeffrey Davis's Tracking Wonder, Skye reflects on how moments of awe and curiosity might help interrupt our habitual stress responses, shift our perspective, and reconnect us with the creative genius we had as children. She also shares a peek behind the scenes of her upcoming Reclaiming Wonder retreat, where she's bringing play, creativity, and professional development together in some unexpected ways (including a few instant cameras!). What if building stress resilience isn't always about learning another coping technique? What if sometimes it's as simple as changing what we notice? In this episode: Why awe and wonder deserve a place in conversations about creativity and wellbeing How shifting our perspective can help us interrupt familiar stress patterns Jeffrey Davis's concept of the inner seven-year-old genius Why play, curiosity, and wonder have a place in professional development A simple two-minute invitation to practice wonder in everyday life Mentioned in this episode: Tracking Wonder by Jeffrey Davis — stay tuned for Jeffrey's guest appearance on Breaking Patterns in January! Explore Skye's upcoming Rekindle Retreat in Brown County, Indiana, February 2027: https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co Your invitation: The next time you feel overwhelmed or stuck, take 120 seconds to notice something extraordinary in the ordinary. What shifts? We'd love to hear about it!

  2. Oct 22

    Poetry, Resilience & the Art of Being Yourself with Westley Penland

    What if creativity isn't something we get to do after everything else is done—but something that actually helps us get through life? In this episode of Breaking Patterns, host Skye Nicholson sits down with poet Westley Penland to explore how poetry can become a powerful outlet for processing trauma, navigating identity, supporting mental health, and finding connection. Wes is a transgender man, spoken-word poet, and author of Confirmation of Life. His deeply personal work explores growing up queer, surviving conversion therapy, navigating transition, mental health struggles, and the complicated, beautiful process of becoming yourself. Together, Skye and Wes explore what happens when we give difficult experiences a creative outlet, and what changes when those experiences are shared and witnessed by others. They discuss poetry as a companion to therapy, the vulnerability of sharing personal work, the relationship between creativity and emotional resilience, and why art doesn't have to fix anything to be meaningful. Their conversation also takes a wonderfully unexpected turn toward nature, wonder, play, and Wes's delightfully unconventional vegetable-butt paintings. Because creative wellbeing isn't only about processing pain. It's also about making room for joy. Through the lens of Skye's emerging Creative Health Framework, this conversation asks an important question: What if creative expression isn't a luxury or an extracurricular activity, but an essential part of living well? In this episode: How poetry helped Wes process childhood trauma and reconnect with his younger self The connection between creative expression, emotional release, and feeling less alone Why being witnessed through art can create powerful human connection The role of identity, shame, and self-acceptance in Wes's poetry Why nature, wonder, and play belong in conversations about mental health How to make room for creativity in an already busy life Chapters 00:00 – Creativity in the margins of everyday life (opening preview) 01:28 – Meet Westley Penland: Poetry and Confirmation of Life 02:41 – Poetry as a safe space for expression and processing trauma 06:00 – The power of sharing poetry and being witnessed 08:15 – Wes reads "Unfazed" 11:00 – Conversion therapy, identity, and learning to trust yourself 15:38 – Mental health, shame, and finding connection through poetry 18:01 – Why creativity isn't a luxury 20:46 – Nature, wonder, and the creative process 23:08 – Wes reads "As You Wish" 26:53 – Poetry doesn't have to fix everything 28:00 – Wes's upcoming creative projects 32:00 – Finding your way back to creativity 34:24 – Giving yourself permission to play 36:00 – Vegetable-butt art, joy, and creative community 38:18 – Closing reflections Connect with Wes Instagram: @simply_the_wes Listen to Confirmation of Life: https://poetrybywes.bandcamp.com/album/confirmation-of-life Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westley.penland Connect with Skye Learn more about creative health, stress resilience, workshops, and retreats at https://wellbeingworkshop.co Breaking Patterns explores the beliefs, behaviors, and expectations that keep us stuck—and the unexpected ways we can create more meaningful, connected, and joyful lives. Content note: This episode includes personal discussion of conversion therapy, childhood trauma, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.

    Poetry, Resilience & the Art of Being Yourself with Westley Penland

  3. Oct 8

    Permission to Pause: Why Retreat Spaces Matter with Vicky Lynn Andritsch

    What happens when the person who is always caring for everyone else finally has space to hear herself? In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye sits down with Vicky Lynn Andritsch, founder of Rooted Within Wellness, to explore the deeper purpose of retreat spaces—especially for parents and caregivers navigating chronic illness, acute illness, and other difficult medical journeys with their children. Vicky's own family has walked through childhood cancer, brain injury, seizures, mental illness, and years of uncertainty. Those experiences now inform the restorative retreats she creates for caregivers who are often so attuned to everyone else's needs that they've lost touch with their own. Together, Skye and Vicky talk about why retreats are far more than spa weekends or an escape from real life. They can create a container for rest, connection, nervous-system regulation, reflection, nourishment, and perhaps most importantly, permission. They explore what happens when we step outside the constant demands of everyday life long enough to ask: What does my body need? What have I buried under all this stress? And what tools might already be inside me if I could get quiet enough to find them? This conversation is also an exploration of something central to Skye's emerging Creative Health Framework: intentional spaces and experiences aren't frivolous extras. They can help us interrupt our usual patterns, reconnect with ourselves, and return to our lives differently. Chapters 00:00 – Welcome to Breaking Patterns00:41 – Meet Vicky Lynn Andritsch03:09 – The synchronicity that brought two retreat hosts together05:07 – What makes retreat spaces different?07:04 – Giving yourself permission to pause08:55 – When someone asks, “What do you need?” and you don't know12:21 – You don't have to know what you need—you just have to show up13:26 – Knowing the tools doesn't make hard things disappear15:40 – Self-care “for the good of the realm”17:19 – Modeling rest and self-care for our children18:08 – Breaking the cycle of busy, martyrdom, and putting ourselves last20:13 – Does it inspire you or expire you?22:13 – “I have too much to do to go on retreat”25:03 – What if taking care of yourself actually makes you a better mom?27:04 – The generational pattern of women serving everyone else first29:27 – Inside a Rooted Within Wellness retreat30:40 – The healing power of community and being understood32:24 – Sound healing, breathwork, yoga, nourishment, nature, and rest34:03 – Retreat as a toolbox, not a cure36:13 – What's next for Rooted Within Wellness38:19 – Closing reflections Learn more about Vicky and upcoming retreats at rootedwithinwellnessllc.org. Learn more about Skye's upcoming Wellbeing Workshops retreats at https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/ Follow Vicky on IG: @rootedwithinwellnessllc If this conversation made you think of someone who spends their life caring for everyone else, share this episode with them.

    Permission to Pause: Why Retreat Spaces Matter with Vicky Lynn Andritsch

  4. Sep 24

    You Can’t Think Your Way Out of Stress: Breathwork, Safety & the Nervous System with Colette Wilson

    What if calming your mind starts with your body? In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye reconnects with an old friend, Colette Wilson—founder of StillPoint Studios, 9D Breathwork facilitator, and nervous system educator—to explore why we may be approaching stress, anxiety, and overwhelm from the wrong direction. Skye and Colette first met more than 25 years ago as young teachers in Kansas City. After losing touch, they each traveled their own winding paths through healing and eventually reconnected...only to discover that their work had evolved in remarkably similar directions. Together, they explore the difference between simply knowing you should “calm down” and actually giving your body an experience of calm; why breath can be such a powerful doorway into nervous system regulation; and how 9D Breathwork combines deep breathing with sound and immersive technology. They also get curious about the intersection of science and the “woo,” bringing nervous system regulation into workplaces and schools, the ripple effect of our own regulation on the people around us, and Colette’s beautiful idea of becoming a “beneficial presence”, someone whose grounded presence helps create greater safety for others. Wellbeing isn’t always about thinking differently. Sometimes we have to teach the body what safe feels like. In this conversation:• Why we can’t simply think our way into calm• Breathing techniques vs. immersive breathwork experiences• Training the nervous system to return to safety• Colette’s own unexpected path from teaching to breathwork• Science, spirituality, and the space where “woo” meets curiosity• Nervous system regulation in workplaces, schools, and families• What it means to become a “beneficial presence” for others Colette Wilson is the founder of StillPoint Studios and the StillPoint Institute of Breath and Nervous System Science and creator of the Signature StillPoint Reset™. With a background in physiology and education, she works with individuals and organizations through breathwork, nervous system education, and self-connection practices. Learn more about Colette and StillPoint Studios: stillpointstudiosKC.com Follow Colette on IG: @colette_wilson TikTok: @colette_wilson88 Try a 5-minute 9D Breathwork

  5. Sep 10

    We Have Forgotten How to Grieve: Ritual, Resilience & the Grief We Carry | with Alyssa Rose

    What if grief isn't something we need to get over—but something we need to learn how to tend? In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye talks with Alyssa Rose, a Portland-based grief tender and ritualist whose work bridges earth-based ritual practices with modern, trauma-informed somatic approaches. Skye and Alyssa met at the National Wellness Summit, where conversations around creativity and spirituality opened the door to a larger question: What parts of being human have we left out of our modern definition of wellness? Together, they explore the ways Western culture often asks us to privatize grief, move through it quickly, or save it for a therapist's office—and what becomes possible when grief is instead witnessed, embodied, ritualized, and held in community. One of the most personal moments in the conversation comes when Skye recognizes a connection she hadn't fully made before: that some of her own problematic alcohol use may have been an attempt to numb grief she didn't yet know how to name or tend. Looking back at divorce, lost identities, and the life she once imagined for herself raises a different question about addiction: What if some of the things we reach for to numb ourselves are helping us avoid grief that has never been given somewhere to go? CHAPTERS 0:00 — Meet Alyssa Rose: Grief Tender & Ritualist 1:00 — Grief Is Connected to Love 2:23 — Have We Forgotten How to Grieve? 4:54 — Why Grief Needs Community & Witnessing 11:02 — What Does a Grief Tender Actually Do? 12:01 — Grief Beyond Death: Addiction, Anxiety & Life Transitions 13:05 — Grief Lives in the Body: Somatic Healing 15:40 — Ritual, Community & Creating a Container for Grief 17:14 — My Aha: Untended Grief, Identity & Alcohol 19:45 — When Grief Comes Out Sideways 27:30 — Grief, Burnout & the Workplace 32:44 — What Grief Teaches Us About Resilience This conversation continues a theme we've been exploring on Breaking Patterns: spiritual wellness doesn't have to mean religion. Sometimes it looks like ritual. Sometimes it looks like making art, gathering around a fire, being witnessed by a community, or creating enough space to feel what our busy lives have asked us to suppress. And perhaps that is part of Creative Health, too: maintaining access to the full range of our humanity—our grief, longing, curiosity, imagination, connection, and capacity to begin again. About Alyssa Rose Alyssa Rose is a grief tender and ritualist in Portland, Oregon. Her work bridges ancient, earth-based ritual practices with modern, trauma-informed somatic modalities to hold sacred space for those navigating loss, mortality, and deep life changes. Learn more about Alyssa and her grief circles, retreats, individual work, and practitioner training: Website: https://www.alyssarosehealingarts.com/ November Retreat:  https://www.alyssarosehealingarts.com/grief-ritual-retreat-2026 Women and femmes retreat:  https://events.humanitix.com/womens-grief-ritual Instagram: @alyssarosehealing

    We Have Forgotten How to Grieve: Ritual, Resilience & the Grief We Carry | with Alyssa Rose

  6. Aug 27

    Sacred Travel, Spiritual Wellness & the Places That Wake Us Up | with Bobby Ansari

    What if wellness includes more than caring for your body and managing your stress? What if it also includes meaning, belonging, awe, ritual—and even the places we choose to travel? This week, Skye sits down with Bobby Ansari, Certified Wellness Professional, spiritual travel specialist, and founder of Rose of Jericho Wellness. Skye and Bobby met serendipitously while they were both presenting at the National Wellness Summit in Nashville, and quickly discovered just how much overlap exists between Bobby’s work in spiritual wellness and sacred travel and Skye’s work with poetry, creative health, and retreat experiences. Together, they explore why spirituality and religion are not the same thing, what spiritual wellness can look like for people from many different belief systems, and why meaning, hope, connection, and belonging deserve a place in the broader wellness conversation. Bobby shares stories from her own remarkable path—from studying spiritual care in trauma settings to learning from teachers and sacred traditions across Turkey, Ireland, Indigenous communities, and beyond. She also introduces the idea behind her Travel Prescription™: thoughtfully using place, ritual, ancestral connection, and meaningful travel as catalysts for healing and transformation. The conversation also goes into some important territory around safety and integrity in the wellness and retreat world: cultural appropriation, poorly trained practitioners, “plastic shamans,” and why holding sacred or transformational space comes with real responsibility. And somewhere along the way, Skye and Bobby discover a shared fascination with creativity as spiritual practice—including the idea that perhaps artists aren’t simply “channels” for inspiration, but prisms, allowing something larger to move through the lens of their own lived experience. They talk about: Spiritual wellness beyond religionTravel as a catalyst for transformationSacred landscapes, ritual, and the energy of placeBeing a witness instead of trying to “fix” someoneWhy safety and cultural integrity matter in retreat spacesAwe, wonder, and spiritual experiences in everyday lifePoetry and creativity as forms of reverenceWhat it means to create spaces where people can rediscover parts of themselves that have gone quiet This one goes beautifully deep—and may leave you looking at your next journey, your creative life, and even the places that make you feel most alive a little differently. Learn more about Bobby and Rose of Jericho Wellness at roseofjerichowellness.com. Learn more about Skye's upcoming retreats at https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/womens-retreats-indiana

    Sacred Travel, Spiritual Wellness & the Places That Wake Us Up | with Bobby Ansari

  7. Jul 16

    Making Peace With Your Fertility Journey: When Two Women Create the Thing They Needed Most

    While Beth is away for the summer, Skye welcomes two special guests whose friendship and shared healing journey inspired the creation of a powerful new retreat experience. Abby McHale, an Oregon-based practitioner specializing in womb and pelvic somatics, and Ruby Shah, M.D., a Houston-based board-certified physician, poet, and author of Night Song For My Sisters: Endometriosis, Infertility, Loss, and Healing, join Skye to share the story behind Rooted In: Making Peace with Your Fertility Journey—a trauma-informed retreat designed for women navigating infertility, endometriosis, pregnancy loss, hysterectomy, and other fertility-related experiences. Together, they explore the hidden grief that often accompanies fertility challenges, the healing power of being witnessed in community, and the importance of reclaiming identity beyond diagnoses and outcomes. Abby and Ruby also discuss how somatic healing, flower essences, creativity, and meaningful connection helped transform their own experiences and ultimately inspired them to create the retreat they wish had existed when they needed it most. Whether you have personally walked a fertility journey or simply know what it feels like to carry grief, loss, or uncertainty in your body, this conversation offers a compassionate look at healing, resilience, and the patterns we can break when we stop carrying our stories alone. In this episode: 00:00 – Meet Abby and Ruby03:18 – The overlap between pelvic health and emotional healing05:04 – Why somatic practices are central to the retreat experience06:18 – Healing beyond the goal of pregnancy12:38 – Who this retreat is designed to serve15:43 – Moving from isolation and grief toward pleasure and presence20:31 – How Abby and Ruby's collaboration began24:37 – Ruby's healing journey after infertility and hysterectomy27:53 – Abby's flower essences and the role they play in healing31:21 – Why retreat experiences can be so transformative35:37 – Building community, waitlists, and what's next36:58 – Closing reflections To learn more about the retreat or join the waitlist, visit https://www.leoraintegrative.com/retreatinquiry To bring your own retreat vision to life through Skye's Retreat Guide Mentorships, visit https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/retreat-guide-mentorship

  8. May 21

    Why Are We Giving 100% to Work? | The 40–60% Rule That Changed Everything

    In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye and Beth unpack a quote that completely stopped them in their tracks: “We should only be giving 40–60% of ourselves at work.” At first, it sounds almost wrong — especially for women raised on hustle culture, perfectionism, productivity, people-pleasing, and the belief that our worth is tied to our output. But what if reserving part of yourself isn’t laziness… it’s survival? This conversation spirals (in the best way) through: work culture and burnoutvalidation vs appreciationinvisible labor and emotional exhaustionparenting anxious kids in a productivity-driven worldgratitude as an antidote to shame and anxietyAlan Watts, Kroger meltdowns, motorcycles, and “one wild and precious life”learning to stop taking everything so seriouslyIf you’ve ever felt completely drained by work, constantly “on,” or unsure who you are outside of productivity, this episode is for you. Maybe the goal isn’t to give everything away.Maybe the goal is to reserve some of yourself for your actual life. ✨ Come join us at the Reawaken Retreat this July: https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/womens-retreats-indiana🎧 Subscribe, share, and send this episode to someone who needs permission to breathe a little.

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About

What if some of the things we’ve accepted as “normal” are actually keeping us stuck? Breaking Patterns is about noticing the patterns that shape our lives—and getting curious about what might be possible instead. Join wellness educator and writer Skye Nicholson for candid conversations exploring wellbeing, creativity, nervous system health, grief, spirituality, identity, work, and the wonderfully messy experience of being human. Get curious. Notice the pattern. Imagine what else is possible.

Information

  • Creator
    Skye Nicholson
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    40
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Skye Nicholson
  • Show Website
    Breaking Patterns