My work didn’t begin in a classroom or a training, it was born out of the darkest night of my soul. I hit rock bottom.
My nervous system was shattered, my will to live was slipping away, and I was standing face-to-face with suicidal thoughts that terrified me. Everything I now share with others started as my own desperate attempt to save my life in the deepest valley of my own healing.
Meet Nicole Dersweh.
Nicole Derseweh is a trauma-informed psychedelic guide, integration specialist, and founder of Union Light Church, a modern spiritual community rooted in self-responsibility, consciousness, and radical healing. Drawing from years of experience facilitating plant medicine ceremonies, Nicole has developed a unique, multidimensional approach that weaves together somatic release, Internal Family Systems (IFS), breathwork, and authentic relational practice. Her work centers on the provocative question: What becomes possible when we stop seeing ourselves as broken and start living from the truth of our innate power?
Trip to Oneness Docuseries
Parts Unknown meets Eat Pray Love, a soulful food and travel quest for oneness.
Playful and deep, this food-and-travel series follows me across the globe to some of the most eco-friendly, spiritually conscious cultures on Earth. We share meals, learn rituals, and sit with wisdom keepers, blending the culinary curiosity and authenticity of Parts Unknown with the heartfelt introspection of Eat Pray Love. Along the way we uncover ancient wisdom, reconnect with our inner selves and the natural world, and reveal the oneness that binds us all.
Born from my own recovery journey, the series threads through Reclamation Therapy™ — Release · Reprogram · Rewire — and plant-medicine–informed integration, showing how real transformation moves from initiation into daily life. Made in collaboration with my creative director, Holly, we’re developing Trip to Oneness for major streaming partners and are currently open to funding and collaboration.
Watch the Trailer!
Nicole’s Other Projects
NOT FISH,
NOT SORRY
Love& | Plant-Based Seafood
Love& believes everyone should have access to sustainable, delicious, alternative seafood. It’s the passion in our sole-er, soul. We want to protect our oceans and ecosystems while still serving up clean, flavorful spreads that you can feel good about. Not fish. Not sorry.
DELIVERING LOVE TO THE HOUSELESS
The Martha Project
The Martha Project is a nonprofit that provides plant-based meals and human connection to those without shelter in our local communities.
REMBERANCE IS A JOURNEY.
REMBERANCE IS A JOURNEY.
NICOLE’S STORY
And yet, in the midst of all that chaos, I had my one. Everyone has a one. Mine was my grandmother, Martha Ann.
My work didn’t begin in a classroom or a training, it was born out of the darkest night of my soul. I hit rock bottom. My nervous system was shattered, my will to live was slipping away, and I was standing face-to-face with suicidal thoughts that terrified me. Everything I now share with others started as my own desperate attempt to save my life in the deepest valley of my own healing.
I grew up in Riverside, California in a small family with my sister. My childhood was shaped by religious oppression, the suppression of the feminine, and experiences that left deep imprints on my nervous system: childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence in the home, and the trauma of watching my parents’ marriage unravel. By adolescence, my body was already carrying the weight of PTSD alongside narcolepsy, severe asthma, and a rib cage abnormality that made me the target of relentless bullying.
And yet, in the midst of all that chaos, I had my one. Everyone has a one. Mine was my grandmother, Martha Ann. She was my safe harbor and the reason I survived. Grandma was the one who gave me the healthy attachment and nourishment my little body and heart desperately needed. She loved with her whole being, steady, present, unshakable despite the storms around us.
My healing began with the smallest steps. A weekly massage I could barely afford. A friend introducing me to Kundalini yoga. A solo trip that became my initiation back into myself.
She was also a healer in her own quiet way. There was a special energy in her hands that people felt instantly. If you rested in her touch for more than thirty seconds, you’d drop into a state of deep peace and openness. It was her superpower. I come from a long line of female healers, and I know my gift is an echo of hers.
In my twenties, life broke me open again. I was in a car accident with the first love of my life that left him in a coma for 17 years before he passed. I survived narcissistic abuse and sexual assault. I reached a point where my depression was so heavy I could barely see to the other side. My nervous system was fried, and I was fighting for my life.
My healing began with the smallest steps. A weekly massage I could barely afford. A friend introducing me to Kundalini yoga. A solo trip that became my initiation back into myself. I still remember standing barefoot on a beach in Bali, tears in my eyes, whispering the words that became my mantra: Thank you for my life.
That was the moment I shifted from being a victim of my story to seeing it as my soul’s curriculum. Every heartbreak, every trauma, every obstacle was shaping me into someone who could walk others home to themselves. Along the way, I deepened my spiritual studies, learning Tibetan Buddhism under Lama Dorje of Nepal, whose teachings on compassion and emptiness still ripple through my work today.
Eventually, my path led me to Plant Medicine. Ayahuasca was my first psychedelic, and it cracked something wide open in me. Because of my background as a chef, I began cooking for private ceremonies, and soon the head shaman Ivan Chocrón invited me to apprentice under him. That was over a decade ago, and since then, my work has grown into something beyond what I could have imagined: blending plant medicine, Internal Family Systems therapy, somatic healing, and the channeled energy work that first came to me in ceremony.
One of my deepest honors was studying with the indigenous Shipibo tribe in Peru, a matriarchal lineage led by renowned medicine woman Master Estrella, who became one of my core teachers. Her way of weaving song, plant spirit, and soul retrieval into every healing has forever shaped how I hold space.
One of my deepest honors was studying with the indigenous Shipibo tribe in Peru, a matriarchal lineage led by renowned medicine woman Master Estrella, who became one of my core teachers.
My service has also taken me outside the ceremonial space. During the COVID epidemic, I founded a nonprofit to feed the unhoused, work that earned me a humanitarian award from Supreme Master Ching Hai of Thailand. That time taught me that healing isn’t only about going inward, it’s also about showing up for the collective with an open heart.
All of this became the foundation for Reclamation Therapy, the modality I created that weaves together the tools that helped me reclaim my own life. It’s work that lives at the intersection of science and spirit, body and soul.
If you are reading this, I want to honor you. Healing is one of the most intimate journeys we can take, it asks us to face our most tender places and to trust someone enough to hold us there. That trust is sacred to me. Every soul I work with feels like a divine contract, a meeting we were always meant to have. To be invited into someone’s healing is the highest honor, and I hold it with the fullest reverence.
In my work I still feel my grandmother’s hands guiding mine. Her love, her touch, her energy live in every session I hold.
My journey is proof to me every single day that no matter how deep the pain or how long the darkness, we are never too far gone to come back to ourselves.
I’m here in love,
Nicole