Daily Dose — Sound Healing Practitioner Builds Healing Community in Nelson
By Ari Lord
Nadine Wildwood, who moved from Calgary 15 years ago, is a yoga teacher and sound healer at SOMA studio/venue + gallery 444 in Nelson.
Hall Printing Daily Dose reporter, Ari Lord, takes a look at the owner/curator/facilitator powerful self-healing community hub for people to connect and share that opened in March of 2023.
SOMA is a hub in downtown Nelson for community healing and expressive arts.
Wildwood is a trained yoga teacher and sound healing practitioner. She teaches classes and also does individual sound healing sessions. This work is very intuitive, she says.
“Sound healing is so powerful in that it allows people to drop into a state of relaxation and self-healing,” says Wildwood.
But there is also a science behind it.
“We’re in a society where our nervous systems have been taxed to the nines. Healing can’t take place when the body is stressed. So when we put ourselves in an environment where we feel de-stressed, we’re coming into the parasympathetic nervous system, and now the body can do the healing that it innately knows how do to,” says Wildwood.
Wildwood’s journey to Nelson started 15 years ago.
“Before Nelson, I was in Calgary and before that Guelph. I was a military kid, and my dad moved us around every 2-3 years. When I landed here, I felt very resonant with Nelson.”
For Wildwood, this was a turning point.
“I didn’t realize it then, but I came here to heal. Nelson is a healing ground. A lot of people, whether they realize it or not, come here to do some deep healing work,” she says.
So, Wildwood was inspired to go on a healing journey.
“I had done my own business through Community Futures many years ago when my daughter was one. I started a home-based floral business. I gave that up to work at Bella Flora as a floral designer for seven years. At that time, I realized I wanted to be more involved in my yogic journey, so that’s when I did my teacher training at Bamboo,” says Wildwood.
From there, she shifted into the healing and expressive arts.
“I’m a community builder and a space holder,” says Wildwood.
SOMA is located in the Old Shambhala meditation centre in the 400 block of Baker Street, above Maison.
“I opened up SOMA in March of this year. It’s a studio venue that I offer to the community as a space to facilitate various curated offerings in the healing and expressive arts,” says Wildwood.
SOMA offers a unique service to the community.
“It’s similar to what we had at the Moving Centre before that got moved from the community. There were a lot of people who relied on that space to facilitate the work that they did. Soma is more curated,” says Wildwood.
“During the day, I’ve opened it up as a gallery of contemporary art that focuses on local artists and BC wide artists. Currently, I have Zora Duvall exhibiting. She’s got beautiful ink paintings on wood panels. Much of the art that has been here has an organic, expressive feel,” says Wildwood.
Earlier this month, Wildwood hosted a guided healing meditation with sound called ‘Awakening Your Abundant Self’ with Tara Kabatoff.
“We have an abundance of facilitators with a wide breadth of knowledge within the realm of healing and expressive arts,” says Wildwood.
Wildwood has hosted all kinds of events in her space: lectures and educational events, natural building system workshops, continuum dance, Taoism, Indian Classical Dance, meditation, vipassana silent meditation, healing harp, live music events, and yoga.
“When I have people in the space, it feels so good—knowing that the space is serving a purpose. It’s going to be the community that makes it what it is. It’s for the whole community,” says Wildwood.
SOMA studio/venue events & workshops gallery 444 contemporary art gallery
Find SOMA’s event calendar here and Linktree.
Instagram: @soma.gallery444 @gal.lery444
Facebook: Gallery 444 + SOMA studio/venue gallery 444
Email: somastudiovenue@gmail.com
SOMA, located in the Old Shambala meditation centre on Baker Street, above Maison, is able to host many participants. — Submitted photo
