Meet Nicola
Founder of Soulful Wisdom Academy
Shamanic Dragon Priestess • Author • Teacher
People often ask me how Soulful Wisdom Academy came to be.
The truth is, it wasn't built from a business plan.
It was built from a lifetime of curiosity.
For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by one question:
What helps us become more fully ourselves?
Long before there was an Academy, I knew I was here to teach. What I didn't yet know was what I would one day be teaching, or how every chapter of my life would quietly prepare me for it.
Looking back now, I can see that every experience was part of the same unfolding.
Today, Soulful Wisdom Academy is the home of that journey, bringing together education, nature, mythology, symbolism, ceremony and the sacred feminine through the living lineage of the Sophianic Spiral of the Dragon Rose.
The Teacher
Teaching has always been part of who I am.
In my early twenties, I was jointly managing a 120-place day nursery before qualifying as an NVQ Assessor and Adult Education Teacher. I taught Early Years practitioners, designed learning programmes and supported adults in developing both confidence and professional competence.
Alongside my work in education, I completed a BA (Hons) in Sports Studies, where I became fascinated by the extraordinary intelligence of the human body. My studies explored physiology, psychology and sociology, deepening my curiosity about how we learn, what shapes us and what helps us flourish.
Even then, I knew that one day I would create my own academy.
I simply didn't know what it would become.
Motherhood
When my three boys were born, life invited me into a different kind of classroom.
I chose to step away from formal teaching to raise my family, home educating my children at different stages of their childhood, serving as Chair of our local preschool and later as a Governor of their primary school.
Those years taught me just as much as my professional life ever had.
Children don't spend their lives trying to become someone else.
They ask questions.
They follow what fascinates them.
They trust their imagination.
Rather than directing every step, I found myself creating environments where learning could unfold naturally. Looking back, I realise that this philosophy has become the heart of everything I teach today.
I don't believe learning begins by telling someone who they should become.
I believe it begins by creating the space for them to remember who they already are.
The Seeker
Alongside family life, another journey was quietly unfolding.
As a child, I experienced prophetic dreams. Some revealed disasters that later happened exactly as I had seen them. At the time, I had no framework for understanding those experiences, so I quietly tucked them away and carried on with everyday life.
Yet the questions never left me.
As my children became older, I found myself returning to study, not because I believed I needed fixing, but because I wanted to understand life more deeply.
One thread led to another.
I explored Reiki, Advanced Transference Healing®, Qigong, sound healing and shamanic practice. I taught Pilates, shared workshops exploring herbs and our relationship with the natural world, and became increasingly fascinated by the energetic body and the invisible patterns that shape our lives.
Each path revealed something valuable.
Yet I still sensed there was something deeper waiting to be understood.
Then the dragons appeared.
I didn't go looking for dragons.
I didn't call them into my practice.
They appeared quietly, and once I began paying attention, they kept placing another thread in front of me.
If I'm honest, they were the last thing I expected.
Growing up with Christian ideas about dragons representing evil, my first instinct wasn't excitement. It was fear. I questioned everything. I wondered whether I should walk away. Part of me worried that I was opening a door that should remain closed.
But curiosity kept asking me to look again.
The more I followed the threads, the more impossible they became to ignore.
The dragons didn't ask me to believe in them.
They invited me to become curious.
They led me into ancient landscapes, forgotten stories, mythology, folklore, symbolism and the deep wisdom woven throughout the natural world.
They led me to Mary Magdalene.
To Sophia.
To the Rose.
And eventually, to the living lineage that would reveal itself as the Sophianic Spiral of the Dragon Rose.
Looking back now, I realise the dragons were never the destination.
They were the guides that led me home.
Only then did I understand that everything I had explored throughout my life had been preparing me for this work.
Education taught me how people learn.
The body taught me embodiment.
Nature became teacher.
Energy work revealed the unseen.
The dragons awakened remembrance.
The Spiral showed me how it all belonged together.
Why I Created Soulful Wisdom Academy
As my own understanding deepened, I began to notice something.
Many women were following the same kind of path I had walked.
They were reading books.
Attending workshops.
Exploring healing.
Following signs and synchronicities.
Collecting beautiful pieces of wisdom.
Yet so often those pieces remained separate.
There was rarely a place where they could be woven into a coherent, grounded path of learning.
I realised that the academy I wanted to teach in didn't exist.
So I created it.
Soulful Wisdom Academy brings together everything that has shaped me as an educator, a seeker and a teacher.
It is a place where learning unfolds slowly and thoughtfully.
Where nature, mythology, folklore and symbolism become living teachers.
Where ceremony creates space for reflection.
Where knowledge becomes embodied wisdom.
And where women are encouraged to trust their own authority rather than hand it to someone else.
At the heart of everything I teach is one simple belief.
You are not here to become someone else.
You are here to remember the fullness of who you already are.
My shamanic name, Elini Sahara, means Guiding Light in the Wilderness.
Over the years, I have come to understand that not as a title, but as a quiet reminder of my role.
I don't believe teachers exist to stand above us.
I believe we sometimes carry a lantern for one another until the path becomes clear enough for each person to recognise the light they have always carried within themselves.
That, to me, is what teaching truly is.
Find Your Way In
There is no single route through Soulful Wisdom Academy.
Some women begin by listening to the podcast.
Others gather in circle within the Mystery School.
Some choose to explore a self-study programme, read a book, discover the blog or work with me one-to-one.
Every doorway leads towards the same centre.
You simply begin with the one that is calling you.
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