Life Healing Life

Her acupuncture clinic — Life Healing Life (as opposed to ‘doctor fixing patient’) has been open since 2006 and is housed in a beautiful art deco co-op in Minneapolis, MN. At Life Healing Life, Nicole delivers education-based, concierge style-fertility care, trauma informed fertility-focused acupuncture, and so much more! She offers day of embryo transfer IVF support at multiple IVF clinics, and her outcomes — both for pregnancy AND quality of life improvements — surpass all the studies and expectations. Nicole’s goal is never “just a baby,” but rather an empowered and thriving baby, mom, family, and future beyond infertility.

Nicole was originally planning to be a geneticist when her own trauma and subsequent health crisis led her to reassess her career. A lifelong learner and lover of science and western medicine, she saw (and experienced) the serious gaps in mainstream medicine’s ability to connect the dots and treat people as whole-beings instead of pieces and parts. A curiosity and quest for something more led her to pursue a Master’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine. And she showed up as a truly extraordinary TCM student — while her classmates were steeped in natural medicine, Nicole had never even had a real acupuncture treatment and had junk food in her lunch.

Her fresh perspective turned out to be a total blessing. Nicole adored learning about holistic ideas and natural modalities that had stood the test of time, but also kept her love and connection to science. She constantly married the two, and from her first days as a student intern, she practiced like no other acupuncturist. She came up with new ideas and approaches to holistic health care and even came up with totally new names for some of them. For example, Nicole coined the term “faux holistic” to describe care that is natural, but actually harms the patient via being doctor-centric, immoderate, and lacking evidence. Because of her own trauma and experience she focuses exclusively on trauma and sexual / reproductive health and she does this work in a way that quite literally doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world (this makes it hard for the Google algorithm to know what to do with her, but she’s okay paving a new path even if it takes time)!

Nicole marries the best parts of Eastern and Western care for both the body and mind. And her patients crave this sort of care and thrive when they experience it. From six months in, Life Healing Life has had a wait list for new patients and after years of feeling like a bottle neck and not having other options to point patients towards, Nicole began creating on-demand content so that no one would have to wait for her to get the empowering education they deserve! Every part of Life Healing Life and Nicole’s work is about moving reproductive culture and care in the direction of what she calls the four pillars of fertility:

Patient-Centered:
Nuanced mind-body medicine is the future of great medicine. And that’s where patients get the very best — and fastest — fertility outcomes. It’s time to say goodbye to conveyor-belt healthcare and band aid fixes that only focus on bits and pieces. It’s time to be seen and treated like a whole, unique person.

Science-backed:
From brain scans to Doppler ultrasounds to blood work. We’ve now got all the cutting-edge science that proves holistic layers like empowering education, mental health support, and patient engagement make measurable biological changes that really matter. We must harness this powerful science to boost fertility odds.

Compassion Based:
Facing infertility for 2+ years has been shown to be as stressful as battling cancer. Every person deserves fertility support that’s kind, warm, and nurturing. Every person deserves to be listened to and seen as a whole person facing a very real medical challenge. Not only does it protect the heart and mind, but it makes wonderful ripples for fertility and pregnancy outcomes too.

Ethical:
Infertility care is a relatively new specialty that’s operated on the edge of mainstream medicine since its start. Sadly, that‘s created a complex gray zone of unrealistic expectations, inconsistent care standards, and confusing statistics. And that makes it hard for real people facing infertility to make good, informed choices. We must push back and change this. Life Healing Life fights for it every day.

Nicole has created exceptionally effective infertility courses and extensive online content. Here is a list of just some of what she has created (and much of it is totally free to anyone in the world):

Fertility Freebies:
DIY Fertility Acupressure Guide — with points for pelvic circulation to vagus nerve pressure points to calm the entire body and mind this guide has a symptom glossary, easy to use point combinations, and video links for how to find and stimulate great acupressure points.

TTC Timing Guide — 70% of people don’t cycle like the textbooks and apps tell us we “should.” This means what we’re taught is normal is NOT the norm. This is a huge problem when trying to get pregnant, and the only solution is to learn to understand your unique body so you can actually try to conceive (TTC) at the right time for YOU!

The Extra Awful Infertility Guide –This guide has three core lessons for when you land on the rotten side of fertility odds and statistics. From miscarriage and loss, to hard medical diagnoses like POF this helps a person process and feel safer to make their next best choices. This guide is one of my favorite things I’ve made. We don’t talk about the hard parts of infertility nearly as often or openly as we should.

The Fertility Medication Guide — What meds are used, how they work, what the common side effects are, and how to offset and feel more comfortable on the meds if you need ’em! From clomid and progesterone, to follistim and gonal-f!

Online Courses:
The Baby You Want — Nicole’s signature 90-day on-demand course to guide from the foundation up and get he very best fertility outcomes by working on the whole person, body, mind, relationships and fertility treatments as needed all together! This is the class that truly transforms lives and fertility stories. There are so many people who had given up or been told they had no hope who have had successful thriving pregnancies and lives via this program. It was five YEARS in the making.

IVF Insider Course — The best IVF education on everything from protocols, finding a good IVF Lab, embryo odds, and bladder preparation for embryo transfer to big picture stress/anxiety coping lessons on dealing with the unknown and lack of control. This is a game changer for anyone considering or in IVF treatments.

Banish Fertility Burnout — a 7 day mini-course that’s a fabulous reset to build back up emotional and physical buffers and regroup. Great for lulls in TTC and also for the uphill moments (like the 2ww and week prior to a first pregnancy ultrasound) when you want to “do more,” and are feeling at a loss for ideas.

Extra Content:
The Baby You Want TV Youtube channel. With lots of one-off topis like twinges in the 2ww and how to do castor packs.

Life Healing Life Blog — a great place to see both video lessons and longer written pieces on topics like surviving the holidays and honoring pregnancy loss.

Life Healing Life Newsletter — a weekly check-in with timely topics for all. Never salesy, always useful!

Fun fact! In 2016 Nicole’s artist, designer, musician hubby Mark left corporate life and joined the Life Healing Life team. He makes everything extra special — after all a soothing, lovely user-experience is part of being truly holistic. Small layers add up!

Nicole also teaches for and works with some of the top IVF clinics in the nation and with people across the globe. She is always open to teaching OBGYN and IVF clinic staff, fertility caregivers, infertility support groups, being an expert guest on podcasts, etc. She has done hundreds of talks over the course of her career.

Nicole and Life Healing Life are changing infertility care, culture and outcomes one person and one fertility journey at a time. Her own trauma and upheaval led her to the most meaningful work she could imagine. She is grateful for her life (twists and turns included). She trusts that every person going through infertility can feel the same way. With the right big picture support.