Embracing Faith, Love and Health: Guest Nikki Walton

This episode emphasizes the importance of love and faith in overcoming challenges, particularly during health crises. Nikki Walton shares her experiences of rising early to meditate and pray, highlighting how these practices cultivate inner peace and community.

• Importance of faith during health challenges 
• Morning rituals for mental clarity 
• Love as both a feeling and a conscious choice 
• The practice of asking, “Is love here too?” 
• Community impact through shared spiritual practices 
• Encouragement to embrace stillness and mindfulness 
• Health as wealth and emotional resilience 
• Building connections through love and shared experiences 

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Chapters

• 0:04 Wake Up to Love With Nikki
• 9:04 Anchored in Love and Peace

Transcript

Bettina M Brown: 0:04

Hello and welcome to In the Rising a health and wellness podcast for those going through and those supporting those going through cancer. My name is Bettina Brown and I'm board certified in physical therapy, wound care and lymphedema, and you know, for me cancer is very personal. It's affected my friends, my immediate and my not so immediate family, and therefore I created this podcast and fitafterbreastcancercom to address the multiple dimensions of our lives during and after recovery. Hey there, my name is Bettina and I am really happy to talk today with Nikki Walton. I know I say that a lot, but every conversation is a new experience, and so I'm really eager, happy and also honored to share this with you.

Bettina M Brown: 0:58

My guest today is Nikki Walton, who's a best-selling author, naacp Image Award-nominated author and also a licensed psychotherapist. She has curlynickicom and maybe you know her from there, so she has been the number one natural hair beauty blogger in the world and has reached millions and millions of women across at least 30 countries. So she has a beautiful, unique story to her life. But today we take a pause and we slow down and talk about faith. For a lot of us going through a major event of life, we really cling to our faith, and for us that are in the best times of our life. Maybe we need a reminder to stick with that.

Bettina M Brown: 1:47

My podcast is about going through major health crises, of which cancer is one, and I have witnessed the importance of faith to so many people that it's not something I can turn away from and not talk about. I have in front of me, you know. Wake up to love meditations to start your day. First of all, congratulations on this book. Thank you so much. We don't really appreciate how much work, effort, soul, love, sweat, tears all of that goes into writing a book. It's not a small thing at all.

Nikki Walton: 2:32

Right? No, you're absolutely right. It's daunting and it can be very scary, especially when you're just getting started. It seems impossible when you're just getting started.

Bettina M Brown: 2:40

So congratulations, and that's a lot of determination and grit started. So congratulations, and that's a lot of determination and grit and there's a lot of love just in it, because to do this over and over, to go through that, to write this and wake up to love, and a lot of times what I've noticed is we listen to people differently when we know their story of why they're doing this and we can I mean, we can always have a long conversation, but what is really like your, why? What was the reasoning? Your get up to continue to do this journey and have your own podcast and make the difference that you are.

Nikki Walton: 3:14

You know, I, during COVID, found myself stressed because I couldn't just get out and be alone, and so I was constantly being called by my kids. You know, my parents call and so it's like mommy, mommy, nikki, nikki. And then emails curly Nikki, we need this, we need that so much. And so I made a conscious decision to start waking up before the sun, about four, maybe four, 35 o'clock in the morning, and I'm not a morning person, but I had to become one to stay sane. And I'd get up and it felt so good to not have to be anything for anyone and just be. And I do my spiritual practice, I do my chanting, my praying, and after just three months of that sitting in the stillness, sitting as the stillness, the idea came up and you listening at home, and maybe you too, bettina, there's something on your heart, in your heart, that you have to start, and all of a sudden, someone that goes from just being really like a writer or a blogger is like I have to start a podcast and it has to be every morning, it has to be first thing in the morning, and since 2021, I've been doing Good Mornings with Curly Nikki, and it's every single day about 10 minutes of a meditation to help the listener find this peace, find this love.

Nikki Walton: 4:30

But after so many years of doing this, there's just too many episodes, especially for someone coming to this new like when it gets introduced to a family member or friend. They see 1500 episodes, because some days I do double episodes. They're like where do you begin? And so my book Wake Up to Love is the best 52 practices, 52 different doorways to get into this love, or 52 ways up the same mountain to love. And I just want people to have an anchor, to recognize that there is something here that they are constantly overlooking and replacing with snacks and scrolling and new relationships and excessive thinking. And as soon as you slow down or, right now, sit up, go from hunched over like we usually are, sit up into this presence, into the silence, you start using your body like an antenna for God, for the divine, and you'll be able to hear what's next for you, what you're supposed to be doing in this moment.

Bettina M Brown: 5:36

Thank you for sharing that and I heard it on your podcast. I hear it now. You have a voice that is slowed down, that is calm, like it. It's not. It's not a meditation, that someone is trying to be relaxed in, like you. You embody it completely and I yes it. It comes through. It comes through. And I wanted to start with with some definitions, and one is love, and the big thing is a love of feeling. Or is love a choice, or what is your?

Nikki Walton: 6:11

idea about it. Love is the filling, and it gets distorted and then we call it many other things. But it is life, it is what all of this is. I think it was Daniel Penchik that says we call it stuff, you know, chair, microphone, computer, these bodies. It's love appearing as these things, and so it's universal. It's everywhere appearing as these things, and so it's universal. It's everywhere, and we don't slow down enough to recognize that we are that and rethink. We're these bodies only. But as soon as you stop, you feel that this body is made of that and it's made of that, and so that is my definition of love. It is who and what we are. It's beyond race and weight and, like what this is does not get old. What this is, you can't see in a mirror, you can't see with a naked eye, but you can experience it very easily.

Bettina M Brown: 7:02

We can experience it, and it's something that we long to experience as well.

Nikki Walton: 7:08

Exactly, and you said too, it's a choice that you make in the moment to remain aware of what appears to be happening or to not judge by appearances, like we're taught in the Bible, and to feel what's also here. And so I often point my listeners to that question that you can ask yourself in any moment, especially in the overwhelming moments, to say is love here too? And it's a listening. I ask the question and I say is love here too? And then I just listen, not for an answer that says yes or no, but the listening is the answer, and the love rushes into that gap, into that silence, and that's it. Yes, love is here too, in addition to what appears to be like the anger or the frustration or the fatigue. And if you could just feel a teeny bit of that love, things begin to change inside of you but outside as well.

Bettina M Brown: 8:03

And that's where waking up to love is, and I think what you just said you made a conscious decision to wake up before the sun comes, and wake up can be physically. Wake up can actually mean to come out of the darkness, as in you're going on habit and you're not awake, and for a lot of my listeners we go so we're so busy with life, and then you get a diagnosis, you get, or someone you love gets, a diet. That is the wake-up call. Absolutely. What do you describe waking up to love Like? What does that mean to you when you say that?

Nikki Walton: 8:39

Every moment, every seeming moment, it's a little bit different as far as what. It is that grace that comes in that wakes me up, and even sometimes bad news or a text that doesn't generate loving feelings, you know, can wake you up. You begin to use every single thing life throws at you as something to trigger you back into this love, back into waking up. I am very big on physical postures and not like strenuous, like yoga postures. I'm saying like right now, fold your hands in front of you in prayer pose and just bow, gently bow, and it's like you're bowing into God, into grace, into love, into the silence.

Nikki Walton: 9:24

When you're like that, the negative thoughts slow down. They may even come to a complete standstill. When you're using your body like an antenna for the divine bowing into God, you can notice that your body feels peace and then, even when you sit back up and your hands are now resting in your lap, that peace is still there. It's like you're still bowed inside, you're still humbled inside, you're still aware of that sweetness inside, and that's all you ever have to do. It's all you ever have to be, and it's just a matter of letting everything, good or bad, turn you back around to this.

Bettina M Brown: 10:03

You're anchored in. Exactly, you're anchored in. You do these podcasts, you write these books. You're also a businesswoman. You're a podcaster.

Nikki Walton: 10:14

So many things. It's a lot.

Bettina M Brown: 10:15

It is a lot, but you know what, when you love it, you love it and it comes across. My podcast is in the rising. What do you see yourself still rising up to, or rising up to support others with?

Nikki Walton: 10:31

The podcast feels like my life's work. It feels very important. However, as of November 11th of this year, I began waking up even earlier. Now I get up at four and I do a live stream where I pray the rosary with my audience. And you do not have to be Catholic to pray the rosary, we just pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and we do it 150 times and we do 15 Our Fathers, and it's a very powerful practice because you're replacing your thoughts, the usual thinking, the usual worries, with what seems to be just words, but it's guiding you into a deeper feeling of that presence. And so we're basically praying love.

Nikki Walton: 11:14

We're practicing love for about 45 minutes every morning and right now that feels even more exciting to me than the podcast, because I'm doing it with others, real time, and there's about 60 of us waking up at that time, and there's some that are in central I'm in the Eastern time zone there's some in central, some out in California. They're not even, they haven't even gone to bed yet. They're still up, you know. So if you're for some reason not asleep or you're up early and you want to pray with us and with them chanting, you know you can use this service as you wish, but it feels very divine and I'm very blessed to be able to do it, even though I'm very tired, because it's been now since November 11th since I've been doing that and I don't even know what today's date is.

Nikki Walton: 12:05

But it's a very powerful practice to pray and to chant and to practice this love with others, and so I'm just going to continue listening, just like I hope you listening at home will continue to listen, of course, to this podcast and to mine as well, but also to the silence, because your answers, your project, whatever you're rising up to, you'll hear it. You'll begin to take steps towards it, even when the steps sound outrageous and you're like I could never do that, you can and you will, because it won't be you. It's God working through you, the Christ love working using your hands, using your feet, using your voice. I never have words. I never know what I'm going to say. I just have trust in the love to speak, and it always speaks.

Bettina M Brown: 12:49

Well, we have trust in love and then we begin to behave in that way and it's fun to actually be with other people. That is the gratitude, that is the peace and that is the community that people are sometimes are longing for in the scrolls, in the sex, in the new relationships, absolutely. But this is always going to lead to positive. It always will.

Bettina M Brown: 13:11

You know, thank you so much for anchoring us in together during this podcast conversation and for all that you do for the world, because that is a light, that is a love and that has such resounding positive consequences. So I just want to thank you for all of that you're doing.

Nikki Walton: 13:31

Thank you, and thank you for all that you're doing and for the service that you're providing, being a light for others in times of just needing to migrate and navigate through, and we all are in positions where we need someone to lean on, to have someone to shine a light in the darkness, and you are doing that every day and it is very much appreciated.

Bettina M Brown: 13:53

What really came across to me listening to Nikki talk, and then also listening again as I was creating the podcast episode is the calmness and the peace that Nikki has, and I don't feel that is something you have just because you have been blessed with calmness and peace. It's something you work for and you work towards, and it's something that a lot of us could continue to incorporate in our lives, regardless of the external circumstances. I've read somewhere that your happiness can come and go based off the external things, but that internal joy and peace with your life it's either there or it's not, and nothing external can make that. So, whatever our place is in life, whether it's our friend or it's not, and nothing external can make that. So, whatever our place is in life, whether it's our friend or us going through a major event or really looking at and evaluating our health, health is wealth and health is really what brings us to life and feel life. What is it that we can still find that joy in and that connection? And if faith is something that you find important, find that joy in and that connection, and if faith is something that you find important to you or you're new on your journey, I welcome you to the resources below.

Bettina M Brown: 15:05

If faith is something you're familiar with and you'd like to continue that on with your journey, what do you move forward to? How are we going to move with the next steps? How do I navigate onwards? How are we going to move with the next steps? How do I navigate onwards? I invite you to look at my life coaching experience and offerings of Rising Within Life Coaching, the Crossing Between Faith and Wellness. I've seen it so often make a big difference for that person, whether it brought about healing or brought about healing and peace. Either way, there is no lose at all. So until next time, let's keep building one another up. Thank you.