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204 | Where Healing Meets Human Rights: Consent, Reiki, Privilege, and the Practice of Being Alive with Nadine Donselaar

  • 4 days ago
  • 6 min read

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Listen to Where Healing Meets Human Rights: Consent, Reiki, Privilege, and the Practice of Being Alive with Nadine Donselaar on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Your player of choice

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Nadine Donselaar, Human Rights lawyer, Reiki and Kriya Yoga teacher, women’s mentor, and author of Your Journey to Consent: A Practical Guide to Understand, Prevent, and Heal from Sexual Violence. This conversation moves through the tender, layered intersections of consent, sexual violence, gender-based violence, holistic healing, human rights, privilege, and the everyday practice of being fully alive. Nadine brings such a unique lens to this work, blending her background in law and human rights with embodied healing practices like Reiki, womb work, meditation, ritual, and energy healing.


Together, we explore what it means to heal without turning healing into another endless self-improvement project. Nadine shares how her own experience with sexual violence, EMDR therapy, energy work, and writing her book shaped the way she supports women in reconnecting with their bodies, desires, boundaries, and inner truth. We talk about the difference between trying to become “better” and learning how to become more fully yourself — not as a new spiritual persona, but as a grounded, living, breathing human being in your real, everyday life.


This conversation also goes beyond the personal. Nadine and I dive into the relationship between self-healing and collective responsibility, including the ways privilege, politics, human rights, colonialism, spirituality, and social justice intersect with the personal growth world. We talk about why healing cannot only be about “me, me, me,” how spiritual bypassing can become a way of looking away, and what it means to be a more ethical practitioner, parent, leader, friend, and member of a larger collective.


We also discuss consent education, bodily autonomy, rape culture, survivor healing, and how parents, coaches, healers, and community leaders can begin having more honest conversations about boundaries, safety, and accountability. Nadine reminds us that consent starts within ourselves — with understanding our own yes, no, and maybe — and that creating a more consent-centered world begins with learning how to listen to the body, honor our values, and support others without assuming we know what they need.


At its heart, this episode is a conversation about choosing life after survival. It’s about laughing louder, dancing more freely, asking harder questions, healing in relationship, and remembering that personal liberation and collective care are deeply connected. If you’ve ever wondered how energy work, embodied healing, human rights, consent, and everyday aliveness all belong in the same conversation, this episode is for you.


Meet Nadine:

Nadine Donselaar is a Human Rights lawyer, Reiki and Kriya Yoga teacher, and author of Your Journey to Consent: A Practical Guide to Understand, Prevent, and Heal from Sexual Violence. Blending legal expertise with holistic healing, she works as a women's mentor offering 1:1 mentorship for women reclaiming their lives after sexual violence.


In this episode, Where Healing Meets Human Rights: Consent, Reiki, Privilege, and the Practice of Being Alive with Nadine Donselaar, we cover:

  • Nadine’s re-release of her book, Your Journey to Consent: A Practical Guide to Understand, Prevent, and Heal from Sexual Violence

  • How Nadine’s personal experience with sexual violence shaped her path into healing, human rights law, Reiki, Kriya Yoga, womb work, and women’s mentorship

  • The difference between healing as a path back to yourself and healing as another endless self-improvement project

  • Why “becoming more of yourself” is often less about understanding everything and more about feeling, expressing, and living

  • How trauma can live in the body, even after the mind has made sense of what happened

  • The role of Reiki, energy healing, womb practices, meditation, ritual, and Kriya Yoga in reconnecting with the body

  • How healing practices can become part of your everyday life without becoming a new persona or performance

  • What it means to choose aliveness, joy, desire, and beauty after seasons of survival

  • How small daily choices — movement, color, pleasure, intention, presence — can reshape your relationship with life

  • The intersection of personal healing and collective responsibility

  • Why healing cannot only be about the self, and how privilege shapes our ability to look away from suffering and injustice

  • The tension between spiritual bypassing, “love and light” culture, and staying grounded in real-world responsibility

  • How human rights, bodily autonomy, equality, consent, and sexual violence are deeply connected

  • Why good intentions do not always equal ethical impact, especially in healing, coaching, spiritual, and facilitator spaces

  • The importance of knowing your values, standards, boundaries, and responsibilities as a practitioner or leader

  • How colonialism, exploitation, lineage, and privilege show up in spiritual and wellness spaces

  • Why amplifying the voices of those most impacted matters more than speaking over them

  • What consent education can teach parents, coaches, healers, and community leaders

  • How consent begins with understanding your own yes, no, and maybe

  • Why asking survivors what they need is more supportive than assuming we know what is best

  • The complexity of accountability, enablement, harm, repair, and community dynamics after sexual violence

  • Why we are not meant to heal as isolated individuals, but in relationship and community

  • The power of women gathering, sharing stories, dancing, listening, and being witnessed

  • How to begin again after a hard season with softness, honesty, support, and joy

  • Why we are all unfinished projects — and why that does not mean we have to wait to fully live


If this conversation sparked something for you, share it with a friend who might need it too.


Make sure to follow or subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, and come connect with us on Instagram—our DMs are always open for your reflections and questions.

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Emily is a speaker, facilitator, and host of the Wild & Waking podcast, creating spaces for women to unravel conditioning, reconnect to their truth, and rise in alignment with who they’re becoming.


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About Wild & Waking: 

Wild & Waking is more than a podcast—it’s a sacred return to who you’ve always been.


This space is for the woman standing at the edge of everything she’s outgrown. The one who’s checked all the boxes, followed all the rules, and still feels the quiet ache for something more honest. More alive. More hers.


She’s begun the unraveling—of roles, expectations, identities that no longer fit. She’s remembering the voice beneath the noise, the rhythm beneath the hustle, the truth beneath the performance. She’s reclaiming her joy, her intuition, her fire. And she’s rising—not as a version of who she was told to be, but as the truest expression of who she already is.


Hosted by soul expansion coach Emily Reuschel, Wild & Waking is for the spiritual entrepreneurs, coaches, rural changemakers, and conscious leaders dismantling old paradigms and creating new ways of living, leading, and becoming. Through raw conversations, deep reflections, and embodied wisdom, we explore what it means to awaken a life of abundance, authenticity, and purpose.


This is for the woman who holds both sacred rage and radical joy. Who moves with reverence for the seasons of her life. Who isn’t afraid to break cycles, speak truth, and dismantle what no longer serves—not to destroy, but to create. To rebuild a world rooted in the celebration of difference, the beauty of nuance, and the power of sovereign, embodied leadership.


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We’ve been waiting for you.


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