What is a Holistic Nurse Coach?
This article explores what a holistic nurse coach is, what you can expect from this approach, and how it may support your health and wellness journey. We’ll also look at how holistic nurse coaching differs from traditional healthcare.
What Is a Nurse?
When you think of a nurse, you might imagine scrubs, hospitals, needles, or even Grey’s Anatomy. But nursing goes far beyond these images.
According to the International Council of Nursing:
A nurse is a professional who is educated in the scientific knowledge, skills, and philosophy of nursing, regulated to practice based on standards and ethical codes. Nurses enhance health literacy, promote health, prevent illness, protect patient safety, alleviate suffering, facilitate recovery and adaptation, and uphold dignity throughout life.
Nursing is both a science - grounded in evidence, critical thinking, and clinical skills - and an art - rooted presence, compassion, advocacy, and human connection.
Nurses support individuals, families, and communities across all stages of life, in hospitals and far beyond. Many pursue additional training or certification in specialities such as critical care, pediatrics, oncology, or community health.
What Is a Holistic Nurse?
Holistic nurses recognize that health is shaped by many interconnected parts of life. Rather than focusing solely on symptoms or diagnosis, they consider the whole person — including physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and environmental factors.
Holistic nursing may incorporate complementary or integrative practices such as:
Meditation and breathwork
Energy-based modalities
Somatic or body-based awareness practices
Nature-based and lifestyle interventions
The goal is not to replace conventional care, but to expand it — supporting deeper awareness, prevention, and long-term vitality.
What Is a Nurse Coach?
A nurse coach is a nurse who has additional training in coaching and therapeutic communication. Their role is not to direct or prescribe, but to facilitate meaningful and sustainable change.
Nurse coaches:
Support clients in clarifying their health goals
Focus on strengths and inner resources
Foster accountability and empowerment
Encourage alignment between health choices and personal values
Nurse coaching is collaborative and relationship-centered. It honors the client as an active participant in their own healing process.
So What Is a Holistic Nurse Coach?
A holistic nurse coach integrates all of these elements.
They are traditionally trained, regulated nurses who combine scientific knowledge, clinical experience, and coaching skills with a whole-person perspective. Complementary modalities may be integrated when appropriate and within scope of practice.
Holistic nurse coaching supports transformation and wholeness — not simply symptom management.
It asks not only:
“What is wrong?”
But also:
“What is this experience asking of you?”
“What patterns are present?”
“What would alignment look like here?”
Beyond “Fixing” — Toward Wholeness
Traditional healthcare is often focused on identifying and treating a problem quickly — prescribing medication, ordering tests, stabilizing symptoms - in order to alleviate suffering. This approach is essential and lifesaving in many contexts.
However, it may not always explore the deeper patterns, stressors, or life circumstances contributing to someone’s experience.
As a holistic nurse coach, I do not view people as broken or in need of fixing. Instead, I:
Create space for deep listening
Explore what symptoms or patterns may be communicating
Collaborate to identify root contributors
Support sustainable lifestyle and mindset shifts
Foster a meaningful relationship with self
Healing is not one-size-fits-all. Together, we co-create a personalized path toward greater balance and vitality.
What You Can Expect at Rooted Wholistics
At Rooted Wholistics, I use the five-step nursing process - assessing, diagnosing, planning, implementing and evaluating - as a structured foundation for care.
Each session individualized and may include one or more of the following:
Traditional nursing education
Understanding disease processes, treatment options, medications, and navigating the healthcare system.
Nurse coaching
Guided dialogue that supports clarity, self-discovery, and empowered decision-making.
Mind-body practices
Meditation, breathwork, journaling, grounding, and nature-based practices.
Energy-based care
Reiki and subtle energy balancing within scope of training.
Plant and nature-based support
Western herbal knowledge, holistic nutrition, and Traditional Chinese Medicine dietary principles (education-based, not medical prescription).
Lifestyle and stress management
Practical strategies tailored to your unique life circumstances.
Inner journey work
Exploring emotional patterns, triggers, habits, and belief systems. When psychotherapy or trauma-specific treatment is indicated, I collaborate with and refer to licensed mental health professionals.
Each session is co-created, evidence-informed, and grounded in safe nursing practice.
Why Holistic Nurse Coaching?
Holistic nurse coaching may resonate with you if you:
Seek deeper understanding rather than surface-level solutions
Want lasting, sustainable change
Value collaboration and compassionate care
Feel disconnected from yourself or your body
Desire alignment between your health and your values
Client's often report that this work helped them:
Feel heard, safe, and supported
Reduce stress and build resilience
Strengthen self-awareness and intuition
Cultivate self-compassion
Experience greater clarity and vitality
The journey to wholeness is not about becoming someone new — it is about tending to what has always been within you.
Rooted in Professional Standards
As a registered nurse, I practice in accordance with the standards set by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM). This means I:
Prioritize a safe, ethical, and evidence-informed care
Work within my defined scope
Maintain confidentiality and professional integrity
Refer to other healthcare providers when appropriate
I also align my practice with the Canadian Holistic Nurses AssociationStandards of Practice, ensuring that holistic care is delivered responsibility and professionally.
Walking the Path Together
Holistic nurse coaching is not a quick fix. It is a partnership grounded in presence, accountability, and respect.
At Rooted Wholistics, I walk beside you as you reconnect with your inner wisdom and natural rhythms. Together, we create space for curiosity, healing, and growth.
A gentle invitation
If you’re curious about how holistic nurse coaching might support you, I invite you to explore the offerings at Rooted Wholistics.
You don’t have to navigate your health journey alone.
Let’s begin your return to wholeness — together.
A Note from Crystal
If this reflection resonates with you, consider bringing this seasonal wisdom into your own rhythm of healing.
🍄 Join the Rooted Wholistics newsletter to receive mindful reflections, herbal wisdom, and seasonal self-care rituals delivered to your inbox.
🍄 Or explore how holistic nursing and coaching can help you reconnect with your body’s natural pace — one rooted breath at a time.
Wellness from within begins with returning to wholeness.
