Fashion, Healing, and the Nervous System: When Alignment Becomes Embodied

Fashion, Healing, and the Nervous System: When Alignment Becomes Embodied

Nisha Parekh

Speak Your Truth Series


When Alignment Becomes Embodied

Some years change you quietly and without warning.

For me, 2016 was the beginning of something I couldn’t yet name. It wasn’t dramatic — just a subtle, unmistakable shift. A gentle opening. A quiet awakening that changed everything.

On the surface, I had everything one could wish for. My life looked full and functional. I was producing, mothering, and moving through the motions. Inside, I felt profoundly disconnected.

I was living in survival mode, carrying emotions I’d never been taught to process. My body was constantly flooded with stress, my nervous system stuck on high alert. Outwardly, I appeared composed. Inwardly, something was unraveling. Looking back now, I can see it clearly: my body was whispering a truth my mind had avoided for years — something inside me needed healing.

I was 34 in 2016, already searching — questioning the life I was living and the stories I’d inherited — when I read The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani. That moment didn’t create the awakening. It collided with it.

Something in me was already awake, already asking for more truth, more depth, more honesty. The book simply gave language to what my body already knew.

For many women, this age becomes a quiet turning point. When the nervous system matures. When old roles stop fitting.

When the body begins asking for honesty instead of endurance.

The Awakening That Started in 2016

That year, I began to see the inherited patterns woven through my life — the old stories I kept replaying. The ways I made myself small to stay safe and acceptable. The way shame would quietly build until it spilled out in reactions I did not yet understand.

As a South Asian woman raised between cultures, emotional expression was not encouraged. Strength meant silence. Survival meant self-abandonment. Something in me was no longer willing to live that way.

I did not yet have the language for trauma, embodiment, or nervous system regulation. I only knew I felt anxious, overwhelmed, and deeply disconnected.

So I reached for practices that helped me reconnect — Reiki, journaling, meditation, sound healing, breathwork, inner child work, and EFT. Each one offered a doorway back into my body at a time when I didn’t yet have words for what I was experiencing.

In those early years, I also explored Neurological Integration System (NIS). I remember clearly why I first went.

I lost vision in one eye for over thirty minutes — one of the scariest moments of my life. After medical tests ruled out anything acute, I was told it was stress.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I only knew my body had reached a breaking point. What I was carrying internally was no longer staying quiet — it was demanding to be addressed.

That experience led me to NIS. It became one of my first encounters with working directly through the brain and nervous system, long before I had language for trauma, regulation, or somatic healing.

NIS showed me just how much my body had been holding — and what can happen when pathways begin to reconnect. Looking back now, it was one of the earliest stepping stones toward somatic work, long before I understood how deeply the nervous system shapes our emotions, health, and sense of safety.

There was also yoga. Not the performative kind. Not the workout version. The quiet, honest practice where you meet yourself on the mat. Where breath becomes truth. Where the body softens enough to speak.

Yoga taught me how to be present without running, numbing, or performing. It was a return to myself long before I realised I was trying to come home.

Sound healing was another gentle entry point for me.

Through sound, my nervous system softened out of fight or flight, cortisol eased, and my brain slipped into a theta state where rest, repair, and safety became possible.

Sound gave my nervous system permission to settle without needing to analyse or explain anything. There were moments where my body responded before my mind understood why.

Like somatic work, sound reminded me that healing does not always require effort. Sometimes it asks us to receive.

There is something deeply humbling about realising it has been a decade since I first began this work. Ten years of learning, unlearning, falling apart, and finding myself again.

In 2026, I can finally hold the full arc of it with grace. I have left so many versions of myself behind, each one necessary, each one a stepping stone. Ultimately, this journey led me from science into fashion—a transformation I never could have predicted. Now, I understand that healing does not end; it simply evolves as we do.

South Asian Silence, Generational Trauma, and the Body

In South Asian households, we do not talk about trauma, nervous systems, or emotional safety. We talk about resilience. Responsibility. Keeping the peace.  We swallow our feelings and continue moving forward.

I did not realise that the silence of generations was living inside my body. It was in my breath. My fascia. My throat. My posture.

Somatic research now confirms what many of us have always felt.

The body stores what the mind suppresses.

Healing is not only mental, but it is also physical, ancestral and deeply embodied.

Why Intuition & Energy Work Were Silenced

It has always struck me as deeply ironic that intuition, astrology, and energy healing are often viewed as unusual or fringe practices today.
This is especially puzzling when so much of our South Asian heritage is rooted in energy wisdom- Chakras, Prana, temple rituals, Ayurveda, the sacred red or black thread tied on our wrists. Our ancestors lived by intuition and embodied spiritual knowledge long before these ways were dismissed or pathologized by the Western gaze.

Colonialism, patriarchy, and Western rationalism systematically taught generations to doubt their inner knowing and distrust anything that could not be measured or explained.

But none of these practices are new, nor are they trends. We are simply remembering what our lineage already knew and reclaiming what was always ours.

When we reconnect with our intuition, we reconnect with ourselves.

The Birth of Speak Your Truth

Speak Your Truth did not come from a design meeting.

It came from healing. Holding emotions for too long. From generations of silence. From learning to hear myself again.

I was once the little girl who learned to stay small, and then the woman who realized she no longer had to. For a long time, I mistook speaking my truth for speaking from my wounds- overexplaining, rushing, and sometimes becoming aggressive or controlling instead of being simply assertive. I was trying to be understood before I truly felt safe in my own voice.

My nervous system was still on high alert, convinced that self-expression meant risk. It took time, compassion, and practice to teach my body that it was finally safe to be heard.

Now, I practice speaking my truth from a grounded place. It is a work in progress. Something I return to daily. With each pause, each breath, each moment of honesty, I build more trust in myself.

Speak Your Truth became the heartbeat of NPFD.

Not a slogan.
A lived experience.

Healing is not becoming someone new. It is remembering who you were before the world told you who you should be.

Spinal Energetics and the Body’s Natural Release

My most recent session, Spinal Energetics, was one of the most powerful healing experiences I have had. It blends nervous system awareness, gentle touch, and the body’s natural energetic field to release stored tension and emotional residue.

During the session, energy moved from my sacral up to my throat. At one point, the release was so intense that I was gagging. Yet, it was not frightening- it felt like deep, ancient grief leaving my body. It was as if a weight I had carried for years simply dissolved, leaving space for a quieter, steadier self-assurance to emerge.

 

It was not only a mindset shift, it was a physical one.


Perimenopause, the Nervous System, and Returning to the Body

As I enter perimenopause, my body is shifting. Hormones fluctuate. Sleep patterns change. Emotional sensitivity and intuition deepen.

Instead of resisting, I am listening—paying attention to what my body needs instead of ignoring or pushing through. Supporting my nervous system is not an indulgence; it is essential. It forms the foundation for sustainable creativity, motherhood, and authentic self-expression. This is the safety I am learning to offer myself, day by day.

The decade I have spent working on myself has given me the inner resources to support myself and others through these transitions. 

A loving reminder.

Healing is not meant to feel like a full time job. Yes, the inner work matters, but so does joy, laughter, connection, loving and simply being human.

Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is live our life fully, without turning everything into a lesson or something to fix. 

There is deep medicine in allowing yourself to enjoy the life you are healing for.


Why I Am Sharing This Side of My Journey

Talking about somatic work, energy healing, emotional release, or ancestral patterns is not mainstream.

I am not here to be mainstream. I am here to be honest and speak my truth.

I share this so people do not feel not alone. Embodiment is not something to hide, it is something to reclaim.

If you ever want information about any of the modalities I mention, or feel called to begin your own healing journey, I am more than happy to share what has helped me.

The more I heal, the more aligned my creativity becomes. The more I embody truth, the more NPFD evolves into what it was always meant to be.

A space where fashion, healing, culture, and authenticity exist together.

This is not a guide. It’s a lived reflection. Take what resonates, and leave the rest.

© NPFD • Live Your Truth. Create Your Magic™
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