If It’s Complicated, It’s Not the Way: An Interview With Integrative Healer Nev Winkworth

Nev Winkworth doesn’t introduce himself with a job title first. He starts with a lived understanding of what it means to be human — and why being human matters.

“Who am I, in my own words? I am a student of the University of Life,” Nev says. After a near-death experience (NDE) and “having that opportunity to come back,” his perspective shifted. “I realised that we’re not this form.” For Nev, the body is not the whole story — it’s the vehicle that allows the soul to experience emotion, love, connection, and the full spectrum of life.

He describes it simply: “Just like we have a car to get from point A to point B, the soul aspect of ourselves, or spirit, however you want to term it, needs a vehicle.” And that vehicle matters because, as he puts it, “what I was shown up there, as beautiful as it is, we can’t do that there.”

At the heart of Nev’s work is remembrance — not as a concept, but as a lived return to what’s already within us. “I am a soul that is blessed to be able to, or fortunate to be able to have an experience through this human vessel, that has come here as part of a greater learning, to remember that I’m here to remember.”

The simplicity that changes everything

Nev’s philosophy is grounded in a kind of spiritual practicality: the sacred doesn’t need to be complicated. In his community, he shares a motto that threads through his work and his worldview: “If it’s complicated, it’s not the way.”

For Nev, simplicity isn’t superficial — it’s presence. He speaks about how easily we get swept away by busyness, even when beauty is right in front of us. “We’ll see the rose, go, that’s beautiful, and then we’re off to the next thing.” His invitation is to pause and actually be with life. “Part of our experience is to pause and be there, and have that experience with that. It’s only through that that we get to experience the perfume that life can exude for us.”

Nev Winkworth sitting on rocks with sunset behind him

“It’s the simple things — stop and smell the roses.”

That same simplicity shapes how he supports transformation. Nev is clear that his work isn’t about owning information or positioning himself as the source. “None of this stuff is mine, and none of it is anyone’s. Nothing is new.” What matters is what becomes possible when someone has done their own inner work and allows what’s true to come through.

From dark places to rapid transformation

Nev’s path into healing began through personal upheaval and an unexpected doorway into energy work. During a difficult relationship breakup, he travelled to Gaia, Olivia Newton-John’s resort, with his sister. In the spa, a woman named Velda asked him a question that changed the direction of his life: “Have you heard of Reiki?”

That first experience with Reiki practitioner Linda was, in his words, “profound.” Nev says she told him that in her 27 years of practice, what occurred on the table had only happened once before. The experience sparked something in him — a desire not just to receive healing, but to understand it.

Synchronicities followed, leading him to Reiki training and early practice with family. One moment stands out as foundational: working with his auntie, who had been diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. Nev describes placing his hands on her body, on her liver, and watching what happened. “She would go to sleep, and her pain would go away for an hour and a half where nothing else would work.”

Her encouragement became a turning point. “One of her last words to me was… promise me, my angel, that you will continue doing that energy work, because it works. And that’s where it started.”

From there, Nev’s work evolved through his own healing journey, and into what he now calls an integrative healing approach — “a very bespoke approach.” He also shares that during his NDE, “my gifts awakened.” He’s careful to normalise this, saying, “We all have gifts. You’re no different to me, you’re no different to anyone else.”

Nev describes his gifts as the ability to “hear, see, sense, and feel things in people’s bodies — stored information that I work directly with.” He emphasises speed and spaciousness: “We do it very quickly… in one session, to make space for what we’ve spoken into.”

A modality built for long-term empowerment

Nev’s work is shaped not only by what he’s witnessed in others, but by what he experienced in healing spaces that didn’t support lasting change. He speaks candidly about the cycle many people fall into: feeling good in a session, then slipping back. “A week and a half, two weeks later, I’m back where I was.”

He names what he believes is happening underneath: “It was disempowerment in the guise of empowerment.” For Nev, true healing must include tools that the client can integrate themselves. “My path is about empowering people. I do what I do, but you’ve got tools now that you’re integrating yourself to maintain this.”

When asked what makes his approach different, Nev points first to the space itself. “I get out of the way of structure, process, concept, and context. The space that is created and held is a very sacred space. It’s a space without judgment, condition, preconceived ideas, or expectations.”

He also uses a powerful metaphor to explain why people need more than a single session: they need a map. “Part of maintaining this is that you’ve got to provide people with a map — what I call the forest of life.” Without a map, he says, when life hits a fork in the track, panic and dysregulation can take over. With a map, you can regulate even in the storm.

And crucially, Nev keeps the client engaged throughout the process. “I keep the client engaged in what I’m doing at every point, so that they’re safe, but they’re empowered.” He frames healing as a collaboration, not something done to someone. “You’re engaged in this as a reciprocation, instead of being something done to you.”

“We never truly heal someone; we just show people how to heal themselves.”

When the healing becomes real in the body

I experienced Nev’s work firsthand when I was in Melbourne, and it’s one thing to understand his philosophy intellectually — it’s another to feel what it can do in the body.

Living with a brain injury (Post Concussive Syndrome) for the last 12+ months has meant navigating neurological weakness and ongoing cognitive challenges that can be hard to put into words. After just two healing sessions with Nev, I noticed profound shifts. The neurological weakness is barely a problem now, and when it does show up, it might last an afternoon, as opposed to days. For me, there were physical shifts and cognitive shifts as well.

Nev is careful not to tell people what they should experience. “I’m really big on not being preemptive or suggestive to anyone prior to or post-session,” he says, because then “the mind will go looking for what isn’t happening instead of what has transpired.” Instead, he focuses on the integration phase — the tools, the support, and the follow-up call “to speak into what you have noticed.”

He returns again to a guiding principle that runs through his work: “Expect nothing, and you’ll receive everything.”

Rapid Emotional Reset and the wisdom of the system

Nev’s work has continued to evolve into a modality he created: Rapid Emotional Reset. He describes it as “an evolutionary approach to PTSD, CPTSD, and emotional trauma,” adding, “There’s nothing else out there like that.” He also notes that they are “currently bringing the case studies together to be published in a journal.”

Underlying his approach is a deep trust in the body’s intelligence. “Remember, the system holds the wisdom.” It’s a perspective that reframes healing as less about forcing change and more about making space for what the system already knows how to do.

His book: “Rapid Mindfulness, The No Bullshit Approach”

Nev is also preparing to self-publish a book that distils his philosophy into something practical for real life. The title is direct: “Rapid Mindfulness, The No Bullshit Approach: Emotional regulation in real time.”

He’s clear about what the book is — and what it isn’t. “I’m not being dismissive of mindfulness practices. Not at all.” But he speaks to the reality many people live: “When your kids are having a meltdown in the supermarket aisle… you haven’t got time at the end of the day to do 30 minutes of breath work. Most people haven’t.”

The book, he says, is built for “real people — real life, real time.” It includes lived experience, client stories, and “the tools: a set of tools and how to stack them and apply them into everyday life.” The spine of the book is “the way of the centred self,” a process designed to help people “reset and recalibrate in micro-moments… in under three minutes.”

Coming back to centre — human and soul

What stands out most in Nev’s work is how consistently it circles back to the same meeting point: the human experience and the soul experience are not separate. The body is not something to bypass, and spirituality is not something to perform. It’s about remembering what we are, and then learning how to live from that — in the middle of real life.

Nev speaks of trauma, difficulty, and hurdles as part of the learning that brings us back to ourselves. He also speaks of empowerment as the true measure of healing: not a temporary high, but a lasting shift supported by tools, a map, and integration.

And perhaps that’s the quiet power of integrative healing when it’s held in a sacred, grounded way: it can create space. Space to regulate. Space to feel. Space to reconnect. Space to remember.