Kiwi healer's transformation ‘I'M A SEXUAL WERE WOLF!'

After a life-changing vision, Wānaka sexologist Nina is now helping other women recover from trauma

- Cloe Willetts

When sexual counsellor and healer Nina Powell found herself in the middle of a forest nine years ago, the vision of a vicious werewolf flashed before her eyes. The Wa-naka woman saw herself covered in fur, with sharp teeth, as her body and arms lashed about, and a sensation moved from her pelvis up through her mouth. In that transformative moment, Nina screamed out the rage she’d been carrying ever since being sexually abused in her twenties.

Today, the former occupational psychologist runs a “sacred, orgasmic” leadership business called House of the Wild Divine, where she dubs herself the Red Wolf and helps women find pleasure, healing, confidence and self-expression.

“The trauma of being raped was one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through, but it’s become a gift in terms of my whole life story,” says Nina, 41, who grew up in an eco-community in the Coromandel, before attending boarding school in Auckland as a teen. “It’s partly why I’ve gone down this path with my work.”

Nina was 25 and studying towards an honours degree in psychology in Plymouth, England, when she was drugged and raped during a night out with friends, waking in a stranger’s bed with no recollection of the night’s events.

“I didn’t know what’d happened and thought I’d cheated on my then-boyfriend, except I’d never been one to cheat or lose my memory on a night out, and I’d never blacked out,” she shares.