“I would recommend Lavender to anyone that is looking to connect deeper to their own personal power and heart space.”
— Daiana Hermes, Big Island, Hi, on receiving a Nightlight Wellness Reiki session with crystals, a sacred herbal elixir, sound healing & a drum activation
Meet our founder, Lavender:
Cacao Ceremonialist, Herbalist, Reiki Master, & Resident Healer.
Lavender Malin is a Usui Reiki master, herbalist, intuitive healer, cacao ceremonialist, guided meditation facilitator, womxn's circle leader, singer-songwriter, poet, kava fairy, potions master, mental health advocate and nomadic student of the world. She uses the beautiful medicines of Reiki, cacao, herbs, meditation, music, spoken word, and the powerful energy of community to clear away blockages and bring souls closer to their inner light. Her mission is to awaken and empower the healer within each human, so we may all heal the world.
The Medicine Path
Lavender found her way into holistic medicine and spirituality the same way many of us do: while seeking answers and solutions to heal herself. As an adolescent, she struggled with severe depression, anxiety and PTSD. Normal Western/pharmaceutical approaches were not only unhelpful, but didn’t feel healthy, so Lavender went on a journey to study alternative methods to balance and align her mind. This is how she first came into herbalism: discovering and utilizing herbal medicine that powerfully and successfully balanced her mental blocks and allowed her to step into her true, clear, empowered self.
After many years of her own research and self-teachings, studying the literature of the likes of Susun Weed, Robin Rose Bennett, and others in the Wild Woman Tradition of herbal medicine, Lavender became an apprentice at Flower Power Herbs of NYC, and studied under the renowned herbalists of the apothecary. It is during this time that the medicines of Reiki and Cacao came into and fully transformed her life.
Reiki’s Call
Lavender first encountered Reiki while in a yoga class in Brooklyn, NY. At the end of the class, while students were in Shavasana, the instructor walked around and gave everyone a simple Reiki touch on their forehead. When Lavender experienced this light, brief moment of Reiki healing, she felt such a powerful vibration on her forehead. A gentle but firm nurturing arm came down from the heavens and smoothed out her stress and anxiety. She felt her mind clear into a pure blissful state, and she felt as though she was being held by a divine being. Just from this one moment of Reiki, that warm nurturing vibration stayed with her for the rest of the night and throughout the next day, and she knew she had to call more of it into her life. It was also that evening that she felt a clear and loud message from Spirit: it was her calling to become a Reiki practitioner.
She began to train with Brooklyn’s Glowing Heart Reiki School. After her Reiki Level 1 attunement, a world-rattling shift happened in Lavender’s life. From that moment on, she felt Reiki’s divine presence with her, every moment of every day, like a kind ethereal, nurturing friend that was always by her side. It was Reiki that assisted her in cutting out the toxic influences that were still in her life, such as alcohol. It was Reiki that allowed her to dive deep into her past traumas and begin to fully make peace with them, so she could let them go.
The callings to dive deeper into Reiki kept coming loud and strong, and Lavender went from Reiki Level 2 and 3 trainings, to an 8-month long Reiki mastership training. The day she graduated as a full Reiki master, she felt the energies of the 3 original Japanese Reiki masters come down, supporting and encouraging her, telling her this is what she came to this planet to do in this lifetime. There is no moment she feels more in her element than when she is in session, giving Reiki, passing on the same divine nurturing full-spirit hug that first visited her with that brief forehead touch on the yoga mat in Brooklyn.
Mama Cacao, The Third of the Healing Trifecta
Lavender’s initiation journey with cacao began many years ago in New York, when she sat in a traditional Mayan cacao ceremony for the first time, and felt the clear, loving, motherly energy of cacao’s divine feminine spirit come through the drink. She began sitting in bi-weekly ceremonies and deepened her relationship with this sacred plant, its indigenous heritage, and herself. Cacao’s nurturing spirit assisting her in cutting out toxins and patterns from her life that no longer served her, and gave her the tools to dedicate herself fully to the healing path.
Eventually, Lavender trained to become a cacao ceremonialist under the Mayan Tzu’tu’jil tribe’s lineage, learning about the Mayan calendar, cosmovision, and sacred traditions surrounding cacao. She tasted a fresh cacao bean for the first time in the cacao jungles of Costa Rica, and she spent time with the Tzu’tu’jil tribe in their homeland of San Pedro, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, sitting in prayer and ceremony with the very tribe through which she found her connection to cacao’s sacred spirit, deepening her understanding and relationship with the plant & with the indigenous wisdom around it.
It wasn’t until she moved to the volcanic neverland of Big Island, Hawaii that Lavender began fermenting and processing cacao from the pods, and singing and drumming her gratitude and prayers to cacao trees in recognition of her Mayan spirit family. This exploration and deepening of her walk with ceremonial cacao led her to the beginning of Goddess Cacao:: the making of her own mindful chocolate, and the reminder that cacao is always sacred, and can always be a ritual, and always comes back to the Mayan ancestors from which it first came, in every single form it is experienced.
It is these three main healing modules: Herbal Medicine, Reiki + Cacao, that infused in harmony together to create the specific healing style that Lavender works with, spreading light, love and medicine tools to all that desire to step forth on their own self-healing journey.
The Origin of Nightlight
Nightlight Wellness was born while Lavender was an active member of the spiritual community in New York. As someone who has chosen to walk a sober, plant medicine path, she noticed there was a lack of non-alcoholic options at events and dances. She wanted there to be a junction between party culture and wellness, and she was determined to create a reality of mindful nightlife. She began setting up an herbal sanctuary station at dances and parties, to give attendees an option to feel into their bodies and expand through plant allies instead of substances. Nightlight Wellness began as a pop-up herbal elixir bar, and soon expanded to be a pop-up Reiki healing and oracle booth, a traveling herbal apothecary, and a center for ceremony and community.
Now universal, our mission is the same: To allow individuals access to medicinal, uplifting, natural tools that will empower you to clear your mind, rise above blockages and become one with your higher self.