Posted on March 28, 2024

Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. My name is Christine Nih'shaw, founder of Riversong Nutrition & Wellness, a practice that offers guided, realistic support on your journey to holistic, sustainable whole-body health for life. Riversong Nutrition & Wellness focuses on creating a path as bio-individual as you so you can reach your goals of a more balanced and satisfying life through whole-body healing and positive transformation. 

I have been in the healthcare field for 30 years, and I'm so excited to bring those years of experience, sensitivity, and knowledge to the local and global community in a way that honors mission, values, and ancestry. 

For too many of us, we have fallen victim to the dangerous cycle of modern convenience foods & diets, stressful home, work, and relationship environments, and limited, restorative free time. Add to that chronic pain and illness, and our already-busy lives can no longer handle the burden, and we're left feeling out of control and helpless, so we resort to prescription medications that cause side effects worse than the original problem, fad diets that aren't sustainable or realistic, staying in toxic relationships (personal or professional), or worse, accepting to live with the situation because it's what we know and are used to. But there's a better way!

Why am I so passionate about helping others find their path? A little about my journey. I'm a children's author & illustrator, and while I work on a number of projects in various genres, I'm also a strong advocate for preserving our indigenous languages and cultures. As a woman of Siksika (Blackfeet) and Onondaga Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) blood, this is incredibly important to me. I started working with a small group in the Lakota Nation several years ago to illustrate some of their stories. The books are used in the classroom to teach the children their ancestral language. While visiting the Red Cloud Lakota School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, I was struck by the limited access the people had to a local grocery store with fresh produce and healthy choices, the amount of obesity and medical issues that were never part of our heritage, and the scarcity of medical services. 

I returned home and really started to notice the people around me: family, friends, coworkers, and patients with constant complaints about chronic pain, illness, and stress. One of my coworkers suggested doing a fitness program with a gut-cleansing protocol as a group. I've always struggled with maintaining a consistent fitness routine, but I liked the idea of accountability as a group. 

For four weeks, we followed a simple workout plan and cut certain items out of our daily food intake: alcohol, sugar, gluten, corn, processed, caffeine, and dairy, in order to "reset" our gut. At the end of the day, you could slowly add an item back into your diet or replace it with something else. I lost 34 pounds in a month! I found I actually enjoyed the exercise routines and started increasing their intensity. I chose not to reintroduce some items and instead found healthy replacements like honey or stevia instead of sugar, for example. I started making time to do the things I enjoy, like painting, writing, and...I went back to school and got certified as a nutrition and health coach. My patients started asking me what I was doing because they saw the positive change in me, too. I started sharing some of my tips and tricks, and then it hit me! Why don't I share what I know with more people?! So here I am, ready to work with you on your own journey. Let's make it together!