Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas has led a colorful life full of twists and turns. From starting out as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines (TWA) to becoming the president and founder of the International Hypnosis Federation and authoring 27 books, she views her life as divinely guided.

“I've just had a very interesting and complex life of being Shelly from Torrance,” Stockwell-Nicholas says. “I don't know how else to say it, but I just feel like I'm divinely guided, and everything works perfectly, and I don't have to do anything. Everything [just] happens.”

Stockwell-Nicholas’s interest in hypnosis began when she was a flight attendant for TWA, where she encountered a common issue: her own struggle with eating junk food.

“ I would pick up somebody's tray on the airplane and bring it to the gallery and eat their dessert,” she says. “[I realized it was] not a good thing. So I decided I'd go see a hypnotist to see if I could stop eating junk food.”

Stockwell-Nicholas visited a hypnotist for the first time and he put her in a trance and instructed her to not eat sugar.

“It worked,” Stockwell-Nicholas says. “I didn't eat sugar for a year. And I said: How could this be? How could somebody talk to me and say, ‘Don't do something’ in a trance, and then it would work?”

Her curiosity now piqued, Stockwell-Nicholas began to explore the world of hypnosis, but she struggled to find much information. The literature on the subject was vague, so she revisited the hypnotist she had gone to before and asked for training.

“I learned what he did, which was nothing except count backwards from 100 and say, ‘Don't do something,’” she says.

While better training would come down the road for Stockwell-Nicholas, she ventured into the world of hypnotism. Still working as a flight attendant, she was somewhat of the “in-house hypnotist” for the aviation industry, as she was requested by the flight attendant union to hypnotize people in the industry for common issues such as stress and jet lag.

Eventually, Stockwell-Nicholas furthered her training and expanded her business outside the airlines. Though she was busy, she realized she was not pursuing other career paths that she wanted to explore as well. She had been telling people she was writing a book of poetry, and she decided it was time to transform it into a reality.

“I didn't know how to type, so it was all written on scraps of paper,” she says. “So I decided if hypnosis works so well for everybody else, why don't I hypnotize myself? So I did. I hypnotized myself, saying that I would write this book, and this book would become really popular. I believed it because I hypnotized myself. One of the things about hypnosis [is] you come to believe the stories you tell in trance. So I came out of trance, and I went and bought clothes for the talk shows. I had my girlfriend type up my scraps of paper, and then I sent it to publishers, and I got incredible rejections.”

Publishers liked her work, but they were concerned poetry would not sell. So instead, Stockwell-Nicholas moved forward with self-publishing. She then sent her book to a top radio host of the time, Dr. Toni Grant.

“I wrote a note. I said: I wrote this book, and I think it's really important. It'll really help people love themselves,” Stockwell-Nicholas says.

It worked. The show featured Stockwell-Nicholas’s book, and her book became popular, even going into a reprint.

“I was on a layover in New York, and my first interview was in Chicago airport, in my TWA uniform, and I was at a phone bay with a bunch of businessmen,” she says. “I did my first radio talk show interview on national radio. After that, I was on many, many, many, many radio and television talk shows.”

Since then, Stockwell-Nicholas has become an avid writer. After starting with poetry books, she began writing how-to books, a genre that attracted her because of their practicality and ability to make people’s lives better. Her books are rooted in her knowledge of hypnosis.

“What's beautiful about them is they help people improve their lives, and they're hypnotically sound, which means you keep turning the pages because you're learning about yourself,” she says. “That was really worthwhile because as I see it, my divine guidance tells me I'm here to help people love themselves. That's my job. So as a hypnotist, that's what I did. As a flight attendant, I helped people have a good time. And as a writer, my job is to help people celebrate themselves and learn better ways to communicate.”

Stockwell-Nicholas writes with a sense of humor, and she still includes poetry, as well as her own illustrations, throughout her how-to books. They also feature exercises that readers can incorporate into their lives.

Amid her many pursuits, Stockwell-Nicholas has also worked as a psychic, even assisting the police in some cases. She channels for clients regularly so her spirit guide, Kendra, can provide advice through her.

“Everybody has the gift, but they don't always want to develop it because it's weird,” she says. “I mean, you're not going to go around talking in a funny voice. It's weird. I'm willing to do that because I think it benefits people. I don't like to give advice. However, Kendra tends to give very helpful advice.”

Stockwell-Nicholas has found success in her field, even being inducted into the International Hypnosis Hall of Fame in 2022 for her more than 50 years in the industry. Her books in hypnosis are used for instruction around the world, and she herself has become an instructor over the years as well.

She will even be teaching some classes, including a guided meditation and relaxation class, at the local UCLA campus set to come to the Hill.

In all of her pursuits, Stockwell-Nicholas has been guided by her passion for her work and her worldview. At 79 years old, she remains young at heart and is still working and writing. She does not plan to stop anytime soon.

“I really think that the most important thing you do is laugh and have fun,” she says. “If it's not fun, I won't do it. I think we're here to have a jolly good time. And I just think that everything is divinely guided to celebrate this earth walk that we're on along the way.”

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