I Can Feel It in My Bones...
Hi friends,
We're back from California, and apparently a few days in L.A. and Palm Springs was enough to send me down approximately seventeen new existential rabbit holes.
We tried a modality I'd never experienced before. I found myself unexpectedly thinking about my grandmother in the desert. Rafa and I attended a wedding completely sober. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a stranger asked me a question that made me hear myself differently.
So...just your average weekend away.
Today's Lineup:
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Every certification seems to open five more doors
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Palm Springs made me think about what we inherit
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Apparently, sobriety made me realize how sensitive I am
Every Door I Walk Through Opens Five More
Before heading to Palm Springs, Rafa and I went to a group Spinal Energetics session in Long Beach.
If you're wondering what that is, you're in good company. Until recently, I didn't know much about it either.
It was actually a modality I had been considering studying, so rather than immediately signing myself up for another certification, I wanted to experience it first.
During the session, my body began to tremor and shake in ways I wasn't consciously creating. Subjectively, it felt almost like a charge moving through my body or tension releasing.
It was interesting. But in the days afterward, I didn't notice any profound shift that I could confidently attribute to the session.
And I think that's important to say too.
Exploring something doesn't mean I automatically need to believe in it, teach it, or add it to my work. I get to experience it, stay curious, and see what happens.
Later that weekend, someone new asked me a question I don't think I'd ever heard myself answer before:
Why do you have so many certifications?
Fair question.
I've spent more than 20 years studying health and human development, and the answer that came out surprised me:
Every door I walk through seems to open five more.
Movement opened one. Nutrition opened another. Behavior led to beliefs and identity. Then came the nervous system, emotions, somatics, spirituality and consciousness.
I realized I've never really been collecting certifications.
I've been following a trail.
There's a greater mystery of being human that I feel like I've been trying to understand for most of my life. The strange part is that sometimes I feel like I can sense the bigger picture before I can explain it.
I can feel it in my bones.
Nutrition. Movement. Emotion. Behavior. Relationships. Environment. Spirituality. Consciousness.
They don't feel like separate subjects to me. They feel like pieces of some greater divine architecture.
And every experience gives me another piece.
Maybe I'll spend my entire life putting that puzzle together.
I actually hope I do. How boring would it be if we figured out the entire mystery of being human by 45?
I Felt My Grandmother in the Desert
Then we arrived in Palm Springs.
Holy shit, it was hot.
It was around 104 degrees, and suddenly taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon seemed like an intelligent survival strategy.
But the desert was also incredibly beautiful.
Sitting outside in the sun, I started thinking about my grandmother. She lived in Phoenix for much of my life, and something about the heat, landscape and light brought her back to me.
I wondered what she felt when she looked at that kind of landscape. Why did she love it? What did that land give her?
I've become increasingly curious about lineage lately. Not just what our families intentionally teach us, but the beliefs, behaviors, memories, fears and dreams that seem to echo across generations.
Maybe now, as I get older, I'm beginning to understand parts of her that I couldn't understand when she was alive.
I didn't need to explain the feeling.
I just let myself feel connected to her.
Sometimes understanding ourselves means looking forward at who we're becoming. Sometimes it means looking backward at the people whose lives helped create ours.
Apparently, Sobriety Made Me Realize How Sensitive I Am
And then there was the wedding.
Alcohol wasn't exactly a casual acquaintance in my previous life.
I spent years bartending and managing bars in San Francisco. In 2010, I managed a bar across from AT&T Park when the Giants won the World Series. We could do around $75,000 in alcohol sales in a single day.
I've spent a lot of time around drinking.
And I was also really good at participating.
Now, Rafa and I don't drink.
Being sober in an environment where most people are drinking makes you notice things differently. And this time, I noticed something about myself.
I am incredibly sensitive.
Sensitive to sound, people, energy and stimulation.
It made me wonder whether alcohol once helped me turn the volume down.
I've learned that when stimulation becomes too much, I can disconnect from my body. Alcohol may have made it easier not to notice when I'd already reached my limit.
This time, I stayed present. I danced. I talked to people. I had fun.
And eventually my body said, I'm done.
So we left.
No pushing through. No overriding myself. No story about what we “should” be doing.
That felt really good.
And it's actually one of the deeper threads woven into Awaken Your Nutrition, which begins again this week.
Yes, we talk about nutrition, strength training and habits.
But underneath all of that is something much more intimate:
How do you relate to yourself?
Can you become curious about your body instead of constantly trying to control it? Can you notice how your environment affects you? Can you recognize hunger, energy, stress, fatigue and sensitivity as information?
To me, self-care is learning to know yourself well enough to recognize what care actually looks like for you.
That's also why I think coaching can be such a beautiful luxury.
There's something powerful about having another human in your corner, holding the goal of your evolution alongside you and helping you see what can be difficult to see on your own.
And One Little Travel Win
I tracked throughout the entire trip.
Airports. Hotels. Restaurants. Wedding. Social events. Every meal eaten out.
When I got home, I stepped on the scale and was the exact same weight as when I left.
For my current goals, that felt like a win.
I also got my workouts in without making them a big deal. Sometimes I had a gym. Sometimes I had a hotel room. I worked with what I had.
And that's the kind of health I care about.
Can what we're practicing actually work inside our real lives?
Because our lives don't happen in controlled environments.
They happen at weddings and airports. During vacations and busy workweeks. At restaurants, celebrations and in seasons when everything changes.
That's what we're practicing inside Awaken Your Nutrition too.
Not how to follow a perfect plan.
How to know yourself well enough to navigate your actual life.
The Mystical and the Practical
One final thing from the wedding stayed with me.
We spent time with two very different couples.
One looked like the quintessential Instagram version of spirituality and knew all the language of consciousness, metaphysics and plant medicine.
The other appeared much more conventional. High-level careers. Corporate world. Yet our conversation naturally moved into awareness, sensitivity and some of the larger questions about being human.
The contrast fascinated me.
I'm becoming less interested in how “spiritual” someone looks and much more interested in how our inner work shows up in the way we live.
Can we explore consciousness and still pay our bills?
Can we be curious about subtle experiences without losing our grounding?
Can we respect what science can tell us while remaining curious about what we don't understand yet?
I don't think we have to choose.
The mystical and the practical. The measurable and the felt. Science and wonder.
Maybe that's why nutrition has never really been just nutrition to me.
Food is one doorway. Movement is another. Our habits, emotions, relationships, environment, beliefs and sensitivities are others.
I'm not looking for one modality that explains everything.
I'm interested in the architecture connecting all of it.
Awaken Your Nutrition is one place where we get to explore that relationship with ourselves.
Elevated Frequency is becoming another.
We don't have to have all the answers.
We get to explore, experience, question, and sometimes change our minds.
Maybe, piece by piece, we find language for something we've somehow known all along.
Nice chat. Let's do it again next week.
Until then, follow the doors that make you curious. You never know what part of yourself might be waiting on the other side.
All love,
Shannon
P.S. The door is open.
Our next Awaken Your Nutrition cohort begins this week.
If you're feeling that pull toward having someone in your corner, not simply handing you another nutrition plan, but helping you understand your body, build strength, change your body composition, navigate real life and build a deeper relationship with yourself, this is for you.
You'll have your own coach alongside you, plus our team bringing their different perspectives and experiences into the weekly group calls.
There's something incredibly intimate about having another human hold the goal of your evolution alongside you.
If you've been thinking about it and feeling the pull, there's no more waiting.
Book a Discovery Call
It's time. The door is open.
