Is AI Making us More Human?

Hi GDL Fam!

As the rise of AI gets more and more pronounced, I am finding that the gap gets both wider and smaller to the incredible architecture of our human intelligence and design.

The more the machines learn, the more I find myself turning toward the intelligence I was born into.

The body.

A system that senses, adapts, protects, remembers, and repairs, all while responding to an environment that is changing every second.

I have been in health and fitness since I was 18 years old. But the conditions for the way I view the body started much earlier than that.

Let me take you back.

It Started in the Kitchen

I was raised Christian Scientist.

This isn't Scientology. It's a type of Christianity founded by Mary Baker Eddy, and one of its foundations was that we could heal the body with the mind.

So I was born at home. And I was raised with something else, too: the foundation of intuitive eating, and using the body as a pendulum to test what foods, supplements, and environments were supportive for health and healing.

When I would come home from school sick, I would step into the kitchen and my mother would ask me what I was craving.

Sometimes it was a bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes it was avocado.

But every time, I felt better when I listened.

Not from the mind. I didn't have the "why" yet as to what was good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

I listened to the body.

And I felt better each time.

These conditions were unique in my upbringing, and I am truly grateful for them. I didn't approach life or my body the way many of my peers did, and that was because of my parents.

I Was That Kid

My mother taught nutrition when I was in second and third grade to help pay tuition for the Catholic private school I attended in Marin County.

So I was one of those kids with carrot sticks and rye bread with almond butter on my sandwiches. I traded my carrot sticks with one of the boys in my class for his chips whenever he would let me.

We also had one of the largest juicers you've ever seen in our kitchen, and I remember walking in at meal times and being handed a glass of carrot, beet, and celery juice by my mother to finish before dinner began.

Thanks to my mother... I have great eyesight, if anyone is wondering.

My earlier years shaped a certain way of relating to food. But like most young adults, I also rebelled, and would gorge on chocolate at Easter, Christmas, and any holiday that had the treats we didn't generally keep in our house.

I didn't quite yet have an understanding of how food worked in the body, or the mathematical expression of nutrition, or the patterns of behavior that weave into our relationships with food.

That understanding was still years away.

Then I Tried to Fix My Body

Fast forward to puberty.

Cravings rising. Parents divorcing. Hormones changing, and my body showing it.

I was generally around 20 pounds overweight during these years, and I was drawn to diet pills, SlimFast, Weight Watchers, and the Master Cleanse, to name a few.

All in an effort to "fix" my body.

I would learn much later that every one of those attempts was a bandaid that wasn't addressing the root cause at all.

The root cause being emotions. Blood sugar rising and falling. Meals that were imbalanced for the activity I was living from day to day.

One of my favorite lunches as a young adult was a to-go box of rice with peanut sauce along side a white chocolate mocha. Wow… those were the days. 

I was enjoying the naïveté of eating without an understanding of what I was putting in my body. And all of the layers of emotion I was using food to numb.

Then My Body Changed the Direction of My Life

I was introduced to strength training at 16 by a boyfriend, and I have been in the gym ever since.

At 18, a severe concussion from a car accident thrust me into rehabilitation through Pilates and myofascial release. And I was set on a path to experience firsthand the incredible depth of intelligence the body holds.

For the first time, my body wasn't a project to solve or to shrink.
It was something to build a relationship with. 

I got a taste of how exercise could not only heal injury, but how it could change the shape of my body, to a certain extent.

I thought I had found the answer.

I had found one layer.

When the Mystery Began to Disappear

It wasn't until my late 20s that I discovered the science of macronutrients, and the patterns it would reveal.

Patterns of hiding. Patterns of excess. Patterns of deficiency.

And all of a sudden, the mystery of the 20 added pounds I was carrying began to disappear, and what was left was my choices and my behavior patterns.

This realization was both liberating and frustrating.

And this is when I began embarking on mindset work. The kind that would force me to look at stored emotions, memories, and beliefs I had about myself and others that were running unconscious behavior patterns.

At around 30, I became a nutrition coach, and I have been leading both clients and coaches through their own journeys ever since:

NUTRITION → EXERCISE → BEHAVIOR CHANGE

Because they all matter equally. In my experience, focusing on just one of these leaves you with more questions than answers.

But all three together produced a certain type of confidence and magic I had never even dreamed about.

My body started changing. Weight started coming off. My emotions began to regulate. My PMS and cramps started shifting. And I became addicted to feeling energized, confident and in relationship with my body.

I thought the picture was complete.

Then another layer began to reveal itself.

The Language Without Words

A few years ago, another layer of the health spectrum came into my life. The layer of trauma and emotion.

You might think this falls under mindset, I surely did. 

However the unfolding world of emotions and the somatic layer brought me somewhere much, much deeper than the mind alone had yet to show me.

I began to build a language with my body that didn't have words. It had sensations. It had memory. And it produced profound results in my life and my reality that none of the physical protocols ever could.

Because I would watch clients have all of the information, all of the education, understand their behaviors… and still feel stuck inside of them.

It was only when we started stacking all of it together that I began to see a new pattern emerging.

Nutrition as the consistent foundation that reveals our patterns and beliefs inside of coaching containers. And the somatic imprints as the engine of those very patterns, operating in the subconscious through a protective mechanism, trying to keep us safe from events that, many times, no longer exist.

I have seen this now with clients who have moved through Awaken Your Nutrition over the years. Even clients who come back to revisit the program when they are in a new phase of life.

Because the patterns that keep us in a certain cycle don't disappear within a day.

They cycle just like the seasons. And where one season produces growth, another produces reflection and insight.

So Let Me Ask You

If a machine can learn, adapt, and evolve… what about the intelligence you already live inside of?

When was the last time you stepped into the kitchen and asked your body what it was craving, instead of telling it what it should want?

What is the pattern you keep cycling back to, the one you have tried to think your way out of?

And what if your body was never the problem to be fixed, but the most intelligent teacher you will ever have access to?

So Here Is the Full Circle Moment

What took me 20 years to understand about the incredible intelligence of the body, and of course I am learning more with each day and year, is woven into the 12 weeks of Awaken Your Nutrition.

• You will learn strategies of nutrient timing and balance. The practical things. Dining out, reading nutrition labels, exploring the grocery store, recipes, cooking for yourself and your family.

• You will learn exercise science and have a curated program built for you and your lifestyle. Your current fitness level, the types of movement you love, what you are already doing, and what will actually move you closer to your goals, sustainably.

• You will have accountability and reflection from a coach who is dedicated to your health and your success. This is not a small thing, especially for the caretakers out there, which so many of our clients are. The ones who have dedicated their lives to caring for everyone else while their own health is suffering. This is where a coach gets to be this for you. And your family will thank you for making this choice, because you feeling better impacts everyone else in your life.

• And you will finally meet the mindset and emotional components that are quietly driving cravings, decisions, and self-sabotage tendencies. The areas that keep you cycling and yielding the same results you have gotten on and off for years.

Your body is a temple. And this program is the foundation for building your relationship with it.

Which means building a relationship with you. Putting you first, and having the dedicated support to do that.

And We're Not Doing This Just to Weigh Less

This is the part that excites me most now.

We're not nourishing ourselves to hit a number. We're not building muscle just to change our composition. Health isn't the finish line.

We're doing it because we want energy for the businesses we're building. Strength for the adventures we haven't taken yet. Vitality for our relationships. Capacity for our families. Creativity. Intimacy. Purpose. Freedom.

More life.

Maybe this season isn't about making ourselves smaller. Maybe it's about building the physical, emotional, and energetic capacity to become more fully ourselves.

Our bodies aren't projects to finish. They're the vessels through which we experience our lives.

The Women Forming Around This

We have a beautiful group of women forming for our September 21st cohort.Women just like you.

They want the answers. They want to feel confident, manage perimenopause and menopause symptoms, lose fat, build muscle, and create a vibrant body that holds them for life.

This isn't a quick fix. It's an investment in your future.

Women who work with us don't go off and do another diet again. There is no reason for them to. They know the what, the why, and the how of navigating the language of their bodies.

This is freedom. This is embodied wisdom.

And this is the time.

→ APPLY FOR AWAKEN YOUR NUTRITION + RECEIVE $500 OFF Register before September 18th. Our next cohort begins September 21st.

We can build machines that learn. But no machine will ever feel your energy drop in the afternoon, or notice your shoulders rise before a hard conversation, or know that what you need today is a bowl of oatmeal.

Only you can do that.

So maybe AI isn't making us less human. Maybe it is reminding us of the incredible architecture we were given all along.

All love, Shannon

Founder of The Green Door Life | Architect of Embodied Change

P.S. If something inside of you has been quietly saying, It's time to take care of me too… that is the body speaking. She has been talking the whole time. Maybe this is the moment to listen.