Shannon Knorr
Founder of Body, Root & Soul, Shannon completed her Pilates certification in 2003 through PhysicalMind and Balanced Body, Gyrotonic Level 1 in 2005, and received her Dance/Movement Therapy degree in 2000 at Naropa Institute. She completed a 500 hour Advanced Yoga Studies program completing her certification in Iyengar inspired Yoga at The Yoga Room, Berkeley in 2014 as well as completing several scoliosis certifications, and Movement Medicine trainings, learning the deep work of rehabilitation, what Pilates was really created for. She is also a Tamalpa Institute Level 2 graduate, and is a certified Tamalpa practitioner. She has also studied and learned various release techniques, somatic meditation, mindfulness practices, Qi Gong, Reiki, Restorative Yoga, expressive arts and dance, Yamuna Body Rolling, nervous system rebalancing as well as being a LifeArt Process® practitioner. She is a somatic educator and guide and an ISMETA member and practitioner (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association)
Shannon currently is completing her Masters Degree in Somatic Psychology, working towards her Somatic and Expressive Arts Movement Therapist Certification and license. She continually studies movement and anatomy, with emphasis on embodiment practices, nervous system rebalancing, trauma work, scoliosis, plant medicine, ancestral healing, expressive arts and much more.
Shannon herself has scoliosis as well as other physical issues since childhood, chronic illness and pain, which brought her into the Pilates and Yoga methods. She herself has also struggled with anxiety, PTSD, asthma and chronic pain, and found tools to help her body become the refuge and friend it was designed to be. Shannon fully believes our bodies want to come into balance, we just need to show up for our body to begin this lifelong journey of embodiment.
Using the pilates and yoga methods, Shannon specializes in scoliosis, sciatica, and back and sports injuries, but she loves working with people at all fitness levels; from the professional athlete to the post surgery client, to the client going through chemotherapy.
Shannon herself is a breast cancer survivor and her movement practice of Yoga, Pilates along with guided meditation and expressive arts practices saved her during her time in and following treatment. She believes fully in her work and teaches directly from her own experience and heart.
Shannon also offers many different modalities as she has studied wide and broad within the healing arts and the wisdom of the body. See below examples of what her sessions entail. She is also the guided meditation teacher at the Women's Cancer Resource Center in Berkeley. She believes rest and learning to relax are just as important as adding movement into our lives and helps women learn to breathe deeply and find ease within breath and body, while helping them reclaim their connection to their bodies and their surrounding environments, reclaiming our belonging to ourselves, our bodies and to the earth.
She believes movement is for every body and that experiencing the healing power of movement positively impacts how you live, feel and show up in your life. Shannon fully believes that these practices are building a relationship. It is not a pill you take once and you are cured. We are learning to cultivate and deepen our relationship to ourselves, our bodies, our stories and our environments in which we are a part of. These practices are about learning ways and tools to help us navigate the multiple layers of ourselves and our bodies. Exploring the emotional, physical, dream, mental, ancestral and spiritual bodies. Accessing our own resources and inner connections. The more we know and embody ourselves, the more we can feel the connection of ourselves to the greater universe and truly know our purpose. Cultivating our inner terrain of our bodies, as our health depends on it. Our terrain, our inner environment is who we are. Embodied movement and practices carry over into our everyday lives, so we can live a more embodied and compassionate life. What Shannon calls, full embodied living.
The breath is our guide into the body
Shannon offers a multitude of movement and somatic sessions. Sessions are designed specifically for YOUR needs and may include any combination below. Shannon is a functional movement guide, movement coach and specialist and somatic guide
PHYSICAL ALIGNMENT
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Pilates, Yoga, connective tissue repatterining, traction techniques, and other movement modalities helping those with back pain, injuries, pelvic diaphragm issues, and more. Specializing in back care and scoliosis, strength, stability, fluidity and mobility work and training. Functional movement specialist and guide.
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Restorative Yoga, Breathing Awareness, Learning to breathe naturally, finding our natural way of breath, full, relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing. Increasing body awareness, interception and proprioception, developing kinesthetic intelligence. Mobility, fluidity and subtle body explorations and movement, great for those with limited movement abilities, as well as those with illness or life transitions such as chemotherapy. Somatic yoga and developing body awareness.
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Guidance and support helping those to establish a movement practice, looking at blockages and uncovering our inner drive, commitment and what motivates us. Help and guidance in designing a home movement practice and home exercise program.
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Posture and alignment guidance, body awareness and mindfulness in movement. Posture also greatly affecting our nervous systems and the vagus nerve. Finding our way back to center, and our central axis and channel. Focusing on Psoas and coming into a dynamic, supple, fluid and responsive Psoas muscle.
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Yoga Ropes Wall Sessions, where we use the Yoga Ropes Wall, giving the body ultimate traction while learning how to support ourselves in this traction, what I call, active participation traction. This is great for back pain, disc and nerve issues, sciatica, scoliosis and more. The Ropes Wall allow spaciousness, unwinding and full body integration.
SOUL ALIGNMENT
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Somatic sessions to help find our inner alignment to our life's purpose, meaning making, improving our quality of life, deepening presence, authenticity and overall somatic awareness.
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Building resilience through somatic awareness while gaining tools to help us embody our voice, embody our truth, expand our capacity and capabilities and expand ways of being into a life with more self actualization and sovereignty. Developing self agency, self awareness and the ability to create change in our lives.
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Building a container, working on boundaries and relational tools of grounding, connecting, expression, releasing, integration and communication.
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Using movement, sounding and somatic practices, exploring our inner bodies through the expressive arts, movement and performance ritual, meditations that help guide the soul back into the body, and finding its natural rhythm again and into the rhythm of our own lives.
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Somatic sessions where we explore the inner terrain of the body through the LifeArt Process®, using the creative process including creative writing, drawing, dance and storytelling, while reweaving ourselves back to wholeness while integrating our personal stories and mythologies using art, dance, movement coaching and somatic explorations.
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Somatic meditation, learning to meditate with focus on the body and the breath, we follow and give the mind the task to stay present and witness the body being breathed, ultimately bringing us into the present moment and building our capacity and capability to feel and sense on a much deeper level in the present moment.
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Guided meditation and guided imagery; being guided into deep relaxation then into guided meditation, where one can explore their inner terrain, speaking to deeper parts of ourself, receiving images, messages and clarity. Working with dreams in this manner, beginning to explore our unconsciousness which lays just below the surface of our beings, and is often unseen, yet is most likely running the show.
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Guidance and support helping those to establish a spiritual or meditation practice, looking at blockages, core beliefs, while uncovering what we are committed and devoted to. Locating what it is we need, want and desire in our lives. Working with elements of shadow, and ways to integrate parts of our stories and selves back into wholeness. Beginning to accept all parts of ourselves. What needs tending to? What lies at the center of our hearts?
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Body awareness and tools to help with trauma and PTSD, including mindfulness practices and other nervous system rebalancing techniques, somatic resourcing and re-patterning. Learning and cultivating deep body awareness on many levels, from sensations, emotional, mental, imaginal and spiritual. Learning to restructure and rebuild our nervous systems. Deepening our capacity and building resilience for our bodies to hold and adapt in the places where we may need growth, ease and transformation
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Embodiment practices that help us come into greater alignment with our beings, while finding a greater sense of wholeness and wellness while gaining access to our greatest resource within, our own bodies in relationship to the earth. Embodying and trusting our belonging and locating our prayer and finding more heart centered living.
Pilates is a movement system that puts emphasis on breathing and alignment, while developing a strong core or center,
while improving coordination and balance. The system includes thousands of exercises, which can be modified in range of difficulty from beginning
to advanced. The intensity of one's individual Pilates work, will gradually increase over time, and the workout is forever changing, so one never gets bored,
and one's body is consistently growing and developing a bigger movement vocabulary.