We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shannon Tunnell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shannon, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I am an endoscopy nurse who first heard about pelvic floor physical therapy from one of my GI docs during a procedure on a young healthy patient with chronic constipation. I was wondering why they were having a colonoscopy for constipation since I myself have IBS with chronic constipation and have not been scoped. They were ruling out any obvious causes/blockages and then were referring them to pelvic floor physical therapy. During my yoga teacher training I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do as my specialty, and I kept coming back to pelvic floor yoga the more I heard how backlogged the physical therapists were and how many people were waiting to be seen for their many different pelvic floor issues. After taking the training for pelvic floor dysfunction yoga, I am now a firm believer that everyone can benefit from this regardless if they have dysfunction or not. There are so many factors that can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction like: vaginal birth, incontinence (stress, urgency/frequency), organ prolapse, having surgeries that cause organ displacements (hysterectomy, anatomical sex change, colon/rectal surgery), pain with sexual intercourse, chronic constipation, erectile dysfunction, menopause and physical trauma directly to the area just to name a few. The list goes on and on as I talk to more and more people about my work. Some medical conditions can cause dysfunction as well like Sjogren’s, Ehler’s Danlos and other auto immune/connective tissue disorders. Pelvic Floor health and dysfunction is widely misdiagnosed and under studied but is starting to have its moment. I am excited to be one of the first few to bring this to the forefront.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been a nurse for over 13 years and have practiced yoga for 14 years. I have worked in several different areas within the hospital system including: medical surgical, trauma, intensive care units (medical, trauma and neurology), cardiac progressive care, post anesthesia/recovery room and finally in endoscopy/GI (gastrointestinal). I was a travel nurse for 3 years and lived in 6 different states during that time. I have been to all but 4 of the states throughout my traveling days, including Alaska and Hawaii. While this all sounds amazing and like the perfect lifestyle, I am looking back now with open eyes at what it really was: early signs of burn out. I love learning about the human body and how things work and how to fix issues. However, the work itself was no longer in alignment with my current path. The longer I tried to hold on to the steady income, benefits and security (especially through my first ever pandemic), my body rejected it more and more. Finally I decided to listen to my body, but by this time I had almost every chronic pain you can imagine from years of chronic tension and stress. So, I took the leap and looked fear in the eye and decided to step back from full time nursing to per diem knowing I’d lose my health care and retirement benefits, but to this day this is something I do not regret. I know I am on the right path now. I feel that my story and/or my yoga sessions alone can help the many people out there who are in the same boat or not regardless of their own situation. Yoga, and pelvic floor yoga in particular, can help anyone who comes in with an open mind and is willing to do the work to engage in a little self care.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The major lesson I have had to unlearn is that I do not have to keep up with or have the same goals as everyone else. The conditioning of society is to hit certain milestones and in a specific order to be considered successful in life. I am redefining my own definition of what success means and looks like for me. This is an ever evolving definition as well as I continue to be a student of my passions and interests. The backstory of this lesson involves some high level burnout from my time as a full time nurse, well before the pandemic highlighted the many inefficiencies in healthcare and burn out became a cliche word. I stayed in this role because of the fear of losing the job security, the benefits and the fear of the unknown. What else I would do to be “successful” were words I muttered over and over. Then finally one day I knew I was done, I still didn’t know what I was going to do or how to do anything other than nursing, but I knew I was done and I took the leap. I transitioned to per diem from full time and accepted my fate, whatever that was. The rest is continuing to unfold for me. I have learned to surrender and to not rush things, and time and time again I see the seeds I have planted starting to sprout and bloom.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for me have been through the doctors I work with and the referrals to their patients with pelvic floor dysfunction. I also work at a yoga studio with several pre/post natal and new mom classes that have been successful in promoting my specialty.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.holisticrootsyoga.com
• Instagram: holistic roots yoga
• Facebook: holistic roots yoga

Image Credits
Shannon Tunnell