Awakened Body
In 2022, Hayes Nutrition became Awakened Body.
This transition has been slowly evolving, as has my experience, my own personal work, and continued learning over the years. My skill set has grown to encompass more than just of a “dietitian.” I have expanded my work, focused at a much deeper level than just looking at what someone is eating or how they are moving their body. I explore the “why”- Why does someone use food and exercise behaviors? Often a part of the “why” is trauma, whether a big T or little t, and presents itself physically, mentally, and physiologically. Dieting alone presents these traumas to the body and the mind.
In 2020, I began the training to become a Somatic Experiencing Practioner. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented therapeutic approach to help heal trauma and other stress disorders. Trauma lives inside of the body. The states that occur with trauma-fight, flight, and freeze, stay stuck in the body. SE helps, in a very titrated way, to allow your body to complete these cycles that became your survival mechanisms when the trauma occurred.
As I ventured into my own somatic work, I found things that I had talked about for years in therapy shifted in a way that they were never able to. It was as if parts of me had awoken, released, and found freedom. Hence, Awakened Body.
Our bodies are incredible, magnificent vessels. When you begin to turn in and tune into your body for counsel, direction, and healing, you create an entirely different relationship with your body. My hope is to help you awaken to all the treasures your body holds for you. The resource, the restoration, the discovery that lives inside of you.
Through this work and healing, you find peace with your relationship with food, your body, and most importantly, yourself.
Finding Freedom with Food
Do you view yourself as good or bad based on what you eat?
Is your day dictated by the number on the scale?
Do you cycle on and off diets?
Do you feel like when you finally reach “that weight” or have “the desired body” you’ll be happy?
Do you have history of an eating disorder and still struggle to find peace with food and your body?
Do you feel that your body is “wrong” or “not enough”?
Do you view exercise as a way to change your body or as punishment?
If you answered “YES” to any of the above questions, you are have come to the RIGHT place!
What We Do: Somatic Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating is an anti-diet approach to food. It is a way to helpyou create a healthy, more kind relationship with food, your body and mind. Diet culture has led you to believe that you lack willpower, you’re not trying hard enough and that with pain, suffering and deprivation, you’ll have the results you’ve been striving for. And you maybe you lose the weight, but then you gain it all back. What diet culture does not tell you, is that diets are not sustainable. You find yourself being angry, distraught and frustrated and in a place of shame because you feel that you failed, all the while, it is the diet that has failed you, not the other way around.
Intuitive Eating helps you to heal from diet culture. Whether it is from growing up in a diet household, a past eating disorder, chronic dieting, or feeling confused on how to feed your body, intuitive eating gives you the tools to reconnect to the only expert of your body-YOU. It helps you recognize hunger, fullness, and satiety. Intuitive Eating helps you heal from the rules of food by giving yourself permission and attunement to your body. Intuitive Eating helps you heal your relationship with exercise from it being punitive to movement that feels fun and even joyful. You find respect and appreciation for your body, regardless of its size.
My goal is to help you find a balance with food and see how it fuels and nourishes your body. How food can make you feel good and energized versus full of guilt and shame. How reconnecting to your body and learning to listen helps you to rebuild the trust that was taken from you with dieting. My hope is to help you create a kind, loving relationship with food and your body.
I have created the Five Foundations to Healing Your Relationship with Food and Your Body, based on the principles of Intuitive Eating. I help you through these foundations using the principles of Intuitive Eating, along with the Somatic Experiencing method. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-centered approach to healing that cultivates an integrated connection with mind and body. I believe in the work that I have done with my clients, that these five foundations, in conjunction with SE, allow you to see the impact that dieting has made and guides you to reconnect and repair your relationship with food and your body.
The Five Foundations To Healing Your Relationship with Food and Your Body
- Witness the Wounds of Diet Culture
- Reconnect to Your Signals
- The Gift of Permission
- Feeling the Emotions You are Numbing
- Finding Forgiveness-Repairing the Relationship with Food and Your Body.
Finding peace with food and your body is a journey, but with the right tools and guidance, it can be yours.
Health at Every Size (HAES)
At Hayes Nutrition, we believe in the Health at Every Size approach. This approach rejects the use of weight, size, or BMI as a determinant of health. The principles of HAES include:
- Weight Inclusivity: All weight are accepted and we respect that there is diversity in body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
- Health Enhancement: We support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, as well as personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs.
- Respectful Care: Acknowledge the biases and stigma, and strive to end weight discrimination, weight stigma and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequalities.
- Eating for Well-being: Eating is based on hunger, satiety, pleasure and nutritional need and is flexible and individualized rather than an external eating plan that promotes weight loss/control.
- Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities and interests to engage in movement that is enjoyable, to the degree that they choose.
To read more about The Health At Every Size Approach click here.
Awakened Body
In 2022, Hayes Nutrition became Awakened Body.
This transition has been slowly evolving, as has my experience, my own personal work, and continued learning over the years. My skill set has grown to encompass more than just of a “dietitian.” I have expanded my work, focused at a much deeper level than just looking at what someone is eating or how they are moving their body. I explore the “why”- Why does someone use food and exercise behaviors? Often a part of the “why” is trauma, whether a big T or little t, and presents itself physically, mentally, and physiologically. Dieting alone presents these traumas to the body and the mind.
In 2020, I began the training to become a Somatic Experiencing Practioner. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented therapeutic approach to help heal trauma and other stress disorders. Trauma lives inside of the body. The states that occur with trauma-fight, flight, and freeze, stay stuck in the body. SE helps, in a very titrated way, to allow your body to complete these cycles that became your survival mechanisms when the trauma occurred.
As I ventured into my own somatic work, I found things that I had talked about for years in therapy shifted in a way that they were never able to. It was as if parts of me had awoken, released, and found freedom. Hence, Awakened Body.
Our bodies are incredible, magnificent vessels. When you begin to turn in and tune into your body for counsel, direction, and healing, you create an entirely different relationship with your body. My hope is to help you awaken to all the treasures your body holds for you. The resource, the restoration, the discovery that lives inside of you.
Through this work and healing, you find peace with your relationship with food, your body, and most importantly, yourself.
Finding Freedom with Food
Do you view yourself as good or bad based on what you eat?
Is your day dictated by the number on the scale?
Do you cycle on and off diets?
Do you feel like when you finally reach “that weight” or have “the desired body” you’ll be happy?
Do you have history of an eating disorder and still struggle to find peace with food and your body?
Do you feel that your body is “wrong” or “not enough”?
Do you view exercise as a way to change your body or as punishment?
If you answered “YES” to any of the above questions, you are have come to the RIGHT place!
What We Do: Somatic Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating is an anti-diet approach to food. It is a way to help you create a healthy, more kind relationship with food, your body and mind. Diet culture has led you to believe that you lack willpower, you’re not trying hard enough and that with pain, suffering and deprivation, you’ll have the results you’ve been striving for. And you maybe you lose the weight, but then you gain it all back. What diet culture does not tell you, is that diets are not sustainable. You find yourself being angry, distraught and frustrated and in a place of shame because you feel that you failed, all the while, it is the diet that has failed you, not the other way around.
Intuitive Eating helps you to heal from diet culture. Whether it is from growing up in a diet household, a past eating disorder, chronic dieting, or feeling confused on how to feed your body, intuitive eating gives you the tools to reconnect to the only expert of your body-YOU. It helps you recognize hunger, fullness, and satiety. Intuitive Eating helps you heal from the rules of food by giving yourself permission and attunement to your body. Intuitive Eating helps you heal your relationship with exercise from it being punitive to movement that feels fun and even joyful. You find respect and appreciation for your body, regardless of its size.
My goal is to help you find a balance with food and see how it fuels and nourishes your body. How food can make you feel good and energized versus full of guilt and shame. How reconnecting to your body and learning to listen helps you to rebuild the trust that was taken from you with dieting. My hope is to help you create a kind, loving relationship with food and your body.
I have created the Five Foundations to Healing Your Relationship with Food and Your Body, based on the principles of Intuitive Eating. I help you through these foundations using the principles of Intuitive Eating, along with the Somatic Experiencing method. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-centered approach to healing that cultivates an integrated connection with mind and body. I believe in the work that I have done with my clients, that these five foundations, in conjunction with SE, allow you to see the impact that dieting has made and guides you to reconnect and repair your relationship with food and your body.
The Five Foundations To Healing Your Relationship with Food and Your Body
- Witness the Wounds of Diet Culture
- Reconnect to Your Signals
- The Gift of Permission
- Feeling the Emotions You are Numbing
- Finding Forgiveness-Repairing the Relationship with Food and Your Body.
Finding peace with food and your body is a journey, but with the right tools and guidance, it can be yours.
Health at Every Size (HAES)
At Hayes Nutrition, we believe in the Health at Every Size approach. This approach rejects the use of weight, size, or BMI as a determinant of health. The principles of HAES include:
- Weight Inclusivity: All weight are accepted and we respect that there is diversity in body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
- Health Enhancement: We support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, as well as personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs.
- Respectful Care: Acknowledge the biases and stigma, and strive to end weight discrimination, weight stigma and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequalities.
- Eating for Well-being: Eating is based on hunger, satiety, pleasure and nutritional need and is flexible and individualized rather than an external eating plan that promotes weight loss/control.
- Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities and interests to engage in movement that is enjoyable, to the degree that they choose.
To read more about The Health At Every Size Approach click here.
Shannon Hayes Buescher
Registered & Licensed Dietitian in St. Louis
I have almost two decades of experience helping people heal their relationship with food. I want to use that experience to help you to look beyond the surface food and your body and discover the emotions that are attached to your struggles.
"Shannon perfectly balances expert professionalism with deep, personal caring for each and every client. I honestly don't know where I would be without her."
~ Kirsten
"In the process of fighting for my body instead of against it, I’m learning to be intuitive to what my body is communicating. Being able to trust Shannon has been the key piece in beginning to trust myself."
~ Christina
"Shannon is like no dietician I have ever encountered; she truly understands how emotions and food are connected and provides excellent support to my clients."
~ Sarah Coffman, MSW, LCSW
"It’s a joy to work with another professional that is as dedicated, informed and caring as Shannon."
~ Laura Grace, MA, LPC
Are you ready to improve your relationship with food?
Schedule an appointment with Shannon today.
