From Surviving to Surrender: How Embodiment Helped Shauna Hawkes Find Freedom, Joy, and Self-Connection

Welcome back to Positive Vibes.
I’m your host, Nicki Dennis, and if you’ve ever felt weighed down by old patterns, disconnected from yourself, or like you’ve been living in survival mode, today’s conversation is going to feel like a deep breath for your soul.

My guest, Shauna Hawkes, knows exactly what it’s like to feel stuck and what it takes to find your way back to freedom, joy, and deep self-connection.

Shauna is a women’s embodiment mentor, yoga teacher, and Gene Keys guide who helps women break free from self-sabotage, embrace their feminine nature, and create lives that feel light, fulfilling, and authentically their own. With a background in social work and more than 15 years in yoga and holistic healing, she blends the grounded with the soulful, offering practical tools and intuitive wisdom through retreats, workshops, and mentorship programs.

When the Body Speaks What Words Can’t

Shauna’s journey began in chaos.
She describes her childhood as “a house where there was trauma in every direction.” It left her feeling dislocated, uncertain where she belonged, constantly questioning why life felt that way.

That curiosity, the question “why?”  eventually led her to study social work, hoping to understand people, purpose, and pain. But while she was busy helping others, she hadn’t yet faced her own.

“Doing social work didn’t help my trauma,” she admits. “It actually exaggerated everything. I was trying to hold space for others without ever learning how to hold it for myself.”

Exhausted and disconnected, Shauna eventually moved to Australia in her mid-20s, not realizing that the next chapter would completely reshape her life.

The Day Yoga Found Her (Even When She Hated It)

A friend invited her to a heated vinyasa class.
Shauna laughs now, but her first reaction wasn’t enlightenment, it was rage.

“I hated everything,” she recalls. “The teacher. The smell of the carpet. The person next to me breathing. I was angry at all of it.”

And yet, she kept going back.
Class after class. Breath after breath.

Until one day, something cracked open.

“All of a sudden, I’d be in a pose and I’d start crying,” she says. “But I wasn’t thinking about anything. I wasn’t feeling sad. It was like energy was just moving through me.”

That’s when she realized, the yoga mat wasn’t the problem. It was the mirror.

From Anger to Awareness

That moment of clarity hit hard.
Shauna realized her anger wasn’t about the yoga class, it was about everything.

“The mat became a reflection of my inner state,” she says. “Once I saw that, I couldn’t stay in the victim role anymore. I had to take responsibility for what was really happening inside.”

That shift, from blame to awareness, was the beginning of her embodiment journey.
Because embodiment, as Shauna teaches, isn’t about poses or postures. It’s about presence. It’s the practice of listening to your body’s intelligence, the tears, the tremors, the sensations, without judgment.

“The body keeps the score, yes,” she says, “but it also holds the wisdom to release what the mind can’t process.”

The Power of Letting Go

Through yoga, somatic practices, and the Gene Keys, Shauna learned to release decades of stored emotion, not by thinking her way out, but by feeling her way through.

She began to notice subtle changes:

• The heaviness in her chest lightened.
• Her nervous system softened.
• Life started to feel more fluid and less forced.

“For years, I was trying to fix myself,” she shares. “But the real transformation came when I stopped trying and started listening.”

From Stuck to Free

Today, Shauna helps women reconnect with that same wisdom, the kind that can’t be found in a book or a to-do list. She teaches that true healing happens through the body, not around it.

Whether it’s through movement, breath, or stillness, the message is the same:
Your body is not the enemy.
It’s the doorway back to yourself.

Final Thoughts

When tears fall during a yoga pose for no reason, when emotion rises without thought, it’s not random.
It’s your body releasing what your mind has carried for too long.

Shauna’s story reminds us that freedom isn’t about escaping the pain, it’s about meeting it with compassion, breath, and presence.

“Embodiment,” she says, “isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.”

And that, right there, is the path to peace.

If today’s story resonated with you, share this episode with someone who’s ready to come home to themselves.
Because healing doesn’t start in the mind, it starts in the body. 

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