Meet Eleanor Shannon
Therapeutic Mentor – Guide in Nervous System Reset
who creates a safe space for you to
tune into your nervous system,
shift out of limiting beliefs and behaviors, and
create the life that you’ve always wanted,
but never believed you could have.
My Story
Eleanor in 2023
(After)
Eleanor in 2002
(Before)
By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I had everything I thought I wanted: two Ivy League degrees, success in competitive corporate jobs, a high-achieving husband, three children, and a dream home with a pool and tennis court in a bucolic college town.
On the outside, everything looked perfect.
But on the inside? I was barely hanging on.
For ten years, I lived with chronic back pain that surgery couldn’t relieve. Both my parents were seriously ill and needed care. My marriage was unraveling. And I was exhausted from trying to be the “perfect” mother, daughter, and wife.
And the worse things got, the more I doubled down—pushing myself harder to do everything for everybody else—my parents, my kids, and my husband—ignoring my own needs, especially back pain that gripped me with increasing ferocity..
I had always been capable of handling whatever I had to, but my heroic efforts weren’t working.
My mother was so depressed from a chronic neurological disease that she made three serious suicide attempts. My father went into hospice after nine years of cancer treatment. My husband and I operated like office-mates—communicating only enough to keep the household running. And, whenever things got difficult, we moved—in a blind attempt to outrun all the stress we were experiencing.
I believed there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t keep up—couldn’t figure out a solution—couldn’t make it all work.
But the truth is, there was nothing wrong with me.
What I didn’t know then was that the behaviors and beliefs that had been embedded in my nervous system as a child to keep me safe and protect me from pain, were the same patterns that were keeping me stuck.
What I needed was a chance to step outside of those old patterns—something to remind me of who I was underneath the fear of making a mistake, being found out as incompetent, the terror of losing my parents, the anxiety over my kids’ and their education, the frustration that I couldn’t get rid of my back pain, and the shame of giving up my career.
A Turning Point
That doorway came in the most unexpected form: a summer language course in Italian.
For the first time in decades, I felt the joy of being myself—not because I was achieving or doing something productive, but because I was having fun. I felt like a kid again while I sang songs, acted in skits, dressed in costumes, danced, and spoke—all in a new language.
That discovery changed everything.
It taught me the power of following what felt good instead of what I was “supposed” to do.
Seven years later, I had learned to speak Italian fluently enough to accept an invitation to teach business in an Italian university in Milan. Over the next fifteen years in Italy, I intuitively made a series of decisions to “choose” myself—filed for divorce, left the university to train and certify as a wine sommelier, founded and wrote my own blog, Uncorked in Italy, about natural Italian wine, practiced and trained to teach yoga, meditation, and conscious dance.
I followed what felt good in my body to liberate myself intuitively from physical pain and old patterns.
Listening to and valuing myself was the secret to creating nourishing relationships and a whole new life.
Now in my sixties, I’m doing work I love, enjoy deep and nourishing relationships with friends and family—especially my three children and three grandchildren, live free from physical pain, and wake up feeling grounded and full of vitality—ready to experience the adventure that is my life.
For clients, I bring together decades of study, practice, and personal experience into personalized mentorship programs and group retreats designed to create results in months, not decades.
It was only when I returned to the States to train with leading trauma experts, including Gabor Maté, that I discovered cutting edge neuroscience that explained why I no longer had back pain or the limiting beliefs and behaviors that had created it.
During my time in Italy, I had lived in so much trusted connection with my own body and with others, that my nervous system had felt safe enough to release those old survival patterns and allow me pleasure, joy, and fun.
