My Story
Welcome! I’m Shannon, an Energy Medicine practitioner living in the woods in the heart of central Missouri. My journey to energy healing has been both winding and transformative, rooted in a deep commitment to understanding and nurturing the human spirit.
From Conventional Medicine to Holistic Healing
Twenty years ago, I began on a path that I believed would lead me to fulfill my calling to service and as a healer. After serving two years in the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa as a health and biology teacher, I started medical school in Chicago, driven by a passion for learning about the human body, healing and serving others. However, from the very beginning, I sensed that something fundamental was missing. The conventional approach to medicine felt overly reductive and incomplete; the focus was heavily on logic, diagnosis, and treatment while overlooking the wider, more holistic aspects of human connection, culture and health.
Throughout my medical training, I struggled with this disconnect. My intuition, which I now recognize as one of my greatest strengths, was directly disregarded. Yet, it was this very inner knowing that kept whispering that there was something essential to healing that was not being taught or even acknowledged. Surgery, with its immediate problem-solving nature, brought some satisfaction, but I knew my journey needed to diverge from the conventional path.
When I became pregnant with my first child, the pull towards a different way of healing became undeniable. I needed to be present as a mother, which the demanding medical schedule didn’t allow. This was a turning point; after completing medical school I decided to step back and re-evaluate my path. This led me to Harvard, where I pursued a Master’s in Public Health, focusing on family and community health, especially breastfeeding—a deeply personal interest at the time.
Harvard was a revelation. I met like-minded physicians from around the world who shared my belief that true health extends beyond the individual, encompassing the community, the family and our environment. Yet, even as I explored these broader aspects of health, I still felt there was something more, something deeper that I hadn’t yet discovered.
A Personal Healing Journey
My journey took a profound turn after the sudden death of my father and the birth of my second child. These events, coupled with a personal health crisis—an undiagnosed mystery illness—forced me to step away from the medical field entirely. I immersed myself in the arts, working with textiles, fibers, and native plants, reconnecting with the creative, non-linear aspects of myself that had been suppressed during years of rigorous medical training.
During this time, a snakebite became a catalyst for change. Conventional medicine left me feeling disempowered, I turned inward, realizing that my healing was my responsibility. I was not to outsource my healing to anyone else. This conscious decision marked a powerful shift, opening me up to the amazingly supportive worlds of herbalism, nutrition, yoga, meditation, and eventually, the world of energy medicine.
As I explored these new paths, I experienced a series of profound spiritual awakenings, including a life-altering out-of-body experience during a healing retreat. My Being was connected with an All enveloping Divine Love and the simultaneous knowing that we are all part of a vast, interconnected energy field. In addition to catapulting me into physical healing, this moment also re-awakened my clairvoyant abilities, further guiding and informing my path.
Embracing Energy Medicine
Almost immediately after this retreat, through a series of serendipitous events, I was introduced to energy healing practices, including working with chakras, sound healing, and Reiki that helped me make giant leaps in my own healing. Each of these practices resonated deeply with me, aligning with my belief that true healing involves more than just the physical body—it encompasses our emotional, mental and spiritual bodies as well as the energetic fields that surround us.
My own self-healing and training continued to evolve, leading me to become a certified Healing Touch Practitioner. This certification allowed me to step into my role as a professional energy healer, supported by a global community of practitioners who share a commitment to integrating energy medicine into daily living and with conventional healthcare.
Today, my practice is grounded in the belief that healing is a deeply personal and sacred journey. My role is never to “fix” my clients, but to create a safe, sacred space where they can reconnect with their own expansive inner wisdom and healing potential. I trust in the divine intelligence within each person and see my work as facilitating their alignment with this deeply attuned and brilliant higher self. In this sacred container, I am continually amazed by the miraculous shift I get to witness in my clients!
Moving Forward
The journey to becoming an energy medicine practitioner has been one of self-healing, reclaiming my intuition, trusting in the mystery of life, and embracing the sacred nature of healing. I am deeply honored to support others on their paths, helping them to rediscover their own power and potential for healing.
Over the past decade, I have learned to incorporate Healing Touch, Eden Energy Medicine, the work of Barbara Evans, Barbara Brennan, Ellen Meredith, Guided Meditation, Shamanic practices, Lovingkindness and support from Herbal Allies. I am so grateful for ALL of my teachers and the support of these life giving modalities that can empower each of us on our healing journeys. I’m humbled and grateful to ALL of my guides – Seen & Unseen – that have stepped up to help me on my own personal Healing journey. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Thank YOU for being here! Let me know if you’d like support in your healing journey!
Background and Qualifications:
Shannon Hensley, MD, MPH, HTCP
Shannon Hensley is an Energy Medicine practitioner and Spiritual guide. Shannon’s understanding of self-healing was initiated in 2013 with a mystery illness, subsequent brain tumor misdiagnosis and a copperhead snakebite. This abruptly awoke her to activate her own inner knowing and support the innate intelligence of her body to heal. Using herbal and nutritional support, Reiki, sound healing, chanting, Eden Energy Medicine, and Healing Touch training, Shannon continues to be deeply engaged with embodied learning.
Shannon graduated from the Honors College at the University of Kansas with highest distinction from the College of Liberal Arts & Science and with departmental honors in human biology for her thesis work in mechanisms to prevent temporal lobe epilepsy. She was selected as the Most Outstanding Junior Woman at the University. During college, she was also a Mayo Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellow in Molecular Neuroscience.
She earned a Medical Degree (M.D.) from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine where she was honored as a Taketa Scholar, a Ross World Service Scholar, the Chicago Youth Program’s Most Valuable Volunteer, and an Albert Schweitzer Fellow.
Later Shannon attended Harvard University where she earned a Masters Degree in Public Health with a concentration in Family and Community Health. She attended as a Zuckerman Leadership Fellow in a joint program with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Shannon is a Healing Touch Certified Practitioner and an Usui Reiki Master. She has had Books Neuraltherapy Training (BNT) as well as death doula and grief work training. She is self-educated in herbal medicine over the past decade.
Before medical school, Shannon served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer for two years in the West African nation of Ghana where she was a science teacher and health educator.
* Although Shannon has a Medical Degree, she is not licensed to practice medicine. Sessions are not meant to diagnose, treat or cure any specific conditions and are complementary to conventional medical treatment.
More information about Healing Touch
AGAPE story
Several years ago, I was actively grieving the loss of several loved ones in my life including the more recent loss of my cousin to leukemia. While on retreat, I took time alone in a chapel connecting with this sorrow. With my medical training and public health background, I felt I wasn’t able to make a difference for these people I loved so dearly; I felt that I had failed. I actually cried out through my tears:
What should I have done? Why couldn’t I save or heal them?
I was answered immediately and clearly in a voice that filled my whole Being:
YOU are not meant to heal or save anyone! Your only job is to LOVE and to LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY.
I felt the truth of this message at my core and from that moment began to see my role as a healer in a very different light – one rooted in Compassionate LOVE. This is what the word Agape means to me; aligning with the Highest form of Love as the most powerful transformative healing force in the Cosmos.
I see the utter Magic & Majesty of Compassionate Love in action over and over when I simply open and allow myself to be the channel of this Divine Light – Lovingkindness – for the Highest good of my clients.
ALCHEMY
To me, Alchemy is the magic of transforming and transmuting the mundane into something Sacred, Beautiful and Miraculous.
This is at the heart of making deep meaning of the Life that we are gifted.
The meaning of our experiences is entirely up to us.