About Shandra
I am a registered yoga teacher, somatic coach, grief tender, group facilitator and ritualist.
I create spaces for grief and soul tending in service of personal and collective liberation.
The guiding principles of my work are community, connection, and belonging. My offerings are rooted in a deep relationship with oneself, with community, and with the more-than-human world. Through a gentle, trauma-informed lens, I invite you into a deeper sense of belonging as you navigate grief, change, life’s thresholds, and the complexity of being human in the Long Dark.
My path has been shaped by my own lived experience of sorrow and becoming. My companionship with grief began with the unexpected death of my sister, Mel, in 2017, followed by the loss of my father in 2020. These profound losses led me inward, into an ongoing apprenticeship to grief and a devotion to trusting its wisdom.
What began as profound personal journey deepened into a soulful vocational calling.
I trained as a Mindful Grieving Facilitator with the Center for Somatic Grieving and later completed Francis Weller’s Grief Ritual Leadership Training in 2023. I now facilitate grief circles in my local community and virtually, creating spaces where grief can be felt, witnessed, and integrated in body, mind, and heart.
I believe that tending to grief is a form of soul activism- a way of staying responsive and receptive to the sorrows of our world and systems of oppression. When we allow grief to move through us, we reconnect with our aliveness and strengthen our capacity to respond to the troubled times we inhabit. Grief brings us back into connection with what we love and care about most.
In addition to my work with grief, ritual and somatics, I am a board-certified physician assistant. Drawing on years of clinical experience, I bring steadiness, presence, and deep care to my somatic coaching practice.
My understanding of belonging, community and connection has emerged from my relationship to the more than human world-this includes the plants, animals, watersheds, stones, moon, sun, stars, and ancestors. I continue to be in deep devotion to the cycles, rhythms and seasons that unfold so beautifully in the natural world. I am a humble student and kin to the mystery and sacred that exists in the seen and unseen world.
I am a lifelong learner and continue to study grief, trauma, ritual, politicized healing, and embodiment. My teachers and influences include Francis Weller, adrienne maree brown, Prentis Hemphill, Holly Truhlar, Kai Cheng Thom, Tracy Chipman, Tricia Hersey, Tara Brach, Sue Monk Kidd, and Glennon Doyle.
I am the mother of three children and partner to Adam. When I am not tending to family or community, you can find me gardening, reading, or trail running — returning again and again to the rhythms of the living world. I am a wild one of the woodlands-most content when surrounded by my tree kin.
Trainings, Experience and Certifications:
Ongoing Participant in Soulful Life: a virtual community that meets weekly for soulful liberation work
Symphony of Self: IFS informed coach training through Coaches Rising
Presence Based Coaching: ICF Accredited Coach Training
Entering the Healing Ground: 5 Month Grief Ritual Training with Francis Weller
Mindful Grieving 200 hour Yoga Therapy Teacher Training-Center for Somatic Grieving
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy 60-hour Certificate-Embody Lab
200-hour Yoga Teacher Training-Kramas Yoga School with Jessica and Al Noche
Master of Physician Assistant Studies-University of Iowa
Undergraduate Degree in Biology with Nutrition Minor-University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse