Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Shane, MSW, LICSW, and Charles Collins.
Hi Megan and Charles, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
For years I dreamed of creating a private practice within a home setting, where people could be in a comfortable environment as they took the difficult steps of working through traumas and places that keep them stuck. I envisioned a holistic, trauma-informed, boutique concierge practice that would offer both traditional and intensive, customized approaches to therapy and coaching services. It has been so gratifying to see that vision come to life.
We see clients in our space, in nature, or their space. We offer appointments ranging from 50 minutes to intensive sessions that can span multiple days at a time. At Intentional Healing Counseling and Coaching, we approach our work with the knowledge that our bodies and brains are innately connected. We teach clients about their nervous systems and how they can better regulate themselves, and we integrate meditation techniques into our sessions. Increasing their ability to self-regulate allows clients to show up for themselves and live life in the present moment as much as possible.
We walk beside clients as they heal wounds, achieve goals, and connect with their inner wisdom. We support them as they explore how they wish to live out their truth. We work together to help them understand their brains and learn how to rewire them.
We help clients understand, through a trauma-informed lens, why they may feel so uncomfortable in or disconnected from their bodies, and we partner with them to explore reconnection — if that is a goal they desire. Ultimately, in our work, we aim to help our clients live life more fully and comfortably in their bodies as they heal from within.
Soon we will also be offering companies the opportunity to invest in their leadership and staff with a 10- or 12-week mindfulness course that meets weekly. In this course, employers and employees will learn various mindfulness practices and techniques that can help them reduce stress, increase focus, improve workplace and personal relationships, and enhance overall well-being. We will guide participants through each session, providing them with the support and guidance they need to develop a consistent mindfulness practice. Our course is evidence-based and designed to help participants cultivate mindfulness and live a more peaceful, fulfilling life.
We think participants will experience benefits in their personal lives as well as their work lives. Our course allows participants to cultivate self-awareness and self-compassion, manage stress and anxiety, improve concentration and focus and enhance emotional regulation and resilience.
It also helps them develop greater empathy and compassion toward themselves and others.
We’re also working on an outdoor space to provide a calming, Zen-like atmosphere created with intention. It will incorporate the ability to move outside as the client desires within our space and their sessions on-site.
Megan, tell me about yourself.
I’m a licensed independent clinical social worker who received my master’s degree in social work from the University of St. Thomas/St. Catherine University. I believe firmly in my calling to psychotherapy and consider it an incredible privilege to walk beside others who are experiencing difficult times and to witness the incredible strength and resiliency in the human journey we call life. I believe with my whole being that every one of us possesses the ability to heal. I am here to support my clients on that journey as you lean into hard places.
As for my professional background, I had the honor of working in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) while obtaining my bachelor’s degree. After getting my master’s degree, I spent 9 years working in an ER setting, assessing children, adolescents, and adults experiencing mental health crises. I have walked beside families as they navigate multiple losses and stressors associated with having a baby born prematurely or with medical complications. I have supported families experiencing the excruciating loss of their baby and/or older child.
I am so grateful that I was able to spend several years at home raising my 4 kiddos, and one bonus kiddo, who are now big people and crazy, amazing, resilient humans. To this day, they continue to keep me on my toes. They have challenged and stretched me in so many ways, and for that I am grateful. We survived hard things together! I’ve wished for do-overs in the parenting department a million times, but I am content knowing I am a human who makes mistakes and my people love me for who I am. As a family, then and now, we do our best to support and love each other, especially through hard times. Understanding trauma and its impact on me and my family continues to drive me to pursue continued healing, growth, and self-awareness as a mom, partner, and clinician.
After my years at home with the kids, I had the privilege to again use my passion and strengths to work with and walk alongside families experiencing difficult circumstances in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) setting. In this environment, I truly found my desire to understand trauma responses and how they impact us on the most visceral level in body, mind, and soul.
As a Clinical Traumatologist, I hope to help our clients understand how trauma not only has an impact at the time of the event but also long after. It can creep into our daily lives and does so often without our knowledge or invitation,
Have you experienced the benefits of this approach yourself?
I have found healing in my journey, as well as consistent calmness when I intentionally practice mindfulness and trauma therapy, including EMDR, body-focused work, and more. This has made me content and peaceful in a way I never thought possible, even on the hard days. I am OK when I’m not OK. I’m learning to honor those days and listen to what I need. That is healing and that is love. On days that bring more of a challenge, I know I am equipped to handle whatever comes my way.
Mindfulness, being attuned to the parts of self that may not want or like change or fear the unknown and learning to listen to what our body and our minds are trying to communicate: This has been life-changing for me. I have been able to build confidence in my ability to calm myself in moments of turbulence in ways I never thought were possible. I’m way more comfortable being uncomfortable and find that I cherish being in the moment and awake to my life. My desire for all humans is to have first-hand experience of a body in tune with self, alive to each moment, living in a relaxed body and mind.
What is your treatment approach?
Through somatic body-based work, EMDR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and an attachment-based relational lens, I strive to provide a holistic, integrative approach to mental health therapy, allowing healing in a new way. This approach also utilizes a strengths-based perspective. Mind/body connection in the healing process changes our ability to live each day to our full potential as human beings.
We also provide trauma-informed life coaching. The benefit of working with a trauma and resilience coach in a coaching relationship is that your coach knows how trauma manifests in people. Trauma coaches provide practical skills to educate and help you understand you are not broken or crazy, just having predictable responses. Your coach can recognize trauma in the many masked forms that it presents in our lives and knows competently how to make sense of those masked forms. They also know practical, science-based ways to promote transformation.
Charles, can you tell us about your experience?
I am a motivational speaker as well as a life coach, and I’m certified as a Trauma & Resiliency Life Coach through the Arizona Trauma Institute. I’m passionate about working with my clients and using a trauma-informed lens, because I understand how hard it is to be a trauma survivor.
A trauma life coach works with trauma survivors as a peer, mentor, guide, and educator to help them understand the path to intentional healing in the recovery process, to reconnect with themselves and what’s important to them while using their strengths to build a life of alignment and health. Trauma-informed coaching is the practice of understanding the presence of trauma in a coach-client relationship and how to use it as a guide for resilience and solution-forward resolution.
As a resilience coach, I partner with clients to optimize health and well-being by developing and sustaining positive mindsets. I help clients discover and explore their “why” for change. Mindfulness-based practices can bring us to the present where we can learn and experience the benefits of increasing self-regulation skills. We use the strengths clients already possess and discover new ones as we navigate the journey of change — all while building up valuable resources along the way.
What led to your calling?
I grew up in a high-crime area on the South side of Chicago and was a highly sought-after college football recruit. Within a short period in my early 20’s, I lost both of my parents. I have overcome other challenges as well, including navigating life in a wheelchair while paralyzed and hospitalized for a year from a rare illness called Guillain-Barre Syndrome
My experiences set the stage for many years of untreated trauma, which I had no idea was bubbling under the surface. I decided a few years back that it was time to name and face the ways I was stuck in life, because my once-adaptive survival skill to run away and disconnect from myself and others when my body felt overwhelmed was no longer helpful. I learned the biology of why my nervous system feels and responds the way it does. That knowledge has been life-changing for me.
I continue to learn grow and expand my toolbox to deal with the stressors of facing life with complex post-traumatic stress disorder as well as generalized anxiety disorder. I am committed to being a lifelong learner, and I love to share this learning with others.
As for my professional career, I spent over a decade in training and development at UPS. After successfully losing 150 pounds, I felt called to shift my focus to becoming a health and wellness coach. Here, my passion for walking alongside others trying to tackle the hard places in life became apparent. I challenge and support clients as they learn to know themselves in a new way, create change, and grow from places that were once stuck. Across the span of over a decade, I have helped thousands of people achieve their health and wellness goals while they stretched, healed, and grew in the process. Life coaching and working with clients in my own business was the next step.
Over the years of being a health and wellness coach, life coach, and motivational speaker, I have developed a reputation for being able to build rapport and connection. I teach trauma-informed tools to help others face their fears and overcome their obstacles. I believe the trust formed in a working relationship needs to be client-centered care tailored to each client to identify those patterns they wish to change, to establish new patterns by setting clear goals, and helping to navigate with them the path to get there.
I believe in being direct with gentleness while encouraging clients to look at the hard places in their lives. At the same time, I take care to meet clients right where they are. I have repeatedly witnessed people reach goals that they never thought possible. Together, we explore what self-imposed obstacles are keeping them from living their most fulfilling lives. I employ wisdom and humor to help people develop the best version of themselves.
Megan, can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth?
Leaping to start my practice has been an adventure. Many times I have felt out of my element with all of the business-related aspects that are required when beginning something new. It’s a leap of faith to be fully invested in this dream, but I wouldn’t trade any of it, and our clients affirm that our vision is different and feels more personal and supportive to the clients we serve. They enjoy being met where they will heal best, whether that’s our home or meeting with them at their favorite park to walk and talk. When clients come to our home, they tell us they love our dogs greeting them at the door and the dogs being close by to provide some comfort and grounding within their work.
Thankfully, Charles and I both have a love of learning and will continue to seek out the latest courses that are on the cutting edge of trauma-informed care. With this is the challenge of continued financial investment in ourselves and this dream as well as carving out the time and space to be a continuing student.
In building a business, creating boundaries around work/life balance has been a continual conversation we have, so that we can stay in check with ourselves and our families. This allows us to recharge and renew, focusing on our own self-care needs along with our own continued journey to wholeness. This balance is everything, and it allows us to provide this important work to our clients.
We’ve been impressed with Intentional Healing Counseling & Coaching. For folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
One of the things that sets us apart is the fact that therapy and coaching are provided in our home as well as our backyard. We will travel to clients’ homes, and we will meet them in nature’s healing environment. Our space was created with the intention of supportive body-based work, including room for trauma-informed yoga practices, meditation, somatic exercises, and more. Our suspended swing is available to help clients regulate while processing if that is soothing to them.
In addition to traditional services, we offer intensive services that are designed to provide longer and more frequent therapy sessions over a shorter timespan to accelerate your recovery. With intensive work, clients can progress faster than they can with weekly sessions. Imagine the amount of work and healing that can be accomplished in a half day, full day, or three consecutive days (which equates to about 21 hours of highly focused treatment within three days). They can address urgent needs in a dedicated manner instead of in a bits-and-pieces approach. In the long run, due to the efficiency of intensive sessions, clients can save both time and money. Scheduling time for a single retreat may also be more convenient for people who have a busy schedule, kids to plan around, and travel or work commitments. Intensive treatments are tailored for each client, so there are many ways they can be customized for a client’s individual needs.
Individual trauma-informed therapy helps our clients gain knowledge about why they respond to things the way they do, and it gives you a framework for understanding why you may feel stuck in certain aspects of life. We use a variety of therapeutic modalities to tailor treatment to your individual needs and goals. Whether you are at the beginning of your therapy journey or continuing on your path toward better health and feeling more balanced in your body, we will be beside you in the process. Therapy can help you become more conscious about yourself, your world, and your relationships.
Many of us have some form of early attachment trauma from when we were babies and toddlers. However, once we are adults we have no picture memory of what happened to us then. All we have are implicit memories that we “feel” in our bodies. The great thing about EMDR is that it can access these felt memories and get to the somatic parts of the body that store deep emotional pain.
“Birth trauma” is distress experienced by parents during or after childbirth. Birth trauma includes struggles with mental health at any point in the perinatal period. EMDR can help with loss, struggles with fertility, fear of or trauma within the birthing process, births resulting in a NICU stay, previous medical and hospital experiences we may have had, breastfeeding experiences, and past mental health struggles. EDMR can also help with our own childhood experiences and life experiences that can be triggered when we become parents.
As traumatic as birth can be for parents, it can also be traumatic for babies and toddlers who are born prematurely or with medical complications or other stressful in-utero experiences. Parents/caregivers will learn and practice self-regulation skills to be in a relaxed muscle body while trauma is processed with their precious ones. If children experience in-utero exposure to drugs or alcohol, EMDR therapy may be limited in what it can do, but it may still help.
We offer anxiety treatment as well. Anxiety symptoms are often as physical as they are emotional. These may include feelings of panic, trouble sleeping, trembling, tingling, fatigue, heart palpitations, nausea, loss of appetite, feeling dizzy, random aches and pains, or even a fear of dying. It can also present with racing thoughts, social anxiety, and a lack of self-confidence. Anxiety can cause us to want to withdraw from others and isolate which can impact our ability to form meaningful relationships with others. At times, these symptoms can feel like they can overtake your life. We are here to help you learn to manage your fears, decrease how you take in stress, and live in a more relaxed body.
Grief therapy is another one of our key offerings. Grief is a natural process that most people experience following a meaningful loss. There are so many types of loss we may experience as humans, and often as we grieve, we can feel alone and misunderstood. Grief and its far-reaching effects can lead to feelings of isolation and confusion among the pain, anger, short fuse, forgetfulness, numbness, sadness, and whatever else we may be experiencing. Everyone copes with grief differently, and the process is very non-linear for most of us. While grieving is important following a loss, we all grieve differently which can be difficult within the context of life and relationships.
We are dedicated to walking through the hard work of relationships with couples in a new way with our 2-on-2 Couples Therapy and coaching approach. We offer these services in both traditional and intensive formats depending on our clients’ needs. Together we will explore those stuck points in your relationships and learn how to disrupt the dance you may be locked into. Learn how your attachment style influences and may be impacting your rhythm with your partner and ways to shift these patterns.
We also offer mindfulness, health and wellness, and trauma and resiliency coaching that is geared specifically toward men. It’s easy to live life reactively and never think about the way you respond to stress. Mindfulness can help you slow down and shift out of autopilot, giving you more control over your reactions, and finding balance. When we practice mindfulness, we cultivate skills that are essential for human living: we learn to pay attention, calm down, and nurture joy.
Men’s health and wellness coaching helps people make behavior changes to improve their health and well-being. Your coach will help you to achieve your overall goals from a holistic perspective that views each person as intrinsically whole and the ultimate expert in his or her healing journey. Using concepts drawn from psychology, behavior change, and life coaching fields, a wellness coach helps clients overcome obstacles to maintain healthy habits for life.
Trauma-informed life coaching can help you identify stuck places, educate you on why your body and mind react the way they do, and shift your reactions in a way that feels positive and empowering. Coaching will help you learn what it means to be resilient. Unlike ordinary talk therapy, coaching doesn’t dwell as heavily on your traumatic experience itself. Instead, it focuses on the reasons your body and mind react the way they do. Here you will learn practical skills for managing your trauma reactions. The goal is to help you reconnect with your feelings, build on your strengths, and improve your emotional regulation.
Another unique offering is our men’s wilderness coaching. Wilderness-based coaching involves an intentional change of environment. It immerses clients in the natural environment as part of the coaching process to evoke introspection and facilitate change. Hiking in nature reduces negative patterns of thinking and increases neuroplasticity. Learning about and facing challenges in nature is a beautiful environment in which to grow and gain confidence.
Finally, we offer the perspective of two individuals coming together as a bi-racial couple with a blended family trying to navigate life. We focus on our continued healing from early developmental traumas, cultural traumas, losses, anxiety, and more with intention. We hope our openness with our journey normalizes that we all have stuff, and there is no shame in being human and seeking support.
What is up next for your practice?
We are starting a podcast soon to share our real-life struggles as a couple. We will also be creating relaxation content for mindfulness practices, and we are available for speaking as we love to educate and support others in normalizing giving time and space for healing places in our lives that need healing. Mental wellness matters. We all struggle and cope in ways that may not be the most adaptive to our current circumstances.
Megan, can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
For me, growing up brought so many moments of joy as well as challenges. I have always been When I was a baby, life threw my parents a curveball when my mom was diagnosed with MS and was in and out of the hospital for years to come. That meant that I was separated from my primary attachment people for long periods. It created a level of high alert in my tiny baby body that was felt in my body, but without words to understand the whys. It was a fear that remained for many years. As an infant, I had a constant gaze on potential danger and felt unsafe. Through intentional healing, I have a greater understanding of the tiny human I once was.
When we can understand the why of how we adapted and formed certain patterns that we may not appreciate or understand about ourselves, self-compassion may feel easier to access.
Pricing:
- Therapy rates are $200 per 50 min increment/weekday
- Coaching rates are $150 per 50 min increment /weekday
- Therapy rates are $250 per 50 min increment/weekend
- Coaching rates are $200 per 50 min increment /weekend
- We are not in-network with any insurance companies. Payment, in full, is required at the time of service. Our payment system accepts HSA and FSA cards, as well as all major credit/debit cards. We also accept cash for in-person appointments. We do provide superbills, which can be submitted to your insurance company. Depending on your policy’s out-of-network benefits, your carrier may reimburse you for a portion of the fee. We can offer a limited number of sliding scale appointments in our practice when there is a demonstrated need. Please inquire if you are interested in utilizing one of these appointments.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.intentionalhealingmn.com
- Email: contact@intentionalhealingmn.
com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intentionalhealing.mn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intentionalhealingmn1
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/intentionalhealingmn-meganshane
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@intentionalhealingmn
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/intentionalhealingmn
- Other: www.intentionalhealingmn.com/links
Image Credits
Charles and Zencare
