Certified Yoga Teacher and Reiki Master Shannon Eastwood of Our Lotus Society Recently Featured on Close Up Radio

RICHMOND, VA, UNITED STATES, September 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Science is finally catching up to a truth Shannon learned long ago: a body in crisis can become a body that heals itself one breath at a time. A 2025 randomized controlled trial published in OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine found that eight weeks of Hatha yoga postures measurably lowered stress while raising mindfulness and body awareness, regardless of yoga philosophy. For Shannon, a Richmond-based yoga teacher, sound bath facilitator and Reiki practitioner, that finding is much less a headline and more of a fact.

In 2020, Shannon began experiencing severe bleeding and pain that doctors initially treated with over-the-counter medication and hormonal prescriptions. The symptoms worsened until a five-inch mass released from her body while she was practicing tree pose at an outdoor yoga gathering. She was rushed to an emergency room and later underwent a hysterectomy to remove the cancer. During recovery, she decided to pursue formal yoga teacher training. Not too long after, she founded Our Lotus Society to make yoga and healing accessible to everyone in the Richmond area and beyond.

“Yoga has always been such an important part of my life, all through my symptoms, my pain, my suffering and through my recovery process,” Shannon shares. “That said, learning that I had cancer was the turning point for me.”

Before opening Our Lotus Society, Shannon spent 20 years as a corporate strategist, moving from technical design in the fashion industry to a design-build startup in Richmond, then into physical product design and a master’s program in product innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Da Vinci Center. That background, she says, taught her human-centered design: the discipline of understanding what people want and need before building a product or service. Later, she returned to the Da Vinci Center as an instructor, teaching graduate students design theory for innovation while nurturing them with music, food and open discussion in the classroom.

That same instinct for combining disciplines is shaping her sound baths (meditation sessions built around crystal singing bowls tuned near 432 hertz), along with Tibetan bowls, chimes and lavender-scented eye masks for an added dose of relaxation. During Our Lotus Society sound sessions, participants lie down while the vibrations and musical tones guide their nervous systems into a calmer, parasympathetic state. Shannon says clients regularly report physical pain fading during a session and, in some cases, vivid memories of loved ones surfacing. One participant described reconnecting with a brother who had died in childhood.

Eastwood’s approach to breath work developed in part through an unlikely classroom: a study-abroad program in the English countryside with vocalist Frankie Armstrong, who is partially deaf and blind. There, Eastwood learned to treat the voice and the breath as tools for healing rather than mere biological functions. Shannon later became Reiki certified and now layers guided breathing, meditative visualization and chakra inspired color theory into her sessions, techniques she credits with helping her body recover from cancer.

Eastwood describes yoga as accessible to all bodies, in all conditions, at all skill levels. “If you’re moving and breathing with intention, you’re doing yoga,” she explains, adding that she builds modifications into every class so beginners and advanced practitioners can work side by side. She also encourages what she calls an intentional pause. A few minutes of stillness carved out of a demanding day can be a lifeline by resetting the nervous system and improving decision-making.

Her advice to anyone hesitating to try something new, whether a first yoga class or a bigger life change, is straightforward: fear and excitement often feel identical in the body, and the difference is just the story attached to it. “You’ll never feel ready,” she asserts. “Just take that first step.”

Shannon continues to offer yoga and lead sound baths in the Richmond area, drawing on a career and life experience that includes fashion, product design, entrepreneurship, performance and recovery. Each chapter is evidence of the same underlying idea: people heal and grow when they combine movement, breath, sound and community rather than relying on one single technique.

About Shannon

Shannon is a certified yoga teacher, Reiki practitioner and sound bath facilitator and founder of Our Lotus Society, based in Richmond, Virginia. A cancer survivor with over 30 years of personal yoga practice, she holds a master’s degree in product innovation from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Da Vinci Center, where she has also taught design courses to graduate students. Her work draws on a 20-year career in corporate strategy and product design, along with study in vocal technique, breath work and international innovation programs across Europe and Central America. She teaches yoga classes and sound baths designed for practitioners of every experience level through Our Lotus Society.

Close Up Radio recently featured Shannon Eastwood, certified Reiki master, professor and founder of Our Lotus Society, in an interview with Jim Masters on Monday September 28th at 11am Eastern

Listen to the Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-up-radio-spotlights-certified-yoga-teacher-and/id1785721253?i=1000792134676
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-close-up-radio-242020413/episode/close-up-radio-spotlights-certified-yoga-teacher-and-reiki-master-shannon-eastwood-of-our-lotus-society-346455882
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1FqYJWH3rT2aKZayZjEPeD

For more information about Shannon Eastwood and Our Lotus Society, please visit https://www.ourlotussociety.com/

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
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