Shawna Thibodeau

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Grimsby, ON
Shawna Thibodeau

Shawna Thibodeau offers counselling, group coaching programs and meditation circles to help women reach increased peace, happiness and live their truths.
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Shawna Thibodeau is a Registered Nurse working in mental health. Through Be Free, Shawna works as a private coach, holistic counsellor and certified meditation teacher to empower women and help create lives of happiness, passion and purpose. Shawna specializes in hospital-based mental health and crisis treatment. Through Be Free, she offers women her unique knowledge in mental health combined with

interests of positive psychology, mindfulness, energy psychotherapy and spirituality. Be Free is a sanctuary of wisdom and strategies offered through articles, video and private services to optimize the lives of others and help them reach their full potential.

07/24/2026

If you’ve been feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or disconnected from yourself or from life lately, join us this Sunday for a half-day meditation and inner healing retreat to help you work with your mind and emotions so you can experience greater calm, clarity, and inner peace.

Throughout the afternoon, you’ll learn two powerful practices that you can take home with you to help reduce stress, navigate difficult emotions, and cultivate greater peace, wholeness, and clarity in your daily life.

We’ll close the afternoon with a gentle, calming yoga practice followed by a restorative sound healing journey led by sound practitioner, Tala Muhtadi. 🤍

✨ The Inner Shift Afternoon Retreat 🗓 Sunday, July 26 ⏰ 1:00–5:00 PM 📍 The Yoga Vine, Beamsville, Ontario (just 20 minutes from Hamilton)

This retreat may be for you if you’ve been...
• Experiencing anxiety, sadness, stress, overwhelm, anger, or irritability. • Feeling disconnected from yourself or struggling to find peace within. • Feeling burnt out or moving through a difficult season of life, loss, or transition. • Wanting to learn practical tools to work with challenging emotions and life situations with greater understanding and wisdom. • Longing to experience greater inner harmony, peace, and fulfillment that isn’t dependent on external circumstances. • Wanting to connect more deeply with your intuition, your inner wisdom, and yourself.

The practices we explore are designed to help you move through life with greater love, compassion, understanding, and inner peace.

Come on your own or bring a friend. We’d love to have you. 🤍

Learn more & register through the link in my bio.

xx Shawna

07/09/2026

✨ Registration is officially OPEN! ✨

I’m so excited to share that registration is now open for our upcoming overnight retreats in Muskoka and the Dominican Republic 🤍

If you’ve been feeling called to step away from the busyness of life, reconnect with yourself, and spend time in a supportive community of women, I’d love to have you join us.

🌲 Northern Healing Women’s Weekend Retreat 📍 Muskoka, Ontario 🗓 November 13–15, 2026
A restorative weekend of meditation, gentle yoga, breathwork, emotional healing workshops, connection, and time to simply slow down in one of the most beautiful places in Ontario 💛

🌊 Return to Self Oceanfront Retreat 📍 Dominican Republic 🗓 April 19–24, 2027
Join Bridget and me for 5 nights by the ocean filled with yoga, meditation, breathwork, inner healing workshops, beautiful excursions, sunshine, laughter, and connection. Our villa and yoga shala are right on the ocean 😍

✨ Secure your spot for both retreats with a deposit. ✨ Come on your own or bring a friend.

The links to learn more and reserve your space are in my bio💛

And if you’re looking for something closer to home this summer, we’d love to see you at The Inner Shift Half-Day Retreat in Beamsville on July 26 or August 23.

These afternoons include guided meditation, inner child healing, gentle yoga, reflective exercises, and an incredible sound healing journey to close the day. 🤍

We also have upcoming in-person breathwork sessions and online breathwork sessions happening this summer.

Info for all upcoming events can be found through my bio or at www.shawnathibodeau.com 💕

Send me a DM if you have any questions!

Hope to have you join us 🤍

xx Shawna

06/18/2026

We have two upcoming in-person breathwork and meditation sessions happening at The Yoga Vine Integrated Health Studio in Beamsville ✨

➡️ Next Friday June 26, 7-9:15pm

➡️ And Friday July 24, 7-9:15pm

Conscious connected breathwork is a practice that brings our mind and body into what’s called an altered state of consciousness (we’re basically turning down certain parts of the mind we more commonly use, and we’re turning up other parts such as the limbic system).

What this does…

It helps us connect to things that can bring deeper insights, peace, and healing such as: our emotions for deeper emotional processing, memories, our inner truths, intuition and inner wisdom.

This can help us: decrease stress, heal from present or past situations, improve mood, gain clarity on our path forward, access deeper inner peace & more ❤️

Conscious connected breathwork is done lying down, with an eye mask on and to a really good playlist! 🎶

We start the evening with intention setting and a guided meditation to ground, we then flow into the breathwork session, and we close with integration and some guided journaling.

No experience necessary! Come alone or with a friend.

Link to learn more & register can be found through the link in my bio or visit shawnathibodeau.com

Look forward to seeing you there!

Xx Shawna

05/26/2026

Really excited to share that I’m now offering private 1:1 IFS (Internal Family Systems) coaching sessions online over Zoom 🤩😍

Throughout 2025 and this year I’ve been completing deeper IFS training through Wilfred Laurier University and the IFS Counselling Association❤️

➡️ If you haven’t heard of IFS, IFS/PARTS work is a therapeutic modality that helps us connect with the various aspects (what are called PARTS) of ourselves.

We’re all made up of lots of different PARTS. Examples: anxious, fearful, sad, self-conscious, angry, frustrated, stressed, or lonely parts… and so many more!

In an IFS session we see what situations are happening in our lives and what PARTS are being activated.

Example: If you feel anxious about something, there’s an anxious PART present. We then connect with that part and explore it, learning: what it might have to say, why it feels the way it does, what it didn’t receive in the past or what it might need now, what it’s ready to release, and what it needs moving forward.

Experiencing greater harmony within isn’t about NOT feeling challenging emotions…it’s about learning how to see them, become curious about them, relate to them, hold them, and work WITH them*

With IFS we practice MOVING TOWARDS what is coming up versus burying, moving away from or wishing it wasn’t there. This practice can help build confidence in your ability to MEET, feel, and work with whatever comes up in life, no matter how challenging it is ❤️

➡️ If you’re interested in learning more about my IFS sessions, comment “IFS” below and more information will be sent!

You can also find the info through the link in my bio 🔗

xx Shawna

04/11/2026

Had a great time at The Velvet Bookmark bookstore in Tonawanda, New York today discussing and signing copies of The Light That Shines Through ❤️✨🌸

Thank you for having me and thank you for all your support with this book! 💕

For those new to the book, The Light that Shines Through is all about how to use your mind through meditation, spirituality and inner healing practices to heal, connect to your intuition, and create shifts within your life 🧘🏼‍♀️💃🏼✨

Available through the link in my bio ❤️

04/01/2026

April events are here! Here is what we have coming up this month:

Sunday April 12th: Kinetic Bloom - Breathwork, Dance & Sound, 3-6pm
Ridgeway, Ontario
An afternoon of breathwork, ecstatic dance and sound healing journey with & . Join us for an afternoon of release, healing, movement and fun ✨

Friday April 24th: Evening Breathwork & Meditation, 7-9:15pm.
Dundas, Ontario (Just outside of Hamilton) .yoga.fitness
An evening session to release stress and emotional tension, experience healing, connect inwards with yourself and your life, and gain clarity on your path forward.

Sunday April 26: The Restore & Reconnect Day Retreat, 10-4pm
Niagara Falls, Ontario
A gentle day of meditation, inner reflection, and emotional healing practices to reconnect with yourself and return to a deeper sense of peace and wholeness within.

🔗 in bio to learn more about all of these events and to grab your spot.

Hope to see you this month! ❤️

xx Shawna

03/17/2026

It was last year during a retreat breathwork session that a participant said this to me.

She had gone through a relationship breakup and had an extremely challenging year. She was looking for relief and healing and she’d never done breathwork before.

When she came out of it she looked at me and said, “Holy, that was the most healing I’ve felt in an hour compared to the whole last year.”

And this is why I love breathwork. 😍💫

It gets into nooks and crannies that other modalities can’t and brings us to unique insights, healing experiences, and clarity about ourselves and our lives.

If you’ve been curious to try breathwork, there’s two events to join us this week:

❤️Evening Breathwork & Meditation: This Friday March 20th, 7-9:30pm. Dundas, Ontario
An evening session to reduce stress and emotional tension, to become more grounded within yourself and gain clarity and insight on your path forward.
(4 SPOTS LEFT)

❤️The Peace & Empowerment Day Retreat: This Sunday March 22, 9:30-4pm. Hamilton, Ontario
This is a healing & rejuvenating day retreat to learn skills and practices to reduce stress, find greater peace within, and experience greater empowerment within your life.
(3 SPOTS LEFT)

🔗 in bio to learn more and to register.

Send me a DM if you have any questions 🙏🏼

Shawna

03/13/2026

We have two events happening next week!

Friday March 20 (evening): If you’re looking for an evening of self-care, we have our evening breathwork and meditation session happening next Friday (March 20) in Dundas, ON (just outside of Hamilton). 7-9:30pm. This session helps to reduce stress and emotional tension, to become more grounded within yourself and gain clarity and insight on your path forward.

Sunday March 22 (full-day): This month we also have the Peace & Empowerment Day Retreat happening on Sunday March 22 in Hamilton, Ontario. This is a healing & rejuvenating day retreat to learn skills and practices to reduce stress, find greater peace within, and experience greater empowerment within your life. It includes meditation, gentle yoga, breathwork + nervous system and emotion regulation practices. **During the day I also teach how to use these practices in simple and quick ways at home so you can experience improved emotion regulation, stress reduction and greater inner peace in your everyday life.

Beginners are welcome to both sessions!

If you have any questions about either of these sessions, send me a DM.

🔗 Visit www.shawnathibodeau.com to learn more and to grab your spot,

xx Shawna

01/12/2026

Our 6-week online meditation program, Stillness starts in just one week!

This program is for anyone wanting to learn the practice of meditation and commit to a daily 20-min practice throughout the six weeks.

Stillness is a great fit for anyone experiencing:
- Low/depressed mood or lack of motivation
- Lack of inner peace or inner fulfillment throughout your day
- Stress, fear, anxious or ruminating thoughts or spiralling
- Overwhelm and not feeling grounded within
- Reactivity, irritability or feeling frequently triggered
- Feeling stuck or lack of clarity on your path forward

Meditation was the first practice I discovered on my spiritual path, when I was experiencing all of the above.

It’s funny what sitting in stillness can do (don’t worry, I know sitting in stillness can sound daunting but, I’ll teach you how).

My mind became quiet - a quiet and peace I hadn’t experienced before. The world around me became vibrant - I share a funny story of this in my book, The Light That Shines Through, where after a few weeks of practice, I had a moment on the bus where I was absolutely captivated and filled with joy by a view of nature, while everyone else was staring at their phones. It felt like I was high - but wasn’t, I was just consistently meditating. My mood improved. And then I started hearing my inner truths during my practices of silence.

Consistent meditation practice changes the neural pathways of the mind and how the mind is working. And when we change how we’re resting in and perceiving the world around us, so much changes from there. We don’t even realize how much HOW we perceive the world and our lives, is affecting the very feeling and experience of our lives.

Super excited to dive into a solely meditation focused 6 weeks with you!

The Stillness Meditation Program starts in one week, online on Monday January 19th, 7PM EST.

🔗 Click here to learn more: https://shawnathibodeau.com/meditation-program/

xx Shawna

01/09/2026

I found meditation when I was 22 (I’m now 36). I was in nursing school and experiencing depression and anxiety. I felt stuck, stressed, struggling in a low mood and didn’t have motivation for the future.

I found a psychologist who also taught meditation. He said he recommended his 8-week meditation program over psychotherapy. I didn’t know what meditation was but I researched it and found that it had good outcomes for mood, depression and anxiety. I decided to sign up.

During my first meditation practice back in 2012, I understood what Dr. Lee was pointing to when we practiced following an anchor (our breath) and observing thoughts as they come up. I had insights into my mind right away during that first practice.

But it was over the course of a few weeks that I really noticed how it was working on my mind…

- My mind got more quiet and more calm.

- The inner chatter got turned down and it felt immensely relieving.

- The stress and anxiety decreased.

- I felt a lift in my mood.

- The simple world around me became more awake and alive and woke a natural joy within me

- I began accessing more inner wisdom and clarity on my path forward.

I was amazed that simply sitting in stillness could have these shifts on my mind, my mood and my life.

Slowly, through meditation, my mood improved and I began aligning my life to the inner truths that were coming to me. This is how my life shifted from the practice. And this is why I’m so passionate about it.

➸ Starting January 19th I’ll be teaching a 6-Week Online Meditation Program called STILLNESS, if you’re interested in learning meditation and experiencing how it can work on your mind, your mood and your life 🧘🏼‍♀️

This course is the most similar to the program that I took with Dr. Lee back in 2012 that I’ve ever taught, which I’m really excited about. The program includes weekly Monday night calls to learn + practice, and you’re provided with a 20-min MP3 meditation each week for daily at-home practice.

I’m excited for the 20 participants we have joining so far ❤️

We start online Monday January 19th, 7pm EST over zoom - join from anywhere.

🔗 Link is here to save your spot: https://shawnathibodeau.com/meditation-program/

xx Shawna

Address

Grimsby, ON
L3M

Website

http://www.shawnathibodeau.com/

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