The Body Artisans, Santaquin, UT (2026)

02/04/2026

“So Katie, what really happens at your retreats?”

We study fascia, the nervous systems, and emotional release.

We laugh until our ribs hurt.

We heal.

And yes… we absolutely wear Star Wars helmets and dance life out.

Best experiences of your life.

02/04/2026

The Lining That Listens

If you’ve been following along as we explore the enteric nervous system and the intelligence of the abdomen, this is where those conversations begin to settle into the tissue. If we want to understand why abdominal work and nervous system regulation can create such meaningful change, we first have to understand the living interface that receives those signals and how it learns to repair.

Consider this. The gut lining isn’t a rigid barrier, but a living, responsive interface. It is just one cell thick in many places, constantly renewing itself and deciding what belongs and what doesn’t. It is part border guard, part diplomat, and an extension of the nerve system. Its job is not just digestion, but discernment as well. So let’s explore this incredible lining to understand it better.

At the surface of the intestines sit millions of finger-like villi and microscopic microvilli. Their role is absorption. They increase surface area so nutrients can move efficiently from food into the bloodstream. Then between these cells are tight junctions, dynamic protein gates that open and close in response to signals from the immune system, the microbiome, and the nervous system. When those signals are balanced, the barrier is selective and intelligent. When they are overwhelmed, the barrier becomes reactive or leaky.

Covering this lining is a delicate mucus layer, created by specialized goblet cells. This layer isn’t waste or residue; it’s an active, protective presence. It nourishes beneficial bacteria, cushions the lining from irritation, and maintains a healthy boundary between microbes and the cells beneath. When the body is under stress, inflamed, underslept, or underfed, this layer thins quickly. However, with consistency, nourishment, and rest, it slowly rebuilds.

One of the most hopeful things to understand about the gut lining is how quickly it can renew itself. The cells that make up the intestinal lining turn over every three to five days, meaning you’re not carrying the same lining you had last week. What takes longer to change are the signals those new cells receive. When inflammation, stress hormones, or immune activation stay high, the new tissue learns the same guarded patterns.

Think of it this way. The bricks regenerate quickly. The blueprint changes slowly.

When conditions are supportive, the lining heals in layers. First comes reduced irritation, followed by fewer sharp reactions to food: less urgency, bloating, and pain. Then your absorption improves, your energy stabilizes, and cravings soften. Over weeks to a few months, immune signaling calms and tolerance expands. For many people, meaningful gut barrier repair occurs in 4 to 12 weeks, provided the nervous system is also being addressed.

The gut lining is shaped as much by the nervous system as it is by food. When the body lives in chronic stress and sympathetic activation, the lining becomes more permeable and inflamed, staying on high alert. When parasympathetic tone is supported, blood flow improves, mucus production increases, and cellular repair becomes more efficient. This is why someone can eat “perfectly” and continue to struggle, while another person begins to heal simply by calming the system and eating in a way that feels steady and supportive.

At the same time, the gut lining is constantly educating the immune system. Nearly 70% of immune tissue resides along the gut, responding to signals it receives there. When the barrier is irritated or inconsistent, immune responses become reactive and widespread. As the lining heals and stabilizes, immune signaling often softens, which is why gut healing can ripple outward, affecting the skin, joints, mood, and pain patterns far beyond the abdomen.

As you take in everything we’ve explored here, it helps to remember that the gut lining doesn’t heal through pressure or perfection. It responds to the same signals we consistently circle back to: steadiness, regular nourishment, and enough rest to allow our body to repair.

02/04/2026

Food is not just chemistry; it is information.

Warm, simple meals.
Eaten without screens.
Enough fat to signal nourishment.
Enough time to chew.

Eating while regulated matters more than eating perfectly. The enteric nervous system responds best to consistency, not perfection.

02/03/2026

I often think of the abdomen as a tidal basin.

Not the open ocean, not the crashing edge of the shore, but that wide, receptive place where rivers meet the sea. Everything that moves through the body eventually passes here. Nourishment. Stress. Emotion. Memory. It is where currents slow enough to be felt, and where what has been carried finally has a place to settle.

When life moves too fast, this basin silts over, and the water grows thick and unmoving. Our organs lose their natural glide, and fascia densifies. Breath begins to skim the surface instead of dropping downward into the belly. You can feel the heaviness and resistance.

Each organ brings its own weather system. The liver holds heat and pressure, like an unbreakable storm. The stomach churns with doubt and uncertainty, its waves turning in on themselves. The intestines have a tide of looping stories, unfinished conversations rolling in and out. And the diaphragm hovers above all of it like a tide gate, deciding what is allowed to pass.

This all becomes poetry written into tissue.

When we place our hands here, we are not digging or forcing or fixing; we are dropping a pebble into still water and waiting to see what ripples. The contact is slow, the pause intentional, the hand listening rather than leading, inviting movement instead of demanding it. And the body responds the way water always does, not all at once, but in widening circles that travel outward, softening what they touch, carrying ease from the center to the edges.

Within abdominal work, we must wade slowly into these waters. This is not solid ground but a living basin, warm and responsive, where organs float, and emotions gather like shifting weather. The nervous system listens closely here, reading every change in pace and pressure. When we arrive with patience, our touch becomes a kind of climate. Rushed hands churn the silt and cloud the current, while a steady presence settles like rain after heat, restoring movement and clarity.

Sometimes, nothing dramatic happens in this work. No big release. No story. Just a subtle shift, like water beginning to move again where it had gone quiet. That is enough. When movement returns here, the body follows.

Remember, the body does not need to be convinced to heal. When we meet the abdomen with patience and care, the storms soften, the tides return, and the basin remembers its own flow.

02/03/2026

She isn’t bracing for the storm or clenching the rail in anticipation of what might come. She is seated inside the movement itself, hair lifted by salt wind, hands steady, allowing the current to speak first.

The body was never meant to be an anchor dropped in fear, but a vessel shaped for tides, for weather, for long crossings that change us. Built with curves that know how to meet resistance and still move forward. Built to sway, to adjust, to stay afloat even when the horizon keeps shifting.

When we trust the vessel, we stop fighting the sea. We stop demanding stillness from something designed for motion. We begin to feel the rhythm beneath the waves, the quiet intelligence that knows when to yield and when to hold course.

And in that listening, our journey can truly begin.

02/02/2026

The Enteric Nervous System

After a beautiful week of helping my fellow therapists dive deeper into the enteric nervous system, I realized how many of us may not fully understand this incredible inner steward. It is quiet, vigilant, and continually tracking our inner terrain. How often does this system get overlooked?

Most people know it as “the gut.” The stomach. Digestion. Something that should quietly do its job in the background as long as we eat well enough and manage stress properly. But the enteric nervous system is not passive, and it is not secondary. It is intelligent. It is responsive. And it is deeply involved in how we experience safety, emotion, and regulation.

This inner caretaker lives entirely within the digestive tract, stretching from the esophagus to the colon, woven through layers of smooth muscle and connective tissue. It contains hundreds of millions of neurons, more than the spinal cord itself. Communicating constantly with the brain, the heart, and the immune system, yet it can function on its own. It makes decisions. It adapts. It remembers.

The enteric nervous system manages digestion, yes, but it also monitors threat, modulates stress responses, and plays a decisive role in emotional processing. It is exquisitely sensitive to rhythm, environment, and touch. That is why emotions so often show up in the belly before they reach our lips.

Anxiety often tightens the belly before fear ever finds words, and grief dulls appetite before the heart understands what has been lost. And under chronic stress, the gut becomes a holding place.

When the nervous system perceives a threat, resources are diverted from digestion. Blood flow shifts, stress hormones rise, and peristalsis slows or becomes erratic. The microbiome adapts to a body preparing for survival instead of nourishment. Over time, this state becomes familiar, and familiarity begins to feel like a baseline.

Because the enteric nervous system does not respond to logic or reassurance, you cannot talk it into safety; it learns through sensation, through rhythm, through the difference between being rushed and being met. It is exquisitely attuned to touch, pace, and presence, just as any living creature would be.

This is why the belly is such a powerful place to begin.

Research consistently shows that gentle, intentional abdominal contact increases parasympathetic activity, improves vagal tone, and supports heart rate variability. Stress chemistry begins to soften, digestion improves, and inflammation quiets. The nervous system receives a clear message that it no longer has to stay on guard.

What many of us don't realize is that most of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. Mood, sleep, and emotional resilience are intimately tied to this system. When the enteric nervous system is overwhelmed, even the most self-aware person can feel emotionally unsteady. When it feels safe, things begin to reorganize quietly, often without conscious effort. This is why I return here again and again within my work.

Not to uncover stories, or to chase emotional release, but to honor the system that has been carrying a heavy load from the very beginning. The system that adapts silently, holds stress without complaint, and keeps the body moving forward when life demands more than feels possible.

The abdomen is not just another place to work, but a neurological crossroads, a sensory hub, and often the first place the body tells the truth. When we understand this, our touch, our pacing, and our outcomes change.

Tomorrow, I want to take you further into this landscape and show you how abdominal work becomes a conversation rather than a technique, and why beginning here can change everything that follows.

01/31/2026

Such incredible bodyworkers this week! 🥰

01/27/2026

We love our retreats. 🥰 Aqua Fitness and some hot tub time to start the day.

01/27/2026

Vibroacoustic Education

Today in class, we set the notes down for a bit and just let everyone feel. I took a short video while we explored different vibroacoustic sounds and how the body responds when you actually give it a moment to listen.

We started low with delta and theta waves. These are the slow, settling frequencies that help the nervous system drop its shoulders and take a breath it didn’t know it was holding. This is where the body feels safe enough to soften. It’s often where emotions, memories, or deep rest show up without effort. We use these when the goal is regulation, grounding, or simply letting the system calm down.

Then we moved into 30 and 40 Hz, and you could feel the shift. The body started to wake up. Muscles responded more clearly, fascia felt more fluid, and circulation picked up. These frequencies are great when tissue feels stuck or guarded, when you’re trying to create movement and change without forcing anything.

At 60 and 80 Hz, the energy changed again. These frequencies are more stimulating. They help bring awareness back into areas that feel heavy, sleepy, or disconnected. They can be really useful for activation, clarity, and allowing the body feel present and alive again, especially toward the end of a session or with clients who need a little spark.

What I love about teaching this is watching people realize there’s no “best” frequency. There’s only what the body needs in that moment. Vibroacoustics gives us another way to listen, and once you feel the difference, your hands never forget it.

01/26/2026

The Joy Family

Emotions: joy, happiness, delight, contentment, ease, gratitude, playfulness, wonder, serenity, pleasure, enthusiasm, amusement, lightness, bliss, celebration

Joy doesn’t knock politely. Instead, it bursts into the room like a long-distance best friend you haven’t seen in years, the kind who throws the door open mid-laugh, drops their bag wherever it lands, and wraps you into a warm hug. For a moment, everything else fades. Heaviness loosens its grip, and the body remembers something it didn’t realize it had been missing.

For joy is a spark, a natural force. It behaves like a breaking storm in the desert, the sky darkening and cracking open, rain hitting the earth with urgency and relief all at once. And then the clouds clear. Sunlight pours back in, sharper and more alive than ever before. The world takes on a deeper light, and colors brighten. In Arizona, after the storm passes, the air fills with the scent of creosote, that unmistakable earthy sweetness that says the land has been touched and changed. Joy feels like that to me. Not delicate or polite, but cleansing. Something ancient is waking up and reminding the body how alive it really is.

When joy moves through the body, our physiology follows suit. The chest opens as if it has more room than it remembered. Breath deepens without effort. Dopamine sparks motivation and pleasure, serotonin steadies mood and digestion, and endorphins move through tissue like warm light, easing pain and softening jagged edges. Cortisol, that constant companion of stress, finally steps back, and our fascia becomes more fluid, less guarded, and more willing to glide. The body doesn’t brace for what comes next; it expands into the moment.

Joy often enters as motion rather than emotion. A stretch, a sigh, a spontaneous smile that surprises you. It feels like fullness without weight, like a cup that overflows not because it was poured too quickly, but because it was finally ready to receive. The chest softens, the belly warms, and the body hums with a gentle aliveness that asks for nothing more than to be felt.

And yet, for some bodies, joy can feel unfamiliar or even risky. When you’ve lived a long time in vigilance, joy can feel too bright, or too sudden, like sunshine after days in darkness where your eyes need time to adjust. This doesn’t mean joy is unsafe; it means your nervous system is learning how to trust expansion again. Because joy isn’t the absence of pain; it’s the presence of safety.

This is why joy matters so deeply to the body. It teaches regulation through pleasure rather than effort. It reminds the nervous system that connection, play, and ease are not luxuries, but biological necessities. Joy nourishes immune function, supports cardiovascular health, improves digestion, and restores rhythmic breathing. It tells the body that it doesn’t have to survive every moment. Sometimes, it gets to live.

In bodywork, joy is not something we manufacture; it emerges when the body feels met without demand. When touch is rhythmic, smooth, curious, and unhurried, joy finds pathways to circulate rather than flash and disappear. Gentle movement, breath-led pacing, and full-body connection invite joy to settle rather than spike. Bodywork teaches that pleasure can be steady, not fleeting, and that safety doesn’t always have to be serious.

Joy is also meant to be shared. It echoes. It multiplies. It shows up in laughter that fills a room, in quiet moments of contentment, in the simple miracle of feeling present in your own skin. Sometimes it roars like thunder. Other times it hums like sunlight warming stone. Both are brilliant and beautiful to behold.

If joy has been distant for you, let this be a reminder, not a reprimand. You haven’t lost it, and your body hasn’t forgotten how to feel it. Joy is not found through pursuit, but through presence, often showing up in small, unremarkable places when we allow ourselves to feel them. It returns when the conditions are right, when the storm clears, when the ground has been touched by rain. And when it does, it won’t ask permission. It will burst back into your life, familiar and wild, smelling faintly of earth and light, reminding you that you were always built to feel this alive

01/24/2026

Today unfolded like a long, needed exhale at Montage Deer Valley, shared with a fellow Body Artisan. The kind of day that settles you back into yourself and reminds you why beauty lives so deeply in the body.

The spa experience flowed beautifully. The warm pool, whirlpool bath, cold shower, steam, and sauna created a perfect rhythm of contrast and calm. Lunch was nourishing, and the staff throughout were genuinely kind, attentive, and thoughtful.

We got to see Andrew for his incredle bodywork. His touch is deeply present, intuitive, and grounded. Not rushed or forceful, just skillful hands that listen and allow the body to soften and reorganize naturally. As bodyworkers ourselves, that kind of care matters.

We leave feeling slower in the best way. More embodied. More ourselves. Not because anything extravagant happened, but because everything was done with presence. Today wasn’t about escape or indulgence. It was about remembering how healing feels when it’s human, warm, and allowed to unfold at its own pace.

The Body Artisans

02/04/2026

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