The Body Artisans, Santaquin, UT (2025)

11/30/2025

Starlight in Human Form: The Field That Connects Us All

Every human being carries a measurable field around them, a quiet halo of electricity shaped by the heart, the nervous system, and the living fabric of fascia. This is not mystical thinking. It is physics. The heart’s electromagnetic field radiates several feet beyond the body and shifts with emotion, becoming smooth and coherent during gratitude or peace, and jagged during stress or fear. The people around you feel these shifts even if they cannot name them. We are not just bodies moving through space. We are signals moving through each other.

The fascia beneath your skin behaves like a liquid-crystalline network. When it is pressed or stretched, it generates electrical currents, just as a quartz crystal generates charge under pressure. This is called piezoelectricity. It means your body is constantly transmitting tiny electrical whispers through its tissues. When you are anxious, the fascia contracts and the signals become erratic. When you feel safe, the tissue softens and communication improves. This is the scientific foundation of what many people describe as “energy.”

Your nervous system responds to the emotional weather around you. Mirror neurons fire in response to the expressions and movements of others, allowing your brain to copy their internal state. The vagus nerve tracks micro-shifts in voice tone, breath, posture, and tension. You do not choose to synchronize with people. You are built to do so. Just like birds in murmuration or trees connected through mycelium, humans are wired to share information through subtle channels that lie below conscious awareness.

Even your cells emit light. This is one of the most extraordinary discoveries in biophysics. Every cell produces tiny pulses of photons called biophotons, and the amount of light changes based on your emotional and physiological state. Stress increases this cellular glow in sharp, chaotic bursts. Calm creates soft coherence. In other words, the body literally shines differently depending on how you feel.

This is why tools like copper dousing rods respond to emotions. They are not detecting magic. They are responding to fundamental shifts in muscle tone, electrical charge, and electromagnetic flow. When you feel sadness or fear, your field contracts just like fascia tightens under threat. When joy or hope returns, the field expands, and the rods spread apart. Your inner world has a physical footprint.

Think of yourself as a tuning fork. When someone near you is calm, your nervous system vibrates toward that calm. When someone is angry or distressed, your system picks up that vibration as well. Your body is constantly adjusting itself to the signals around it. The science of this is clear. The metaphor is simple. We shape each other.

This is why presence matters. Your emotional state is not contained within your skin. It enters the room before you speak. It influences the physiology of the people you love and the strangers who sit beside you. You leave a trail of coherence or chaos everywhere you go.

In the healing arts, this understanding changes everything. When we regulate our own nervous system, the client’s system begins to follow. When we breathe slowly, their breath deepens. When our fascia is fluid, theirs begins to unwind. When our electromagnetic field is coherent, theirs begins to reorganize.

There is nothing mystical about this. It is simply the science of being human. We are electrical creatures living in a shared field of influence. We are always communicating, even in silence. We are always shaping the world inside and around us.

The more we understand these truths, the more compassion we can hold for ourselves and each other. After all, every emotion you feel becomes part of the environment we share. Every breath you take quietly alters the world.

You are not small.
You are resonance.
You are signal.
You are a living field of light in motion.

11/30/2025

Lipedema. Lymphedema. Lipo-lymphedema.
So many of our clients arrive with these words written in their chart, but very few have ever had them truly explained.

I like to imagine these conditions as what happens when the body’s rivers and riverbanks begin to struggle. The lymphatic system is the river that carries excess fluid, proteins, immune cells, and metabolic waste back toward the heart. Fascia and connective tissue form the riverbanks, guiding and containing that flow. When either is overwhelmed, the landscape changes.

In lipedema, the change begins in the fat tissue itself. It is not “just weight.” It is a chronic, progressive disorder of subcutaneous adipose tissue, almost always affecting women, in which fat cells and the surrounding connective tissue become enlarged, tender, and inflamed, most commonly from the hips to the ankles, while the feet are often spared. Clients describe aching, heaviness, and easy bruising. Research shows micro-inflammation around blood vessels, fibrosis in the fascia, and early lymphatic overload, which means the very terrain that should glide and cushion instead feels crowded, pressurized, and sore.

Lymphedema is a different, but related story. Here, the lymphatic vessels themselves cannot keep up. Protein-rich fluid accumulates in the interstitial spaces because drainage is impaired, either due to a genetic weakness in the system (primary) or to damage such as surgery, radiation, infection, or trauma (secondary). Over time, chronic swelling can lead to increased fibrosis, fat deposition, skin changes, and increased vulnerability to infection. The river slows and thickens; the banks harden.

When lipedema persists long enough, the overloaded lymphatics can begin to fail, and lipolymphedema emerges: disproportionate, painful fat plus true lymphatic swelling layered on top of each other. This is often the client who tells you, with shame in their voice, that they have been told to “just lose weight,” even though dieting has never changed the shape or pain of their legs.

So how do we, as bodyworkers, help in a way that is both safe and meaningful?

First, we honor that this is a medical condition, not a character flaw. Many clients with lipedema or lymphedema arrive carrying years of dismissal and stigma. Our presence and language matter as much as our hands. We are not “fixing their legs.” We are helping a fluid-starved, overworked system find a little more room to breathe.

Second, we remember that these tissues are fragile, inflamed, and prone to overload. Deep, aggressive work is not helpful here. The research on lymphedema management consistently supports gentle manual lymph drainage, compression, movement, and meticulous skin care as core pillars of care. Our work can harmonize with those pillars.

Gentle, rhythmic manual work can support lymph flow when we follow the anatomy. We always clear proximally first, creating space in the larger trunks and nodes near the abdomen, trunk, and groin before encouraging fluid from the more distal tissues. Think of it as opening the dam before inviting more water downstream. Very light pressure, skin-stretching techniques, and slow, wave-like motions are key. Lymphatic capillaries are superficial and delicate; they respond to whisper-light touch, not force.

Fascial work still has a place, but it needs to be re-imagined. Instead of sinking deeply into already painful tissue, we can focus on long, slow, melting contact that respects the direction of lymph flow and the client’s pain threshold. Restrictive fascial bands can act like tight rings around a swollen river, further impeding drainage. Gentle myofascial spreading around the hips, pelvis, abdomen, and diaphragm can help free these choke points and support better fluid dynamics without bruising or flare-ups.

Movement is therapy for both systems. Studies show that low-impact, rhythmic exercise such as walking, water aerobics, rebounder work, or gentle strength training in compression garments helps lymph pump more effectively and may improve symptoms in lipedema and lymphedema. As bodyworkers, we can coach micro-movements: ankle pumps at the end of a session, diaphragmatic breathing to create a pressure piston through the trunk, and small gliding motions of the arms and legs. At the same time, the tissues are warm and supported.

We can also advocate for the practical tools that make a huge difference day to day: properly fitted compression, pneumatic pumps when appropriate, elevation, and collaboration with medical and lymphatic specialists. Our treatment room becomes one piece of a long-term self-care ecosystem.

Emotionally, these clients often live in bodies that feel “too big,” “too heavy,” or “betraying.” The shape of their legs or arms is not a reflection of willpower, yet the world often treats it that way. Our table can be the rare place where their body is met with curiosity instead of judgment. Where we name what we see: the peau d’orange texture, the cuffing at the ankles, the tenderness to touch, the symmetrical pattern that says “lipedema,” not laziness. Simply understanding the pattern is a form of relief.

In Body Artisan work, I like to think of sessions for lipedema and lymphedema as tending a tidal marsh. We warm the tissues. We invite slow tides of movement with our hands. We clear the main channels, then softly encourage the pooled waters to find their way home. We track the client’s nervous system the entire time, keeping them in a state of safety and rest so the body can prioritize drainage rather than defense.

No single session will erase a chronic fluid disorder. But every session can offer less pressure, less ache, more space, and more dignity. Over time, with thoughtful touch, movement, compression, and collaboration, the river and its banks can work together again.

To every client living with lipedema, lymphedema, or lipo-lymphedema: you are not your diagnosis, and you are not alone. Your body is not failing; it is adapting under enormous load. Our work as body artisans is to meet that adaptation with science in our hands, compassion in our hearts, and a deep respect for the quiet courage it takes to live in a body that feels heavy and keep moving toward lightness.

11/30/2025

There is a gentle divide in our field that often goes unspoken, yet it defines how we witness the body. It is the difference between the disease on a chart and the pathology living inside a person. And when we learn to recognize it, our touch becomes more precise, more compassionate, and more true.

A disease is the story someone is living. It is the collection of symptoms, struggles, flare-ups, and moments of resilience that give their experience its shape. It is the title of the book they carry into your treatment room. Lupus, EDS, lipedema, fibromyalgia, migraines, and chronic fatigue. These names describe the journey, but not the mechanisms underneath.

Pathology is different. Pathology is the why beneath the what. It is the cellular shift, the tissue disruption, the microscopic conversation that changed course long before a diagnosis was ever spoken aloud. It is the inflammation that refuses to settle, the collagen that forms irregularly, the lymph vessel that slows its flow, the nerve that begins to fire without mercy. If disease is the title of the book, pathology is the plotline unfolding inside the pages, explaining how each chapter came to be.

As bodyworkers, we stand between these two worlds. We do not treat disease; we support the person who carries it. We meet the pathology through the language of tissue, rhythm, temperature, and tone. We ease the grip of fascia that has been bracing for too long. We calm the nervous system that has forgotten how to find safety. We nourish the lymph that is searching for movement. We read the story the body is telling, and we answer it with touch that acknowledges both the science and the soul.

This is the artistry of our work. To honor the disease without reducing a person to it. To understand the pathology without losing sight of the human being beneath it. To meet each client not where their diagnosis begins, but where their body is asking for relief, space, and recognition.

In this way, every session becomes a rewriting. A gentle editing of the story. A reminder that the body is not the name it was given, nor the chapter it is currently in. It is a living manuscript, capable of healing, adapting, and beginning again.

11/29/2025

The Quiet Symphony of Fibromyalgia and Myofascial Pain

Fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome often arrive in the body like two quiet storms. They move through tissue, sensation, and the nervous system in ways that are deeply physical yet profoundly invisible. To the outside world, these clients may look “fine,” but inside, the body is whispering its overwhelm with every breath, every step, every night of unrefreshing sleep.

Science tells us that fibromyalgia is not a flaw of strength or willpower. It is a shift in how the nervous system processes sensation. The volume dial in the spinal cord and brain becomes turned too high, a phenomenon known as central sensitization. Functional MRI studies show that even gentle pressure lights up pain-processing centers more intensely than in neurotypical bodies. Some clients also show small-fiber neuropathy, tiny peripheral nerves within fascia and skin firing more rapidly or inconsistently than they should. The result is a body that becomes hyper-attuned to touch, temperature, movement, and emotion. A body that reads too much, too fast, with too little recovery.

Myofascial pain syndrome, meanwhile, often begins within the tissue itself. Taut bands, trigger points, and oxygen-deprived fascial pockets become tight, guarded, and overly reactive. These areas send constellations of referred pain across the body. Chemical changes within trigger points alter pH, blood flow, and nerve firing. And when enough of these regions stay active for long enough, the nervous system becomes overwhelmed as well, and the entire picture begins to resemble fibromyalgia.

This is why so many clients drift between labels. Why their symptoms do not fit neatly into a single box. In truth, these conditions share pathways, amplify one another, and often coexist in the same tender, exhausted system.

For bodyworkers, this means our work is not about chasing knots. It is about tending to an ecosystem. Every stroke we offer becomes a message to a sensitized nervous system: “You are safe. You can soften. You do not have to guard everything.” Slow, broad contact helps soothe Ruffini endings. Gentle myofascial spreading reduces local nociception. Craniosacral holds, diaphragmatic softening, and vagus-aware techniques help invite a shift from sympathetic vigilance to parasympathetic rest. Even oscillation or subtle traction can bring clarity back to tissues that feel thick, congested, or disorganized.

Many clients with these diagnoses also carry autonomic dysregulation. Their heart rate fluctuates. They may overheat or freeze easily. Their digestion slows. Their sleep collapses into fragments. The body hovers between fight, flight, and collapse because it is tired of trying to keep up. This is where your steady presence matters. Predictable rhythm, grounding touch, warm draping, weighted bolsters, dimmer lighting—each becomes a lifeline that signals to the brain that it can quiet the internal alarms.

And then there is the emotional piece. People with fibromyalgia and myofascial pain have been dismissed more than nearly any other group. Their pain is real, yet they are often told it is “just stress,” “just hormones,” “just anxiety.” When we listen without minimizing, when we name their symptoms with accuracy and compassion, we are already helping the nervous system unwind. Safety is biochemical. Validation is an intervention.

Think of it this way: fascia is the instrument, the nervous system is the soundboard, and the brain is the composer trying to interpret the music of a life that has been too loud for too long. These conditions do not mean the body is broken. They mean the orchestra needs gentler acoustics and a different kind of conductor.

As bodyworkers, we do not force harmony. We offer resonance. We help retune what has become dissonant. We create a space where pain can soften enough for the person beneath it to breathe again.

And little by little, with steady hands and a nervous system that knows how to hold another, the body begins to remember its music.

11/28/2025

The Tender Architecture of EDS

To work with an Ehlers–Danlos body is to touch a story written in collagen. The architecture itself is different. The fibers that most bodies rely on for stability, recoil, and support are softer, looser, and more fragile. This difference does not make the EDS body weak. It makes it exquisitely sensitive, incredibly adaptive, and deeply deserving of informed, compassionate care.

EDS affects far more than joints. Collagen is everywhere: in fascia, ligaments, blood vessels, organs, the gut lining, the diaphragm, and the skin. When collagen’s structure is altered, the entire body feels it. This is why an EDS client may present with pain in one session, digestive issues in the next, dizziness another day, and profound fatigue the day after. It is not randomness. It is connective tissue telling its story.

Digestion is one of the most profound places this story unfolds. The digestive tract relies on connective tissue to create tension, movement, and motility. When collagen is lax, the gut does not move food efficiently. The valves can struggle. The stomach may empty slowly. The small intestine may experience dysmotility. Constipation, bloating, nausea, and abdominal pain are not separate issues. They are a continuation of the same systemic laxity. Many EDS clients live with IBS-like symptoms not because of food alone but because the structural scaffolding of digestion is compromised. Gentle visceral work, vagal support, abdominal myofascial release, and diaphragm softening can be life-changing simply because they help the gut remember its rhythm.

Dysautonomia and POTS weave into this picture as well. Blood vessels in EDS are often more compliant and less able to maintain tone. When collagen is too elastic, the vascular system cannot regulate pressure effectively. Blood pools in the extremities. The heart races to compensate. Clients may feel dizzy, lightheaded, anxious, or exhausted simply from standing. This is not an emotional issue. It is biomechanics, it is physics, it is physiology.

When we work with an EDS client experiencing dysautonomia, our touch becomes a conversation with their autonomic nervous system. Craniosacral work, diaphragm release, occipital decompression, and gentle lymphatic-style flow help regulate vagal tone and reduce sympathetic overload. Slow transitions, side-lying positions, and elevated legs can help them stay grounded and safe on the table.

Strengthening is essential, but it must be intentional. For an EDS body, stability cannot come from ligaments. It must come from the muscles. The best form of strengthening is low-load, high-control training that teaches the body to stabilize without overstretching. Pilates, slow weight training, isometric holds, breath-based core engagement, and functional movement patterns help build the scaffolding that collagen cannot provide. This is not about pushing harder. It is about precision, control, and gradual resilience. When EDS clients strengthen wisely, their pain decreases, their joints feel more supported, and their nervous system becomes less reactive because it finally feels safe.

On the massage table, our role is to support the systems that work the hardest. Gentle myofascial spreading helps improve proprioception. Soft, rhythmical compression gives joints a sense of boundary. Slow visceral work eases digestive strain. Craniosacral stillness calms the dysautonomia that often hums beneath the surface. Lymphatic-style work supports vascular pooling and inflammation. Diaphragm release helps regulate breath, posture, and vagal tone. Everything we do is about reducing the body’s need to fight for stability.

EDS clients live in a world where their structure is always negotiating itself. Many have been misunderstood, dismissed, or told their symptoms are exaggerated. When your hands meet their body with knowledge, humility, and respect, something shifts. They no longer feel like they have to justify their experience. Their nervous system softens. Their breath deepens. Their joints stop bracing. For a moment, the world inside them becomes quieter.

Caring for an EDS body is not about correction. It is about companionship. It is about meeting a connective tissue story with skill, softness, and science. It is about helping someone feel at home in a body that has rarely felt simple. And when we do this well, our clients rediscover not just relief, but a sense of empowerment, clarity, and belonging that they carry long after they leave our table.

11/28/2025

The Hidden Ecosystem Under Your Skin

There is a reason people look at the branching currents of fascia and think of mycelium, the great underground network that carries information through the forest floor. They feel similar long before you know the science. Both look like living constellations. Both listen. Both respond. Both exist not as separate parts, but as unified systems devoted to connection.

Inside the human body, fascia forms a continuous web of collagen and fluid that wraps every muscle fiber, every organ, every vessel, every nerve. It is the only system that touches everything. When you zoom in under a microscope, fascia reveals delicate branching fibers that look astonishingly like fungal hyphae. When you zoom out, it behaves like a communication network, transmitting mechanical, electrical, and chemical signals across the entire body.

Beneath the earth, mycelium creates the “Wood Wide Web,” an underground communication system that allows forests to behave like a single, intelligent organism. Mycelium can transfer nutrients to weaker trees, warn neighbors of pests, regulate moisture, and maintain the health of the entire ecosystem. The network thrives on conductivity, hydration, and collaboration. It is not simply fungal tissue. It is a relationship embodied.

This is where science and metaphor meet.

Fascia conducts electrical signals via mechanotransduction, converting pressure and stretch into cellular signals that ripple outward. Mycelium transmits electrochemical pulses across long distances. Both systems coordinate responses faster than conscious processing. Both store memory. Both change their density and responsiveness in response to stress, environment, and hydration.

Fascia thickens and stiffens under emotional load, exactly the way a forest mycelial network becomes denser under threat. Fascia softens when safety returns, just as fungal networks increase nutrient sharing when a forest is thriving. Fascia maps experience, trauma, and recovery in its matrix. Mycelium maps seasons, storms, and regeneration across its vast web.

Humans are not separate from nature; we are built with its patterns.

When we touch fascia, we are not just altering tissue. We are restoring communication within an internal ecosystem. We are helping a body remember that its parts belong to each other. Through slow pressure, traction, breath, and presence, we help the signals move again. This is why fascial work can shift emotional states, restore fluid movement, and awaken tissues that have gone silent. We are rehydrating the network. We are clearing blocked pathways. We are giving the body back its forest-like clarity.

The deeper science is even more beautiful. Fascia contains more sensory nerve endings than muscles or joints. It senses vibration like a tuning fork. It transmits mechanical forces like an internal tide. It carries subtle electrical currents that influence how cells behave. In many ways, it behaves like biological mycelium, a distributed intelligence that monitors and adjusts the whole.

And just as a forest thrives when every tree is connected, the human body thrives when fascia glides freely, breath moves fully, and the nervous system feels safe enough to soften its grip.

As bodyworkers, we are the caretakers of this inner landscape. We listen for places where the network has gone quiet. We hydrate the dry fascial riverbeds with movement, warmth, and mindful pressure. We help reconnect the body’s communication pathways so the person lying on the table can feel themselves again, not just physically, but emotionally and intuitively.

The body is not a machine. It is a living ecosystem. A forest of sensation. A mycelial web of memory and meaning. A world that speaks through its fascia the way the earth speaks through its roots.

And when we honor it this way, with curiosity, science, artistry, and reverence, the whole system begins to heal.

11/28/2025

The River and the Riverbed: The Lymphatic Myofascial Relationship.

The body is not made of separate parts, no matter how many textbooks try to divide it. It is one continuous conversation. One river system. One woven landscape of structure, fluid, memory, and sensation. Nowhere is this more beautifully seen than in the relationship between the fascia and the lymphatic system.

Fascia is not simply connective tissue. It is the body’s inner forest floor, the soft earth through which everything grows and travels. It holds more sensory nerve endings than the muscles themselves. It houses the interstitium, a vast fluid reservoir now recognized as one of the largest “organs” by volume. It creates the very terrain through which lymph must move.

Lymph is the traveler, the cleansing tide, the quiet river that removes waste, regulates immunity, transports nutrients, and responds instantly to inflammation or injury. But lymph does not move on its own. It depends on movement, breath, pressure changes, and the softness of the tissues it flows through. Its vessels sit embedded inside the fascial layers, anchored to the very fibers that bodyworkers stretch, melt, warm, and free.

This is why these systems cannot be separated. This is why fascial lymphatic flow works. The Long Method is my favorite technique taught by Katrina Gubler Long.

When fascia becomes dense or dehydrated, the interstitial fluid thickens, pressure gradients collapse, and lymphatic capillaries cannot properly open and close. Imagine trying to push water through a dry, compacted sponge. The lymph has nowhere to go. Post-surgical clients feel this acutely. Trauma, inflammation, surgical scarring, or immobility cause the fascial planes to lose their slide, which in turn traps swelling, slows immune function, and increases pain.

But when we touch fascia with slow, intentional, directional work, something extraordinary happens. Mechanotransduction, the cells' response to mechanical pressure, shifts the behavior of fibroblasts and immune cells. Collagen fibers begin to reorganize. Hyaluronic acid changes viscosity. The interstitial fluid becomes less stagnant. The tissue warms, hydrates, and begins to breathe again. And the lymphatic system, finally uncompressed, begins to move with ease.

You cannot restore lymph flow without changing the landscape it flows through. You cannot free swelling without freeing the structures that hold it. You cannot separate the river from the riverbank.

This is not guesswork. It is anatomy.

The superficial lymphatic system lives in the loose areolar fascia, a layer designed to glide. The deep lymphatic system lies within the deep fascia surrounding muscle compartments. When these gliding surfaces stiffen, every lymph vessel tethered to them loses its ability to pump. This is why many clients feel more relief with fascial lymphatic flow than with lymphatic work alone. We are restoring the architecture that lymph depends on.

In post-surgical care, this becomes especially profound. Scar tissue alters glide. Protective guarding increases fascial tension and non-pitting edema forms when fluid becomes trapped in thickened interstitium. Traditional lymph work is essential, but fascia must also be addressed for complete restoration. A gentle fascial approach honors the lymphatic system's delicacy while creating the space it needs to travel.

This is not breaking tradition. This completes the picture.

Some may challenge this perspective, but the body does not argue. It responds. It softens. It drains. It heals. Thousands of therapists have seen swelling reduce, pain decrease, and mobility return when these systems are treated together. Because fascia and lymph are not separate entities. They are partners; two halves of one healing intelligence.

To work the fascia is to prepare the riverbed. To work the lymph is to free the river. Together, they create a landscape where healing becomes possible again.

For the bodyworkers who feel this truth in your hands, keep listening. The body is always teaching us how interconnected it really is.

11/27/2025

Do you have a friend or loved one with a condition you would like to understand better?

There are so many conditions and pathologies we learn about in textbooks, yet the lived experience behind them is often left untouched. In The Body Artisan way, we don’t just study a disease, we listen to the person living inside it. We explore the physiology, emotions, fascia, and the ways the body adapts and speaks through pain or imbalance.

So tell me, what disease or pathology would you like us to explore next? Not just to understand the condition, but to understand the human being carrying it and how we can support them.

11/27/2025

On this day of gratitude, I want to turn our attention to the quiet miracle that carries us through the world. The human body is not simply anatomy. It is memory, electricity, intuition, and resilience woven into form. It is the most extraordinary companion we will ever have, and so much of its brilliance happens beneath the threshold of our awareness.

This body regenerates itself without being asked. Bones reshape, skin renews, organs repair, and fascia remodels in response to how we breathe, move, and feel. Even in moments of profound fatigue, the body continues its quiet work of rebuilding us from within.

So today, may we bow to this incredible vessel that has carried us through every hardship and every joy. May we thank the fascia that holds us together, the breath that steadies us, the heart that keeps choosing to beat, and the nervous system that organizes the whole symphony.

Your body is extraordinary.
Your body is resilient.
Your body is worthy of reverence.

And today, on this day of gratitude, may you feel just how miraculous it truly is.

The Body Artisans

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