The Power of Proprioceptive Practices to Navigate Binge Urges

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host. Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.

As many of you know, I'm currently in school to receive my PhD in somatic psychology. Each semester, we have a somatic praxis class that explores different lenses to connect with the body such as interoception, which is sensing your internal body, proprioception, which is our body's ability to sense itself in space, and exteroception, which is the process of perceiving stimuli from outside the body aka using our senses. We have also explored feeling into the body by attending to and moving from the skeletal system, the muscular system, organs, skin, and fascia. It has reminded me how complex we are and that there are many ways to be with your body. Sometimes, when there is a desire for connecting with yourself and your body but you don't quite know how to do that, food becomes the most readily available resource for connection. It is a rich sensory experience that can make you feel so much when you're having a difficult time feeling anything or want to feel something different. I chat about the connection between your food behaviors, proprioception and the fascial system today with Dr. Satya Sardonicus.

Dr. Satya is a leading expert in fascia, nervous system healing, and embodied transformation. After overcoming a decade of debilitating chronic illness—including misdiagnosed neurological conditions - she developed the NeuroFascial Flow Method, a groundbreaking approach that integrates fascia release, somatic healing, and proprioceptive re-patterning to support deep, sustainable healing. She’s the founder of Inside the Chrysalis, a thriving healing community, and she trains healthcare professionals in her method to elevate patient care. Her work bridges science and spirit, helping people reclaim their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, and unlock their full potential - whether in healing or in life. We talk about what is proprioception and fascia, how low proprioception and rigidity in your fascial system can lead to increased stress, proprioceptive and fascial exercises you can engage in that can help you to navigate food urges, what somatic and nervous system practices could be making things worse and dysregulating you, and so much more.

The next Somatic Eating® Program starts May 22nd. We spend three months together building safety, security, and satiation in your food interactions. If you're new here, Somatic Eating® is my life-long work. This approach to your relationship with food is grounded in the premise that your food coping mechanisms, like binge eating, chronic emotional eating, yo yo dieting, restriction, and body image concerns, are your body's way of trying to communicate its lack of safety as a response to past trauma and a dysregulated nervous system. In the program, I teach all classes live, classes are recorded to watch the replay, and you receive a space to connect with me and other participants. We explore a somatic, nervous system, parts, trauma lens to your food behaviors so you can build more self compassion, awareness, and capacity to be with your body in food and non-food ways. If you're interested in learning more and getting on the waitlist, go to somaticeating.com.

Now welcome Satya! I am so excited that you are here and to all listeners actually, I recently just taught in your platform a class on Somatic Eating, so I'm like, really excited about connecting with you again, just like, really jive with your energy, and I'm really excited to hear more about your work and your offerings and, you know, getting into a little bit of talk about proprioception and fascia today, and most listeners know I always like to start out with like, how you got into your work and how it found you.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 04:33

Yeah, thanks, Stephanie. It was so fun having you in the inside the chrysalis group. So I'm really excited for this conversation, getting to be in your world. Now, as Stephanie mentioned, I am Dr Satya. I'm a fascia and nervous system specialist and the creator of NeuroFascial Flow Method. It is a unified model for healing that bridges movement, fascia and nervous system healing. So I've been really immersed in the world of healing my whole life. I come from a family deeply rooted in holistic health. Pretty much all of the people in the generation immediately before me are in different kinds of holistic health. So at school, because I had that experience growing up, but my personal journey with my own health made me look at things in an even deeper way. I spent my entire teen and young adult years struggling with chronic illness with progressively worsening neurological symptoms that doctors couldn't figure out. They thought maybe I had multiple sclerosis or fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, maybe a brain tumor like maybe schizophrenia, because I had hallucinations. I mean, they couldn't figure it out, and oftentimes they landed on it's all in your head, as we with chronic illness often experience, but eventually I discovered that the root cause was actually a condition called cerebellar tonsillarctopia, which is that part of my brain got herniated out of my skull in a car accident when I was a young child, and nobody realized it. They thought that I was just very sensitive and needed to control my environment, and a lot of it was blamed on my personality, actually, and so a lot of people haven't heard of this condition, but it actually affects a huge percentage of people with chronic pain. One in four people with neck pain whose ever had a head injury, whether it was dealt with seriously or you were sent back outside to play with a minor, quote, unquote, minor concussion. One in four people with neck pain and that kind of a history has some degree of brain herniation, so it's super common. I was told I needed surgery to cut off the back of my skull or cut the attachment between the spinal cord and the tailbone, like some pretty not good outcomes when I dove into research mode, but instead, I found a way to restore my brain body connection through fascia release and movement. And I was also, at that time, specialized working with kids with sensory processing difficulties, autism, dyslexia, tourettes, things like this. And I said, wow, these kids and me and their stressed out parents have a ton of overlap around nervous system dysregulation. And so that really made me refine and evolve what I knew about healing from my childhood, which was about, you know, saying the body knows how to heal itself if you support it, rather than try to micromanage it. And that totally led, you know, over time, into the development of neurofascial flow. So it's really about helping the body reclaim its natural capacity for adaptation and regulation. And one of the missing pieces that's so massive in nervous system regulation work today is around proprioception, the brain's ability to feel where it is in space. And we talk a lot about interoception. I know you talk a lot about interoception, and that ability to feel what's happening inside. But if proprioception, which is a specific type of interoception, if proprioception is compromised, then the brain gets stuck in a state of uncertainty and dysregulation, because it's actually the way we normally recover from alarm, like if you smash your finger, you want to shake it or squeeze it, because those things provide proprioception, and it calms the nervous system, and the fascia has a massively high density of proprioceptors, especially in the spine, and that's why fascia movement, and specifically spinal movement and the nervous system healing have to really work together. So I love that we're diving into this today. I think food regulation and nervous system health and movement are so deeply intertwined, and this conversation doesn't get enough attention. I'm so grateful for our time together.

Stephanie Mara 08:27

Yeah, thank you for sharing all of that. Wow. What a healing journey you have been on, and I really hear your passion for this work, just also from your lived experience of how many people with chronic illness are so misunderstood, and I know that I've been very open here about my long covid healing journey, and one of the times that I went to the hospital because I was like having trouble breathing, swallowing, all these like important functions they wanted to give me just a dose of anxiety medication, just like, oh yeah, let's just like, let's just help you out here. And I'm like, um, I've never taken like and to anyone who's listening, who's on that, like, if it helps you, great, fantastic. I never want anyone to feel judged. But in that moment, it just completely bypassed that I was having real physiological symptoms going on and applying it just to, like a psychosomatic kind of thing.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 08:39

No, we get so gaslit into saying, oh, it's all, quote, unquote, just stress. And I'm like, you know what? You're right, it is stress, but I don't mean it's just emotional stress. There's physiological stress that we need to be addressing.

Stephanie Mara 09:45

Yeah, so for anyone who's unclear about what proprioception is, could you go into a little bit more explanation of what that is and how it connects to your work?

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 09:58

Totally. Yeah. As I was saying, like if you smash your finger, alarm signals go to the brain. That's called nociception, and then you shake it, or you squeeze it, or both. And so both movement and deep pressure, specifically not light touch, but deep pressure, send these signals called proprioception, and it will calm down the alarm response. It'll help you recover from it. It's why exercise fights depression. It's why kids who take gym class in school test higher on their exams than kids who don't have gym class because it affects cognitive function. It's why weighted blankets help with anxiety and thunder coats for our animals. So that's the signaling that happens. But the brain relies on proprioception so deeply, actually, that it's been considered that exercise is probably more important for our brain function than it is for our heart, lungs or muscles. Not that it's not important for those things, but the brain relies on three essential inputs or nutrients for function. Oxygen, you have to breathe, glucose, you have to eat and proprioceptive input, you have to move, and without clear proprioceptive signaling, the body defaults to a state of uncertainty, which can lead to anxiety, overwhelm, dissociation, chronic bracing patterns in the fascia, food dysregulation, since the body struggles to process internal and external sensory inputs effectively. So a lot of focus comes around interoception, which is super important, but proprioception, which is where we are in space, specifically, and the deep pressure signals, is not just about where we are in space, it's also about the body feeling safe and recovering from nociceptive alarm signals. So any kind of stressor, whether that's, you know, a scary lion chasing you, or feeling self judgment or judgment from someone else, or eating something that has, like a lot of preservatives and like neurotoxins, or sleeping weird or stressing out about your job, like all of these things equally, send alarm signals and amp up a response in the brain that is totally normal, fight or flight. And if you're in it for a long time, or there's a really intense trauma, you might even have some dorsal vagal collapse it's called where you go into like a freeze state. And I usually don't see people 100% in freeze. We're in like a mixed, sympathetic dominance, functional freeze, kind of between the two. But either way, those are different flavors of alarm state. And when you're in survival mode, it distorts everything, which I'm sure you've heard about tons from Stephanie here. But the thing is, is that proprioception is the way that normally we're meant to come out of it. So if you have places in the body that aren't moving and articulating through where you have this neurostructural fluidity that all the joints, all the muscles, all the fascia can smoothly articulate through the whole thing. Then the places that are stuck, the stuff around it, will move a little extra, and you might not notice, you might not even have any pain, but it's starving the brain of the proprioceptive signals it's normally meant to get from there. So usually you're just moving around in your daily life, your brain is getting fed that proprioception constantly. But if a bunch of places aren't moving normally because you have adhesions in your fascia, or your joints are jammed up, or tight muscles, now the brain is handling every new stressor of all types, whether it's chemical, emotional, sleep, any of it with one hand tied behind its back. And adding insult to injury is that those stuck places are sending alarm signals 24 hours a day. So even if nothing ever stressed you out, and you had all the best nutrients and all the best sleep and enough hugs and you loved your job, everything, you feel connected with your family and spirit like you still will be having your brain in this alarm state, because the body is sending alarm signals. And so that's the place where I really focus in on is this missing link where there's a lot of things like growing a healthy plant, you know, it needs nutrients and water and sunlight. Like humans, also need a whole list of things, but the proprioceptive feedback is one that I find missing a lot of the time, and then the brain is starving, and it just doesn't handle stress as well. And so everything is more difficult.

Stephanie Mara 14:15

Yeah, you know, I see so many correlations in there with our relationship with food, and that when we are feeling like, stuck in a place in our body, that even eating is movement, we are reaching out for food. We are grabbing the food. We are like, bringing the food in. You're chewing.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 14:37

Your jaw has high proprioceptors in it. Yeah, you're chewing, you're swallowing. There's a lot of movement in it.

Stephanie Mara 14:44

Hearing in that of I always like to bring in there's wisdom to why you are choosing food for a reason. And so I just hear another lens of that, of what even choosing food when you're not physically hungry is doing for a person.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 14:59

I love that. I love that you think about. That's something I think about also is like, when we have something that we are like, a behavior that's persistent, that we go, oh, it's harmful, because x, y, z, and I'm like, well, but why are you doing it? Because you're doing it because you're getting needs met. Even when I help people who are, like, trying to quit smoking, their needs are being met in that they get to go outside, take a break from work, go be social or be alone. So always thinking about what needs are being met, and then how can I get those needs met in a different way. So if somebody is having food cravings, like a lot of times, you know, people will assume their cravings for sugar, carbs, hyper palatable foods are purely emotional or metabolic, but sometimes it's actually the brain searching for sensory input, because the gut and the nervous system are so intimately connected. Proprioception plays a really key role in regulating hunger and satiation and energy balance. And if the brain's not getting enough proprioceptive input, especially from the spine, the fascia, the joints, the nervous system might misinterpret this as a need for quick energy, leading to sugar or carb cravings, and the other thing that happens is that stress will naturally shut down proprioception, because the body is prioritizing survival over fine tuned body awareness. So this can lead to a feeling of disconnection from hunger and fullness cues as like an increased reliance on food for regulation, and so movement and proprioceptive activation can actually reduce dysregulated cravings, like, if somebody's experiencing frequent, intense food cravings, especially for sugar, integrating proprioceptive inputs like gentle fascia work, weight bearing movements or even deep pressure touch can really help regulate the nervous system and bring cravings into balance. So like, instead of immediately reaching for sugar if somebody had that craving, or if I have a craving for sugar, I will first try doing these deep squeezes, where I take a broad, deep contact and just gently squeeze gently but deeply on my both soft tissue and my joints, and I'm showing it on my arms here.

Stephanie Mara 17:05

What you're doing is basically, I do show this to people who I work with is like, she's just lightly squeezing down her arm. And I know that I've talked about even I put out a video on my social media page recently about like I was having a craving over a weekend, and like, you know, found myself just like, squeezing my legs just to bring in that proprioceptive input.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 17:28

Yeah, so I love that you said the legs, so the feet are the second highest density of proprioceptors after the spine. So squeezing the feet also can be a really good I will sometimes tell people it's a really good excuse to ask your partner for a massage, not a massage where they change something necessarily, literally just squeezing, like some nice, deep squeezes can be really helpful, but also something like a really simple spinal movement, where you find, like a little tiny wave side to side in your spine, keeping it sosmall, because it's how many joints you can articulate through is way more important than how big. And if you do it really big, you might run into stuck places and send alarm signals. So I do this like side seaweed flow thing in my neurofascular method, where we just try to find as many joints participating in the side to side wave as you can without any alarm. Like, if it hurts something, don't do it, you know. But the idea is, how can we get more proprioceptive feedback? You can wiggle your hands, wiggle your toes and see if that helps, because it might be that your body's actually craving proprioceptive input. So fascia is super rich in proprioceptors, meaning that hydrating it, mobilizing it, stimulating fascia, can increase body awareness and nervous system regulation, and that can really help with hunger cues versus cravings. Because if you're still hungry, like, maybe you are actually hungry and you need something, I know the word cravings, I'm like, well, but you could be craving something because your body really needs that nutrient, like, right? If you crave chocolate, you might need magnesium. Like, there's reasons it's an easy, quick thing that you can do to rule out that proprioceptive starvation is what's actually happening, and these practices can help restore that brain body connection, making it easier to listen to what your body actually needs.

Stephanie Mara 19:16

Thank you for naming also to go slowly. Just even as you were, like, swaying your spine, it was really, really gentle and subtle. And, you know, there's one of the somatic practices that has become so mainstream that everyone is making videos on is shaking, you know, it just makes me think of that, of like, well, if you are, like, dramatically shaking your body, which can be supportive sometimes, but that you may actually be hitting on places that are stuck doing it in a way that's too fast. You're overwhelming your system that's already overwhelmed and like that isn't feeling supportive to your body, ultimately, because what the point of a nervous system or somatic practice is, is to support the body in feeling safe and feeling connected to and feeling like, okay, we can maybe turn off these alarm bells. And so I really appreciate you also bringing in that sometimes it is movement, but it doesn't have to be so big.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 20:20

It doesn't need to be big, and it doesn't need to be so dramatic, like, oftentimes shaking, especially if somebody has stuff going on in their body, like it can be really, actually, the opposite of safe feeling. I have to do a lot in my body before I feel like I really want to shake. And for a lot of years, shaking wasn't a safe feeling in my body at all. And I tried doing like TRE and these other things that just bring in the shake. And I, I so love that that is deeply helpful for a lot of people, but there's also a lot of people it's it's not helpful for and what you were saying is, like, the number one goal needs to be around safety. And that's even in the neurofacial flow five step framework, which is about having a container for change, most methods, techniques, therapies, are going right to step three, so that the steps are one establish safety, so that you actually have receptivity to change, and then you facilitate a softening of the body on its own, like inviting it to soften and release the clenching effort. And then you do the step three, whatever the changing thing is that you want to do, but only to your nervous system's tolerance. And then you re-establish safety. And then you adapt to that set point before you try to go concentrically bigger and deeper. And you can really up spiral your healing process in this way, it's this container where safety is both step one and four, like it's so, so important for us to feel safe. Because it's like all change is hard, even in the right direction.

Stephanie Mara 21:50

Yeah, I completely agree with that. It's also the basis of my work, as well as we have to start with laying a foundation of safety so completely on the same page. Coming back a second, just if you were talking also about fascial work, and for anyone who doesn't know, potentially what fascia is, because I really didn't, and I think it took a lot of reading to understand how fascinating fascia in our body actually is and what it does for us. And like even we don't fully know what fascia does. Like, there's still a lot of research that's being done of, like, like, why can fascia exist in like, so many different forms? And it's just like, fascia is crazy. So I'm wondering if you could speak to that at all about, like, what it is and why it's so important that we work with it.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 22:38

I totally can, but I can't leave this there. It's actually fascianating.

Stephanie Mara 22:42

Oh yeah!

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 22:43

I just really just love, I love a good pun!

Stephanie Mara 22:49

Yes, it is fascianating!

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 22:50

You said it was fascinating and I was like oh so close.

Stephanie Mara 22:57

I set you up for it.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 23:02

Fascia is the richest sensory organ for proprioception, and it is this spider web like material that runs through the entire body. And you're right, there are actually a lot of different definitions of the term, and I think it depends a lot on, like any word, the context and what we're using it for. So I tend to go with the broadest definition, the most inclusive definition of fascia, which is that it is all of the superficial fascia, deep fascia, visceral fascia, the layers. You know, when it gets super dense in the embryo, as the bones are getting longer, it turns into the tendons at the end of the muscle and the ligaments between the joint, the bones. So the reason I use that really broad term that also includes aponeuroses and the sutures between the bones of the skull and the dura mater, lining of the skull and spinal column is because it is all interconnected in this web like fashion, such that it acts a lot like fabric. So if you were to pull on the edge of your bed sheet, you see a tension line like it pulls across the whole thing from a functional, kinetic chain perspective, a biomechanics perspective, which I come from in my my background in bodywork, I'm thinking about, okay, for example, if the bits of fascia between the muscle fibers in the calf get gluey together so that it doesn't articulate and it's not supple anymore, it's kind of gluey and functioning as a stiff mass of muscle instead of an articulating mass. Then when I walk, it yanks up the fascial line in the back of the leg that attaches up in through the sacred tuberous ligament into the tailbone, and then that pulls up the dural sleeve around the spinal cord and up into the dural lining of the skull. And we see this. I actually published a study in, I think it was 2015 in the Canadian Pain Journal, showing a dramatic reduction in headache frequency and intensity by working on the fascia down in the legs, like pulling your stockings up, not from the waistband, but down by your ankles. You gotta, like, feed the length up. And so when I think about how fascia works in the body, that connection between the dura lining of the skull sleeve around the spinal cord, and then through the tailbone to the back of the legs and into the plantar fascia, the bottom of the feet, that dural fascial kinetic chain. I actually named that structure in that article because we see these interconnections between how, if there's a tangle over here, it's going to yank over there. And another super common one is when people have chronic stress, that the nervous system is in a state of alarm for a long time, the rib cage glues down onto itself and turns into kind of like armor to protect your heart and lungs, your vital organs. But if you have all this tangled fascia together in the rib cage, you can imagine that over the shoulder joint gets over stretched, the fabric, like material there, gets over stretched, and then you're vulnerable to shoulder injuries. And a PT might say, well, now you have muscle weakness over here, we should strengthen your shoulder. And I'm like, maybe you should release the fascia in the rib cage, and then we see alleviation of the tension into the neck muscles and the shoulder joints that are over stretched, or the back of the knee. The knee becomes really vulnerable when the calf fascia is really tangled up. And so there's these different points in the body that get dehydrated, rigid, gluey together, adhesions and fascia has a super strong protective function. It's not just scaffolding of the body. It's also very protective, which, like I was saying with the rib cage, getting gluey together to protect your vital organs in times of trauma and stress, it will remodel in response to the demands around it. And if you've had an injury that it couldn't figure out how to like process in the moment, whether it's a physical injury or an emotional trauma, there's that book The Body Keeps the Score. The body really does hold things, and largely it's in the fascia is what is doing that protective function. So it's very adaptive, but when it is gluey and you have that chronic tension in the fascial layers, it keeps the nervous system in that survival mode, creating that feedback loop of which makes it want to stay braced and guarding, and you have less body awareness, and you have heightened emotional dysregulation, including around food choices, but around everything, like being able to think clearly becomes challenged. And so the fascia is really where I get excited about focusing on saying, well, let's make sure that we have that fluidity. But you can't just tear it open. Like fascia is having such a moment right now, and there's so many, oh, the fascia blaster and foam rolling and cupping. They're all like, like, shaking, very I call it like, top of the elevator. And I'm like, we need to work on a ramp, not just, you know, go straight to the most intense thing, because even well intentioned providers often are actually aggravating nervous system dysregulation by trying to force the body to let go of bracing and splinting that it doesn't yet feel safe to release.

Stephanie Mara 28:05

Yeah, I know you know how much I'd love to connect all this back with food. And something that I hear in that is that we're working with the fascial system in the lens of its relationship with your food behaviors is also like, okay, if you can imagine that things are like stiff armored gluing themselves together, and you're feeling tight and tense in your body, and that's sending a cue to your nervous system and your brain that, like, hey, we're in danger here and you're constantly feeling like you need to be you know, have enough energy to run away from threat, or you're trying to shut yourself down, and don't know how to do that, food comes in as a resource in response to all the ways that your body's trying to protect you.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 28:50

Totally it's so intelligent. It's like so many people struggle with food regulation, not because of willpower, but because their brain lacks clear proprioceptive feedback. And when there's this tension locked in the body, the nervous system stays dysregulated, and then emotional eating patterns are so much harder to shift.

Stephanie Mara 29:11

Yeah, so I'm curious you were offering a little bit about like, how you work with maybe proprioception, squeezes, gentle swaying. What are things that maybe people could play with to start to tune into their own facial system of kind of going out and getting, like a facial massage if it may be available to them.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 29:29

Yeah. So well, and especially because, as I was saying, a lot of times, even well intentioned providers, like they're actually causing more dysregulation. And what I found in my own body was that there's a lot that I could do myself, and so that's actually why I have inside the chrysalis, because I teach people a lot of these techniques of how you can find the window of access and go through a process of unraveling your tension patterns in a way that feels safe, and oftentimes it starts from the bottom up, because that dural fascia kinetic chain tension is such a big deal. But even figuring out if this is something that might be going on, there's a few, like self assessments I like to teach. I'm happy to share those. I'm gonna try really hard to explain them with no video. But one of them is like that side kind of seaweed flow that we did. You could try taking it gently, a little bit bigger, and see if you run into stuck places. One of the things that's really common with that is that your lower spine might move fine, but then from like your sternum, like the part of your rib cage, between your clavicles and your stomach, kind of will tend to move like a single like a piece of wood, instead of articulating through the area, and then the neck wants to flop, and so don't let your neck flop. That can be really alarming. And if you have that situation, you probably have chronically tight neck muscles and shoulder muscles, because two things. One, they're trying to stabilize your neck that is relatively floppy compared to what's not moving enough in your rib cage. But also, if your rib cage, you could also take a measuring tape around your rib cage and measure the difference between when you breathe all the way out and then all the way in. So most adults should have, like, anywhere from a two and a half to four inch difference from all the way out to all the way in. And I'll measure it around, like, right where my stomach is, the soft spot, right where the sternum is. But then I'll also do it as high as I can under my armpits, because the upper rib cage is usually what's much more restricted than the lower rib cage. And so I'm looking for that functional difference. And if the rib cage can't expand enough to breathe, then your neck muscles get really tight because they're trying to lift your rib cage to get a the lung inflation. And so that's why even, like, you'll get a massage and it'll just get tight again, because your brain is like, no, I'm using those muscles like I need them. And so those could be indicators that you could get into some fascial release in the rib cage. Although most of the time, when I try to go there directly with people, it triggers more alarm, and they actually need to they put some slack in the system by feeding the length up from the bottom up. I'm happy to share the link to the inside the chrysalis with your people, if anyone wants to, like, go through those. But I also share a lot of free content on my Instagram and my TikTok that can give listeners like actually be able to go see some videos of what I'm talking about, so I'm happy to share those as well. But it's really about like if you feel disconnected from your body, or if you're struggling with food regulation or experiencing nervous system overwhelm, proprioceptive nourishment is such is such a crucial piece that is likely happening, whether you're noticing it with chronic pain and difficulty movement or not, because of the body's ability to compensate. So really small things like just trying to do some fluid, spinal waving movements, deep pressure, like regularly, think about it like taking vitamins, not just when you're in the moment of alarm, like wake up in the morning and just spend like, a minute doing deep pressure anywhere in your body that feels accessible and good. It's a global response. So if you only ever do it at your feet, you're still getting it. You don't have to also do your arms. And so you can use that as a reactive thing to calm down in the moment. If you're, like, having cravings and you want to know, hey, am I just needing some proprioceptive activation? But you can also use it as a supplement, and if you can find a fascial release practitioner that you don't feel any alarm with when they're working with you, that can be really helpful too. You know what I teach in my program is like you can probably get the first 40 to 70% of it yourself, but you can't do 100% I don't know how to not need any professional help, but there are ways that you can show up to the providers in a way that they're less likely to trigger you, and that has a lot to do with what I teach in my program, is somatic tuning. But I know Stephanie, you teach something really similar is tracking if you're going into any kind of edge of alarm, then you back out and you find a different way, and you can track that when you're getting any kind of professional work as well, and that can be really helpful at making sure that they don't accidentally push past your capacity to integrate that change.

Stephanie Mara 34:14

Yeah, thank you for naming that. All of these are also daily practices. You know, I find just in the way that somatics is being described on social media, for example, is kind of this, like one and done, rather than it's you're going to have a body your whole entire life, and it's really normal and natural for that body to move in and out of regulation and dysregulation all day, every day throughout your entire life. And so you know something that I talk a lot with people that I work with around and not always, but usually there is a time of day where people find themselves emotionally eating or binge eating. And so if we can say, okay, so that's at the point where your body is navigating so much that it's starting to scream at you. It's like, I really need your help now. So we kind of sometimes have to back that up and say, okay, 30 minutes, 60 minutes before you get to that time, can you start practicing all the things that maybe you listen to here, or you are learning on social media, or you're working with a somatic or nervous system, or somebody practitioner. It's doing the practices when you feel like you're able to actually receive the feedback from that practice, because once you finally hit the moment where the urge feels like a tidal wave, when your sympathetic nervous system is like on fifth gear, it's all you know signs are moving ahead that it's gonna be really hard to one practice, to remember what to practice, and to also receive the benefits of that practice, because your body's in a danger zone at that point. So I really appreciate you naming like this is something to find moments throughout the day, every day, to start practicing proprioceptive input, and that even the squeezes like when you were talking about fascia, see it as just like your internal clothing. It's just like, it's right underneath your skin. And its just, like, that's what I the imagery that I always get when I think of fascia, because it's through your whole body. It's just the clothing underneath your skin, through your whole body.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 36:28

I will be using that from now on Stephanie. Oh my god, that's perfect.

Stephanie Mara 36:34

So glad you love that. So even the gentle squeezes are going to be doing you're going to be stimulating that fascia as well.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 36:41

Yeah, there's a really interesting nuance that I'd like to reflect on what you were just sharing, because it is so important to recognize the consistency, just like I brush my teeth, like I have spinal hygiene practices that I do as well. That said I have noticed that sometimes I'll say for myself, and I know for a lot of other people, I was getting caught in a place where I felt like I was just constantly having to do a lot of self care or and if I skipped a day, it would all fall apart. I tried to look at, well, what do I need to do to increase the threshold? And something that I found was in this spinal fluidity, specifically, and of course, I, you know, I have this chiropractic lens, so I've already had a lot of focus on the spine, but the spine has the highest density of proprioceptors in the body, and so I can supplement with the squeezes and with the seaweed flows, but actually releasing the facial adhesions and having better neurostructural fluidity is a solution that needs to be looked at to see if that's an issue and to restore fluidity, because it's very normal when we are in a time of crisis to split and freeze and, you know, just lock everything down. That's very normal. But if we don't get back to a state of fluidity, then it's going to be keeping us locked there. And so it's important, I shared these practices, like the squeezes, to feed the proprioception in the meantime. But also we want the brain to not be starving so much so doing something to find where you can get more articulation in the system and ensure that all of your joints, all of your fascia, everything can smoothly move like I'm thinking of there's a 75 year old yoga teacher, I think that's her age, close, who has been an inside the chrysalis member for a while, and now she's actually going through my professional certification to be able to incorporate neurofascial flow in her practice teaching. She was reflecting in one of her reflection workbooks, she said I always thought I was super flexible. And what I'm realizing through some of these self assessments and these somatic practices is that I actually have a lot of rigidity in some places of my body, which is over demanding other parts. And she was reflecting that there's so many of us she was including herself in yoga classes who are unintentionally elevating the alarm mode in our nervous systems when we're doing our yoga practice, because it's hyper demanding surrounding areas near something that's not moving and you might not notice it when you're not doing these more refined movements to articulate through places, because she can touch her toes. So I think that's a really important point is that ultimately, you want to make sure that you have good neuro structural fluidity in the system, and that the practices, I will always do them forever, but I don't need to do them as consistently as I needed to before I loosened most of the sticky places.

Stephanie Mara 39:46

Yeah, I'm curious for you and those you've worked with, like as you've continued to have this consistent practice, what have you noticed change?

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 39:55

I am more clear headed in my thinking. I can tolerate more like I've had a lot of, historically, a lot of sensory sensitivities. There was a time in my life I had to wear earplugs 24 hours a day because everything, all sounds, were too much. And I couldn't go to New York to visit my family. I couldn't go to the city even with earplugs. It was just, crash my nervous system for a month if I go for 24 hours. Last summer, I was able to go once a month for a week like I probably spent a total of eight weeks there, over four months and no earplugs, and rode the subway. I have so much greater tolerance in my nervous system. I am calmer, and it doesn't mean I never get meltdowny. I do, but then I have tools that can bring me back, but it doesn't happen as often as it used to, where I was having really a hard time regulating more frequently, and it's healing is like a spiral staircase, like, you know, you go up and you might come around, the same challenge again, you know, I certainly have that. But as my godfather pointed this out to me, he's my chiropractor, he's like but you're up a little higher, you recover a little faster. And that's the goal in that's what I've certainly experienced, is it's not about never feeling hard things or never getting off kilter. And I know we talked about this, Stephanie when you were a guest on my call, is it's about building a greater capacity to feel the pain and not freak out, or to feel the discomfort, or to and to be able to witness and notice and hold space for a wider range of feeling, because we can't selectively numb. If I try to feel less pain, I also feel less joy. And so I'm not trying to feel less pain, I'm trying to have a wider capacity to just roll with the wild craziness of this human experience. And I certainly have have had a much greater capacity for experiencing all the things over the years.

Stephanie Mara 41:53

That is so beautifully said. And I love that analogy. You know what it makes me think of, just in relationship with food as well, is that I always like to normalize it's never like you're never going to have a food urge ever again, because if we see that that is just a language of the body, and it's a natural response to when you start moving into some of these more dysregulated states, that you are going to start to have a desire to eat different kinds of foods in different quantities, that it is, like you said, a matter of, can we slow down enough, create more internal space to be with that so that you feel like you have choice, you don't have to respond to, you know, the impulse, just because it's come up, and that you have options of how to respond to that and that, like you're a little bit higher up on that spiral laddercase that it's like you're gonna recover a lot faster, but that I always want to reframe that recovery or healing is not that you're ever gonna have a food or any other kind of impulse ever again like that is a natural part of being a human being. It's like, how do we actually build capacity to be with ourselves in these things and that's just what I hear you beautifully stating.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 43:06

As you were saying, that I'm thinking more specifically about my relationship with food. In the past, if I got ice cream, I would eat the entire pint. And now it might take me 10 sittings before I actually eat it, because my cravings are satisfied sooner. And I'm like, oh, actually, that's all I want. Like, I just wanted, like, four bites of it or something, you know. So it's naturally it's not that I'm restricting myself. It's that, you know, a friend of mine came over and was like, you have ice cream half eaten in your freezer? And I'm like, yeah, because I, you know, because I don't finish it all at once. When I have cravings and I still honor them, it doesn't feel so mindless. It feels more intentional. I also feel like I really deeply enjoy I make really conscious decisions. Because also, one of my my big things I talk about a lot, for anyone who's like followed me, is that I don't think that I should live in a smaller and smaller bubble. I think I should get to choose my stressors, not just be resilient to the inevitable stressors of life, but if I really want to have some pizza, like, yes, it's gluten and dairy, but I'm gonna choose mindfully the ones that I know. I'll be less reactive to something organic and maybe goat cheese instead of whatever my stuff is, but I don't feel so restricted, and I feel really calm around the diversity of my food choices in a way that I used to feel more like I would eat something mindlessly and then feel bad and judge myself about it, and now I'm just like, no, that was great, and like, actually have the experience that I want to have, and I think that vibrational experience makes such a difference even on how my body responds, and I probably am much better at digesting and handling those things, I'm actually a lot less food reactive. At one point I did a food sensitivity test, the IgM. I think it was like 200 foods I was allergic to and I'm like, allergic to broccoli. Come on, this is ridiculous. And that's what made me actually go a lot into this. That was when I was super sick, before anybody knew what was wrong, and before I got into all of this world. And I was like, that's crazy. This functional medicine doctor was like, you got to avoid all these foods. I don't have that anymore. I don't have those sensitivities.

Stephanie Mara 45:20

Yeah. So a couple things I'm hearing that one, the body's great capacity to heal and change, and two, also, I love that you're bringing in of the nuance of being able to, like, choose your triggers. And sometimes that takes time to know, like, okay, what's gonna activate my system to a point that I could actually handle that, and meeting that activation might actually grow my capacity to be with it and very slowly show my body that actually this isn't something it needs to activate towards anymore, while also being aware of being in environments or interacting with foods or people or whatever it is that activates you to the point where you can't actually be with yourself in that. And that is going to take a little bit more time to approach those things, but it's just bringing in a lot of that body listening of like, okay, let me just pay attention to how my body responds to this. And sometimes, yeah, we do go way outside of our window of tolerance, and then we learn and we recover from that, even if it takes a couple weeks or a couple months, and you keep moving forward. So I just hear a lot of compassion.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 46:30

It's the compassion, it's the deep listening. It's like the more I listen, I've cultivated this capacity where I know more accurately what my body needs, because we spend so much of our time out here in the world and energetically, especially if you've ever had chronic pain or like any issues around your body, like we automatically go into this kind of dissociation, not like a deep psychological dissociation state, but like we separate energetically from our bodies and bringing myself back home into my body and restoring a sense of it's safe to live in here, in this body, means that I you know, what's that quote? It's like, if you've learned to listen when your body whispers, you won't have to hear it scream so often. And certainly that's a beautiful thing about this work, whether it's nervous system regulation, movement, somatic eating, like all of it helps with cultivating that relationship with my body.

Stephanie Mara 47:24

Yeah. So as we move towards wrapping up, you know, I always like to wrap up with a baby step, and we have offered a ton of baby steps today. And so I'm curious if there's one you want to reiterate, or even something you want to offer that's new, that if someone wants to start, you know, a proprioceptive facial release practice for themselves at home, or start to get or learn more about any of this, what's a baby step you would offer to someone listening?

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 47:52

If there's one thing that I hope listeners take away, it's actually a perspective shift baby step first, and it's that your body isn't broken, no matter what like we often have this you know, we're bombarded with signals that there's something wrong, that you're broken, but whether you're experiencing chronic pain or digestive challenges or nutrient absorption challenges or cravings, whatever it is, your body is in an adaptive state. It is intelligent, and you went from a fertilized egg to trillions of cells that all know how to do their job without anyone telling them what to do, least of all a doctor. And that same intelligence like you think about if you've ever held a brand new baby, whether you made the baby or someone else did. But you look at a baby and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a it's a freakin' miracle. And what I and you may have forgotten sometimes is that you are still that same miracle, but even more so because you've lasted this long. So no matter what challenges and suffering you have been experiencing, that intelligence is still there. It is still doing its very best to help you heal and regulate and adapt. And when we understand how to support that adaptation with the right inputs, whether that's through somatic eating or movement or nervous system regulation, then we create the conditions for healing to happen naturally. And so that piece has to come first, I think, to recognize that, yes, my body is self healing and self regulating and shifting the focus from how do I fix the things that are going wrong to what does my body need to be able to heal itself? And the proprioceptive piece is big. And if you'd like to start there, I would suggest you can find me on Instagram @drsatyawellness, D, R, S, A, T, Y, A wellness, or TikTok. It's the same. I actually post more on TikTok. But also, if anybody is interested in the inside the chrysalis container, that's where you can learn more neurofacial flow method. But if you want to just do like a tiny thing, from what I said today, you could every day when you wake up for the next one week. Spend three minutes doing squeeze hugs, those broad, deep squeezes on your feet, on your arms, on your hands, wherever it feels good. Just do it for a week, every day. And if you want to do a like a toddler step a little bit more than a baby, you could also do it before you go to bed. Three minutes, three minutes morning, three minutes night, and see how different you feel.

Stephanie Mara 50:21

Yeah, I love that suggestion. It's doable, it's simple, it's small. Yeah, it's kind of starting to track, like, how do these practices with some consistency make a difference? And you get to discover what works for you, and even how much to do this that works for you. So thank you for naming all that.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 50:39

Yeah, absolutely. I was just gonna say, I love how our work weaves together. I just so deeply appreciate the space that you've created for these conversations. It's just such a joy.

Stephanie Mara 50:50

Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. I usually like to wrap up with also you naming where people can keep in touch with you, but you just listed your Instagram and your TikTok. Is there anywhere else, website,that people can kind of find you and your work?

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 51:05

Yeah, absolutely. My website is drsatyawellness.com so it's D, R, S, A, T, Y, A wellness.com and I would love anyone listening like, send me a DM. Tell me what you were most excited about. Let's keep this conversation going, I love being connected.

Stephanie Mara 51:23

Yeah. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes so people can connect with you. And just love connecting with you myself, and love your work and your energy and just your excitement for this work. So just thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom here today.

Dr. Satya Sardonicus 51:37

Thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie Mara 51:39

Yeah, well, to everyone listening as always if you have any questions, reach out anytime support@stephaniemara.com. I always love connecting with all of you as well, so I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of your week and talk to you all soon. Bye!

Keep in touch with Satya:

Website: https://drsatyawellness.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsatyawellness/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drsatyawellness