Soteria Wellness, LLC

01/26/2026

As the new week begins, check in with your body and mind. Is it time for a massage to relieve pain, reset your nervous system to a calmer state or take a break from the cold with hot stones melting the tension away? Debra has an appointment available this Wednesday 1/29 at 5:30 for an hour!

01/24/2026

Do you sleep better after a sauna?

When life moves fast, a quick reset can make all the difference.

Just 20 minutes in a sauna helps you unwind, recharge, and step away from the glow of your screens. From our portable Solo System to custom Sunlighten saunas, find your perfect fit—https://bit.ly/4b8Hsc7

Cited: Laukkanen et al., 2019 (Complement Ther Med), PMID: 38011189, Miyazaki et al., 2023 (PLoS ONE)

01/24/2026

INTRODUCING AMANDA!

Amanda brings over 20 years of hands-on experience in wellness and bodywork, combining therapeutic skill with a deep understanding of how the body functions as a whole. She has a keen ability to recognize postural imbalances and tension patterns, making her work especially effective for clients dealing with TMJ, upper-body strain, or chronic tightness. Amanda specializes in myofascial release, medi-cupping, deep tissue therapy, and reflexology, creating personalized sessions that restore balance, relieve tension, and support efficient movement. Her approach is intuitive, results-driven, and tailored to each client for lasting relief.

In addition to massage therapy, Amanda is the owner of Chin Up, a myofunctional therapy practice that supports healthy breathing, oral posture, and functional movement patterns. Her background allows her to view the body through a unique lens, often connecting tension patterns to breathing, jaw function, and overall alignment.

When she’s not working with clients, Amanda can usually be found trout fishing, baking sourdough bread, hiking wooded trails, bee keeping or soaking up time outdoors with her family. Her love of nature and movement heavily influences her grounded, holistic approach to care—helping clients feel more at home in their bodies.

Amanda will be seeing clients between 10-3 on Fridays. Schedule today!

https://www.vagaro.com/soteriawellnessllc

01/22/2026

Boost Your Wellness with BEMER – In-Office or At-Home! BEMER (Bio-Electromagnetic Energy Regulation) is a cutting-edge PEMF technology designed to enhance circulation, energy, recovery, and overall well-being. Whether you're looking to optimize physical performance, improve sleep, or support your body's natural healing process, BEMER delivers powerful yet gentle benefits.

✨ BEMER Supports:
✔️ Better blood flow & oxygen delivery
✔️ Enhanced endurance, strength & energy
✔️ Improved focus, stress reduction & relaxation
✔️ Temporary relief from minor aches & pains
✔️ Deeper, more restful sleep—and more!

Because consistency is key, we offer flexible rental packages to fit your needs. Contact us today to get started!

https://www.soteriawellnessllc.com/bemer

01/21/2026

Have you heard the indigenous legend of the two wolves living inside us? This post is a beautiful perspective on trauma, healing and the power of touch.

Understanding Trauma - The Two Wolves

I remember the first time I heard the story of the two wolves. An elder tells a child that inside every person live two wolves, one driven by fear, anger, grief, and pain, and the other shaped by love, calm, connection, and trust. The child asks which wolf wins, and the elder answers, “The one you feed.”

For a long time, I thought this story was about choice and willpower. About deciding to be better, calmer, a more healed version of myself. But years of working with bodies, including my own, taught me something gentler and far more honest. Sometimes the wolf that rises is not the one we chose to feed; it is the one that was fed for us, in moments when survival mattered more than understanding.

Trauma changes the way the body feeds those wolves.

When something overwhelming happens, the body does not pause to consult our values or our hopes for who we want to be. It reacts. The nervous system floods with stress chemistry. Cortisol and adrenaline sharpen focus, narrow awareness, and prioritize survival over reflection. The vagus nerve shifts out of its regulating role and sensation becomes louder in some places and quieter in others. The body feeds the wolf that knows how to keep us alive.

Our emotions often lag behind this process. They arrive later, or all at once, or in waves that feel out of proportion to the present moment. Grief may surface years after the loss. Anger may ignite when safety finally appears. Fear may linger long after the danger has passed. From the outside, this can look confusing. From the inside, it feels like being pulled by forces that do not agree with one another.

This is where many people begin to judge themselves. Why am I reacting this way? Why can’t I calm down? Why does my body keep doing this when I know better? But trauma is not a failure of insight; it is a mismatch between what the body learned in survival and what the heart longs for in safety.

The body feeds the wolf it knows will protect us.

The emotional system feeds the wolf that needs to be felt.

Neither is wrong. They are simply out of sync.

Over time, this dissonance can embody the tissues. Fascia holds these patterns like a memory that never learned language. The body is not stuck in the past, it is simply repeating what once worked.

Healing is not about starving one wolf and forcing another to behave. It is about changing the environment inside the body so different nourishment becomes possible. Safety feeds regulation while presence feeds integration. Slow, respectful touch feeds the part of the nervous system that knows how to rest, and when the body begins to feel supported, the emotional system no longer has to shout to be heard.

This is where touch changes the conversation. It meets the body where learning first happened, beneath language and logic. The wolf that once guarded every moment can soften its watch, as the wolf that carries love, curiosity, and connection does not have to fight to survive; it is simply fed.

Holding onto trauma does not mean the wrong wolf won. It means the body did exactly what it was designed to do when safety disappeared. And healing is not a moral victory; it is a biological one. When the body learns that the threat has passed, both wolves can finally rest, and the system no longer has to choose between survival and feeling.

01/21/2026

Infrared saunas are not just about sweat! Go ahead and hop on the schedule for a lower temperature session if you prefer, you are not missing out and it can actually be more beneficial for some people at lower temps.

Did you know with a full spectrum infrared sauna, as long as you are raising your core temperature a little, you are doing incredible things for your health, whether you sweat or not! You are supporting your detoxification organs (especially kidneys and liver) and improving lymphatic flow, even if you are not sweating.

And of course when the weather is below zero and you come in from the cold, even at higher temperatures, it will likely take longer to reach a sweat. Hint--have a cup of hot tea before going in to start warming up from the inside out and wait through 10 minutes of preheating before starting your program!

01/20/2026

Why do we put so much emphasis on fascia?

"Restricted fascia can trap you in fight, flight or freeze mode. 🥶

Fascia contains about 250 million nerve endings. Many of these connect directly to your vagus nerve - the main highway between your body and brain that controls your stress response.

When fascia becomes stiff, densified, or restricted (from chronic stress, lack of movement or injury), those nerve endings keep firing threat signals.

Your autonomic nervous system interprets fascial restriction as ongoing threat. So even when you're safe, your body stays locked in sympathetic activation - the fight or flight state.

This explains why people can feel chronically anxious, hypervigilant, or exhausted without an obvious external stressor. The stressor is internal - it's coming from restricted tissue sending continuous alarm signals to your brain."

01/10/2026

A gentle reminder as we begin 2026...

01/08/2026

Fox Valley friends, check out this new delight of a place to enhance your healthy dining options! We are so excited to check them out now that they are open!

01/03/2026

Truth bomb for those who live with chronic health conditions (and those who care about them!)

"Living with a chronic condition often teaches us a kind of intimacy with ourselves that others never have to learn. We become fluent in listening. We learn the difference between tired and depleted, between discomfort and warning, between pushing through and honoring a boundary. Rest stops being laziness and becomes a skill. Planning becomes flexible, and strength looks quieter, but no less real."

For a long time, I thought my illness was the headline of my life.

Lupus didn’t just explain my symptoms; it explained the pattern of my days. How I could show up fully, teach with everything in me, hold a room with strength and clarity, and then need long stretches of rest afterward just to feel like myself again. It explained why my calendar had to make room for sleep and recovery, why plans always felt provisional, and why my body could feel powerful one moment and unpredictable the next.

Slowly, almost without noticing, the disease began to shape how I spoke about myself. I wasn’t someone who had lupus; I was someone defined by it. Every decision was filtered through it. Every limitation traces back to it. And over time, that way of thinking quietly shrank the world I allowed myself to live in.

What I’ve learned, both through my own body and through the bodies of those who have trusted me on my table, is this. Illness is something the body experiences. It is not who we are.

A diagnosis names a pattern. It describes a process happening within the body. It can explain symptoms, guide care, and offer language for what feels confusing or frightening. But it is not the sum total of a person. It does not hold your creativity, your resilience, your humor, your tenderness, or your capacity for joy. It does not tell the whole story of how your nervous system adapts, how your fascia compensates, or how your body continues to find ways to support you, even on hard days.

Living with a chronic condition often teaches us a kind of intimacy with ourselves that others never have to learn. We become fluent in listening. We learn the difference between tired and depleted, between discomfort and warning, between pushing through and honoring a boundary. Rest stops being laziness and becomes a skill. Planning becomes flexible, and strength looks quieter, but no less real.

From a bodywork perspective, this matters deeply. When we treat someone as their diagnosis, we miss the person in front of us. Two bodies with the same illness will respond differently to touch, pressure, pacing, and presence. One may need grounding; another, lightness. One may crave stillness, another may need gentle movement. The diagnosis informs the work, but it does not dictate it.

And as a client, it matters just as much. You are allowed to name your illness without letting it narrate your worth. You are allowed to need rest without apologizing for it. You are allowed to build a life that honors your body’s rhythms, even when they don’t match the world’s expectations.

I still live with lupus. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the story I tell myself about it. It is no longer the lens through which I see everything else. Instead, it is simply a part of my landscape, not the whole terrain.

Remember, you are not your disease. You are the one living with it, listening to your body, and adapting with intelligence and finding your own way forward, again and again. And that is not a weakness. This is wisdom.

01/01/2026