Body Therapy Institute

08/19/2026

Dear Friends,
You can watch Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Michael Shea on Overstimulation Syndrome by clicking the link below. In addition to the video, there's also a transcript. Be sure to subscribe to my Substack newsletter, so that you'll get all the posts.

You can view the video and transcript from Part 1 and read the full bio on Dr.

08/07/2026

Dear Friends,
My latest Substack features Part 1 of a two-part video conversation with Dr. Michael Shea on factors that contribute to Overstimulation Syndrome. The vid is accompanied by a transcript as well. Dr. Shea is a leader and author in the fields of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Somatic Psychology and Myofascial Therapy, who taught at BTI for many years.

This is Part 1 of a two-part post

07/29/2026

Dear Friends,
My new Substack post on Overstimulation Syndrome is entitled "Food Fights: How your biology is used against you for corporate profit and control." This is a frank look at ultra-processed food -- who started making it and why, the damaging effects it has on people's health, and who profits from it. I also include excerpts from three important books on the topic.
Check it out and please subscribe to the newsletter (if you haven't already)... it's free!

How your biology is used against you for corporate profit and control

07/18/2026

The Mother Tree Beneath All Things

Under the hum of cities, roar of roads,
the growing thrust of green extends down, around,
through and up, up toward sunlight, rain, sky.
Sidewalks crack, boulders split as trees walk across the earth –
a leafy shawl, a sheltering canopy.

May our own fixed ideas, solid as a concrete fortress,
open to this unfurling tendril of new life,
the timeless push of roots seeking fertile ground.
May the passage of creek, stream, river erode what needs to
give way to the wonder and beauty beneath all things.

– Art and writing by Carey Smith

07/14/2026

Dear Friends,
My latest Substack post on Overstimulation Syndrome is entitled "Seeing is No Longer Believing". In it, I take a deep dive into how visual manipulation in the digital era has distorted our sense of self and how we view the world around us. Accompanied by plenty of examples to illustrate what is being done and how it's done. It'll open your eyes.

Visual manipulation has distorted our sense of self and how we view the world around us

07/04/2026

Dear Friends,
I just published a post on Substack entitled "Doctor Pavlov was Right", which looks at how we have been conditioned to respond in predictable ways to common stimuli in our everyday lives. In some ways, we've become like the dogs in Pavlov's experiments that salivated when they heard a bell ring, or the pigeons in B.F. Skinner's behavioral lab pressing the bar to get food pellets. It's the classic cycle of stimulus and response. Fortunately, we humans have the ability to choose our stimuli (if we take that opportunity), and to moderate or avoid reactions that are detrimental to our well-being.

I encourage you to subscribe to my Substack newsletter, "Overstimulation Syndrome". It's free!

Conditioned reflexes are sending us into Overstim

06/28/2026

Study in-person with Carey Smith in Chapel Hill, NC
this Fall at the Unity Center for Peace:

ACCESSING THE WISDOM OF THE BODY:
A Grounded Exploration of Somatic Practices for Educators, Therapists and Agents of Change
October 9-10; 9:30am-4:30pm; 12 CE credits
(Open to the Public)

Click https://bti.edu/continuing-ed/teacher-training/fall2026/
for complete workshop description and registration info

06/23/2026

Writing and art by Carey Smith:
Thank you for the rich and uplifting experience of reading your names and comments, thinking of each one of you and our time together at Body Therapy Institute. I continue to contemplate “home” – its many faces, sorrows, joys, memories and mysteries.

After a number of years, home is still new to me here on the Big Island of Hawaii. Learning the plants, birds, the intertwining of cultures and people, the art and stories, dance and chants. One of the great and surprising gifts is falling in love with these mountains. We live at 1300 ft elevation on the eastern flank of Mauna Kea – the tallest mountain in the world when measured from its underwater base to its peak.

Such beautiful names these many mountains have – Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, Kilauea, the Kohalas. Two of them still active with occasional volcanic flows and eruptions. In honor of these new friends, these breathtaking, grounded and dynamic aspects of landscape, I completed an art piece called “Dwelling with Many Mountains”.

06/17/2026

Dear Friends,
"Take Time for Beauty" is the title of this week's Substack post on Overstimulation Syndrome. In the presence of so many daily inputs that create anxiety, distress and alienation, beauty is one of the antidotes that can help you move out of overstim and back to balance. At the end of the post is a beauty sample from our farm in Hawaii – some wonderful tropical flowers currently in bloom. Enjoy!

It’s one of the antidotes to Overstim

06/16/2026

From Carey Smith:
Recently, I have been thinking about home … and how home lives both inside us and outside us. There are countless meanings of the word “home” and its word origins ranging from womb, living space, cultivated land, birthplace, ancestral lineage, familiarity, place of security, friends, family, landscape. Our internal thoughts, feelings, experiences, imaginings couple with our history, the present moment and an unfolding future … and take place in a particular geography and landscape.

Home means different things to each of us and evolves over time. Questions arise around belonging. In the past, students would arrive at Body Therapy Institute and say “I feel at home”. For some, it was being greeted by the spreading willow oak at the front of the property, for others … the walking path to the classroom, the resonance of the timber frame construction, the beauty and order of the interior space, their classmates and teachers, the birdsong and sound of wind through leaves. And always, something un-nameable but palpable, a mysterious chord resonating within the cellular memory.

For many, this was a time of coming home into the body. Coming home to sensation, memory, aliveness, rest, healing old wounds, opening to new possibilities, wholeness. Body as home – a place from which to both enter and retire from the world – a living door that opens and closes – a sentient being who chooses how and when and why to engage with the outer world; and how to be in a life-giving relationship with the inner world.

P.S. The ancient Indo-European root word for home translates as “dwelling quietly, peace and welfare”.