Carissa Shima Healing Bodywork

Let me tell you about Loki.
Loki is my eight-year-old dog. For the first two years of his life he was in and out of a shelter. He was bitten by another dog. Bullied by dogs around him. His nervous system learned — very reasonably, very intelligently — to stay ready. To guard. To protect.
He's come a long way. Years of patient training, consistency, and the right kind of support have helped him enormously.
But here's what I notice:
Even now, when another dog gets close, something ancient in Loki's nervous system fires. His body tightens. He gets reactive. Not because he's in danger right now — but because his system learned a long time ago that danger was possible. And it hasn't fully gotten the message that things are different.
His body is still organized around something that happened years ago.
Sound familiar?
This is exactly what I see in the human body after injury, surgery, or prolonged stress.
The body experiences a threat. The nervous system activates a protective response — muscles brace, fascia tightens, the whole system organizes around guarding the vulnerable area.
This is brilliant, intelligent, appropriate biology.
The problem is that the nervous system doesn't always get the signal that the threat is gone. Long after the tissue has healed — sometimes years later — the body can still be bracing. Still guarding. Still organized around something that no longer needs protecting.
This shows up as:
Tightness that returns no matter what you do. Areas that feel stuck or restricted for no obvious reason. Recovery that plateaus and won't move forward. A body that feels like it's working against you even though you're doing everything right.
Loki gets craniosacral work. I'm completely serious. The same gentle, precise work I do with my human clients — helping the nervous system understand it's safe to settle — works on dogs too.
He's still a work in progress. So am I. So are most of the people I work with.
But the nervous system can change. The body can release what it's been holding. It just needs the right kind of support to get the message that it's safe to do so.
That's the work I do every single day.
Did you recognize any of those patterns in your own body? Tell me in the comments.

This is one of the most damaging things someone can be told after an injury or surgery.
Recovery takes forever. You'll never be back to where you were. You just have to learn to live with some limitations.
I've heard this story from clients more times than I can count. And I want to address it directly.
Is recovery sometimes slow? Yes. Does everybody return to exactly where it was before? Not always. Those are honest truths.
But here is what I've watched happen over 20 years and thousands of sessions:
The body's capacity to restore, rebalance, and return to full function is consistently underestimated. By practitioners. By clients. By the medical system.
Most people who have been told they'll never get back to 100% were never given the right kind of support to find out if that was actually true.
They were given rest. Physical therapy that addressed the injury site but not the compensation patterns around it. Time. And then a prognosis that became a belief that became a ceiling.
What I do is different. I look at what the body is still holding. The scar tissue. The fascial restriction (tightness in the connective tissue). The nervous system that is still guarding around something that technically healed months or years ago.
When those things are addressed — the ceiling moves.
I'm not promising miracles. I'm saying that most people haven't actually found out what their body is capable of yet.
Have you been told you'd never fully recover from something? Tell me in the comments. I want to know.
Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.

Try this right now.
Hold one arm straight out in front of you, palm facing down. With your other hand, gently pull your fingers back toward you — stretching the top of the forearm. Hold 30 seconds.
Now flip the palm up and gently pull the fingers down toward the floor — stretching the underside of the forearm. Hold 30 seconds.
Notice anything?
For most rotational sport athletes — golfers, tennis players, pickleball players — one direction will feel significantly tighter than the other.
And that tightness doesn't stay in the forearm.
According to Thomas Myers' Anatomy Trains — the definitive map of how fascia connects through the body — the arm lines travel all the way from the fingers through the elbow, into the shoulder, and directly into the back.
Specifically the latissimus dorsi — the large muscle of your mid and lower back — is part of the same fascial line as your forearm. Which means chronic tightness from years of gripping, swinging, and serving doesn't just create elbow and shoulder problems.
It loads your back too.
That chronic lower back tension on your dominant side? It might have started in your forearm.
Two minutes per arm. Both directions. Every day before you play.
Do this for one week and notice what changes in your grip, your swing, and how your back feels after a round or a match.
Tell me in the comments — which direction felt tighter?

Someone told you that at some point.
Maybe a doctor. Maybe a trainer. Maybe you just told yourself.
Pain and tension is normal. It's just part of getting older.
And if you're wellness-focused and health-forward and you've been investing in your body for decades — that message is especially frustrating to receive. Because you've done everything right. And you're still told this is just how it is now.
It isn't.
Here's what's actually true:
The body accumulates structural imbalances over time. Old injuries. Surgeries. Compensation patterns that developed so gradually you never noticed them building. Fascia — the connective tissue that runs through your entire body — that has been holding tension for years.
Those imbalances don't discriminate by age. A 45-year-old body and a 65-year-old body can both carry them. And both can release them.
Age changes some things. It does not make pain and tension inevitable.
The wellness-focused, active people I work with in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are some of the most responsive clients I see. Because their bodies are already primed. Already invested. Already ready to respond when someone finally addresses what's actually been driving the pattern.
You don't have to accept this.
Drop a comment below — what have you been told to just accept about your body that never quite sat right with you?
Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.

Meet Tatiana Suarez.
Professional MMA fighter. UFC competitor. Someone who uses her body every single day at the highest level the sport demands.
This is what she said about our work together — in her own words:
"Before I found Carissa, my body felt really run down. My recovery felt at a standstill and I really felt like I couldn't use my body to its fullest potential. I just felt like a lot of it was locked down and wasn't functioning as one."
"I sought out many other things because I just felt so desperate. I was always in pain — my back, my neck. I would do pilates and yoga and I just felt like none of it was rehabilitative for me in particular."
"Since working with Carissa it's really helped me because now I don't feel like a lesser version of myself. I feel healthy. When I wake up in the morning I'm not like, oh, oh, you know? Nobody wants to feel pain all the time."
"I would just think to myself — this is normal. And it's not normal."
"Now my body feels like it can work as one."
"That's why I come every single week religiously — because I know that it's very important to make sure that my body is working to its fullest potential."
If a UFC fighter who trains every single day and demands everything from her body found the missing piece here — and she calls it a game changer — it's worth a conversation.
Tell me in the comments — have you ever just accepted that pain or feeling off was normal? I want to hear your story.
Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.

Something I've been thinking about lately.
I've had chronic back pain, a broken arm, a partial hysterectomy, and lifelong jaw issues I'm currently treating.
I do yoga and pilates regularly. I just started running again this week after years away. I'm getting back into lifting. And I try to practice what I tell my clients about nervous system regulation — with mixed success on the hard weeks, like everyone else.
I tell you this not to make the content about me — but because I think it matters that the person asking you to trust the process has had to trust it themselves. Repeatedly. In different ways.
The wellness-focused, active people I work with hold themselves to a high standard. They expect the same from everyone they work with.
I didn't come to this work because I read about it or because it seemed like a good career.
I came to it because my own body needed it. And it delivered in ways nothing else had.
That's still true. And it's still what I bring to every session.
If your body has been trying to tell you something and you've been managing it instead of listening — I'd be glad to help you figure out what it's actually saying.
What's one thing your body has been trying to tell you that you've been ignoring? Tell me in the comments — I read every one.
Link in bio when you're ready.

This week I laced up my running shoes for the first time in years.
I was a competitive runner and triathlete for most of my adult life. Running wasn't just exercise for me — it was part of how I understood myself.
And then life happened. Injuries. Surgeries. A broken arm. A partial hysterectomy. Jaw issues that affected everything from my breathing to my nervous system to how my whole body organized itself.
I kept doing yoga. I kept doing pilates. I kept doing the work on myself — the structural integration, the craniosacral therapy, the myofunctional work — that I do with my clients.
But running felt far away for a long time.
This week it didn't anymore.
I'm not sharing this to be dramatic. I'm sharing it because the people I work with are often in the middle of their own version of this story — the golfer who hasn't played a full round in two years, the triathlete who hasn't raced since the injury, the tennis player who stopped booking courts.
The body can come back.
Not always to exactly where it was. But to something real. Something worth having.
I know because I'm living it right now.
If you're trying to find your way back to something you love — this work can help.
Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.

Here's who I'm currently working with in Las Vegas.
Executives, business owners, and serious recreational athletes over 40 who have built an active, high-performing life and expect their body to match it.
Golfers. Runners. Tennis and pickleball players. Triathletes. Lifters. People who travel, compete, and refuse to slow down.
Your body is strong. You invest in your health. But something isn't resolving — the same tightness, the same area that flares up, the recovery that takes longer than it used to.
Or you're post-surgical and there's still a gap between where you are and where you expect to be.
You're not someone who ignores their body. You just haven't found the approach that addresses what's actually driving the pattern.
That's exactly what the first session is designed to do.
We assess. We identify what's actually happening. We begin correcting it in the same visit. You leave with a clear picture of what your body needs next — whether that's a handful of sessions or a full series.
I bring an exercise science background, 20 years of hands-on experience, and the fact that I've navigated my own injuries, surgeries, and structural work to every session.
This isn't abstract for me. I live it too.
New Client Sessions available now. Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.

Things that are not just part of getting older:
Waking up stiff every morning.
Needing two holes to warm up before your swing feels right.
That hip that's been "a little off" since the marathon three years ago.
Recovering from a training week that would have felt easy at 40.
Tightness that shows up in the same place no matter what you do.
Feeling like your body is working against you instead of with you.
None of this is inevitable.
None of it is the price of an active life.
It is a pattern. And pattern can change.
That's what I do.
Link in bio. Las Vegas — Body Spa West.