Tummy Table

There are two kinds of teachers.

The ones who have to teach.
And the ones who love to teach.

I learned that on day one of physics.

I had just walked away from a 5–6 year career I had started in Phoenix. I was in my first year of massage therapy, trying to finish prerequisites for PT school, and physics felt like the wall I had to get through.

My first physics teacher walked in complaining about traffic, complaining about the school, then filled the board with equations that looked like a foreign language.

I remember sitting there thinking:

How am I supposed to do this?
How am I supposed to get to PT school if I can’t even survive day one?

Then I had another physics teacher.

Completely different world.

This man had lived physics. His academic line was one degree separated from Albert Einstein. He had worked with IBM, submarines, and had the kind of career most people only read about.

But what made him different was not his résumé.

It was that he cared whether we understood.

He did not teach physics like punishment.
He taught it like a language.

Not just “memorize F = ma.”

He wanted us to ask:

What are we solving for?
What units do we have?
What direction is the force going?
What does the equation actually mean?

That changed everything for me.

He gave me a B mostly because of effort. I was in tutoring constantly. I was struggling, but I was trying. And somewhere in those conversations, physics stopped being just equations.

It became a way to see.

That is the lens I now use for the body.

Not more pressure.
Not more force.
Not just digging into tissue because something feels tight.

Direction matters.
Load matters.
Time matters.
Mass matters.
Acceleration matters.
Angles matter.
Resistance has meaning.

That is why I wrote Fight Fascia Like a Physicist.

And that is why I created Bailey’s Laws of Internal Motion.

Because the body does not need us to memorize more techniques.

It needs us to understand what the force is actually doing.

In America, we act like the deep squat is some exotic “Asian squat.”

But look around.

Toddlers do it naturally.

Homeless people often do it because the ground is their chair.

And most adults lose it because we spend years in chairs, couches, cars, desks, toilets, and machines that slowly train the body out of the position.

That should make us ask a better question:

Did we evolve past the deep squat?

Or did we just stop participating in it?

The deep squat is not just a leg position.

It is hips, ankles, knees, pelvis, spine, breath, balance, pressure, and comfort all working together.

When kids sit low, they are not doing mobility drills.

They are using a natural human resting shape.

Then adults lose it and call it flexibility.

That is the point of my books:

The Deep Squat — the adult version.

When We Sit Low — the kids version.

Same idea.

Different doorway.

The body was designed to have options.

Sitting low is one of them.

Available now on Amazon and Apple Books.

Chapter 3 of Fight Fascia Like a Physicist is about the lens.

Not a technique.
Not a credential.
Not another dramatic way to press harder.

A lens changes how you interpret what you’re looking at.

Most people approach the body emotionally:

Does it hurt?
Does it feel tight?
Did the pressure feel deep?
Did the reaction look intense?

A physicist asks different questions:

How is force entering?
Where is the load going?
What path is available?
What is being compressed?
What is being redistributed?
What happens after the force is removed?

That is the difference.

Pain is not the map.
Intensity is not proof.
A strong reaction is not automatically progress.

The body is a system under load.

If force enters through the wrong path, the body does not magically “release.”
It redirects, braces, protects, and compensates.

That is why I don’t ask:

“How hard can I work this?”

I ask:

“Where is the force going now?”

That is how you stop fighting fascia emotionally and start reading it mechanically.

📘 Fight Fascia Like a Physicist
Chapter 3 — A Physicist’s Lens

ChatGPT new overlay feature is about to put fitness people on blast

Holding your breath while seated is not automatically parasympathetic activation.

Puffing your cheeks out is not automatically nervous-system regulation.

Tilting your head and forcing a position is not automatically “vagus nerve work.”

A body can make a face, hold pressure, and create a sensation without actually entering a calmer state.

That is the problem with the current parasympathetic market.

People confuse a body response with body regulation.

If someone is seated, hips flexed, spine loaded, ribs compressed, head tilted, breath held, and the body is still supporting itself against gravity…

how relaxed is the system really?

The body may be performing the exercise.

That does not mean the nervous system feels safe.

Parasympathetic work is not just a trick.

It is not just breath holding.
It is not just cheek puffing.
It is not just neck position.
It is not just “stimulating the vagus nerve.”

The body has to feel supported enough to stop defending.

That is the difference.

A reaction is not regulation.
A sensation is not safety.
A hack is not an entry.

That is why I wrote Parasympathetic Entry.

The book is not about chasing nervous-system trends.

It is about understanding the conditions that allow the body to downshift.

Available now on Amazon and Apple Books.

Educational only. Not diagnosis.

Chapter 2 of How to Fight Fascia Like a Physicist starts with a simple problem:

A lot of bodywork looks dramatic because drama gets attention.

Big movements.
Big claims.
Big reactions.
Big “energy” performances.

But fascia does not care how mystical, aggressive, or theatrical the technique looks.

Fascia responds to physics.

Pressure.
Direction.
Shear.
Compression.
Leverage.
Time.
Space.
Resistance.

That is why I wrote this book.

Not to attack therapists.
Not to mock every method.
But to give people a better filter.

Because if the force does not distribute, it stacks.
If the pressure has nowhere to go, it accumulates.
If the pathway is closed, more effort just becomes more noise.

You do not fight fascia with exaggeration.

You fight fascia like a physicist.

Understand the structure.
Respect the pressure.
Change the conditions.

📘 How to Fight Fascia Like a Physicist
Available on Apple Books and Amazon.

— Michael Bailey

Vagus Nerve + Parasympathetic 101

The vagus nerve is one of the major communication lines between the brain and the body.

It helps connect the nervous system to the heart, lungs, digestion, breath, throat, and internal organs.

That is why people talk about it with stress, breathing, recovery, and relaxation.

But here is the part social media keeps oversimplifying:

The vagus nerve is not a magic button.

You do not just hum once, ice your face, rub your ear, or do one “hack” and suddenly undo years of stress, posture, guarding, shallow breathing, pain, and pressure.

A response is not the same as regulation.

The parasympathetic system is often called the “rest and digest” side of the nervous system.

But the body does not rest just because you tell it to.

It rests when it feels safe enough to stop defending itself.

That means conditions matter.

Support.
Breath.
Position.
Time.
Pressure.
Environment.
Load reduction.
Nervous-system permission.

That is the point of Parasympathetic Entry.

Not forcing calm.

Creating the conditions where calm becomes possible.

Parasympathetic Entry is available now on Amazon and Apple Books.

Educational only. Not diagnosis.