How the body senses itself is foundational not just for movement and pain but also for happiness and wellbeing. Emerging models in psychology and neuroscience now show that our brains do far more than passively receive information but actively predict what our body should feel and how we should respond to the world. According to Mark Miller’s 2021 paper on “Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being,” movement, pain, and overall wellbeing is best understood as the result of the brain reducing prediction errors about bodily and emotional states, allowing for more accurate and satisfying experiences.
Why Prediction Matters for Well-Being
The predictive brain relies on continuous sensory input from the somatosensory system, including the skin, muscle, joints, internal organ, and fascia to compare reality with expectation. When those signals are noisy, unclear, or mismatched, the brain interprets that uncertainty as ‘THREAT’. This triggers stress responses, pain perception, and negative emotion. When input is clear, positive, and predictable, the brain’s prediction errors decrease, supporting happiness, movement/pain ease, and emotional resilience.
Bottom-Up and Top-Down Integration
Somatic practices provide positive sensory feedback (bottom-up) while also inviting cognitive reflection and curiosity (top-down), this combination allows the brain to update predictions about the body safely and adaptively, minimizing prediction errors and reducing the likelihood of misinterpreting signals as painful or dangerous.
Fascia for the Win!
Recent research reveals fascia is an active sensory network, not just passive tissue. Fascia contains more than 250 million nerve endings. In some regions sensory neurons outnumber motor neurons by nine to one. Overall, fascia has about 25 percent more nerve endings than skin and roughly 1,000 percent more than the combined innervation of muscle, making it, arguably, our richest sensory organ. It transmits and amplifies sensory signals, directly affecting how the brain maps the body and predicts movement and feeling. Interventions such as kinesiology tape, cupping, vibration, and gentle manual therapy provide relief not just through biomechanical action, but by supplying novel, safe, predictable, soothing sensory feedback. This input helps the nervous system recalibrate its bodily predictions, thus minimizing errors and promoting physical as well as psychological wellbeing.
How This Alters Pain and Movement
Reducing “False Alarms”
When the brain receives consistent, non-threatening sensory input (such as through gentle movement, touch, or breath work), it lowers its “threat level,” meaning pain signals are less likely to be amplified or persist beyond the resolution of injury.
Improving Movement & Confidence
Clearer brain maps support more precise movement, coordination, and control. This not only prevents injury but also gives patients/clients greater confidence in their body, reducing fear and avoidance behaviour.
Reconceptualizing Pain
Somatic therapy gives new experiences that challenge old pain narratives and beliefs, allowing clients to reframe pain not as a sign of persistent damage, but as a modifiable brain-body phenomenon that can improve with practice and awareness.
Practical Takeaways
- Intervene at the level of sensory clarity: Use touch, tape, and guided movement to provide clear, meaningful sensory input.
- Treat fascia and tissue as active sensory organs: Address glide, load, and chemical environment for maximum impact on prediction.
- Use progressive exposure and regulation strategies: Breathing, intentional movement, and repeated interoceptively guided practice to lower threat and support positive adaptation.
- Mindfulness and somatic attention can induce neuroplastic changes that shrink “pain maps,” reinforce healthy sensory experiences, and weaken maladaptive connections underlying chronic pain.
Wellbeing is not just about what the body “feels” but how the brain makes sense of those sensations and stories. The predictive dynamics framework shows that manual therapies, movement practices, and affective touch work best when they help minimize the mismatch between expectation and gentle reality. By treating sensation and fascia as active ingredients in the brain’s prediction model, clinicians and patients can rewrite the experience of pain, stress, and happiness, building resilience at every level.
References:
- Miller, M. (2021). The Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being. [SAGE Journals]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/17540739211063851
- Schleip, R., Mechsner, F., Zorn, A., and Klingler, W. (2014). The Bodywide Fascial Network as a Sensory Organ for Haptic Perception. Journal of Motor Behavior. 46, 191–193. doi: 10.1080/00222895.2014.880306
- Schleip, R, and Stecco, C. 15 - Fascia as a Sensory Organ. In: R Schleip, J Wilke, and A Baker, eds. Fascia in Sport and Movement. 2nd ed. (London, UK: Handspring Publishing) (2015) 169–180.
- Gesslbauer, B, Hruby, LA, Roche, AD, Farina, D, Blumer, R, and Aszmann, OC. Axonal components of nerves innervating the human arm. Ann Neurol. (2017) 82:396–408. doi: 10.1002/ana.25018
- Fascial Image - fascialnet.com
- Non-Judgmental Approach Image: https://mindfulambition.net/non-judgment/
