~ Elevator Speech: Myofascial (myo-fash-al) Release ~
Most folks who call me to set up their first appointment have never experienced a (John Barnes’) Myofascial Release session before (sometimes they say they’ve had MFRelease and it hurt…. that’s NOT this). I love meeting them and sharing this amazing work! I guarantee, in all these years I’ve never explained this bodywork the exact same way twice. Also, I’m aware that I explain this work differently over the phone than I do in person (insert hand gestures).
So here’s a free-flowing explanation:
“Our fascial system is our connective system. It’s the ONLY system that touches, and therefore can directly affect, every other system in the body.
Every, every, every part of our bodies has its own fascial ‘jacket’ that covers it: your sinuses, heart, brain, kidneys, fallopian tubes, spleen, bones (which are actually crystalized fascia), spinal cord, every cell, etc. etc. Then… there is a whole-body, head to toe fascial “web” that holds everything together. Everyone’s facial system is unique to them, at that particular moment in time. It’s not our skeletal system that holds us upright, it’s our facial ‘web’ that holds our skeletal system, that holds us upright.
🕸 EVERYTHING’S CONNECTED! 🕸
That’s why, for example, I may have my hands on your shoulder and you feel a sensation in your calf and say “that’s where my pain always is”, or I have my hands on your sacrum and you feel tingles in your foot. It’s at these moments in the session when folks say “WOW, that’s so cool!” and they ‘get’ that everything’s connected, because they FEEL it in their bodies. That’s the fun part!No two sessions are ever the same b/c your system is ever changing: as fascial restriction are released, the system resets itself, and resets itself, and on and on.
Our consciousness is in our fascia 🤯
NOT our brain: you can’t “think away trauma”, and as John always says “Our bodies never forget what happens to it”. We have AMAZING treatments for forever-trauma-release. Literally. I know this to be true-I’ve personally experienced it many times :-)
This work is ALL about feeling… NOT at all about thinking
A common example is: a client comes to me complaining of chronic knee pain. Its possible that I never even touch her knee the entire session. She’ll return for another session and say “My knee feels good, it doesn’t hurt when I go down the stairs now. But you never touched my knee”. Maybe that’s b/c her pelvis had an anterior tilt, and maybe that made her leg feel like “it is longer” and maybe she’d put more weight into it, and maybe she’d put more pressure into her knee……………..and so maybe her SYMPTOM was knee pain (and probably back pain), but the LOCATION of the “problem” is NOT her knee. And maybe she’s seen a bazillion people doing a bazillion things to her knee. And they haven’t worked….. NOT that those are “bad/good, right/wrong”, just DIFFERENT.