A snapshot in time, immediately following my MFR1 training…

As I sit at the computer now, and intermittently as I go about my day, I find myself deeply attuned to an inner sensation of slow movement and aliveness. This is my body’s fascia: the semi-fluid, hyperconductive, continuously communicative and intelligent tissue that organizes the sensations and movements of my physical body and, by some models, my mind.

Right now, I am allowing a gentle process of “unwinding” to unfold in my body. The heart of it is a network of tensions in the fascia between my right scapula, right shoulder, upper thoracic spine, and the front of my chest. There is a slow and gentle movement that arises from the intelligence of my body, and as I allow it to move me, I feel tiny, long lines of tension melting into a feeling of light. The shape of these lines of tension is spiderwebbing outward from a knot in the center, and when I allow the unwinding to happen, my body is of its own direction gently and lovingly un-knotting the knot. I can allow this to happen in the “background” of my awareness, while still engaging with the outside world, to the degree that I can stay relaxed in my body and lovingly attentive and allowing to those movements. The process can move faster if I give it more of my attention. The process can move MUCH faster if I gave it all my attention and had an attuned, skilled practitioner also giving it all of THEIR attention.

Healing takes time. There are no shortcuts.

I used to think that meant I could just go on with “business as usual”, and my body would magically fix itself while I slept. To some degree, this is true. Maybe if I gave myself more time to sleep, it would be fully true. But if I’ve learned anything through my involvement with several modalities of genuine healing work, it’s that we have to be proactive about our healing. That we actually do have to devote our own time, energy, and attention resources to assist the body in its innate healing process.

So actually, “business as usual” cannot go on if I truly want to heal something. I have to stop whatever else I’m doing, turn towards the hurt, and give it love. I have to fully feel it, whatever “it” is. Pain is only the tip of the iceberg – I have to actively turn towards it if I want to find my way to the underbelly. I do that in large part by feeling. Feeling is healing.

John Barnes has a perfect quote for this:

“Time doesn’t take care of emotional wounds; it covers them up with fascial adaptive layer upon fascial adaptive layer. This is why over time we all solidify and all these physical symptoms manifest themselves.”

– John Barnes, Healing Ancient Wounds

Back to School Mode Continues: From Ortho-Bionomy to MFR

A few weeks ago, right off the heels of my most recent Ortho-Bionomy deep dive, I took the John Barnes Myofascial Release 1 (MFR1) workshop in San Francisco.

I’ve been interested in Myofascial Release since before going back to massage school. Or, more specifically, I was very interested in fascia… and I knew next to nothing about any specific fascially-oriented bodywork modalities.

I was shown a few “myofascial” techniques in massage school, which were introduced as a way to work with restrictions in the superficial fascial layer just underneath the skin. It was the barest of beginnings of an orientation to fascia-forward bodywork for me; I worked with that, learned what I could, and was quickly hungry for more.

Still, it was a leap of sorts to sign up for this workshop. I didn’t know anyone else going, and didn’t have a direct personal connection to John Barnes’s work. I’ve already been taking other continuing education classes in Esalen Massage and Ortho-Bionomy — how much extra education is too much? Plus, since I now have a job, I had to request work off to do it. But when I watched a couple John Barnes videos online, I felt enough resonance with what I heard to take the risk and jump in. What did I have to lose?

And wow, am I so glad I went! I feel floored by that 3-day experience, a deep journey that was sprinkled with moments of magic and synchronicity. Now, as I work to integrate and practice what I learned, I feel an exciting deepening of direction, purpose, and possibility for my work going forward.

What the Seminar was Like

Sadly, John Barnes passed late last year, so this 3 day training was a blend of virtual and hands-on experience. The days were composed of videos with content straight from Barnes’ past seminars. We then had hands-on portions facilitated by highly experienced and credentialed MFR practitioners including the current director at the Sedona MFR treatment facility. Thought I didn’t get to meet Barnes before his passing, I found myself humbly grateful for the videos and an opportunity to learn from him via recording, in order to get initiated properly into this modality of healing. 

The material we covered started with a general introduction to fascia and the MFR paradigm and methodology, including both “old school” methods of soft tissue mobilization, and “new school” MFR with its much gentler approach yet in many ways deeper results. We covered abdominal and psoas work, deep fascial releases, arm and leg pulls, lumbo-sacral decompressions, transverse fascial planes in the body, cervical and occipital work, and a whole lot of cranial work — that last part surprised me. And we were given a glimpse, via many many healing stories and live demos, of the myriad inspiring applications of this work.

“Unwinding”: Continuing and Deepening

One thing I had a lot of curiosity about, coming into the seminar, was how MFR would define and handle “unwinding”. I was already in an active unwinding process in my own body, and becoming familiar with it conceptually through an Ortho-Bionomy lens.

Both Ortho-Bionomy and Myofascial Release have an understanding of “unwinding”, and of the body’s healing process as it relates to physical positions of past traumas. But the way that concept is expressed is very different between them.

In Ortho-Bionomy, the therapist does subtle positioning and re-positioning of the body, while deeply listening and sensing for a softening of tension – oftentimes this leads to bringing the body into a position where it once experienced a trauma. Within that quiet, still space, a certain kind of unwinding happens. There is a release in the stillness that is almost imperceptible, yet the client will feel better afterwards. This is understood in part to be a neuro-muscular technique, where some tissue that’s been in a strain since the trauma is given slack and the body can neurologically repattern itself, or complete whatever process was started with the traumatic incident.

MFR greatly deepened my understanding of “unwinding”. Something in the John Barnes approach seems to create a permission field for the body to unlock its own healing in the form of movement. So the body isn’t being passively guided – it actually begins to lead the process quite actively.

We watched in demonstrations as bodies went into various kinds of active unwinding, sometimes with incredible and dramatic movements – shaking, convulsing, going into odd shapes and patterns. Inside of that, there were periodic “still points”, where everything slowed down and became calm. In the still point, the therapist just held them. According to the MFR theory, some kind of deep reprocessing happens in those still moments.

Demo patients described their experiences as wild, uncomfortable yet cathartic, and safe. Oftentimes while going through this process, they said they were re-living some past traumatic experience. John Barnes was this calm, strong presence, able to hold people going through intense inner journeys and coach them through the process of facing and processing old traumas, coming out the other side changed.

Not every Myofascial Release session involves unwinding, but what I saw of it was incredibly compelling to me. And somehow, magically, unwinding has begun to organically surface in some of my sessions – so far just in the neck area. It’s happened for three or four people as I was giving a myofascial occipital traction hold, that their neck started moving from side to side into bent and twisted positions. I wasn’t trying to make that happen, and I didn’t tell them ahead of time that it could… so it was a surprise to both of us. Each time it’s happened, the recipient was compelled by both the experience and the results. I feel I’ve been initiated into a beginner level of being able to hold space for this kind of thing, and am very motivated to keep learning both as a receiver and giver!

A Complete Package of a Healing Modality?

Something clicks for me with this John Barnes material in a deeper way. It speaks to my very soul, the part of me who knows and loves the wildest of wilds, the very essence of Life that creates beauty and healing. John Barnes’s articulation of the healing process is extremely resonant with my own view and experience. His understanding came from his own deep lived experience of healing himself after injury, and being very spiritually guided through it, more or less being initiated out of his linear-thought-rooted background in traditional PT and into a direct relationship with his intuitive capacities.

The way he talks about fascia is incredibly poetic to me. This is a living matrix that connects our body into a single being; it not only holds us physically, yet also mentally and emotionally. In the MFR paradigm, there is no separation drawn between body and mind. The movement of our physiology IS the movement of our mind and consciousness. Which also means that opening up these restrictions in our fascia have deeper implications than just physical change; these kinds of changes can open us up into dormant aspects of our psyches, and into that more intuitive aspect of our inner nature.

“The motion of the mind has been ignored by healthcare.”

– John Barnes

“Physiological movement IS the movement of the mind.”

– John Barnes

And the variety of healing stories that I’ve now been exposed to in this world… resolution of long-term fibromyalgia. Lasting resolution of severe TMJ. Resolution of persistent headaches after complex injury from a car crash. A lame horse regaining the capacity to run and race. Fantastic!

Listening to John Barnes, I feel some kind of mirror energy to what I’ve felt in the world of indigenous plant medicine healing, or even in the TVM world, where I received bodywork that I felt helped me genuinely process and resolve some ancestral trauma. I respect a shamanic approach to trauma healing. It seems like JB had what it took to operate on that level, like he went through a shamanic initiation of sorts with his own healing journey. I’m so curious to go deeper into his teachings, and into his living legacy: a global community of MFR practitioners and teachers who are carrying the work forward.

Integration & Next Steps for Me

Right after the workshop I felt spellbound, even a little bit obsessed. I felt like I got a glimpse of God, and with all the fresh impressions of miraculous healing stories inside the MFR world, I started having visions of a fantastical-but-possible future where skilled manual therapists actually replace our standardized Western trauma-inducing body interventions. If first impressions tell the whole story, then I’m 100% Team Myofascial Release! Is this a cult? Can I join? God, pick me to join this healing cult!!

It’s a little wild to see myself “fall in love” (or at least first-blush infatuation) with a modality, and to see my mind start spinning fantasies about what my life in that universe could be like.

Meanwhile, I still live in the actual world. I work at a spa where I am expected to practice Swedish Massage, Deep Pressure massage, and occasional energy work. Massage feels so commonplace and even boring compared to what I just saw and experienced… and yet, humbly I remember, this is my grounding and my home base in the bodywork world. Like any living being, I must tend to my roots if I want to continue to grow upwards and outwards.

And to my own surprise, I see that I can actually bring some of what I just learned into my sessions at Kabuki, as well as with private clients. It’s happening in a fairly organic fashion, if I stay open to it. It does take some bravery and willingness to try to take little risks. I have to hold it lightly and be willing to fall back on what I know. The myofascial approach isn’t going to be a fit for everyone I work with right now, and that’s okay.

I’ve put money down for at least 2 more seminars this year, plus a session with a local MFR practitioner simply just to receive more of the work for myself. My intention is to keep following this thread. I want to see where it takes me.

In the meantime, I’ll be practicing what I’ve learned in my own growing bodywork practice. Curious to come check it out? Reach out on my contact form and let me know 🙂

Thanks for reading! Take care and be well!