Myofascial Therapy is a manual approach that addresses the fascial system. Fascial mobilization is a deep tissue technique that manually challenges the inappropriate links within the myofascial sheaths that restrict motion and cause pain. The fascia is the elemental component of connective tissue and spreads through out the entire body in a three dimensional matrix. With this in mind it is easy to comprehend how an obstruction in this three dimensional sheath can cause pain and compensation patterns far from the scared or adhered tissues. My role is simply to act as a guide to explore and uncover what is out there or in this case what is in there and create the circumstance that would allow for change, in this case movement, any movement, from a therapeutic pulse to a knee jerk reaction; and of course if no movement comes honoring the still point.
Myofascial Release developed by John Barnes is an approach where the therapist allows the body via the facial system to direct its own unwinding, called Myofascial Unwinding. Myofascial unwinding decreases pain, increases range of motion, brings awareness to subconscious holding pattern and beliefs. A space is provided for the body to released uninhibited by our left brain (our rational mind). One is directed to be in a neutral state, not to explain or try to understand why. Theory holds that our waking rational mind only utilizes several percent of the brains/nervous systems capacity verses the right brain intelligence, what we may call our intuitive intelligence which utilizes 100% brain capacity. An example of this would be sleeping on an issue before making an important decision. We are not sitting down and putting our thinking cap on, but the opposite, being neutral by going to sleep. I have heard that Einstein realized his theory of relativity; waking up in the middle of the night. You probably have examples of your own answers, break throughs’, solutions coming to in the middle of the night, when we have access to a greater capacity.
Myofascial Release recognizes the numerous levels and enormity of the human experience, without trying to analyze anything. Trauma and memories stored on our bodies may be preverbal, even in uteri. There is no verbal way to experience, recollect or relate to these occurrences in our current stage of development. In this case they need to be felt and experienced in order for change or release to occur.
