About Myofascial Release Physical Therapy
Your body feels like it’s broken.
Because of the migraine, you can’t work a full week or day.
Because of the back pain, you can’t walk your kid to school.
You don’t trust your legs to get you to the bathroom quickly.
Surgery isn’t a solution, and medications are very questionable, but doing nothing is out of the question.
Will physical therapy repair it?
Welcome to insurance-approved physical therapy.
Weeks after the pain started, your doctor finally says: “I’m sending you to physical therapy – check with your insurance as to which clinic.”
You go to the insurance-approved PT clinic and sit in the packed waiting room to fill out more forms. Then you spend the next hour with an assistant, riding a stationary bike, lying on a hot pack, and getting zapped by some crazy electrical machine with many scary-looking wires.
Eventually, the physical therapist sits down with you, writing on her tablet during your entire conversation. She moved your ankle around a little to measure something and poked her fingers into some really sore spots. But in less than 15 minutes, she hurries off to her three other patients in the gym, and you’re back on the stationary bike with her assistant.
Leaving after two hours in the PT clinic, you wonder – how is this photocopied sheet of exercises she gave me really going to help my ankle pain?
Sitting in your parked car, you scream: “Hey! What about my *@#$%* ankle?!”
Myofascial Release Physical Therapy treatment is different.
It’s different from a typical massage.
It’s different from traditional chiropractic adjustments.
And it’s different from conventional physical therapy.
All three above involves something to be done “to” your body. They all treat parts of your body as if they are separate and not affected by anything else. Your body is treated like a physical machine, made of parts that break or just wear out. It is a ridiculous materialistic orientation that completely ignores the fact you are a living, breathing human being.
Myofascial Release treatment involves the connective tissue system, which covers the entire body, inside and out, top to bottom. It literally connects, integrates, and protects all the body’s vital organ systems, including the energetic and emotional aspects of the body-mind.
Treatment is applied to the area of symptoms and many other areas that interact with the symptoms area. This is why other approaches with a very limited focus don’t work. Treating the whole body makes Myofascial Release uniquely effective in helping people heal and return to a pain-free active lifestyle!
With Myofascial Release Physical Therapy, what you feel matters.
We won’t be doing painful exercises and forceful manipulations.
You won’t be alone exercising on some machine for 20 minutes.
And no one will be saying or doing or implying anything that feels hurtful on a personal level.
But it’s more than that…
In your super busy go-go-go life, you spend a lot of time in “fight or flight” mode of your nervous system, strenuously dealing with your uncomfortable environment and all the crazy people and awkward situations in your day.
Sometimes you find yourself in a moment where if you say or do anything, the problem will get a lot worse – so you “freeze.”
Over time, the body gets physically stuck in these “fight,” “flight,” and “freeze” modes of your nervous system. The stuck areas are physical and neuromuscular restrictions that create disability, pain, and other bizarre or unexpected symptoms.
In our treatment sessions, I will help you feel safe and relaxed physically and personally. The treatment helps your muscles “feel safe” at the cellular level so they can relax much more deeply. Then, your nervous system can settle into “rest and digest” mode – and authentic healing can begin.
“The key to healing is feeling.”
– John F. Barnes, PT
Here’s what it looks like…
You’ll be in a private treatment room with my full attention.
To start, we’ll review your symptoms and any recent changes. Then, we’ll do a standing postural alignment assessment to identify areas needing treatment. We might do some clinical measurements and standardized functional tests depending on your situation. This gives us a more precise understanding of your physical condition and a way to measure the effectiveness of treatment.
We’ll then start treatment right away!
Treatment might be face-down on a table (like a massage), but often it’s not. The treatment techniques are mostly hands-on on bare skin with varying pressures – from gentle and barely noticeable to very strong physical pressure. The strong techniques usually feel good. (“That’s the exact spot! It kinda hurts but don’t stop.”) And the light techniques can feel very deep.
The treatment process will reveal areas that need daily attention, and your daily self-treatment program will be customized for your body. Suppose you are already exercising, trying to return to your favorite sport, or just trying to work without being in pain. In that case, we’ll fine-tune techniques and recommend specific ways to make those activities safer and more effective for you.
After our sessions, you’ll feel like I “fixed” you.
I helped you become less fixed – less stuck. But you’ll feel better because we uncovered and “fixed” what was CAUSING your symptoms. You will have given your body and mind what it needed to repair itself!
Most of the time you will feel good after a treatment, and even better later on. Occasionally, you may feel some soreness temporarily, but feel much better after the systems of your body and mind process the changes you made. This “healing crisis” is how your body’s systems rebalance and re-integrate into a new and improved “normal.” Then, you’ll be having more and more “good days” and fewer and fewer “bad days.”
About Me
What started me down this path?
I broke my neck!
One cold and sunny morning in 1986, I was skiing alone, heading down the mountain to meet my friends.
I hopped over a small jump, caught a tip, and started to fall. I remained confident, expecting to roll out of it and keep going. Unfortunately, I fell head-first into deep powder and abruptly stopped. Stunned, I didn’t move.
That was… until other skiers started asking if I needed help. I started thinking I couldn’t survive the humiliation of slowly going down the hill in that awful Ski Patrol sled! So, I got up and very (very!) stupidly skied out.
Later that day, in severe pain, the doctor said, “Good news: You’re walking out of here. Bad news: You have a broken neck.” Soon after that, I got acquainted with physical therapy as a patient.
After rehabilitation, my neck was basically okay…
But it remained very stiff.
In 2001, I took my first MFR course with John Barnes. On the second day of the course, we worked on some MFR neck techniques. I was nervous about being “practiced on,” so I asked one of the assistant instructors (Brian Barnes) to help.
He suggested “real treatment” instead of “practicing a technique.” The physical position of the treatment helped me remember what I was feeling emotionally during my skiing injury. That awareness relieved me of the fear of pain from that injury, and I could finally let go of the fear of embarrassment I felt that day on the slopes.
As our “practice time” drew to a close, my neck felt better than it had in 14 years! I had better flexion, extension, and rotation. It was strong, and I had zero pain. It was actually fun to turn and look backward because I could! I was amazed.
It was my first lesson on how the physical and emotional interact in an authentic healing process.
One thing I love about physical therapy is how it helps the patient or client become more independent – not needing continued treatments twice weekly for the next 30 years! In my neck rehab, the PTs first did more “to” me, which helped. In a short time, I learned exercises and techniques I could safely do on my own. Soon I “graduated” from being a patient and moved on with my life.
Working in a hospital years later, my task was to transport patients in a wheelchair from their hospital room to the Physical Therapy department and back. As I arrived to transport a lady who had suffered a stroke, I could see how very sad, depressed, and anxious she felt. Her new disability seemed to have essentially ended her life. But when I brought her back to her room after her PT session, she was like a new person, excited and cheerful and even crying with happiness. She told me she walked with the therapist for the first time since the stroke and was afraid that she would never walk again. She was so happy and encouraged. I wanted to help people feel that way, too.
After many more adventures, I graduated from PT school.
Since finishing college, it has been important to me to continue my education every year, learning and improving my ability to help people. I regularly get treated by other MFR practitioners for my own health, but also to learn MFR more deeply “from the inside out.”
One thing I am very happy about is my experience over the years working with all different kinds of wonderful, interesting people:
people with money, people with no money, and people who just meditate and pray;
people of all different skin colors, sizes, and shapes;
people who speak American English, people who don’t, and all y’all who say things like “all y’all”;
people wise beyond their years, and “children” who get the senior discount;
people with weak legs, only one leg, two left feet, or even four furry legs!
Give this gift to yourself!
Healing takes time and energy, and no one else can do it for you.
I will be your expert guide for a while, but soon , you’ll continue on your own, FREE of the restrictions holding you back.
Take the next step and commit to claiming that freedom for yourself. You deserve it!
Call me today for your free consultation. Let’s get you back to your life! (916) 359-9590