What is Myofascial Release?

"The purpose of life is to enjoy your life” -John Barnes

Whereeee to begin?   Let’s start by traveling into the multidimensional matrix of liquid light inside of you- fascia!  Fascia truly is the web of life.  It has traditionally been viewed as the covering of muscles, the stuff that surrounds like the white parts of an orange slice.  It’s usually been studied on dead bodies in healthcare.  Well we know now that the fascia is a continuous web that weaves throughout our body…it is our body! One intelligent system that carries information through it continuously. 

 Because of the nature of fascia, restrictions in seemingly distant parts of the body are actually connected. A rotated hip can be pulling through the body like a snag in a sweater.  This is why it's very common in sessions to have releases all over while working in one area.  The technique itself is very simple and one of the main principles is “no force”.  You or someone else is applying sustained pressure to one area of the body.  The length of time along with gentle awareness begins to notify the nervous system that it is safe and the tissue begins to melt open.  The process of healing can then begin which can lead to many types of responses such as dethawing (shaking sweating) feeling energy moving through parts of the body, emotions surfacing, and larger movements called “unwinding” that often have a rotational component because of how energy spirals through us.  In this state you are connected to your vast intuitive intelligence which always knows what to do in order to come into a state of health.

Healing is messy and its also very beautiful! That’s why it is a healing art.  If you watch an animal after it goes through something traumatic it immediately begins to process it through shaking and releasing energy until its back to homeostasis. We are animals too! When something happens to us and we are not able or allowed to process, it forms a fascial restriction that holds the memory.   It basically freezes that moment in time within your watery body until it feels safe enough to let it go.  This can be emotional or physical trauma.  It can accumulate over time like the micro trauma of sitting in a chair all day as a child when your body really wanted to move around.  Culturally we have all been in the soupy marinade of learning coping mechanisms to deal with all of the unprocessed trauma.  We can be in an almost perpetual state of fight, flight, freeze, or play dead and not have any awareness of this.

 "Without awareness there is no choice." - John Barnes 

 As we gain awareness we gain the ability to respond to life instead of reacting from our survival mode nervous system state.  In this state we are bracing against life in order to survive instead of being in flow with it.  Fortunately we are designed to process all of this stuck trauma energy very well.  We only have to learn how to access it. This involves developing awareness in the body, feeling our feelings, listening to the fascial voice and then developing a toolkit to begin unwinding the restriction pattern.  We are teaching ourselves how to drop in to a self healing state when the nervous system feels safe and theta waves can turn on to facilitate truly letting go.  Along with myofascial release the other tools that are innate to us as humans are the voice, our breath, awareness shifting, and movement. They all interweave! Let’s dig in, open up, and truly enjoy life.