Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/720675
Fascia is where therapeutic answers lie and where healing begins. That's the message John Barnes, physical therapist (PT), has been imparting to his clients and students for the past 50 years. Barnes, founder of Myofascial Release Treatment Centers & Seminars, was a traditional PT for the first 15 years of his career before he began to explore the modalities and philosophies that would inform his work and become part of his myofascial release protocols today. ADDRESSING THE FASCIA "Temporary results—they're what drive me crazy and you crazy," Barnes tells the group of therapists gathered in front of him, their nodding heads confirming agreement on why they've come to this Myofascial Release (MFR) workshop. "MFR is another dimension to massage and bodywork that helps to create more long-lasting results," he says. At the heart of the solution, is fascia. "The primary communication system in our body is fascia," Barnes explains during a workshop break. "People have been calling fascia an insulator all these years, but it's really more like fiber optics." As with any communication system, how well the transmission lines work is a key component to the system's health. Barnes says that as fascial sheaths in the body are "glued" together as a result of injury, trauma, or dysfunction, they become unyielding. "Restricted fascia has the tensile strength of 2,000 pounds per square inch," he says. "That's two full-grown horses standing on the nerves that innervate the muscle. It's crushing our cells. And it pulls structures out of alignment." But restricted fascia is entirely capable of being changed. While massage, energy techniques, and other forms of bodywork address fascia, Barnes says they release only 20 percent of the facial system—the elastic and muscular components of the myofascial complex. "It requires very different principles to release the other 80 percent," he says. When addressing fascia, Barnes says you must first get through the collagenous barrier, something that takes up to 120 seconds of pressure to even begin a release. Most therapists, Barnes says, are not that patient. "They're either pushing their way through it or pushing over it; they don't wait to be allowed through it." The other side of that barrier is where myofascial release happens. In addition to waiting on the tissue, and, in effect, being "invited in," MFR is also reliant on pressure. Too much pressure, Barnes explains, and the client's subconscious mind takes over and starts a guarding process— something a practitioner can't muscle through. Too light a touch, and the barrier is not being engaged. "MFR is about 'feeling' into the client's body and reading their body language." Once engaged with the collagenous barrier, Barnes says there is another 3–5-minute window where you illicit the piezoelectric phenomena. "Cells are crystalline in nature; if you put pressure into a crystal, it generates an electrical flow. So, in other words, our mechanical pressure, given significant time, begins to generate a bioelectrical flow. Couple that with mechanotransduction, and you elicit a biochemical response at the cellular level. This then leads to phase transition, into a period of chaos where change and healing occur." From there we find resonance or release. 76 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 John Barnes (above), demonstrating a Myofascial Release (MFR) technique to a recent workshop participant, says he enjoys teaching as much as he did the first day. At right, Barnes illustrates soft-tissue mobilization and a cross-hand myofascial release for back pain and fibromyalgia.