Myofascial Release
🌿 What Is Fascia?
Fascia is the body's three-dimensional web of connective tissue. It surrounds and supports every muscle, bone, nerve, blood vessel, and organ—from head to toe, without interruption. It even extends into the cellular level, acting as the body’s internal communication and support network.
When we experience trauma (including surgery), inflammation, repetitive motion and stress, this web can become restricted and dense, placing pressure on sensitive structures and limiting movement. These restrictions often go undetected by standard medical imaging, which is why unresolved pain and stiffness can persist even when tests show “nothing wrong.”
👐 How Can We Free Up the Fascia?
Using the John F. Barnes approach to Myofascial Release, we apply gentle, sustained pressure to restricted areas—never forcing, always listening. These holds are maintained for at least five minutes, which gives the tissue time to begin softening, unwinding, and releasing.
This is more than just physical. As pressure is sustained, it activates a piezoelectric response in the fascial system—generating subtle electrical signals that guide the body into reorganization and balance. Clients often feel a deep sense of relief, warmth, or spaciousness as their fascia opens and rehydrates.
⏳ Why Time Matters
Fascia doesn’t respond to quick fixes—it responds to presence and patience.
Healing through the fascial matrix occurs gradually, as the tissue transitions from a solid and bound state to a fluid and responsive one. This transformation is known as phase transduction, which enables the body to access deeper patterns of movement, alignment, and awareness.
As James Oschman explains, the fascial network functions as an energetic web—a system that resonates with coherent, healing frequencies when given enough time. In this work, time is medicine. It allows the nervous system to settle, and the body to remember how to heal itself.
💧 Why Fascia Matters
The ground substance within fascia—also known as the extracellular matrix—is the fluid environment that transports oxygen, nutrients, hormones, biochemistry, and energy between cells. When this matrix becomes dehydrated or solidified, cellular nourishment is blocked.
As John Barnes writes:
“No matter what food you ingest, it does not become nutrition until it enters the cells. Hydration does not occur when water goes down our throat, but only when it is capable of entering the cell. If the ground substance has solidified, the body cannot absorb what it needs.”
By restoring flow to this system, we reawaken the body's innate intelligence—its natural capacity to regulate, rebalance, and restore itself from within.
I was a guest on this podcast (Nov 2021).
Here we talk about Myofascial Release.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/doors-of-perception/id1587641303
Visceral Manipulation
"Visceral Manipulation (VM) was developed by renowned French Osteopath and Physical Therapist, Jean-Pierre Barral. Through organ-specific fascial mobilization, VM assists functional and structural imbalances throughout the body including musculoskeletal, vascular, nervous, urogenital, respiratory, digestive and lymphatic dysfunction. It evaluates and treats the dynamics of motion and suspension in relation to organs, membranes, fascia, and ligaments. VM increases proprioceptive communication within the body, thereby revitalizing a person and relieving symptoms of pain, dysfunction, and poor posture." (Taken from www.barralinstitute.com)
Image courtesy of Rob Crampton