MYOFASCIAL RELEASE: Unlocking Pain + Trauma Using the Hands ft. Craig Cohen

In this episode, Craig spills:

• What fascia is, where it lives, and why many don’t understand it
• “MYOFASCIAL RELEASE THERAPY” - the history and reasoning behind the John Barnes Method
• The relationship between our trauma and our fascia
• How fascia restrictions lead to pain - and what we can do about it
• The difference between MFR and massage
• The importance of the patient and practitioner relationship to get good results
• Motherhood, body trauma, and how MFR can help 
• His take on “permanent changes” within a body.

 

About Craig: 

Craig Cohen MPT, PT, ATC, CSCS, CHC  - a licensed physical therapist in North Miami, Florida, with over 25 years of clinical experience. He is the owner and clinical director of Integrated Physical Therapy – www.IPTmiami.com. He is known for his expertise in Myofascial Release Therapy, a manual therapy, a hands-on approach to treating pain and dysfunction in the body.

 

Instagram - @IPTmiami

Instagram - @CraigCohenPT

Website – www.IPTmiami.com

E-mail – [e-mail]

 

People mentioned:

• John F. Barnes is a physical therapist who is known for developing Myofascial Release (MFR), a form of manual therapy that focuses on releasing tension and pain in the fascia, a thin layer of connective tissue that covers and surrounds muscles, bones, and organs in the body. Barnes began his career as a physical therapist in the 1960s and started exploring the role of fascia in causing chronic pain and dysfunction in the body. He developed MFR as a way to address these issues and has been teaching and practicing the technique for over four decades.

     Website: https://myofascialrelease.com/

 

• Carol Davis – Retired Professor Emeritus from UMiami and expert MFR therapist and Researcher: highly respected researcher and educator in the field of fascia. Dr. Davis has conducted extensive research on the effects of manual therapy on fascial tissues, and she has developed a series of techniques that are based on the latest scientific research. She has also been involved in developing educational programs for healthcare professionals and the general public on the topic of fascia.
• Dr. Davis is widely recognized as a leading authority on the clinical applications of fascia research, and her work has helped to advance our understanding of the role of fascia in health and wellness.
• John Sharkey -  Clinical Anatomist, Exercise Physiologist, and founder of European Neuromuscular Therapy John Sharkey is a world-recognized presenter and authority in the areas of anatomy, manual, and movement therapies.
• Dr. Jean Claeude Guimberteau – Dr. Jean-Claude Guimberteau is a French hand surgeon and anatomist who is known for his groundbreaking work in the field of microsurgery and his research on the human body's fascial system. He is the author of several books on anatomy, including "Architecture of Human Living Fascia," which features stunning images of the body's fascial system captured through high-resolution microendoscopic technique
• Joanne Avison – Joanne Avison is a yoga therapist and international yoga teacher known for her work in the field of yoga anatomy and movement. She is the author of the book "Yoga: Fascia, Anatomy and Movement", which explores the relationship between yoga and the body's connective tissues, particularly the fascia.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A noo rye. Even when times getheart and you feel
you're in the dcucye, just how beautiful life can be
when you soph in your heart, you can finally starve

(00:28):
your true seious life. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the
Truthius Life. It's your host, Lisa Ham and today I
have probably like the episode I'm most excited to share
with you all, And I know we have a lot
of great episodes, but today's topic is Fasha and our
guest is Craig Cohen, who I'm probably his number one fan,

(00:50):
and I'm showing you today probably a side of myself
you might not know about. I guess it's a door
her side because we're talking about science and the body.
And I am fully Fasha obsessed and I have been
for about ten fifteen years, But I don't share it
a lot on social media because this is not my expertise.
This is my passion and interest that grows from getting
to know my own body. It's restrictions and learning how

(01:11):
to heal it, both emotionally and physically. But it's not
my expertise. I'm not a Fashia release therapist, no training
in that. It just his own self exploration and learning,
and I find it so fascinating. I could talk about
Fasha forever, and simply because any work I've ever had
done that is on the Fasha has made such a

(01:32):
profound impact on my well being, my physicality, and has
caused lasting change. Most importantly, oftentimes, when we have pain
and we go to body workers, we do get some
sort of relief, but it's very short term. My Fasha
release really impacts us on a much more permanent more
being the keyword here. Nothing is permanent, as Craig will explain,

(01:53):
but Fasha is a huge part of our body. It's
connective tissue all around our body that is underneath our
skin but above our bone. And yet most doctors and
healers that we go to don't even think about it.
It doesn't show up on scans. And yet we can
have restrictions in these areas and very real sensations, but
without validation from people and scanning in the way that

(02:15):
we typically find diagnosis, a lot of us are kind
of like lost in the space of I know I'm
in pain, but nobody knows how to help me. And
so my real purpose in sharing this episode is of
course not to just have like a really fun conversation
with Craig, but to also open your eyes up to
all the various types of healing modalities that exist in
our bodies. There is such a place for doctors and surgery, etc.

(02:36):
But a lot of people don't know that there's a
lot of that leads up until you make your way
to doctor and surgery that can be avoided. Those things
also can cause more complication. So we really want to
inch our way towards the higher level of intervention without
jumping to the highest intervention possible. A lot of people
don't know that there are options below things like surgery.

(02:56):
So this episode today is really inform and really talking
about what MFR the John Barnes technique specifically is about.
And why I think this is so important to bring
on the truthius life is because Fasha is all around
our body, and our body sends us wisdom about ourselves.
If we are not in touch with the wisdom about ourselves,

(03:17):
we can't truly live authentically. A lot of the trauma
that we accumulate in our lives, whether physical, emotional, as
Craig calls it little or big or cumulative, it lives
within our body and it can cause us to subconsciously
or consciously live out our lives in a way that
is not truthful. Every session that I have had with

(03:39):
my Alfasha Release, which by the way I go to
for pain or that was my entry point into this work,
has actually allowed me to much more deeply process things,
work through things, and walk out with so much more
clarification as to who I am, why I am, and
have huge breakthroughs and releases and freedom comes from that.

(04:00):
This conversation is complex. It's not just body, and it's
not just mind. It's a mind body approach and it's,
if you can't tell, my most favorite body work technique,
because it really hits everything, the physicality and the emotional
and then there's an integration that happens at the end
that we take with us and we carry with us,

(04:21):
and I think that's just such a beautiful part of
the treatment. Of course, I'm gonna put Craig's information below
and a lot of what he's shared in this episode,
But if you are looking for a therapist in your area,
you can go to the John Barnes website and you
can search your state and see if there's anybody near
you that offers this treatment. I hope that you love

(04:42):
this episode as much as I do. And if it
feels like, oh my gosh, I can't remember this all,
that's totally normal. There's a lot of information on here.
Just take it for what it is and start to
digest that there's so much more to our bodies than
we give the credit for. Thanks for listening, and I'll
see you back here next week. Well, hello, Craig, good
to see you. Great to see you. Thank you for

(05:04):
having me. I wish I was in Miami on the
table right now experiencing your magic before after this session,
but just being in your presence is healing enough, so
I'll take what I can get today. I appreciate as
a kind words, Thank you very much. I mean every
single one of them. I don't know if you know
how big of an impact you've had on my health
well being, an insight into my own body. Do you

(05:27):
know that? Well, again, thank you very much for the
kind words. You know, as a as a body work,
as a practitioner, we open the door. You're the one
that does all the work, so you get interesting. Okay,
So I'll just start by saying that Craig's work is
incredible and Craig himself is incredible, and it definitely does
take a willingness on my end and a dance between

(05:49):
practitioner and patient who I feel like established the results
that I've gotten from working with you. But I will
just kind of tease people into this episode by saying
that after one of our sessions together or during one
of our sessions, I felt the craziest release in my
neck during I don't know, I think it was three
four years ago, pre pandemic, and you were working my

(06:11):
neck and I felt like something rising up through my
neck and then it released, and I was like, that
was weird, and fast forward for the next twenty four hours.
I ended up getting like very sick, throwing up. And
it wasn't probably like years after until I actually made
that connection that this is my thoughts, not your professional opinion,

(06:32):
that I truly was like releasing something very emotionally stuck
in my body and the result was like an actual
purge of it. I mean, that's not how most of
my sessions go with myofascial release, but for me, it
really speaks volumes about how potent the work can be. Yes,
is that a normal reaction to myofashial work. So yeah,

(06:52):
my fash release is this brilliant work that I've been
studying out for a little over twenty years. And the
gentleman that came up to work, John Barnes, has taught
us that the purge, so to speak, is what you
refer to happens a lot because what ends up happening
is the emotions, the trauma, the physical toxins that we
build up in our bodies have the option to then

(07:13):
be released and then expelled from the body if you
give them permission to do so. And that's what you did.
You are able to release, let go, expel, purge, use
the word that you want, and then move beyond the
trauma that you were holding in your neck at that point.
So a wild thing to really think about. And I
guess the reason I use it with such caution is
because I mean, my goal in speaking to you is

(07:35):
to open people's understanding too. Fasha Fashia work and you
know all the body workers that play such a huge
role in helping people emotionally and physically. And that being said,
I've had many myofascial treatments with you with other people
and I've never had that response. So I think that
that might scare people. And that's the only reason that
I'm like, you know, I want to say that happened

(07:55):
one time. Sure, I have really good sessions a lot
of the time, even maybe better, But that was the
most tangible experience that I've had. Sure, So let's let's
back up a moment and talk about what fasha is
in general, and then we'll get a little bit more
into that. So many many years ago, when the powers
that be were doing dissections on humans, they would like

(08:17):
to get to the tissue. They want to look at
the muscle, they want to look at the bone, So
they would discard this fabric, this connective tissue in the body,
push it aside, and what they were actually discarding was
the fasha. And the last let's say fifteen twenty years,
where the science has really kind of come up in fasha,
we're recognizing that bosha is a system within itself. Basha
is if you would imagine a sweater or a spider's web,

(08:40):
and that spider's web covers us from head to toe,
back to front, right to left. It's a continuous webbing
of tissue that binds our muscles, our ligaments, our arteries,
and veins our organs all together into one common sheath
that continues throughout our entire body. So Fasha's very densely woven.

(09:01):
It's a connective tissue that penetrates every aspect of our body.
And when we experience trauma, right and that trauma could
be a physical trauma from a slip and fall, it
can be from a car accident. It can be an
emotional trauma. It can be a verbally abusive relationship, or
it can be from a somebody being bullied or anything

(09:22):
of that nature. Any type of trauma in this world
right now, we like to lump trauma into two main sections.
Those are the big ones, the slip and falls. We
fall down a flight of stairs and you break an arm,
that's a pretty big trauma. The traumas that happen when
you bend over and pick a pencil off the floor
and your back goes out right, those are small micro
traumas that happen over a period of time. And then

(09:44):
there's that one little incident that's the strauma that breaks
the camel's back. While all those traumas get stored in
the fossil system, the newest research out there is showing
that the consciousness of our body is stored within our
fossil system, and if our fossil system goes from to
toe as one continuous tissue, that means our consciousness and
our memories of those traumas, whether it be large or small,

(10:08):
small that build up into a larger one, they get
held in that fasha creating resistances. So what we do
is my Fashion Release therapists is we use our techniques
that JOHNA has taught us throughout the years and we
open the doors or the trauma to be released. If
the client on the table yourself chooses to do so

(10:28):
and have the opportunity to purge or release those traumas
becomes available to us. And that's an amazing aspect of
the work that we do. So we don't want to
scare patients off. Of course, my fashion Release will only
go as far as you the patient wants it to do.
It wants to go for sure. And it's actually worth
mentioning that what drew me to Fashia Fashion work working

(10:49):
with you was actually not emotional trauma. I have an
interest in my own body because of pain, alignment issues,
chronic things I don't know the right word here that
have before I found you. I was looking inward at
my own body, studying it, and you know, anytime I
come to you, we're working on my hips, my low back,

(11:11):
the same areas that I complain of about the physicality,
but at the same time, within that is also the emotional.
So I think that a lot of people when they
hear me talk about you, I have this idea. I
don't know if it's true or not, but they might
envision you as like a super spiritual healer that looks
a certain way, and in reality, you are a physical therapist.

(11:34):
You operate out of your own business a physical therapist office.
It looks like a very typical physical therapist office, and
then you have a little room where you do MFR.
It's nothing super out there and different from what most
mainstream people have seen when it comes to bodywork. If
you've ever envisioned what a physical therapist office looks like,

(11:55):
and I think that kind of might break down the
barriers as well, like people coming in for physical trauma
accidents that they know about or don't know about, and
then working more deeply. Do you find that a lot
of people come for the physical and then are like, Okay,
this actually worked a lot more deeply. Yeah, So most
people come to me when they have an ache or pain,

(12:16):
something going on in their body. They've been referred to
me because, thank goodness, people like yourself have had positive
responses and things have gone well. You'll tell your friend.
Your friend comes to me, Oh, I've got a shoulder pain,
of back pain, deck pain, whatever it may be, and
then we explain during that session with my fash release
and the technique that I use and that many of
us use here in our practice. But yes, I'm a

(12:38):
physical therapist. I went to physical therapy school many many
many years ago, and I've been practicing everything from the
John Bard's my fash release to orthopedics. My first degree
was athletic training in sports medicine. That was then authletic
trainer in college and pro sports for a while before
I went to physical therapy school. So my main methodology

(12:59):
is my release, but I'm also a very schooled and
educated in the orthopedic world of outpatient physical therapy. So
the combination of the minofascial release combined with the neuromuscular
educational work is really what creates the solid foundation success
of our practice here. And what do you specifically away
from physical therapy into exploring myofascial because not everybody who

(13:23):
does myofascial release therapy John Barton's method is a physical therapist.
That's correct. Correct. So in the state of Florida and everywhere,
every state's a little bit different, But in state of Florida,
we require a license to touch, right, not some massage therapist,
a physical therapist, a chiropractor and MD somebody who has
a license to touch another human being in a professional manner.

(13:44):
So I would say, what really drew me towards the
myofascial work was watching how the industry, the medical industry,
and will use the word general and we're not going
to get into this too deeply, but was very much
gearing towards multiple at the same time based therapies. Very
little one on one time, not as much time really

(14:07):
connecting with a patient, whether it be manually or on
a normal muscular educational component. You'd have three or four
people being treated at the same time. There's no way
you could spend that one on one time with one another.
And I was introduced to this work very early onto
my career and light bulbs just started popping and for me,
I was very much drawn to it, and I followed

(14:29):
both avenues. One was it gives me the one on
one personal time that I would like to have with
a patient that I can make a difference in their
lives and they can make a difference in their own lives.
But also because it really affords me the opportunity not
to see multiple patients in time, I see one on one.
You gave a really solid foundation as to what fasha is.

(14:50):
Fasha is one of those things I could hear over
and over again, and hearing it again and seeing it
described by different people. It takes so many times to
understand it because it's not above own that we understand.
To understand, there's this web of connective tissue underneath our skin,
above the bone, that it's not even picked up on
most scans. Is that correct? That's correct? Don't you don't

(15:11):
see it on the X rays or a moriz or
the things like that. That's an important thing I would
love to touch on in just a moment. But for
anybody who's hearing this word for the first time, I
want you to really envision what this is, because most
practitioners don't even consider it because it's kind of lost
in what the eye can't see even when we do
scans that go inward. So you did such a fantastic

(15:32):
job sharing what fasha is. Can you now break down
what MFR the John Barnes method specifically is, because it
is different than a massage. Correct. That is correct. So
let's take it even a stuff further. If you can
imagine an orange sliced in half, and when you look
at the orange, you see the outer thick skin of

(15:55):
the orange, then inside you see the white pecton inside part,
and then beyond that you see the little triangles. And
if you turn that orange upside down, those little triangle
pieces are not going to fall out because from the
outer thick nature of the skin of the orange to
the inner layers of the peckton, all the way wound,
all the way through, those little triangle pieces to the

(16:15):
center of the orange are bound together by the oranges flasha.
So what John Barnes has figured out through unfortunately an
injury to himself many many many years ago, he found
that three main principles would affect the inner nature of
the human flasha from external touch. And the three main

(16:38):
factors that he breaks down are pressure, sheer, and time.
So with pressure. If you can imagine pressing a raft
into a body of water. If you push too hard,
that raft is going to squirt out one side or
the other, or it's not going to be very stable.
If you don't push down enough, nothing really happens. So
if you push down just enough to where the buoyancy

(16:59):
of the water pushes back on the raft, you find
that equilibrium. And that's the same thing that we do
in the body. We find where the body's tissue pushes
back at us, and we hold that space and then
we create sheer or separation. We can do it with
one hand, or we can do with two hands, based
on the technique. And what we do is we funds.

(17:19):
We find the exact point of buoyancy, so to speak.
We create a sheer force, a separation force in the
restriction of the fassam. And then the most important aspect
here is time. We wait. We wait at what's called
the barrier, the piezoelectrical barrier. We hold it there for
three to five minutes until we start to feel change

(17:40):
and shift in the tissue. And you'll actually feel it
in your hands, patient will feel it in your bodies.
It's almost like this wave that comes up underneath your hand.
It's very very cool. After many many years of doing this,
I still think is the coolest sensation ever. But we wait.
We wait three to five minutes for the tissue to
start to change its viscosity, meaning that it is more

(18:00):
infused with fluid, more appliable, almost think of saltwater taffy
starting to stretch and lengthen in time. We don't pull
it apart. We just wait for it to melt and lengthen.
And that's the technique pressure sharing time. We hold that
we could do it with cross hands, we could do
with elbows, we could do it with hands and anywhere
in the body. It works beautifully differ from deep tissue.

(18:22):
Let's talk about you know, in our world today of
Instagram and whatnot. We've got a few seconds to kind
of show you what we do. And it's not exactly
a very sexy thing to show somebody just kind of
hanging out there for three to five minutes waiting for
tissue enerney. You're probably not going to see on a video.
So what I'll show you is I'll show how to
use a foam roller or a ball and I'll roll

(18:43):
on that. And that is almost like a deep tissue. Right,
it has its benefits. It pros blood flow, it can
promote some lengthen the tissue, but without the time components,
you're not going to get to the fossil connective tissue,
the collagen fiber that leads to the long lasting change
in the system that we're always looking for. So if

(19:04):
you do phone rolling before a workout, you'll notice that
you'll feel good in the moment, you'll do your workout,
but then your tissue will contract back again. In other words,
you're not making the long term changes that you're looking
for with a phone roller or with the ball. Again,
both have a great benefit, but they're very different from
my fashion release in that the three to five minute
hold component allows the deeper college and tissue to actually

(19:28):
create a new length which is then permanent. And that's
what the neuromuscular education component is afterwards, is now you
need to learn how to use that new range of
motion that you have, right because you say permanent, but
it's not like we come to you and we're done,
because we leave you. And even the most diligent person
who's doing their exercises that you give afterwards, like the

(19:48):
body is still very habitual. It goes back to what
it has been doing for decades for most people that
see you, and it's really like a three sixty lifestyle
attention to buy perhaps to make it truly permanent. That
being said, the shift in the body goes beyond what
a massage deep tissue does for me at least, you know,

(20:10):
deep tissue, I might feel good for the day, maybe
the night, but with MFR, I have a structural change.
Because fasha I've referred to it as sticky. I don't
know if that's proper or not, but I think I
think if it as a very sticky thing, so it
gets stuck, that's fantastic way to put it. Yeah, when
Fasha is injured and there's a resistance point, there's no
blood flow, there's no oxygen, there's no nutrient that gets

(20:33):
into that area, and it becomes scarred down. So that's
a great way to describe it. And it just feels
so good when you unstick it and the Fasha goes
back to being more pliable and then that area that
has been This is how I envision it mask down.
Let's say like my low back is my area, my
SI joint, my sacro iliac. Right after I work with you,

(20:54):
there's like space in there and blood flow and with
that comes mobility and like, I'm no longer just this
like robot, because I can move my body and take
up space, and it's so much more than just pain relief.
It is like taking back your power in the world.
It's so transformative. Yeah, the work is very, very powerful.

(21:16):
I truly do love it. And you touched on a
few points. The number one, there's no such thing as permanencing. Right,
we know that in life things are going to happen.
We know that small traumas are going to happen throughout
our lives. And you also touched on the point that
once these fossil changes are made in your system, it's
also up to you when you leave our office to

(21:37):
make some other small micro changes in your life to
keep those changes in place. Right, If you bang your
head against the wall and you have a headache, you
can come to me and I'll help you get rid
of your headache. But if you leave here and bang
your head against the wall, not much is going to
happen with that, right, So we got to get you
to stop banging your head against the wall and give
you something else to do to relieve those headaches. In
the real world of fausha and posture, today's technological well

(22:00):
just very flexed forward. We drive in a flex for
a position, we type on our computers or our phones
or iPads, whatever it may be. So we have to
come with different ways to Number one, be very aware
of our small little things that take place on a
daily basis multiple times and make small changes. And those
small changes over a long period of time is what's

(22:20):
going to make the structure, the scaffolding, the posture within
the system become a little bit more appliable, a little
bit more healthy. In general. I love the pliability word.
It really speaks to what's going on. So before finding

(22:43):
that myofascial work existed and just being interested in fashion
in general, somehow I stumbled upon this in my own
when I was studying my body and getting my masters
and nutrition and exercise, and I was like, how can
I penetrate this level? And I started looking into acupuncture
and cuppying, and I've done dry needling, and all these
things have been hugely helpful because and how I envision it,

(23:06):
it is getting through to that layer and it helps
bring the blood flow and I'm a huge proponent of
those things, sure, but what I think it's missing is
the healing power of the hands and a listener on
the other side of those hands. So, yes, the acupuncturist
is still working with your exact body, but the hand

(23:27):
that's feeling the shift or the non shift, not using
a timer to say, okay, you know your move here,
move there, is just like so deeply listening to a body.
I don't know if there's a deeper level of listening. Yeah.
So all those word dollars that you've mentioned, dry needling
and acupuncture, cupping and massage, these are all beautiful and

(23:48):
wonderful modalities that allow for wonderful effects within our body.
What my foster release allows for is we use a
word called resonance, right, And you can imagine in the
ripple in the wave of a pond. And when two bodies,
two people's energies become in resonance, those ripples double in

(24:09):
size because the energy is now doubled. And when we
talk about the energy that surrounds us, it can become
ten times as much, and so the connection becomes that
much greater because the resonance shared between two people that
are in sync. And that's what the manofaci world allows for,
is the connection between two people shared energy, the exchange

(24:34):
of that energy, and then the receiving of the openness
that is given throughout that manifacial system. And that's beautiful
of the work. That's the beauty of the work. And
there's many practitioners the different modalities that do this kind
of thing, but it's ever present in the minifascial world.
The hands on touch is in my opinion, the greatest

(24:54):
healing ever and the act of listening right because we
listen not only through our ears, but we're listening through
our hands and we respond in that way. And what's
so remarkable recording this podcast in twenty twenty three is
that it cannot be replaced by technology. I mean, a
robot couldn't do it. It doesn't have a heartbeat, right,
it's the energy is not there. And so I don't know.

(25:16):
I hold so dearly to these things that cannot be replaced,
because it feels like everything can be replaced at this point,
but true, real things can't be. And we need to
support those arts and healing arts that are that are
out there so that they don't get you know, a
technology to try and replace it, which something might come

(25:38):
out that resembles MFR somehow, you know, but it's not
the person, So I'm curious. You know, it does take.
It is a very intimate session without words, in the
sense that you are opening traumas that people might not
even know about emotionally. I had a friend who I
sent her to a mile fascial release guy that it's
in my town, who I recently found, who's wonderful, and

(26:00):
they quickly formed enough trust that she had like a
full emotional breakdown in his office and a cathartic breakdown,
not a breakdown, a breakdown, and then she recovered and
then a lift up, an emotional lift up. But for
some people, they might start to feel that bubble of
emotion coming up and then feel very unsafe with a stranger,
if it's their first session or second time. Have you

(26:22):
had an experience where somebody is resisting what's coming up
because they are not comfortable with you, or just don't
feel safe, maybe from other reasons. Sure. Sure. We have
a couple of basic rules in our office, and the
first one is safety. We want to make sure that
the individual is safe in the environment that they have

(26:42):
full control of the session from beginning to end. If
the pressure is too much or too life, feel free
to speak up a little less, little more. If anything
is uncomfortable, whether it be the pressure is uncomfortable in
a place in the body, or they're emotionally uncomfortable, they
are instructing the very very beginning of every single session.

(27:03):
Whether I've seen them once or I've seen them ten times,
is that they are in control of the session and
can stop it at any time. And when we reach
a point of trust, our role as a therapist is
never ever to push, but to hold space. It's the
patient on the table to reach a point of comfort
and trust to be able to express what they're feeling

(27:26):
if they feel comfortable and they choose to do so.
Our job is therapists is a facilitator. We open the
doors and if the client decides to cross that threshold,
if they choose to express, we're going to hold that
very sacred. We're going to hold space and we're going
to let them know that they are in a safe
environment to express that. That's beautiful. So there hasn't been

(27:46):
too many instances where somebody doesn't feel where they feel
that they've been pushed because there's so much framework to
support them. Right, So, first and foremost the man fascial world,
we never push, whether it be physically emotionally. And I
am not a trained psychologist, so that's first and foremost.
Forcing creates injuries when you push on systems that don't

(28:07):
want to be pushed on and the body is resisting
and I'm going to overpower and force, I'm going to
tear fibers and tissues and create inflammation and bruising. We
don't do any of that. We hold tension in our
system for three to five minutes and we wait, We
hold space, and if the client feels an emotion or
a memory coming up, they have the freedom to express

(28:28):
what they're feeling and what that memory might be from
the time they were a child or something that took
place last week even But we never ever force and
we never ever push, and it's a shared experience between
all of us. I assume that most of your sessions
are calm for lack of a better word, but have
there been very uncome sessions that have been appropriate. Can

(28:50):
you give an example of because again, like my big
catharsist through my official didn't happen on the table. It
happened after, but certain things that people can expect on
the regular that is sure. So you know, again, it's
when people come to us, or come to myself in
the space. They may not know that I'm a myni
fashion release therapist, and we provide the information of what

(29:11):
my fashion release is and the way John teaches it,
in the way I follow those rules and techniques. They
come with some sort of a movement pattern dysfunction, let's
call it that. So oftentimes we'll get a client that
comes in after a car accident, and what will happen
is just before the accident happens, the body might assume
a protective posture, afford flexed compressed posture. And what'll oftentimes

(29:37):
happen is when the subconscious is taken given freedom to rome,
so to speak, your body will automatically kind of go
into that fetal protective posture. And whether that happens on
the table or out in just the general public will
find themselves kind of shutting down in areas of stress,
and it's just a remembering of that trauma that the experience,

(30:00):
that accident, and what happens is on the table when
things start to soften and things start to let go
in our body, and the fascia is starting to release.
The memory of that car accident may come up in
their minds, It may come up in their consciousness, which
is theirs, their fossil tissue, and they might start to
open up a little wider in their chest and their

(30:20):
shoulders and hold their heads up a little higher. As
they're going through this process. We call that unwinding. That's
the fascia going through all thet ME phrase that. That's
what John calls unwinding. I follow John's rules and so
I call it unwinding too. But what happens is the
fossil tissue that has been traumatized and protected in that

(30:40):
position beguns to unfold, unwind, and now that very closed
posture starts to become into this lengthening position on the table.
And it's beautiful to watch, and it's very safe. We
don't let anybody go flying. It's a very safe environment,
but we do watch people unwind their traumas, whether they
physical or emotional traumas. Oftentimes on the table. We've had

(31:03):
clients that whether it be physically abused as children or
watching a sibling being abused from the other room, and
they're experiencing that again on the table and just letting go,
because those experiences in our lives lead to the way
we hold our postures and the way we hold our bodies,
and those lead to chronic issues down the road because

(31:25):
everything becomes more compressed and more folded over, and so
our fossil system adapts to that until they're able to
go through it again. And this is when we really
reach out to professional psychologists and psychiasists to help work
with us, because again that's not my training in helping
these individuals get through some of those more major traumas.
I actually forgot that word unwinding, and I'm sure I've

(31:48):
experienced it with you, but my practitioner here in New
York he's used it before and said that I went
through it, and I don't know something like meditative when
you're on the table where he witnessed it. But I
actually didn't feel anything. So from a page point of view,
what is like? I mean, I might have been feeling
a release, but I wasn't noticing my body moving involuntarily, right,
So I just think it's important to share like patient

(32:09):
point of view, what like is actually very visibly grand
and real to a it's kind of subtle for the person,
at least for me in my own experience. What is
the relationship between fascia and pain. Let's come back to

(32:33):
the unwinding for one second, because I want to give
you a very clear example, and then we'll jump into
the connection there. When you wake up in the morning
and you're just kind of half away, kind of half
asleep still, and you're doing this like crazy stretch, right,
and then you just kind of go on today. Ten
minutes later, you don't think about what that crazy stretch was.

(32:53):
That was unwinding. It's intuitive, it's it's within us. Our
body tells us to do it. Correct. That's awesome. Yeah,
as a therapist will never move you on the table
and say, oh, look, you're own winding. No, it's really
like you said, sub consciences within us. And when we
let go, take off the proverbial breaks, we let our
body just go. And that's a perfect example that you're
half asleep, half awake, and your body just starts to

(33:15):
let go. If you watch an animal, a dog or
a cat, when they first wake up, that's their own winding. True.
Animals are the most primal at that so John Barnes
was paying attention to things around him, I guess very much.
So my next question was about pain. But if I
could just lead you a little bit further into the
bigger picture, and very few people listening to this podcast
will never experience a chronic issue with pain. If you

(33:37):
don't have it now, you may have it when you're older.
These things catch up to you or injuries happen, but
oftentimes these pain is missed by health professionals. What is
the relationship between fascia and pain and why do brilliant
doctors oftentimes move into things like surgery or say I
don't see a problem that you might recognize. I'm going

(34:00):
to speak from a therapeutic perspective. Pain is extraordinarily complex.
Pain is very real, and what one individual experiences is
pain is not going to be with the other person
next to them experiences is pain. So it's a very
complex conversation to begin with from a fascial perspective. You know,
we talked earlier about that sliced orange right and how

(34:22):
Fasha intertwines itself through all of our systems within our bodies.
And when I remember going through school, we were taught
the muscular skeletal system. We were taught the nervous system.
We were taught the system of the circulatory system, of
arteries and veins that we're talking about organell systems, and
we were taught in a very separate way, right, And

(34:44):
it makes sense in a linear thought process that when
we look at a picture of muscular skeleton of muscles
and bone, and then next to what we have another
picture of nerves, we think, well, these are two different systems.
And the reality is there's nothing individualized in our body.
Everything is entwined. Everything travels through and connects to one another.

(35:07):
So Fashia, if you can imagine that orange and you
squeeze the orange, what happens, Well, the juices start getting
squeezed out right, And what's happening is the fasha is
compressing the blood vessels, the arteries and veins. They're squeezing
the nerves, they're squeezing the lymph systems. They're squeezing the

(35:29):
fluid out of the areas, and they become less oxygenated,
less fluid, less hydrated, and that can affect our range
of motion, which then means we need to come up
with a different way to move. And when we come
up with different processes of movement. Will Now we're compensating
and using accessory movements, and that leads to chronic movement dysfunction,

(35:53):
which then leads to further fossia restrictions, and the cycle
kind of continues. So when we talk about fasha and pain,
what we're really talking about is trauma that creates restriction
in the fasha, which compresses pain sensitive structures, which leads
to faulty movement patterns which then repeat themselves over and

(36:14):
over again. Doesn't show up on an MRI or an
X ray. So you go to the physician with a
shoulder pain, you do an X ray an MRI. It
looks good because in actuality, what's happening is my hip
has been pulled due to a hamstring tear or an
injury down there, and my shoulders compensating because of a

(36:37):
different movements that are happening in my hip. So John
always uses the phrase, and I followed to the t
is find your pain and look elsewhere for your cause.
To a body globally, right, you're not a shoulder. You're
a human, and your human includes the entire body. So
when we go to a physician and we're complaining of

(36:58):
a shoulder pain that maybe the problem isn't the shoulder,
but it's a movement, it's function caused by somewhere else
in the body or who knows. We find out what
we can find out from there. Yeah, it's actually worth
mentioning that. When I've worked with you or the practitioner
that I have here in New York, oftentimes I'll say it's,
you know, my right hip is just nagging and it's stuck,
and very rarely is the initial starting place there. And

(37:20):
it's like, hello, are you listening to me? At first?
But if you'd go to you know enough m far,
you start to realize that even the most in tune
with their body. I consider myself very in tune, the
starting point is oftentimes elsewhere, and it's it's shocking and
it's humbling, and I love it because it's like the
body really holds so much information and it's not so obvious.

(37:40):
But going back to compensating again, just for anybody who's
entering this conversation that is new to all these words,
just to illustrate it, my right hip does this crazy
cracking noise, and it was it did it from when
I was twenty to twenty five, and I'd walk around,
do the crack, and then move on forout my day,
throughout my day twenty six, twenty seven, left hip, and
there's the chat. Now it's doing the cracking thing. So

(38:02):
when I remember when I was like, okay, now it's
both of my hips. You explained to me, and it
made a lot of sense that, you know, right hip
was out of whatever. I don't know exactly what was
going on, and it did what it could for as
long as it could until it needed help. So then
the left, I guess, was working really hard because the
right couldn't handle it. And now they're both kind of collapsing. Right,
So now I've got issues on both sides, because well,

(38:25):
everybody does. Everybody has some that maybe they don't. I
don't know. I'm just going to illustrate the point of compensation,
and it's not necessarily immediate. At the body works so
hard for as long as it can can't till it can't,
and then you see the compensation consequence is what I
guess I'm trying to say, correct, and you're not wrong.
Everybody has something. We live. We're thankful to live on

(38:47):
a planet that has gravity and gravity is constant that
pulls us down. Hate gravity, overrated, Wake up and fight
gravity every day. But gravity's gonna win. I gonna be gravity,
and thank goodness for that. Right. We live on a
planet that has gravity. It's gonna pull us down. And
if you could take if anybody watching this or listening

(39:08):
to just takes a bundle of shirt in their left
hand and just scrunches it up and pulls it down
into the left and you could probably see in my
shirt on being pulled this way. But look at my shoulder.
My shoulder got pulled down. And that's the compensatory responses
that you're talking about. It's exactly what it is. And
we live in a world of gravity, which means we're

(39:29):
gonna get pulled down and we're gonna have injury in
our body because we live in a world with gravity
and stairs and steps and children and toys and whatnot,
and sometimes it happens. I've never met anybody that's never
having something wrong, so that leads to compensation. I did
see you after I've had a baby, I think, one time,

(39:51):
and you said something so profound, but it also made
me feel very seen that like the mother bearing years
essentially are the most twisted because of holding the baby
on one hip up and like and I honestly think
it's one of the hardest parts of motherhood is the
physical Like I'm not even talking about the pregnancy, I'm
talking about like holding a baby, grabbing things, having zero time,

(40:12):
too unwide and focus on self like I remember coming
in like a twisted pretzel, but in a completely other way. So, mothers,
if you're listening, please acknowledge your fasha and see somebody
for MFR, even just one time. It'll be so important
for you, so good for you. You know, we we
have a Women's Health Maya Fashion RELIEFE therapist here in

(40:33):
our office in Miami, doctor Luanamenda. And you know, motherhood
is beautiful. It is one of the most amazing experiences
that a human can go through. And I will also
throw in it that it's and maybe you can back
me up here, it's traumatic. Again. We love this bundle
of joy and we want to hold this bundle of joy.

(40:54):
And now that that soul is a little older, you've
got around your hip more than you do on the shoulder.
So when you hold around one hip more often than
the other, well then our body starts to compensate and
certain muscles start to get used more than others, and
stability becomes a play. And if we think about childbirth
in general, you know, six months after a woman gives birth,

(41:16):
we still have relaxing forcing through your bodies, which basically
all the ligament structures in your bodies have now they're
loosened right because of the childbirthing process that happens whether
you have a C section or not, mormodes through the
system and that requires our muscle skeletal system to pick
up the slack and everything kind of gets a little

(41:38):
out of whack. So it's very important that during pregnancy
postpartum that you seem fash release therapists to kind of
help get your body back into its proper sync. And
it's such a treat if you are breastfeeding because of
what goes into the neck and I'm illustrating it right now,
but you're, oh, my gosh, the like the web that
I felt of tension in my neck when I was

(41:59):
breastfeed I did see an acupunct dresses before I had
an MFI person here. It was really hard. But for
any of my mothers who are listening that are like
I don't have an MFR person. I just also wanted
to share that exercise like moving my body right now
is absolutely critical for me for a completely like new reason.
And it's my own unwinding, my own like joint stacking

(42:23):
as we say in yoga, and making space in my body.
So it's not just going to the practition. It's not
the only way to refine self. It's just the main
reason I get on my mat every morning right now
is to unwind, make space, undue, and then strengthen so
that it's like locked in place for a little bit
of time till the next day, till I put her

(42:45):
back on my hip and we do the whole thing again.
There's a brilliant woman, Joann Abbison, who is start off
as a yoga instructor and has delved into the world
ten segrity and fasha and so now she's melded the
two worlds of yoga and fasha and agrity into one,
and she's a wonderful resource for yoga instructors out there.

(43:06):
Tom Myers with his fossil slings a little bit more
linear than John Teacher. John teaches a multidimensional fossil approach
where Tom Myers comes from more of a linear clinical approach,
but again both very very wonderful resources to really go there.
Movement is the most important medicine we have. Right food

(43:27):
movement to those are the two best things that we
can give our bodies. Because movement allows for hydration of
the tissue, that's what we want. And so what I
would ask anybody that gets on their map every day
just to explore their movement is whenever they feel some resistance, wait,
try not to cheat, achieve the post, sit in the restriction,

(43:47):
Breathe into the restriction, allow for that to let go,
then move on from there. So be very aware take
time during the process to open up your fascia on
your own for sure. And not all yoga is is
equal in that way. So a lot of times a
doctor or even body worker will say just go to yoga.
It's like yoga could actually tear at your body more.

(44:08):
But if you're listening to your body the same way
as a practitioner, where you can find those sweet spots.
What was the name of the woman who Joanne Abison
a v I s O N. Hers name is Joanne.
There's a lot of people that I follow and I've
studied with and John Barnes. Obviously Carol Davis. Doctor Davis
is Professor Maritus University of Miami and she's one of

(44:30):
the leading clinical researchers to FASCIA. She's a dear dear
friend and a mentor join Abison John Sharkey. He's a
clinical anatomist who's really led the work with doctor Jeane Giambarteau.
If you really want to dive into the science of
this work, this is kind of where you go. Gene
Giambarteau came out with a video called Strolling under the

(44:51):
Skin that you can find on YouTube, and it's the
perfect scientific explanation of how the fossil tissue is multi
layered and there's no space in our body and how
it all connects together. So there's lots of research out there.
And then, just to kind of wrap up this episode,
you did mention that you have a special woman's fashal release.

(45:12):
I'm sorry, what did you refer to her as? So,
doctor Luan Menda is a woman's health my Fashion walleie
therapist as well as a traditional my fashion wallye therapist.
She has extra training in working in the pelvic floor
with females, whether it be preopostpartum, whether it be urinaryan
continents issues, or any types of issues of urinary frequency

(45:36):
or urgencies postpartum. So that's her greatest expertise, and we
offer that here in our office in Miami as well.
And I was a little mind blown actually when I
first heard about the pelvic floor work, because I want
everybody who's interested to just kind of know what that
might entail. From my understanding, the practitioner is actually going
inside the dyna correct, correct, Obviously there's appropriate dressing communications,

(46:01):
conversations beforehand, and yes, the practitioner is entering vaginally to
release the public floor of the walls because you have
direct access of the muscular tissue at that point, and
it's pretty rare to actually be able to be so
close to a muscular tissue. So it's not something that
I've ever done, not that I'm opposed to it, but
it's a different type of work than the mile fascia

(46:22):
work that you and I do. Well. You know, again,
as a male practitioner, I'm not comfortable there. I leave
it for the people that are comfortable doing that and
who are fooled and trained and educated in that area.
My expertise is more un orthopedics than there read and
the fascial component allows for that to work very very well.
But the women's health component is unbelievably powerful. Painful intercourse,

(46:47):
urinary issues, all those types of things that women deal
with on a regular basis. They are common, but they're
not normal, right, so there's treatment for that, and they're
not invasive. They're common, not normal. But again, if you
don't know that this type of work exists, you're out
there on an island by yourself. You might even run

(47:08):
it by your ob and they might, you know, take
a look, but they don't see anything. Again, I just
want to highlight that whatever you may be going through,
pain wise or just health wise, if you haven't found
somebody to listen and say, I understand, I've heard of this,
and I can help keep looking because there's so many
modalities out there. I guess, kind of circling back to

(47:29):
that conversation, I think that I see it a lot
like with my own dad, who doesn't know anything other
than like I don't feel good, I go to a
doctor and there's plenty I believe, you know, there's a
time and a place for that but this was actually
an interesting story, just to get your take on it,
and then what we'll wrap up. My dad came over
the other day and he said, my knee was really

(47:49):
bothering me. A few months ago. I went to the
Hospital of Special Surgery and they told me, all right,
we can do surgery on you. And I almost scheduled it.
Then he went to his jim where he works out,
and he told his trainer, and his trainer said, why
don't we try some squats? And I guess he's been
doing squats for long enough that he goes the pain's
completely gone. And my dad was like, why would the

(48:12):
doctor tell me I need surgery when the answer was squats?
And you know, Evan and I talk a lot about
this when it comes to medicine and health, but the
person you're seeking out will always offer you the highest
thing in their toolbox. Like, so the surgeon is going
to give you a surgery, the trainer is going to
give you a squat, and somewhere along that line, a
squat isn't enough. Maybe there's something, but there's a lot

(48:34):
in between the squat and surgery in my opinion, what's
your take on that story? First of all tell you, Dad,
I say hello, I sent him to Craig once he's awesome,
have some good conversations. I agree with you that when
you send somebody to a practitioner, you arrive in their presence,
they're going to offer you the best of what they
have to offer. And for a surgeon, oftentimes I will

(48:57):
say that's not surgery based on what they see on
the imaging. Right, and again, in imaging, you're gonna look
at structure. Go look at bone structure, ligamental structure, and
cartilage structures, and in somebody who is active in seventy
plus or eighty plus, you're going to see some degeneration
of those structures. When you come to see a physical therapist,

(49:18):
we're going to offer you physical therapy type approaches. I'm
going to offer you my fashion release, and the trainer
is going to offer you movement based scenarios. So this
is the common confusion here is I'm going to assign
your dad in age, So please forgive me. Your dad
goes to the doctor, he's seventy five years young, he's
been active his entire life, so the imaging might actually

(49:41):
show some degeneration of the main structures of his knee,
it might show some arthritic changes, that might show some
cartilaginist damage that exists, some torn cartilage in there. So
would he be a candidate for surgery? I mean, I'm
not a surgeon, but maybe when he goes to the
trainer and he brings in move mint, what does that do?

(50:01):
That movement creates lubrication of the joint, because that's the
way the knee works. When the knee starts to flex
and extend, fluid moves in and out of the knee.
It's a vacuum packed joint, and the surrounding structure is
the hip and the ankle become more stable and involved.
Signals between the spinal cord down to the foot start
to work a little bit better. And now he walks

(50:21):
out of the gym. He's like, oh, paint free. Right.
So somewhere in their lies the answer. We hope that
surgery is the last resort, and there's plenty of cases
we're out there where we can say, hey, listen, this
person needs surgery. This is what needs to be done.
And thank goodness, we're an environment where the skill surgeons are,
that skill technology is where it is. It allows for
that to happen. But I think a lot of the

(50:42):
people that we see don't need it yet, and I
think we should always try with the most conservative approach
before we get there. Yeah. I love that. Thank you
so much. Okay, well, I know you've got to get
back to sessions and treating people with those hero hands
of yours. So thank you Craig for your time, your expertise.
Really like using your god given talents in the world.

(51:03):
It's so needed. I appreciate you. Thank you so much
for having me in the show. It's been great.