Foundations Blog #1

My Foundations course was first delivered in 1995 in the University district of Seattle.

I had been an instructor at the time for three years at Seattle Massage School, instructing with the likes of Andrew Biel (Trail Guide to the Body), Marty Ryan (Love Your Guts), Diana Thompson (Hands Heal), Barbara Frye, Anni Thoe, Diana Kincaid, Clint Chandler, Kate Bromley, Cynthia Wold and Dawn Schmidt, just to name a few of the local legends, some of which now have an extraordinary international recognition.

In those days, the myofascial world for all of its research and information attainable was limited to the Rolfing community with the work of Ida Rolf, and the two renown physiotherapists John Barnes and Carol Manheim. At least that was my experience.

Obtaining osteopathic or chiropractic information was very difficult due to the cloistered protection of each scope of practice and unless you were admitted to study, it was more of an apprenticeship with an individual practitioner who was willing to impart their knowledge.

This was just before the advent of the world wide web in 1995.

So that is the backdrop.

In those early days I began to realize that clinical success had to have a blend of approaches to which I had little training. The ‘fear of god’ to do anything outside of muscle was deeply embedded in me at that time. Joint mobilisation was just beginning to be accepted in massage, although range of motion was always taught for assessment purposes. Best leave the bones to chiropractors and osteopaths.

I first discovered if I lightened up out of the muscle depth and changed my directional orientation through translatory or lateralize direction, muscle tonality changed. That was pretty cool realization.

As I experimented, I discovered the superficial fascial layer. I began to demonstrate this orientation around technique at the massage school, as it seemed to be less forceful and less aggressive than that of muscle applications of deep friction, trigger point and cross fiber frictions, thus saving myself and my client nervous system to some extent.

I remember watching some student grind out a ITB with a forearm roll technique, the client gripping the massage table for dear life grimacing in pain. I said please hold on a moment, and proceeded to treat the gluteal medius fascial proximally, and as it would happen the ITB tension reduced. Very little force or effort applied.

In those days I was enamoured with the compression component of application, spending around two years compressing every joint in the body on every client I encountered to understand the releasing mechanisms. I got pretty efficient using compressions.

 I just didn’t understand the tension aspect, the stretching, the elongation. That’s’ another discussion, especially from the standpoint of John Barnes and his teachings. Compression is considered the short term ‘fools gold’, as Barnes sees it.

I discovered by accessing this tissue I would observe often more nervous system responses in the form of emotionality and improvement in range of motion.

Students began to use these techniques and saw immediate results. I was on to something!

I envisioned working and treating this amazing fascial form by an integrative perspective. Thus my first branding was Integrative Fascial Release IFR.

At the time most MFR was very direct, and I would have arguments that said if you weren’t working the barrier, your not doing MFR.

I had just discovered the osteopathic concept of ease and bind.

That it was always easier on my hands to hold an ‘ease’ barrier over a ‘bind’ barrier. What does that mean. If you assess the skin over superficial fascia in ‘planar’ directions; sagittal (up-down), coronal-frontal (left-right) or transverse (counter clockwise-clockwise), you will always have a plane that moves one direction over the other within the planar motion. And when comparing the three planes, one plane will move more freely than the other two.

This assessment essentially glimpses the fascia form as it exists in tension.

If you change the lesser barrier, you still effect and change the other planes as well.

This became the foundation piece for assessment and application using compression and tension, tensegrity technique if you will, applied not only to myofascial, but joint, ligament, neural and visceral tissue structures as well.

Along with our current understanding of the autonomic nervous system which is now a more Polyvagal Porges orientation. It was in 1995 that I discovered the writings of Micheal Shea, and at that time we had the sympathetic-parasympathetic model drawn from the teaching of Hans Seyle, and Walter Cannon who coined 'flight and fight' evolving his understand from the 1920's and the term 'homeostasis' in 1935.

My goal with Foundations was to introduce to the practitioner the variety of methods of how the ANS I interfaced with all soft-tissue with the lens primarily on the fascial form. To that end, Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains allowed for a clinical template of cardinal lines of myofascial tension to have structure and clinical parameters to instruct from.

Also the joint-fascia interface became very clear to me, and I introduced ‘levering’ into the equation.

The Foundations course then is a four-day immersion in direct and indirect myofascial releasing methods with the practical more emphasized than the theoretical. The changes in our understanding of the theories providing the ‘why’ and ‘how’ mechanism is very ‘fluid’ and hotly debated. I will not attempt to cherry pick a theory to attach to the changes we observe and witness.

I’m interested in instructing practical principles that have withstood the test of time, and that is what I deliver. Anatomy is obviously considered, and necessary, however it is the onus of the experience of the application for both the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’, the space we create for safety and trust, trauma informed touch applied to myofascial is the hallmark of this course.