Healing Step 2: Release
Welcome to MFR: A New Perspective on Healing. This podcast is all about physical and emotional healing with myofascial release.
My name is Liana, I’m an expert level MFR therapist. I specialize in pain relief and all things related to authentic healing of physical and emotional injuries and trauma. I help clients from all over the country and abroad via private Telehealth MFR treatments. You can find out more about working with me and healing with myofascial release at bodyfirstmfr.com.
This episode is entitled Healing Step 2: Release. The next step in healing is releasing the fascia. This is where we really start to get the pain and symptom relief with myofascial release. Whether you’re releasing your fascial restrictions at home with self therapy tools or in treatment with an MFR therapist you need to learn to release, to soften and to let go. To make a lasting change in your body or your emotions you’ll have to participate in this step of the healing process and allow yourself to change.
In our fascia the body holds all sorts of things like pain, emotions, memories of trauma, injury and abuse. It remembers emotions like shame, sadness, fear, guilt and anger and all of this and so much more gets tucked into our soft tissue. And then the strangest thing happens without us even realizing it’s happening. Without even telling us, our bodies start to divert us away from these areas so that we stop using the areas full of memory because they will make us remember the old pain or the old feelings. And instead we start using other muscles and areas of the body and skipping over these areas of old tissue memory. The problem is now we are using muscles that are not meant to do the job they’re now doing every single day and eventually this will cause new symptoms, pains and problems. This is called compensating and every single one of us is compensating somewhere in our body. The longer it goes on the more trouble it can cause. Especially when it’s happening all over the body then we are really going to cause some serious pain, symptoms and weakness in the areas we skip over and never use.
To get out of this mess and heal the body the first step like we talked about in the previous episode is learning to connect to your body for healing. Then we have to learn to release our fascial restrictions. And then we have to get the right muscles doing their proper jobs again which is when things get really fun and we’ll talk about that in the next episode. But we can’t skip any of these steps so first, to release the fascia:
The basics of releasing fascia are always the same, sustained pressure, a minimum of 5 minutes, into an area of fascial restriction. Sounds simple but there is a few key steps that are necessary for successfully releasing a fascial restriction:
- First you need to Connect and Focus: If you are releasing your own fascial restrictions with a therapy tool you have to be connected to your body for it to work. If you’re on your phone, watching tv, or just not paying attention to what you are doing the restriction will not release. Even if you shut out all the distractions you still need to focus inward and bring your awareness/energy into your body.
- Then, and this is a really important one, you need to be willing to feel the sensations & emotions that are trapped inside your body in the areas you are working on or connecting to. So that means being open to feeling pain, memories of accidents and injuries and emotions or anything else that comes up. Remembering that it is just tissue memory, it can’t hurt you now. Even though remembering can hurt just as bad as when you were first injured, and it can be really frightening and difficult to let ourselves remember some of our toughest moments .
- And the 3rd step is Dare to Let Go: Softening into the pain when it really hurts can be seriously challenging. But daring to let go of the constant tension in an area that your body has held tight for many years can be wonderfully healing if...you can dare to let go. Some releases will happen without us doing much but for the really big old injury or trauma sites we will have to really challenge ourselves and dare to let go. This is a really big piece. Softening into the pain sounds so easy but it’s a big deal and at times it is super challenging.
~First we have to be able to start to feel that we are participating in quite a bit of the tightness we’re experiencing. This is why it’s so important to connect to your body, even when it hurts. Otherwise we won’t be able to sense deep enough to realize we can be a part of the letting go and the softening. So often we don’t realize we’re actually holding ourselves tight. Now that is not actually a fascial restriction when we are tensing part of all of our body, that is called a bracing pattern. But if we realize we are bracing and we soften that tension then we can get to the fascial restrictions that are underneath the bracing. Then we can begin to release the fascia and make some real healing progress.
Now all this is also true if you are getting treated by an MFR therapist but now there is another element to consider:
If you are in treatment with an MFR therapist who is not connected to their body while they’re treating you… your fascia will not release and any results you get will be short term. So we need a therapist with a strong inner connection who can hear and follow their own instincts on how to treat you. This needs to be a therapist that you trust and of course who does the work properly in order for you to have successful in person treatment.
But you can learn how to do your own fascial releasing whether you opt for virtual or in person mfr treatment. I highly recommend that you do learn to release your own restrictions. That way you can relieve your pain and symptoms anytime you need to and you can really take responsibility for your own healing. Now you will need some high quality training to learn how and where to use your MFR therapy tools to release your restrictions and get the best results. It’s not as simple as just using therapy tools where your pain is because fascia is a complex system of tissue that runs all throughout and around your whole body. It runs in and around all your muscles, bones, organs and even into every cell in your body. When we get injured or suffer a trauma it is a full body experience even if you think you only hurt one small part of yourself, or you think you came out of it completely unscathed. Nonetheless tissue memory occurs and it will take expert level mfr training to help you unravel your symptoms and understand how to heal fully.
Very often people don’t realize their current symptoms are directly connected to their old injuries and traumas until we start treatment. Then you start to feel as you are releasing a restriction with a therapy tool that treating your current symptoms makes you remember vividly an old accident you hadn’t thought about in years or makes you feel an old injury site just like the day it was injured. And your body will begin to guide your treatment by showing you these connections and memories without you even having to think about it or work at it. You just have to pay attention and learn to listen to your body and respond appropriately. That should be a big part of your MFR training so that you can learn to heal yourself.
This is really cutting edge treatment that is not common knowledge by all health care practitioners yet, though awareness of the need for this type of healing is coming. It has grown considerably in the last 15 years that I’ve been in practice. The trouble is much of authentic healing still presses against some serious social taboos and goes against cultural norms that tell us to repress and deny our pain or our emotions. Unfortunately denial is extremely detrimental to our health and completely thwarts our ability to heal which is a natural process within us. Instead of trying to forget the pain of our past, running from it with drugs or alcohol, numbing ourselves with overworking and over committing, what if we just take the time to tend to the parts of us that need healing and feel whatever it is they need us to feel or remember, so that we can move on and truly enjoy our lives again.
It means having the courage to go into your pain or into your emotions to clean up and heal the past. By purposefully seeking out our unhealed pieces we turn the tables on healing, instead of running from our symptoms and pains, we go right toward them. We feel them, we heal them and we can move on. We don’t have to fear our pain and symptoms anymore. Then we become the healers, those brave enough to feel and clear the wounds of our past and move into the present again.
To work with me on your healing visit me at bodyfirstmfr.com. Empower yourself with the skills to heal and care for your body right and free yourself from relying on anyone else to heal you.
Thank you for joining me today my friends and as always, happy healing!