Today was my last class in my myofascial release, and it gave us some surprises, including some very frightening surprises. They say that all memory is recorded in each cell of our bodies. After today's class, I truly believe it.
One of the things that was shown today, and we had been seeing it over the last couple days, was a technique called myofascial unwinding. Now, although this was shown in this class, it is a separate class in itself.
When we are taught Reiki, we're told that during a Reiki session, a client could start breaking out in various emotions. As one does the session, the energy goes into various places and can release various emotions. I have seen that now and then, as a client might start laughing or crying as they're being worked on. The same thing is taught in massage, as different places of the body are being worked on, any part of it could hold some memory which could be released and cause emotional responses in the client.
When one is doing the myofascial release, they want to be calm, and almost in a meditative state. In a way, the same goes true for the subject. As the fascia is loosened, and constrained fascia becomes unconstrained, the same thing can happen as it does in a regular massage or Reiki session. In myofascial release, this is called unwinding. This is where memories are brought up as the fascia is loosened causing emotional, or sometimes physical responses.
During the work we've been doing in class with myofascial release and cranial sacral therapy, we've heard various people crying and laughing. To some extent, it is real unnerving. No one I have worked on has had any of these responses, but there was lady on the table next to me that did have one. She started rolling around, and crying. At one point, I thought her foot was going to come over and kick my subject in the head. I had to stay alert in case that happened.
In most of the cases, the reaction has been tears. But in a couple of the cases it has been laughter, which spread through the room of the people that were being the therapist.
It was one unwinding that was quite terrifying, and this came from one of the students in the room. We were doing a myofascial response move when all of a sudden one of the subjects started screaming. All of a sudden we heard, "You bastard. You sound of a bitch. Don't you touch me. Don't you dare hit me again." This was followed by more screaming and crying. Whatever move the therapist was working on had triggered the memory deep within their subject and caused this to come out. I think everyone in the room shuttered for second, and took a long, deep, breath. And it's scary to hear it in a class such as this, but to think that something like this could happen in the treatment room when it's just you and the client, is very, very frightening.
As part of the demonstration of myofascial rebounding, John Barnes was working on Donna, one of his assistants, who is also one of his instructors. As he was doing the rebounding, she started unwinding. Now, John had two other instructors up there helping him, and he needed them both. As she started unwinding, her body took strange positions. (With unwinding, if the body wants to go in certain positions, it is the therapist's job to help the body go there, so that they can unwind.) Donna's body took some really strange positions, and as the two therapists and John helped her attain those positions, they were actually lifting her up to the point that she was completely in the air and upside down. This went on for several minutes until they finally set her down on the table and she stopped unwinding. For a minute there I thought I was watching a scene from ‘The Exorcist’, watching a possessed body go through very, very strange positions.
It wasn't until after they were done that we learned about Donna's background, which made the strange positions make sense. Donna used to be a professional diver, diving from something like eight stories high into 11 feet of water. On one dive she was doing, there was a ring of fire, and she was wearing some type of fire gear. Something went very wrong, and she almost drowned. What she went through on the table in front of the whole class, released the memory of her drowning. Watching her gasp for air, and be upside down, looked very much like a person drowning. If we thought the lady who had been screaming about being hit was frightening, this was even more so.
Basically, this was a very good introduction to what could happen during a session. That doesn't mean that something like this is always going to happen, but it warned us to be prepared that it could. One thing we were told was that if a client does start unwinding and we want them to stop, all we have to do is say "stop".
To those people that laugh when someone says that every memory the body has gone through is in every cell of our body, I think I've got a little story to tell them.