At the Threshold of Light: Honoring the Life of John F. Barnes

This will be a long one. You might wish to pour a cup of tea.

Days before the Winter Solstice, we lost a healing giant — my teacher of nearly twenty-four years — John F. Barnes.

Most of my patients know that John was a physical therapist and the developer of John Barnes’ Myofascial Release Approach® (MFR) and a true pioneer of healing. He was also my greatest teacher: of bodywork and life.

Metal into Water

It is at the Winter Solstice, on the darkest night of the year, that we wait in stillness for the return of the light. I do not believe it was by chance that this was when John transitioned to the next world.

Beyond this, in the Five Element system we practice in acupuncture, the Winter Solstice is the point in the cycle where Metal transforms into Water. All the elements logically follow each other in this cycle: Water nourishes the seed, creating the Wood element. Wood feeds the Fire element. As Fire burns down, ash enriches the soil, creating the Earth element. As Earth condenses, minerals form, creating the Metal element.

We can easily see these relationships.

However, at the end of this cycle, Metal transforms into Water, allowing the cycle of life to continue on, ad infinitum. Metal transforming into Water is the cycle of rebirth – the moment where death yields to new life.

But if we are to live into this elemental mystery, we must ask how Metal logically becomes Water.

In Five Element theory, we say this process requires a radical transformation. I choose to call it alchemy. Under great pressure, Metal is distilled so deeply that it condenses and forms Water, the most Yin and most precious substance. Yin is fluid, soft, dark, and mysterious. We know that Water is both the softest and the strongest of the elements, capable of giving life and also destroying life. Water is also formless potential. And so this transformation is radical because this most solid element of Metal is refined and distilled until it dissolves into the most fluid and primordial state of being: Water.

The Solstice (the movement of Metal into Water) is a profound time for anyone to make their spiritual transition. But it is an especially poignant time for the passing of a man who taught how essential softening was to healing itself.

Softening 

If you have been on my table, you have heard me say “soften and breathe,” or “soften your body; soften your mind.”

Softening is the essence of John’s work. Resistance only begets struggle. John would teach, “soften into the resistance. Find the direction of ease.” I urge you to weave these words into your daily life. They matter. We accomplish nothing when we fight against it.

I’ll share this example with you. When I was in my early 20s I nearly drowned when I turned my back on a wave at Jones Beach. I was taken under. I was there alone and no one saw me. I spun in blackness and kept trying to push myself up above the water by pushing against the ocean floor. I fought and couldn’t sustain the fight anymore. I stopped pushing. I let go.

I thought I was moving out to sea. And then I found myself on the sand, pretty badly scraped up, with a belly full of salt water, and feeling quite ill. It was only when I quit fighting though that I reached safety.

I would not meet John Barnes for years later. And I was in a small intro MFR class before I actually met the man himself, when I experienced an unwinding that brought back all of that near-drowning memory. I barrel rolled down a long yoga studio with the instructor and my classmates assisting me until I stopped, face down, and spent. What stunned me most though, and what I will never forget, was when the unwinding was over and I was face down on the floor, I could taste salt water in my mouth, nearly twenty years later. Cellular memory is a thing.

As therapists, John took us all from Metal to Water. This is also why he said that this work takes great courage. To do the work, as he taught it, you must first be transformed by the work. John would tell us, “You can only take your patients as far as you are willing to go yourself.” I believe this is true.

John taught us to center ourselves and to always soften our focus. Softening our hands, our hearts, and our minds were the key to this work. Like the Water element though, the softness that fosters quiescence can lead to some of the most powerful unwindings. John taught us how to follow those sudden waves, and as he would say, to “go where the action is,” showing us how to guide our patients through unwindings with amplitudes that could feel like a tsunami. Within the tsunami though was always the still-point where the body reorganizes and the waves return. Being centered for each stage of that process is essential. It is one of the most invigorating things about being an MFR therapist. There is not one doubt that something tremendous is happening.

John’s work found me in December 2002, when I was in the last week of massage school, a two-year full-time program that integrated both Western and Eastern bodywork techniques. It was that last week of the program when the instructor brought in an MFR therapist to give a demonstration. One of my classmates who was the proverbial class clown volunteered for the demo. What I saw happen that day captivated me. My classmate became still, then he moved about on the table. At times the unwinding looked like a mix of a full-body arm wrestle and a ballet. It was fascinating. But what followed was undeniable. My classmate was silent for the rest of the class. No jokes, no laughter, no chatter. When the demo was done, we had a Q&A with the instructor and then a quiz. My classmate sat in the back corner of the room the whole time, alone, silent, and still. In two years I had never seen him that way.

While I had barely understood what had happened, I knew this was the reason I became a massage therapist. This was “it.”

MFR would become the focus of my clinical practice over three states and the next 24 years.

East Meets West 

Some years later, when I returned to acupuncture school, John’s work would get me into conflict as I would ask genuine questions about the channels and fascia, questions teachers of Eastern Medicine weren’t trained to handle. I did not know that. Thirsty for answers, eager to make connections between East and West, more than once I was accused of challenging or even trying to intimidate my teachers when all I was trying to do was put my greatest loves together: fascia and East Asian Medicine.

These ended up being questions I’d have to answer for myself later.

In seminars, John would talk about photons moving through the microtubules in the fascia, like a fiber optics system. After years of having my hands on people and knowing where the meridians and points were (along with knowing their unique functions now), I came to understand that the light that was moving through the fascia was also moving through the channels that were held in the matrix of the fascia, likely in those microtubules. I understood that these photons were what we called Qi in the medicine. My two worlds finally began to come together.

What I came to further understand had to do with piezoelectricity though. Piezoelectricity is an engineering concept where a solid state turns to a fluid state through light, steady, and sustained pressure. This is what we do in Myofascial Release. Our hands deliver light, steady and sustained pressure into the tissue for five minutes or more. Fascia that has been hardened by injury moves from a dense state (think Metal element) into a soft and fluid state (think Water element). John says it’s like being solidified in amber and the amber begins to melt. When that shift from solid to fluid happens, the tissue, which has up to 2000 pounds of tensile strength per square inch (a potentially devastating force to blood vessels, nerves, and organs), softens and opens up, allowing our life force/photons/Qi to move. As the fascia is released, we literally “light up” again as our body’s vital force is restored.

Here’s where I had my epiphany though: our hands may provide steady sustained pressure for five minutes or longer creating this piezoelectric effect that allows for healing, yes.

But so do needles.

In acupuncture, fine needles are inserted into the tissue, penetrating the superficial and deep layers of fascia, creating a micro-version of piezoelectricity with steady and sustained pressure at the micro level, retained for usually up to 40 minutes in my practice.

Thus, acupuncture does at the micro level what MFR does at the macro level. And with that understanding, a lasting marriage happened in my practice. This is why I integrate both of these powerful healing arts together in my clinical practice and am proud to do so.

There is not one doubt that the fascia is the cellular matrix where the divergent channels of acupuncture exist, where the channels and points live, and why points are not always exactly found where textbooks say they are. That was another thing that would get me into trouble in acupuncture school. I could tell my teachers where the map said the points should be because I memorized them. But I felt where those points actually were in the fascia. I lost more than a few points on practical exams because of that one. The superior practitioner can both feel points and even see them as luminosity and essence rise from the tissue. I learned that from John too… how to see luminosity on the body. It’s made all the difference, including how I hold the needle, insert the needle, and breathe with the needle when I work.

John-isms

If you know and love John’s work, I leave you with these words to take on your journey and keep in your healing knapsack, if you will. We MFR therapists affectionately refer to them as “John-isms”:

Soften

Let go of your mind

Take off the brakes and unwind

Lean into the resistance

Find the direction of ease

Use your intuition

If your tears could speak, what would they say?

Trust your body’s wisdom.

What are you so afraid of?

John taught me that authentic healing requires feeling. And that structural work, while beneficial, will only yield temporary results. You may have even heard me tell you these words in my treatment room.

Here’s what I know from my incredible teacher:

Fear will restrict and limit your life force every time.

Love will allow you to access it.

Courage

The work takes courage, which is why I have a stone with that very word on it in the clinic. Courage to feel. Courage to have hope. Courage to be vulnerable. Courage to trust that you are safe and infinitely loved even when you are most afraid.

As I was readying myself to move out here, I was a fledgling MFR therapist on Long Island, working at a physical therapy clinic. My boss knew I did MFR, but she didn’t really understand John’s work at that point. She trusted me though and let me do whatever would help her patients. Unwindings began to happen daily and word got out. One cold winter afternoon she came into my room, plopped herself down on a stool and said, “What the hell are you doing with people in here?”

I was sure I was about to lose my job. I had been working with a 9/11 First Responder who was healing at an exponential level. I explained as best I could. I got her on the table to show her. She felt it.

I got to keep my job until it was time for me to move to Arizona that spring. The only MFR therapist in her practice, her words to me were: “I could kill you. Now I’m going to have to go learn this stuff.”

And learn it she did, following John for the next few years and becoming one of the preeminent MFR clinics on the island. We laugh about it still. They were good, good times.

Over the years, I’ve encouraged patients to go up to Sedona for a healing seminar to meet the man himself. Being treated there could be a fantastic catalyst to regular work. Some of you have done so. And I’m glad you’ve had that experience. The healing seminars that are open to all will continue in Sedona, as will the courses for professionals, which will be taught by John’s extraordinary team. John's work, thankfully, will be carried on. But to know the man himself was an extraordinary treasure and for me a great privilege.

I would like to end this epistle by reminding you that we are all connected through the the fascial web. It is the light within us that runs through the microtubules of the fascia making us human fiber optic system, forming a network of love that defines our humanity, reaching well beyond the individual. If you’ve experienced the work at its purest level, you know what I mean. If you’ve never experienced the work and are curious about this thing known as the John Barnes’ Myofascial Release Approach®, then consider scheduling a session to find the issues waiting in the tissues. As most of you know, I am offering memberships now, and I do have one membership left for the Integrated Healing Experience: East Meets West (combined MFR and acupuncture treatment). Individual sessions are also available apart from the membership, although those are booked out a bit. Reach out if you have any questions.

In the spirit of service,

Maria Mandarino, MSEd, MSAc, DipAc (NCCAOM), LAc, BFCP, CSD

PS: Click on this link to listen to a Fireside chat with John Barnes where he talks about MFR.

PPS: The image attached to this blog includes a photo of me and John that was taken in the spring of 2019 after a seminar in Sedona. Intuitively, I knew it would be the last time I would see him. What I could not know was that in less than a year the world would be stopped by a pandemic, the clinic I had just opened on a hospital campus would close as a result of that pandemic, and that John’s health would gradually start to decline. I have placed this photo of us alongside Kwan Yin, the goddess of compassion, along with the Courage stone I bought after my first class.