RADICAL UNWINDING
Deep Healing, Cult Methods, and The Dark Arts
A Personal Journey by Joel Mitchell
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Preface

This is a story of my deepest healing experiences that took place in the presence of a healing arts cult. It’s a story of transformation through some of the most extreme, bizarre and extraordinary ways being approached today. I believe there is much to take from this story regardless of who you are because the healing arts is symbolic of everyday life. I’m going to attempt to tell this story so it can be readable by anyone with reasonable comprehension. However, this book is primarily spoken in the language of healing arts practitioners, and more specifically, therapists trained by John F. Barnes, PT. With that being the case, I’ll try and quickly explain the John F. Barnes Myofascial Release Approach to the layman who may be reading this book.

Let’s break down the word “Myofascial” real quick. Myo=Muscle and fascial=connective tissue. The idea is to “release” the connective tissue (which surrounds and connects everything to everything in the body down to the cellular level) on a client via the therapists hands. “Myofascial Release” is a term that was reportedly coined by an Osteopathic Doctor back in the 1960’s and many have adopted the term to describe the approach they use to treating physical tension in the body. John is considered by many of his followers as the Father of Myofascial Release and to a point, rightfully so. There are many approaches to Myofascial Release and John F. Barnes has developed a remarkably effective one. At the surface level, his approach is taught to manual therapists of all kinds (Massage Therapists, Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, etc.) via seminars that are spread out across the country. These seminars offer therapists continuing education credits which are required by the state board for keeping their licenses active. They offer high quality training of hands-on techniques to be utilized or integrated into the practice of the therapist. They also offer therapists a place to be treated themselves in hopes to relieve their own pain and dysfunction which is an important part of the learning process. On a deeper level, since the tension in our body is developed through things such as trauma’s and suppressed/repressed emotions, these seminars offer therapists a place to “heal” at a much deeper level. John holds a very powerful space for such healing to occur and unfold in the most natural way possible. At an even deeper level, these seminars are essentially a recruiting tool for the John F. Barnes cult of which they have attached a spiritual belief system to the healing process. They hope to accomplish new recruits by ridding therapists and clients/patients of their pain, dysfunction, associated neurosis, and current belief systems. Ridding people of their self-limiting belief systems such as, “I’m unfixable” or “unlovable” is a good thing of course, but they will ultimately try and replace your beliefs with theirs which they consider to be superior. This is especially true when it comes to their spiritual belief system which would be a form of universalism. By now, I’m sure you can see how these seminars were taken way too far, and if you don’t, stay tuned.

Some of the experiences I will talk about in this book will seem incredibly foreign to many people as if I’m speaking about an entirely different world, and it kind of is. Since deep healing takes you deep into your own mind and imagination, things get pretty fucking weird, really fast, especially for me. I will be using different variations of the word “unwind” to describe tapping in to the unconscious mind to allow the body to correct or express itself. “Unwinding” as a healing process is something I will be diving into quite a bit in this story so hopefully you can grab a better understanding throughout.

In this story, I will be describing in chronological order my deepest healing experiences that took place inside and alongside the John F. Barnes Myofascial Release Organization’s Seminars. I will be recalling everything from memory which is well known to never be 100% accurate in anyone at anytime. I feel confident in my memory as being accurate to what took place, but I don’t expect anyone to latch on to my words as the gospel truth. However, they are MY truth and I accept all consequences that arise from speaking them because I believe the dangers of not speaking the truth, far out-weigh the dangers in speaking it.

Being that I am currently enemy number one in the eyes of John’s organization, and I will definitely continue to be after this book is released, it would be wise for anyone who has a close relationship with John or has plans to return to his seminars, to not associate or positively engage on any of my online posts on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube as they are heavily monitored by his organization. People who have done this have been targeted by John and will continue to be. However, this is only an issue for therapists who wish to continue to return to seminars. For some therapists associated with John, it won’t make a difference if you engage on my posts and I’ll touch on why that is later in the book. However, there are some who are at risk of being banned from seminars, reprimanded, or mistreated if they appear to approve of me in anyway. If you have no fear of John’s “wrath” (which the only power he holds over therapists is that he knows they want to return to seminars, or if he knows his disapproval would traumatize them) than these things are non-issues and just carry on doing as you please.

Since the John F. Barnes Approach to Myofascial Release (MFR) as utilized by Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Massage Therapists, Chiropractors and other hands-on practitioners has helped and is continuing to help thousands of people in chronic pain, I don’t wish to deter any potential patient seeking help with these methods away from seeking self-described practitioners of the John F. Barnes Approach to MFR. To this day, 90% of my Bodywork practice still consists of this approach, as it is unbelievably effective in the treatment of chronic pain and dysfunction. Patients seeking help will most likely not experience any of the trouble I talk about in this book when seeking a John F. Barnes MFR trained therapist. The therapists who are a potential danger to the public are the ones who have an unhealthy admiration in their eyes when speaking about John Barnes. Patients should be weary of this when seeking a practitioner, but what is more likely to happen is that those patients will find an incredible therapist and human being that can help them in their journey to be free from chronic pain. And they will do it without trying to be their patient’s personal savior. However, ego’s are a sneaky bitch. And just as there are dominant ego’s everywhere you go, they are much more dangerous in the healing arts. So, regardless of what therapist or healing practitioner a patient is considering a deep healing experience with, they should take caution and be absolutely certain about their intentions as they can. And keep it mind that it’s possible that the practitioner themselves are unaware of their own intentions. Trust and boundaries for all parties involved should be well established before doing inner work in the presence of others.

My motivations for telling this story are pretty simple. First, I need to write this down for myself in order make sense of the memories and subconscious material that arose during these experiences. The memories have been showing up randomly during meditation and waking me up on random nights for just over a year now as I write this. It’s time for me to put them down and lay them to rest. Second, many people have reached out to me after I published a YouTube video when I was first beginning to organize my thoughts around my experiences with MFR. Some were in large support and some were confused and wanted to understand what they themselves had been through better. My brief testimony and the conclusions I had drawn at the time seemed to help them, and they wanted to know more about what happened with my experience. The motivations for making this book available to everyone came from the conversations with people that I didn’t have time to have. I am hoping this book will be a good resource for them. John’s real name and organization are being identified publicly for many reasons, but what ultimately led to this decision was the vast amount of people with bad experiences who have chosen to remain silent. Also, the current lies John is spreading about what happened in regards to me leaving his seminars contributed to this decision as well.

In this book, you will notice that I won’t talk much about the techniques that John’s MFR seminars are typically structured around, and I never made learning them a priority. I was in those seminars with my own deep healing being priority number one, and that remained until my last seminar in June 2017. I will be recalling my experiences chronologically from my first seminar in late 2015 until my last in June 2017. I will be attempting to do this while infusing thoughts about how I experienced things at the time along with how I understand it now. I hope it reads well for you, as this is probably going to be weird as fuck. Enjoy!

Before going down into the dirt of things, I’d like to acknowledge John F. Barnes, PT for the therapeutic genius, innovator, and brilliant teacher that he is. I am a better person because of my encounters with John and his organization. 

Thank you, John. 

I learned more from you than you realize.

-Joel

You will automatically be subscribed to future emails from me should I decide to send anything as a follow up, but you can opt out of this at the bottom of the email that contains the ebook if you want to be a dick like that ;) -Joel