“Where you think it is, it ain’t.” — Ida Rolf
Before I found the Kaiut Yoga Method, I managed chronic pain with the John Barnes Myofascial Release Method. A friend introduced me to this in 1997 while I was a technology coordinator for an elementary school. I started getting a monthly massage. By January 2000, I was in quite a bit of pain. Not only that, I lost feeling in my right pinky finger and ring finger. I was in my late 20s, so it seemed a bit early for all this pain and numbness. Once I lost feeling in my fingers, I increased my time working with my friend and massage therapist to twice per week for eight weeks. She was transparent in letting me know she thought it might take that amount of time and consistency. I gave it a shot!
From what I remember, my friend and massage therapist tuned into my body, found fascia restrictions, and worked through them gently. One day, she suggested that she work from inside of my mouth. I agreed; I was open to learning about the method and how my body would respond. To my surprise, it worked. She worked with the fascia around the outside of my teeth. When she started working on my mouth's upper left side, I felt circulation returning to my fingers.
The spaces between
If you Google the nerve that connects to these fingers, it’s called the ulnar nerve. It originates in the armpit and moves to the outer fingers. It was clear there was a connection between the fascia in the upper left side of my mouth and the fingers on my right hand. It was not necessarily a direct connection or one that could be traced by an X-ray, but it was a very clear release.
I was truly surprised, and I now believe in working with this important tissue to overcome chronic pain and get circulation moving again. I continued working with my friend and another who worked near my office at Dell, where I was a technical sales rep. I continued to use the John Barnes Myofascial Release Method until I found Kaiut Yoga in July 2017.
During my massage therapy, I learned that fascia is the tissue that connects skin to muscle. It’s found from the top of the head to the tips of the toes. In simpler terms, if you think of it as a flat sheet that’s pulled taught on all corners of the bed, think of what happens when you begin to pull one side of the sheet. It starts to tighten everything in the direction it’s being pulled, creating up to 2,000 pounds of pressure to different body areas. This phenomenon is unpredictable, and fascia can’t be seen on a regular X-ray.
How Kaiut approaches fascia
Kaiut Yoga addresses the same fascia at the joint level. You’ll hear from teachers of this method something like this: “From standing, take a step back until you can have your heel pressing the floor, but not easily. You will feel the back of the calf as a stretchy sensation—you’re not denying that. However, keep your brain focused on the ankle. That’s where the restriction originates from. Eventually, you won’t have that stretchy sensation, and we’ll still have work to do on the ankle.”
Having practiced this method almost daily for the past six years, I can tell you this is true. I no longer feel the stretchy sensation across the back part of my calf in this standing position. It’s been what we say cleaned up. What is now clear to me is that the joint and the muscles are only part of the issue and the solution. Fascia has at least a third of the involvement of a restriction or issue in the joints, and Kaiut Yoga addresses it very well.
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