If you still wonder why it’s performed this way, and why its gentleness and slowness can offer you unexpected and oftentimes remarkable benefits, continue reading. This journal explains by unravelling some of the science and subtleties behind Myofascial Release Therapy – the bodywork modality that’s given Advaya Healing Bodywork widespread acclaim in New Zealand over the last eight years…

Why Myofascial Release Is Performed Slowly

If you are one of our many Advaya Healing Bodywork clients it’s very likely you already know what fascia is. We spoke about it during your Intake Consultation and, if you happen to be one of our longer-term clients, we will have discussed the unique characteristics of yours on many occasions. By now you will have consciously ‘met’ that wondrous collection of these critically-important tissues that live inside you.

You may by now even feel somewhat bewildered about the behaviours of that part of yourself which, oftentimes, just seem to have a life of its own. As you progressed through your treatment programme you may have suddenly noticed tightness in areas that seemed perfectly mobile and flexible before.

Oddly, body parts that remained well outside the treated areas may suddenly have come ‘alive’ with twitches, niggles, and erratically timed jolts. In other cases, you may have felt parts of your body relax and release, unexplainably days after your last bodywork session.

Weirdly, after every next session, you just felt different, yet again, varying from suddenly sad to exuberantly happy, all within short periods of time.

So, what’s actually going on?

How can it be that your body – or, more specifically, your fascia – suddenly seems to behave more dynamically and ‘intelligently’? Why is that, all of a sudden, just about every aspect of your physique has become so deeply connected to your emotional states? Throughout your treatment programme, when exactly did you begin to notice that interconnectedness within you that deepened your sense of “whole-body awareness” so profoundly?

All of that is because you are receiving a bodywork therapy that differs from just about any other therapeutic intervention. Its slowness, preciseness, and carefulness are not hallmarks of your therapist’s preferred way of working. It is that way because in the treatment of fascia there simply isn’t any other.

Fascia Responds to Time, Not Force

In the world of manual therapy, and specifically in that of MFR, few concepts are as foundational – and as misunderstood – as viscoelasticity. Fascia is viscoelastic, meaning it behaves like both a solid and a fluid. To understand why MFR works the way it does, we must first understand what viscoelasticity is and how it shapes the behaviour of your body’s connective tissue.

Viscoelasticity refers to a material’s ability to exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics.

Honey, for example, can be thought of as a viscous substance – it resists flow and deforms only slowly under pressure. On the other hand, a rubber band can be thought of as an elastic item, which typically returns to its original shape after being stretched.

As a viscoelastic tissue – also typically referred to as a viscoelastic matrix – fascia presents both characteristics, which explains why it doesn’t respond well to sudden force, but it does respond to slow, sustained pressure over time.

Viscoelasticity matters greatly in Myofascial Release Therapy. For one, that our fascia has this quality, and that it permeates our body from top to bottom, immediately dispels the idea that bodywork treatments can only be effective if they’re ‘deep’, ‘hard’, and even painful – as is (too) often the case with regular massage. More ‘intense’ forms of bodywork may benefit your muscles, which you may feel at the end of your session, but they seldom do any good for the fascia that surrounds them.

Quick or aggressive techniques can actually cause your fascia to recoil or tighten defensively which, over time, may very well worsen your pain symptoms rather than alleviating them. In such cases, the benefits you receive from your treatment may not just become short-term; they may actually become tomorrow’s problems.

Nervous System Regulation

How bodywork should be ideally performed is best answered by another question: “why would you want or need bodywork in the first place?“. If it’s because you want to alleviate or even eliminate physical pains and discomforts, it may be useful to explore why your tissues are behaving as they do and, likely, not as they should.

This, then, brings us quickly to the topic of neurological change.

Your nervous system controls everything in your body, including the muscle tensions and pains you may be experiencing. Not all of these pains may actually be caused by physical strain – they can also stem from habitual neural patterns. To address this, our bodywork treatments are specifically designed to tap into your brain’s ability to form new neural pathways – a phenomenon that’s referred to as neuroplasticity. By allowing you to experience different states of tissue tensions and new movement patterns we invite your brain to rewire itself.

That our body stores emotional trauma has been known for decades. That more advanced and sophisticated types of bodywork – such as MFR – can access and release emotional tension stored in your muscle and fascia has for long been supported by an almost overwhelming body of medical and clinical evidence.

“We now know that MFR specifically can trigger neurological shifts that can affect your mood, behaviour, and even identity profoundly – which is why the phrase “change your body, change your mind” has become so closely associated with the work we do…”

If bodywork only manipulates muscles without influencing the nervous system, relief will typically be short-lived. Dysfunctional movement patterns usually return, and the emotional and psychological tension that actually may be the cause for your concerns remains unresolved. This is why we at Advaya Healing believe that true transformation can only happen for you when your brain and body learn something new together.

In bodywork therapy – whether it’s myofascial release or any of our other specialisations – we aim to shift your body from what’s referred to as sympathetic dominance (stress, hypervigilance, tension) into parasympathetic regulation. This shift allows your tissues to soften, your breath to deepen, and your body to enter a state of repair. Gentle touch and slow, intentional movements signal safety to your nervous system, helping it recalibrate, and release stored trauma or chronic tension.

In this way, the bodywork we offer is therefore not just mechanical – it’s deeply neurobiological. It supports healing by engaging your body’s innate intelligence and restoring balance between mind and muscle, sensation and safety. Over time, consistent bodywork sessions can help retrain your nervous system to respond more flexibly to stress, improving emotional regulation, posture, and pain perception. With that, improvements in the way you move, hold yourself, and feel about yourself will begin to last. They often become permanent.

Precision Over Power

MFR is performed slowly because we, therapists, must work harmoniously with your fascia’s viscoelasticity and your neurology to help you regain your most authentic state of physical and emotional being. Rather than just “digging in” to break up dysfunctional tissues aggressively, MFR is about listening to your body’s subtle cues, about following the path of least resistance. That gentleness and slowness is also needed to give your body – and its neurology – a chance to figure out how to reignite its abilities to heal itself, on its own accord.

“This is precisely why MFR can never follow a one-size-fits-all approach – which is yet another reason for why MFR therapies are considered slow. Each therapeutic session must be tailored to your unique fascial patterns, pain history, and postural habits…”

MFR deals with delicate but, at the same time, phenomenally resilient tissues that permeate your entire body. They connect everything with everything else inside you. Treating it correctly and properly requires therapeutic precision that can only be learned over many years of hands-on practice, chiefly because MFR is not just about treating muscles; it also involves manipulation of sensitive structures like nerves, lymph, and blood vessels.

Myofascial Release Therapy: A Practice of Patience and Presence

If you still believe that bodywork therapies can only effective when they are intense and painful, none of our therapeutic treatments will suit you. We believe that in bodywork, for all afore mentioned reasons, pain will never be a measure of effectiveness.

Especially in Myofascial Release Therapy, Manual Lymphatic Drainage Massage, and Visceral Abdominal Massage, excessive pressure and gross therapeutic imprecision can cause your body to brace and resist, making your releases significantly less effective. Over time, such therapies can actually cause more harm than good to you.

All of this makes Myofascial Release Therapy very different from other bodywork therapies. It isn’t just another type of massage. Instead of targeting muscles and using standardised sequences of techniques, MFR focuses on fascia, your connective web of tissues, and involves static pressure held over time to encourage those tissues to release. MFR’s aim is to offer long-term and sustainable results that you can, eventually, manage independently.

Effects of single MFR sessions are seldom dramatic. While each can certainly result in relief immediately, true groundbreaking effects only come gradually and cumulatively. Because fascia releases slowly, multiple sessions are usually required to allow your body to adjust to the changes at its own pace, and for you to comfortably process the emotional responses that are so intrinsically associated with MFR.

Myofascial Release Therapy is not just a series of standardised techniques. Instead, it’s a philosophy of healing. Its slow, precise nature honours your body’s innate intelligence and capacity for self-regulation. And like any true art form, it cannot be rushed or reduced to a checklist. It must be felt, practiced, and refined over time.

Our facial anatomy – that 3D network that pervades everything within us – doesn’t follow linear anatomical maps and doesn’t show on typical medical scans. To become experienced MFR therapists we had to learn to interpret the restrictions that rippled across hundreds of client bodies, how these affected their posture and movements, and how each could be treated best, in ways that were both effective and efficient while, at the same time, helping them stay within their scope and range of their emotional resilience.

True MFR mastery lies in our ability to read you and your body’s language correctly. It lies in our ability to listen deeply to associate your spoken words with what your body signals during treatments. To us, MFR isn’t just a destination but a journey along which we must constantly hone our palpation skills to “feel” even the subtlest of your fascial restrictions – a tactile sensitivity that can only be developed slowly, and only over many years of working with diverse bodies.

MFR, despite its gentle, flowing, and sometimes even ‘messy’ appearance, is one of the most complex manual therapies to master. Yet, now with thousands of treatments under our belt, and after seeing how proper MFR helped our clients so profoundly over the years, it has become much easier for us to accept that our learning can never stop.

Together with clients who also, like us, believe that pain will never be a measure of therapeutic effectiveness, and who are willing to invest the time and patience to help their body regain its most authentic way of being, we will continue to practice Myofascial Release Therapy for many, many years to come.