1

Contents
Preface

Chapter 1: Where I’m coming From

Chapter 2: Going In

Chapter 3: The Afterglow

Chapter 4: Into The Woods


Chapter 5: Captiva


Chapter 6: The Follow Up

Chapter 7: Into The Vortex

Chapter 8: The Aftermath

Chapter 9: Where I’m At

2
 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

3
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.

4
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

5
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

6
 1

Where I’m Coming From
My name is Joel Mitchell. I am a follower of Jesus, a husband, a father of
three daughters, and a Bodyworker currently in my 31st year of life. I’m
going to give some brief background about myself which will hopefully give
you as the reader a better idea of where I’m coming from before diving in to
this deep healing journey that takes place between the fall of 2015 and the
summer 2017.

I was born in 1986 in St. John’s, Newfoundland Canada as the youngest

sibling of three. I was born as a dual citizen since my father was in the U.S.
Navy and was stationed on a U.S. military base off the coast. We moved
away a couple of years later and went back to the states where we did the
typical moving around of a military family. I went to kindergarten in three
different states and eventually settled down outside of Portland, Oregon in
my Mom’s hometown after my parents divorced when I was seven years old.
This allowed me to have a somewhat normal childhood where I spent the
next ten years growing up with friends in one place. I’m extremely grateful
for that.

My Mom says that I was born angry. The divorce didn’t seem to bother me
so much, nor did the idea of not seeing my Dad often because even when
they were still married, my Dad would be out at sea or stationed over seas.
However, moving to the Northwest from California presented some
challenges when entering the elementary school as well as chronic asthma
troubles that would sometimes lead to cardiac arrest and hospitalizations. In
this new school, I was wearing baggy pants, which was the style down in
California. I was bullied right away for this, but refused to change my clothes
to fit in. However, the bullying made me angrier, but eventually the west
coast style made it’s way north and suddenly I was “cool” and blended right
in. I made my way through the rest of 2nd and 3rd grade as a good student
without conflict. The first moment that I remember my rebellion showing up
was in the 4th grade. We had a substitute teacher and according to me she
was unfair and not what I was accustomed to with my primary teacher or
any other authoritative adult in my life. She told me I had to do something I
didn’t want to do. So, I just waited for her to look the other way and I
walked out of the school and moseyed on home without a second thought. I
never liked school, but I hated it from that day forward. I remember having
a conversation with my Mom about what school was and when could I stop
doing it. I don’t remember her explanation, but what I remember was that

7
you were legally allowed to drop-out in the 9th grade. Waiting until then to
drop out was a plan I developed in the 4th grade.

By the time I was 16 years old, I had dropped out of high school with twelve
misdemeanors and three felonies. I had been in and out of the local Juvenile
Detention Center and was extremely lost and miserable. My friends were
just as guilty, if not more so. They would see their own troubles with the
law, but somehow I was the one constantly getting caught and arrested. My
friends and I both used to joke about the serendipitous nature of the police
always showing up at the right place and the right time of our crimes when I
was with them. We would joke, but deep down I knew I was trying to run
from something that was in control of all of this. What seemed like a string
of bad luck was blessings in disguise, because by the time I reached 17
years old, I was sick of it. That’s the power of a praying Mom. I put my
hands up to God and said “Okay, I suck at this. If there is a better way, show
me.” And I prayed the simple prayer “show me the way” over and over
everyday.

It came time for my annual summer visit to Florida where my Dad now lived.
My older brother said he was moving down there with a friend and he
mentioned the possibility of timing their road trip with my visit so we could
ride down together. As the date to leave approached, I made the decision to
not book a return flight home. I was going to get away, and go get my shit
together. My probation officer approved of the choice enough to let me off of
probation early so I wouldn’t have to transfer to the Juvenile system in
another state. It was a fresh start, and it felt amazing.

Once I arrived in Florida, I got a good job and met a beautiful girl. I quickly
destroyed that relationship after her Dad discovered a condom floating in the
toilet. I remember flushing. She moved away and I buried the guilt of the
way I altered her life so heavily. After that, I continued on my path to
establish myself as a responsible adult and after a year in Florida, my
brother and I decided it was time to return home.

I spent six years back in the Northwest. I had eventually found my way into
Massage School in 2008 after losing a good job due to problems with
authority. With massage I could jump in with my GED, not have to learn
anything I didn’t want to, and I could be working for myself in 14 months
and no longer had to deal with douchebags having authority over me. It
turned out that I loved everything about Massage and Bodywork, especially
all the emphasis on the ways of working with connective tissue. I had first
heard of John F. Barnes from one of my instructors, and he suggested that if

8
ever given the chance, to go and study with John before he retires or passes
away. I can’t say that I thought much about it after that. I had received
some brochures for his courses in the mail the years following graduation
and was interested, I just never had the means to get to him. And I was
seeing some long lasting results with implementing structural integration
approaches into my practice and wasn’t looking to branch out.


Fast forward to early 2015; I was now living back in Florida and married to
the girl I met years before. I had adopted her daughter and we had one of
our own. I was Bartending at night to make ends meet while working in a
spa setting for the first time to play around with some techniques on the
tourists. A client came to me who was having an issue with her right hand
and arm which had atrophied after a botched thumb surgery left her unable
to work or use her right hand. She said she had spent the past two years
going from every kind of Doctor and Manual Therapist and their treatments
had either been completely ineffective, or they were too rough and hurt her.
So, she thought she would take a shot in the dark with a massage therapist
while on vacation. Being that my entire practice was based around a rough
approach to working with connective tissue, I was lost as to what I was
going to do with this poor woman’s hand. I wasn’t going to be the next
therapist to hurt her, I knew that for sure, so what could I do then?

She laid down on the table for a 90 minute session that was solely dedicated
to attempting to help her right hand, I looked at it and she turned her head
towards me saying You know what sweetie? If you can help my hand that’s
great, but I’m really here to relax in a quiet room for a while. She had just
taken all the pressure off me with that statement. I immediately relaxed and
my hands went warm. The room was dark and light music was playing like it
does in the typical spa environment of which I wasn’t previously
accustomed. I moved slowly, and made contact gently. I didn’t even begin to
think or do anything until I had safely maintained contact with her hand for
a few minutes. For the first time during a session, I had my eyes closed and
was picking up on subtleties I had never noticed before. I was in no hurry at
all, and found myself waiting at the tissue barrier with no attachment to the
outcome for the first time ever in my practice without understanding it and
having zero awareness of the power of that combination in an approach to
therapy. The only thing I was trying to do with this woman was not hurt her!
I didn’t think much of this and neither did she at the time. It wasn’t until the
next day when she came in with a brand new hand that we were both awe
struck by her result. The color had returned to her hand and so had the
function by about 50%. I didn’t even try and play it cool, I was in just as
much of a shock as she was to see her hand in that condition after one
treatment and only 24 hours later. I thought to myself, I wonder if this is

9
what John Barnes is doing. And wouldn’t you know it, there was this Physical
Therapist all along who not only knew exactly what happened, but had
developed this approach decades prior and had been expanding on it and
practicing it for almost 40 years! I didn’t put any further thought into it until
later that week when I received a phone call from a local therapist who had
received my business card from a client of hers. She was asking if I had ever
taken any of John Barnes courses. I told her I haven’t but I had recently
become quite interested! She invited me to a local event she called
Myofascial Unwinding that was open to the public and gave me a brief
explanation of what it was. She said something along the lines of, it’s a self
corrective movement where the body brings itself back into balance. Based
on the experiences I would have rolling around on my bed trying to stretch
“something”, I felt like I knew what this was.

There were five of us including the John Barnes trained Therapist. She gave
little explanation as to avoid setting up expectations. She briefly described
that we would all go one at a time with the others placing their hands on the
person who’s turn it was at the time. The participant was encouraged to “let
go” and allow their body to do what it needed to do. This obviously sounded
weird so, I decided to go first and express whatever it was that I was feeling
stirring up in my gut. Everybody laid their hands on me and my breathing
rate increased as my pores opened and I began dumping sweat. I screamed
and struggled ending up on the floor in a pile of my own emotional mess. As
I was helped to my feet, the MFR Therapist said, wow you massage
therapists really know how to let go! This was said with some concern in her
voice as this definitely scared the shit out of the other participants who were
set to go next and we both knew it. I flowed with the rest of this class
watching awkwardly as all the other people tried their best to “let go” and
figure out what the hell they had gotten themselves into. I wasn’t quite sure
what had happened myself, but I felt very much alive and awake. For the
first time in what felt like forever, my hips and legs felt the need to walk. The
walk home felt very corrective to my whole body and I could breath so much
easier. I just had to try and explain to my wife what went down and order as
much material on John Barnes as I could. Apparently this crazy need to
correct and stretch my body was a thing in John’s world. I was officially
intrigued.

Reading John’s second book first “Healing Ancient Wounds” had me

resonating like a son of a bitch as I proceeded to research his seminars to
see if I could find one close by. There was none within a reasonable distance
and being the sole provider for my wife and daughters, this was completely
undoable. I asked God to help me get there and soon after, a seminar
schedule came out with a series of courses (MFR1, Myofascial Unwinding,

10
and MFR2) coming to a Hilton Hotel ten minutes from my house. It was rare
that my prayers were answered this directly so there was no hesitation and
it was just a matter of holding out long enough. I kept practicing the
techniques and approach from Johns first book “Myofascial Release: The
Search For Excellence” with my clients while holding on to this fire in my gut
that had me hanging on to God knows what for dear life. The series was set
for early November 2015, but due to my impatience, I decided to take the
MFR Pediatrics course in St. Petersburg, FL the September prior. John
doesn’t teach this particular seminar, but it was still wonderful. I met some
beautiful people, I unwound in a similar fashion as before, but I kept a lid on
the big stuff due to the vibe not feeling quite right in the room. However, I
got a good taste of what was to come with John’s series in 6 weeks. I was
stoked!

11
 2

Going In


(MFR 1, 2, and Unwinding- November 2015- Destin, Florida)

I walked in to this seminar series feeling ready to go and like God had paved
the way for me to be there. I was going to be wide open and hold back
nothing. Just short of one hundred therapists were in attendance for this
seminar so it was a good group and a lot of them were seasoned therapists.
The seminar attendants and myself moved to the front of the room to have a
seat while we waited for the man, the myth, the legend to enter the Hilton
Ballroom. He walks in, a very old fat man looking like he is about to collapse
before making it to the stage. He could barely move and was making small
shuffling steps and it was obvious to me that this guy was struggling to even
be there. I had caught wind of his sons recent passing so I greatly
appreciated the fact that he was there through it all and that I may be
catching him just in time. John makes it onto the stage and I am starring at
this man with high intensity being that he interested me. His eyes scanned
the room landing on me where he stopped with a look of fear and worry on
his face and maintained eye contact with me for a very interesting two
seconds. That was red flag number one, but I moved past it quickly and
didn’t even remember that moment until a year later. He introduced himself,
told his story, showed some slides, demonstrated some techniques, talked
shit about the healthcare system, and day one passed by in a linear fashion
as expected for an introductory seminar. I was loving it.

On Day two, a volunteer being treated on stage began to unwind and I

thought to myself, Oh hell yeah, it’s on now. My chosen partner and I went
to our treatment table and it was now my turn to be treated. John’s voice
and dialogue over the loud speaker was perfect as I began to sink into my
body. I was about to pop, but I waited for my partner to get some good
practice on the technique for a few moments. I could barely stand it any
longer so, I looked up real quick to see if instructors were nearby so they
could help. They were, and I finally felt safe enough to dive in. My legs
started to vibrate heavily and it rippled through my whole body as it became
a full body seizure of sorts while sweat was dumping out of my pores. It
quickly turned in to the largest tantrum I had never been allowed to have.
Control your anger was all I had ever been told growing up. But there is a
big difference in being told to do something as a child and being shown how.
Especially for someone like me. And how is a parent supposed to teach a

12
child to control a rage they themselves have never experienced? On the
table that day, I screamed louder than I ever have in my entire life. As I
screamed with rage, I could feel the sound’s origin deep in my core and I
was scooping it out one loud scream at a time as my whole body fully
contracted to get the noise out. This was well beyond a two year old’s
tantrum. This was primal rage. On the last and what I immediately noticed
to be my final purge of this trapped sound, a two-dimensional-neon-blueish-
purple cat appeared behind my eyelids and gave a loud, high-pitched,
Raaawrrr! I obviously didn’t see that coming being that my eyes were
closed, and it was the first of many pieces of imagery to be seen while
unwinding.

My entire body (and slightly beyond) came flooding into my awareness. I

could feel everything. I collapsed on the table having nothing left but tears
and exhaustion. It was obvious this seminar train was going to keep on
rolling with or without me so, I pulled myself together while eagerly awaiting
my next opportunity to let go. With each unwinding, my core began to
activate for what felt like the first time. Certain muscles that had previously
been weak started to wake up and heavily contract as my body twisted itself
back into a more balanced state. I began to spontaneously hyperventilate,
and for the first time I located the fear of death in my respiratory memory
that was associated with multiple asthma attacks that had taken me into
cardiac arrest as a child. In that moment I found the belief that I can’t
breath and I’m going to die, and I replaced with a, Bullshit! Not only can I
breath, but I can breath extremely well! And on top of that, I am not going
to die at all. I am actually going to live! This was an amazing experience and
one of my favorites that I experienced inside those seminars. The instructors
were beautifully detached, supportive, and awesome the whole way through
it.

These unwindings continued straight into the official Myofascial Unwinding

course on day five. By then, I was fucking loaded. Like seriously tripping. For
those of you still not understanding, I felt like I was under the influence of a
psychedelic drug. My senses were through the roof and I was seeing things
that I normally didn’t under normal sober circumstances. This was not an
unfamiliar feeling or experience for me having spent my 13th year of life
eating psychedelic mushrooms in cow fields and pondering my own
existence after being expelled from the school district in seventh grade. I
was just kind of impressed I had pulled it off naturally, and I was quite
shocked to find myself in this condition at 29 years old inside of a Hilton
ballroom hanging out with a bunch of crazy people. And I was even more
shocked to realize that I was the craziest one of them all! I had a great time

13
in those courses, and was looking forward to returning again someday
sooner than later.


14
 3

The Afterglow

The seminar series may have ended, but my unwindings never did. I found
myself unable to be triggered by things that would normally stir me up and
make me reactive. I just didn’t have it in me anymore. I felt more like
myself than I had in years and I had emotional awareness for the first time
since I was a kid. My bodywork practice started to thrive as my relationship
with my wife began to fall apart. Her Father had become terminally ill and a
fence was being built between us. I was losing her, in fact, I lost her the
moment I saw the look on her face after she got the bad news. I didn’t know
how to support her as she was emotionally checking out other than to stay
as detached from the outcome as possible. I never would have been able to
let her go and do what she needed to do without making it about me if it
hadn’t been for my newfound ability to unwind it all as it came. Even with
that being the case, as I look back, I still wish I had been more supportive
and understanding during her process. I’m not completely convinced that my
level of detachment was the best thing, but I still see how necessary it was
for her to go. That’s why I ended up loving her all the way out the door and
months later, all the way back home.

I was unwinding daily at this point, and I seemed to be able to dip in and out
of that state of consciousness whenever I had a safe moment to explore it.
John generalizes this state as “Channel 3” and it is similar to the state a
newborn goes into once they have latched on for breast feeding. It quickly
went from being me flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water to
slowly forming into some sort of ground practice while alternating from the
bed to the ground. It was a dance with my own animal consciousness, a
spirit dance, or you could even call it a shadow dance at times, but I wasn’t
concerned with the label so much. I wanted to see what it looked like so, I
started to film myself and watch the footage so I could get an objective look
at it. It had the look of some crazy-raw form of yoga, or more like an
unstructured, rebellious dance of sorts. I was moving on the edges of chaos
while my intellect (Left Brain or Channel 5 in John’s terms) was
simultaneously attempting to create order out of the chaos. But chaos was
winning and I felt it was a necessary win, that’s where the healing had
occurred and that I felt would continue to occur.

A year after the first seminar series with John, I decided to post a video of
these movements in the form of a performance art piece on MFR insight (the
closed facebook group of John Barnes) to share my story and gauge the

15
response. I did this knowing very well they may decide to pull it down, but I
wasn’t concerned with the outcome. Whatever it was, it was real and needed
to be seen and who better then the people who had originally facilitated it.
Outside of the typical ratio of haters, it was a positive response and I was
very grateful. That was a glimpse of ME in all my struggle that I was putting
down and sharing in that video which was delivered like some sort of
performance art piece, To have people see it the way I did was really
affirming for what I was going through at the time. I continued to go
deeper…


16
 4

Into The Woods
(November 2016)

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I celebrated my birthday early with my

daughters and prepared for a solo camping trip into the deep woods of
Northwest Florida where I was going to go to a primitive campsite to be
alone for 72 hours so I could really get down to business. I wanted to be
free to unwind with a true wild-freedom without interruption to see where
the hell this whole healing path was going. The car was packed, and I went
to sleep. I woke up the next morning at 6 A.M. after the most vivid dream of
my life. The dream went as follows.

I was driving a strange and oversized vehicle down a road at night. There
was a group of three motorcycle riders represented as three individual
headlights coming from behind and one rider got in front of me. It moved
into a turn lane. All of the sudden the one rider made the left turn and as I
prepared to do the same, the vehicle I was in sped up and I missed the turn
completely and instead I went up and over this hill barely staying on the
road. I kept going faster and it kept getting darker as the road went down
and twisted through the woods. I could barely see the road in front of me. I
noticed that the steering wheel was now above my head. I lost sight of the
road as I tried to get control of the steering wheel and bring it back down.
This struggle continued and the steering wheel kept getting raised up and I
began to realize that the vehicle felt like it was driving itself and I was
amazed I was still on the road. Then, I became completely blind, I was so
scared and could still feel the momentum of this high speed vehicle moving
forward down the road, but I hadn't crashed and I began to feel a sense of
trust in my situation. Suddenly, the steering wheel shot straight up to the
“sky” into total darkness and I held on so tight as I had almost lost complete
control of my situation. I looked up and was blinded by a light that was
piercing and vibrating my forehead. I was completely at its mercy. I
immediately felt a sense of guilt and like an “oh shit sorry sorry sorry sorry”
kind of moment because this light obviously had authority over me. It was
everything, always has been, and always will be. I understood that. I
immediately let go, and I woke up!

17
Is that not the most cliche’, spiritually themed, highly symbolic dream ever?
But I was too shook by the reality of it at the time to shake it off as “Just a
dream”. I got up and immediately wrote down my dream all the while
keeping my head down in avoidance because I had this sense that if I were
to close my eyes and go in to that state of letting go, I’d be confronting this
thing immediately upon doing so. During this stage, If I was to be evaluated
from a western medical standpoint; what was happening was I was on the
grips of an epileptic seizure. The difference was that I was in control and it
would be a voluntary pursuit. I knew I had to go through this and
fortunately I was already packed to head into the woods with the
opportunity to do so. Jumping in my car, I noticed I was keeping my head
down in avoidance. I just wanted to get to my camping spot and get set up
as quickly as possible so I could take this on. I arrived at my pre determined
location. It was nothing like what the map had shown and it was right next
to an unmarked boat launch that had bass fisherman coming in and out
constantly. I looked at the map on my GPS and searched for the largest
patch of woods with vehicle access that I could find in my region. The
nearest entrance was 40 miles East and in there I found the perfect place
with more than three miles between me and other potential passerby. I got
my shit set up as fast as possible with multiple jugs of water placed in
different parts of the camp so hydration would never be out of reach. I said
a prayer and did some sort weird personal ritual that I made up on the spot.
After that, I got naked and started to masturbate aggressively while
dancing. I just thought I’d rub one out real quick before I freaked out….
Just kidding! The naked dancing and masturbation didn’t happen.

I deflected with humor just now because I don’t feel it to be necessary to

dive into the details of what happened over the 48 hours that followed. At
least not in this particular book and the purposes it’s intended to serve. If
you’re interested you can go on to my personal facebook page and find the
post where I wrote a bit about it on the one year anniversary November,
2017. It is also extremely difficult to articulate what I experienced and a
large portion of it is still very much outside of my current understanding. I’ll
be processing those hours for decades to come. What I am able to articulate
now and what I feel is appropriate to speak on in this book, is the
understanding I received within the first few hours in regards to my studies
with MFR. I knew going in there that I was heading to Captiva, Florida in six
weeks to repeat some courses with John. So, that was the first thing to
come up for meditation. What I didn’t know before going into the woods was
that something incredible was going to happen, and that my time in MFR
was going to be limited. I was just going to be passing through. This was
news to me in the woods. I didn’t have the details of how it was all going to
go down. But I did know exactly how it was going to feel once this fire in my

18
gut was set loose in Captiva. All I had to do was Feel it, express it, and let it
go. And with that came an awareness of how much of a pain in the ass I was
about to be for John and the entire seminar staff. However, I felt they would
be up to the task. But for reasons unknown to me at the time, my little
mission was simple… Just let go and trust what happens. Apparently I was
about to go lose my fucking mind in South Florida. Talk about a crazy idea!


19
 5

Captiva



(Repeat of MFR 1, and Unwinding—Captiva, Florida — January 2017)

By this point I had already had a good grip on how the MFR organization and
a lot of its members operated based on the activity inside of the closed
Facebook Group “MFR Insight.” In that group you can get a good sense of
the community and catch a glimpse of the cultish vibe of the Organization.
Every authoritative post that is written from the organization in that group,
appears as though it was written by an 8th grade girl who is still extremely
pissed off that she didn’t make the basketball cheer leading squad. And I
was also aware of who was in charge of these people and these posts.
Although it would have been wiser to give that more thought, It didn’t
concern me all that much at the time. I was going in regardless and what I
was going to do was simple enough. The psychophysiological changes that I
had experienced from this type of deep healing were enough to have me
stoked on doing some more with group energy. And all I had to do was LET
GO and something cool was supposed to happen. That’s the extent of my
agenda walking through the doors of that seminar. And I was completely
aware and okay with the possibility that I may be kicked out of the seminar
in no time. If that came as a result of me being real, than so be it.

It was a smaller conference room since their were only forty participants for
MFR 1. The ceilings were super low and I wasn’t stoked about that nor was I
vibe-ing with the energy of this particular group, so I decided that it was
best to hold off on my crazy until the official Unwinding course in a few days.
That was the plan at the time anyway. John came in and I gave him a hug
and thanked him for what his seminars had done for me and he said, enjoy
this day, which I felt was a pretty lame guru statement, but not bad for
being put on the spot.

Like I said, my original plan was to continue to hold it all in, but as most
MFR therapists know, John holds a very powerful healing space in those
seminars. I was able to manage just fine until this scorpio of an instructor
started fucking with me. I was all about that energy when she came around
during my turn receiving treatment. Her touch was ridiculously seductive
and predatory. I even had to jump up and say quietly in her ear, You better
knock that off before I scare the shit out of everybody in this place, and she
said with a smile, Well you know what they say, when one goes, the others

20
tend to follow. This was meant to encourage my letting go because she
obviously didn’t who she was fucking with and what I was holding on to.
Neither did I, I just knew it was dangerous. After that first day, I went back
to my campsite that was on the next island over. I retreated into my tent
and rolled around all night unwinding around my solar plexus to no avail.

The next day somebody unwound on stage with John during the first
technique and since I was ready to pop, I took it straight to John. I went up
to him and said, My solar plexus is about to explode and I would like to be a
volunteer for the next technique. He said, Yeah no problem, we have
transverse plane techniques coming up. I replied with a simple, Thank you.
It took longer than I had hoped, but when he finally called me up on stage I
was restless as fuck as I tore off my clothes and threw them into the crowd.
John responded to this saying, under wear too, which was a brilliant and
humorous response to a situation he obviously wasn’t unfamiliar with. I
waited for him to get as far as basic explanation and hand placement before
I started let go. My solar plexus contracted and my body was twisting,
contorting and self adjusting with more power and accuracy than I’ve ever
felt as I landed on all fours on the table. This was the embodiment of my
rage and my animal consciousness was becoming dominant. Rationality was
limited. I then started to roar heavily while John tried to explain to the
novice crowd that it was suppressed anger coming out of me. As I became
extremely animalistic in all of my expressions, John took a few steps back
and said, Run out the door and take your power back. Since I was already
an extremely empowered individual prior to walking through the door of that
seminar, and feeling quite empowered in that moment, this statement did
nothing for me. I didn’t even respond to it. He said it again, Run out the
door and take your power back. Even with my limited rationality at the time,
I was sensing that John was needing to get me out of the building due to the
heavy duty nature of what I was displaying to this new crowd of Therapists.
There was a good portion of me that still had a grip, but unfortunately, I was
mostly a filthy animal in that moment. I jumped up, growled at John, and
I’m pretty sure I growled at some random chick on my way out of the
building. I ultimately ended up in a tree outside of the resort conference
area eating my own poop with my bare hands while imagining John saying to
the crowd inside, And that was the respiratory diaphragm technique,
followed by every body chuckling nervously as they were wondering what
the fuck just happened. And they weren’t alone. I didn’t even fully
understand what had happened, but I knew it was incredibly therapeutic and
an awesome experience that had my senses woke as fuck and had me
feeling crazier than ever.

21
I was just kidding about eating my own shit back there. The tree and the
pondering did actually take place though. I hopped down from the tree and
started walking back to the seminar room feeling crazier then ever and I was
greeted by the Scorpio who was being a good girl by volunteering to be the
one to track me down. She had her arms crossed with a look of deep
concern on her face. If I had been attached to an outcome or gave even the
slightest of fucks about what her or John thought of me, I would have
thought to myself, Oh no, I’ve done something wrong, am I in trouble? That
would have been an extremely confusing moment had I not fully owned my
own crazy. But instead, the only thought I had was a suspicious,
Interesting……

Our interactions were brief and she did a good job of meeting me where I
was at even with her ego desperately wanting to be the one to tame a wild
animal. I returned to the seminar to find my clothes and meet the sorry
sucker who couldn’t find a partner and was awaiting my arrival back into the
seminar room. I blended back in with the technique smoothly and someone
later brought me my clothes.

Understand that at this point in the story, I was all in when it comes to the
MFR seminars. I was so stoked to have unlocked that shit inside me and not
only have it be “okay”, but to not be kicked out was even more awesome. No
explanation of my actions was required and they weren’t attempting to hold
me responsible for expressions of my unconscious….yet. And it’s not like I
could have given them an explanation at the time anyway. Being able to
take myself on at the primal level in a safe place has me extremely grateful
to this day. I was a little suspicious of the Scorpio, but I continued to stay
detached from the outcome. At that time, I hadn’t fully understood the
symbolic meaning of my dream before the woods except for one part of it. I
knew that ultimately, I was going to go my own way. So, my attitude
towards my presence in the seminars was, I’m just passing through, but
there was always a struggle inside of me if that was really the truth or not.
However, I believed it enough to detach from the outcome.

The rest of the day was filled with some awesome unwindings. I have no
criticism as they were facilitated beautifully by John’s staff. One I remember
really well was unwinding the tissue memory of when I broke my ribs as a
kid. I was 12 years old and had a horrible skateboarding crash. I was around
only my friends at the time and since we all had this bullshit view of
masculinity drilled into our minds by our culture, I held in my natural
response to the pain that I experienced at the time of the accident. This
resulted in the trauma being recorded in the tissue around my ribs that I
was accessing during this unwinding. So, here I am in a seminar as a 30

22
year old man saying “ow-ie ow-ie ow-ie ow-ie” while I fully experienced the
pain of that shitty crash 18 years prior. Crazy stuff. Awesome stuff!

The rest of the MFR 1 course was typical studies while on the side, John and
the instructors were strategizing about what to do about me and the
apprehensive new therapists in attendance. Meanwhile, John had the Scorpio
stay close to me to keep the animal in me at bay. This is counter intuitive to
the meet them where they’re at approach that John Teaches. That’s the
moment when the subtle control methods began. The dialogue and touch
was far out of alignment with what I was experiencing. This got extremely
annoying, very quickly.

One of the instructors was aware of my MFR testimony from “MFR Insight” a
couple months prior and thought it would be a good idea to have me share
my story with the class. This, I imagine was her way of trying to help soften
the blow that my filthy animal made on the class of newbies. This was a
strategy that I understood and was happy to help with when she approached
me asking if I’d be willing to share my story with the class. This was at the
beginning of the day when I was an alert and reasonably compliant person.
Unfortunately for everybody, especially her, by the time John asked me to
share my story, I was a few unwindings deep and high as fuck (channel 3).
So, what came out was something like, This work has helped me in every
aspect of my life so far, but the trains currently leaving the station folks, and
you’re are at the station! So, jump on.. And John finished my sentence with,
and hang on for dear life with a big smile on his face. John and I were both
laughing as he gave me a subtle hand signal to stop talking. I wish I had
been able to help with their agenda to ease the minds of the new therapists
by sharing more of my story, but I don’t know what to say about that right
now other than, I’m sorry guys, I was high…

On the fourth and final day of MFR 1, with Myofascial Unwinding coming up
next and not digging the control methods being used on me by his
instructors, I decided to go straight to John for some affirmation. I walked
up beside him and said exactly this, Thank you for everything, John. Am I
okay to let my animal out of its cage during Unwinding? And he replied,
Yeah, of course! I said, Thank you! And I walked away. We finished up the
last technique for the class and we were done for the day. On my way out
the door I saw the Scorpio, and I went up to her and said, Unwinding starts
tomorrow, and if you’re going to keep coming at me, you better come at me
with everything you’ve got. I said this in a serious, but playful manner
because to me this was most certainly a seriously playful experience. She
became incredibly defensive in her posture showing to me that she was
guilty of something that had gone unspoken. She said, Why you coming at

23
me like this, Joel? And she burst into tears while running into a fellow
instructors arms for comfort. I was shocked and confused for about five
seconds before letting it go and carrying on out the door. That was the last I
saw of the Scorpio for the rest of the series even though she was scheduled
to be an instructor for the next one. According to John’s book “Healing
Ancient Wounds”, the Scorpio should have thanked me for triggering her
since it gave her the opportunity to feel and heal. I’m still waiting on a thank
you from her. Just kidding! She is one of the most talented and powerful
therapists in terms of energy and touch that I’ve ever encountered. Just as it
goes for anyone else, those gifts are either a force for good, a force to be
used to self-serve, or a force to be controlled by someone else to benefit
their own self-serving agenda. With that being said, I love her and I’m not
sorry for any of the shit that I just talked about her. For the record: Weeks
later, I saw her profile on Facebook and messaged her so I could apologize
for upsetting her and we’re cool as far as I’m concerned.

Myofascial Unwinding

The moment I walked in the door on the first day of the Myofascial
Unwinding course, I was immediately approached by an instructor for a
gentle, let’s take a walk, kind of moment. She said, Joel, we are noticing a
pattern with you. You’re triggering other therapists, and we suggest that you
go under that. That was the first time I heard the saying “go under that”
used in John’s organization. To “go under that” I assume is supposed mean
that you go deeper to bypass the need to express what comes up in your
subconscious, but in John’s organization it means: shut the fuck up and act
right. They’re not using those words, but they’re saying the same thing.
They’re just saying it in the shadiest and most subtle way possible for two
reasons. They lack the guts necessary to resolve conflict with others in an
adult fashion, but most importantly, communicating this way keeps you on
the hook. Imagine the kind of confusion this could have created for me
based on the communication I had had with John himself the day prior who
was not only witnessing this conversation take place, but was the one who
told this instructor to have it. That is some intentionally manipulative and
wishy washy communication from the big man himself. Having a strong
connection with my intuition at the time, as well as being detached from the
outcome, I simply replied to this dialogue saying, Am I no longer free to
express myself in these seminars? She then said, No, we are just noticing a
pattern with you, and we suggest that you go under that. I was thinking to
myself, Well that clears things up, thanks for the help dumbass! But instead
I said with concern, Do you realize how much that just fuels this fire burning
in my gut? I gently placed my hand on her shoulder as I walked away to
take my seat at the front.

24
Like I said, this dialogue was an intentionally confusing way of
communicating to me that I needed to “behave.” And what does it mean to
behave in an MFR seminar? Great question. To this day, who fucking knows?
Anybody who opens the door for unconscious expressions and then tries to
draw a line and hold you responsible, is either naive or completely up to no
good. Good luck with that endeavor. But anyways….

There was absolutely no chance that I was going to “behave” after the chit
chat with John’s instructor. Since the Scorpio had been heavily triggered by
me, she was nowhere to be found and they were an instructor short for the
seminar. I decided at the time that I was going to dial it in a bit and wait for
the 4 person group unwinding on the second day when things are collectively
more chaotic in the class.

If anyone reading this right now would like to know what a better approach
to communicating with me in that seminar would have looked like, read
below.

“Hey Joel, most of the people here are extremely new and you’re unwindings
are scaring the piss out of them. Maybe the instructors and I can treat you
after class so we can get you on the other side of this without triggering the
new therapists in attendance and discouraging them from further studies.”

And I would have even accepted the following dialogue with no questions
asked:

“Hey Joel, you’re behavior is unacceptable, get the fuck out of here!”

With these approaches, that would make them have to explain how they
define the boundaries for the seminar of which they can not do. But I also
would have accepted this:

“Hey Joel, leave!”

There is a reason why they chose not to communicate like this, nor offer any
clear solutions. There are quite a few reasons actually. Some simple, and
some much more complex. The main reason being I scared the shit out of
them and nobody knew how the fuck to handle me honestly and truthfully
without compromising their own ego’s. Which definitely wasn’t going to
happen. They would rather keep me confused and keep me looking to them
for the answers they didn’t have (common disempowerment methods used

25
in toxic relationships). That’s the simple truth of the matter, but for now,
back to the story….

I was now sitting at the front of the class not particularly stoked about what
just happened, but I was enjoying the new group of people around me.
There were some pro’s in the room now and this was going down regardless.
The feeling I had inside (difficult to describe) was a mission that hadn’t yet
been accomplished. I closed my eyes to meditate briefly and get centered
while John opened up the class. I was then interrupted by John yelling
“Wake-up!” He was saying it in a playful manner towards me as he let me
know he was just telling the class about how I had been climbing all the
trees outside. He had shown before that he enjoyed this by asking me to
post a picture of me climbing the big tree on MFR Insight. This is where the
mind-fuck really set in. Isn’t this the same dude who just micromanaged my
shit two seconds ago when I walked in? I let it go and stayed in my center.
During the first unwinding technique, my unwindings became very obviously
symbolic to that of a trapped animal, but an instructor was always close by
to shut it down as soon as possible. That didn’t annoy me too much, because
they really didn’t know what else to do and I knew it. I just wish they would
get the fuck out of the way as one would do if they were staying in
alignment with John’s teachings. It really sucked to be constantly interrupted
during these unwindings.

At the end of the first day, I went up to John and said, Thank you for letting
me run-a-muck in your seminars, John. He chuckled and simply said, You’re
welcome. I decided to test him as I said, Your instructors have been telling
me to go under that and I hear what they’re saying, but I feel like a caged
animal looking for a fight, and I can’t tell if I need to lose and be humbled or
win and be free. The antiquated Guru began to stroke his beard as he said, I
see…… He then pointed across the room and said, You see that big guy over
there? Why don’t you see if he will hold you down after class and let you
struggle for a little bit, but ultimately let you win and see if you can get
under it. To me this was actually an appreciated attempt at offering me a
reasonable solution to a conflict that was very real to me at the time.
Unfortunately for John, that big guy over there couldn’t get away from me
fast enough when I approached him about this wonderful new opportunity to
wrestle with a mad man. Perhaps I could have dialed in the crazy eye that I
had going on when I originally approached him.

So, back to where we started. My sights were still set on group unwinding as
the time and place to throw it down. And during a break on the second day,
while en route to the bathrooms, I met an amazing Shaman woman about
twice my age. She approached me about working together and I said, Yes,

26
during the group unwinding would be great, but I’m going to need some
resistance. She replied with confidence saying, I’m a strong woman. I said,
Right on! And we parted ways for the bathrooms where I took a piss and she
took a really gross shaman’s poop ;)

We were approaching the end of day two of the course and the group
unwinding was next. John was doing his thing on stage when suddenly, I felt
something come over me. My whole mind/body turned to total mush and
suddenly, I became more open and soft for the first time since this series
started. This is the depth of channel 3/altered state that John talks about
and prefers everyone to reach, especially in his presence. What happened
next was I became 100% compliant to any outside influence. I had dropped
my guard. And in this particular case, I had dropped my guard to the guru
on stage. In this state, I no longer had a mind of my own and I didn’t even
notice until I heard a voice that sounded like a whisper in my ear say, wake
up! Suddenly, the fire in my gut raged hotter than ever and I could barely
hold it in. This was no joke, I was resonating towards a boiling point.
Immediately following that exact moment, John dismissed us for group
unwinding. It was me against three women. My Shaman woman was in the
group, but I wasn’t sure if her, the other women, or anybody else in this
class was up to the task at hand. But this was obviously happening now!

I wanted out of that room and to be in the woods so bad. I didn’t want
anybody to see what this was, because I had no idea what this would turn
into. But there was a reason I had been unwinding around this alone in my
tent at night to no avail. It needed this moment, and I apparently needed an
opponent. I threw the treatment table off to the side of the room and made
some space. I let go and while spinning in circles with my arms open to my
sides I growled loudly saying, COME ON, I’M LOOKING FOR A FIGHT! The
Shaman stepped in front of me and said, I’m right here, I’m not afraid of
you! I remember feeling unbelievably relieved in that moment while outside
I probably had a creepy and psychotic smile on my face. I can only imagine.
We went forehead to forehead screaming at each other in some sort of
highly symbolic kindred spirit mash-up where everything we said and did
was exactly what each of us needed to say and hear despite how little we
knew about each other. It was therapeutic chaos in the raw. I finally felt free
to express myself fully, and at this point no instructor of John’s dare interject
with what we had going on. The Shaman had relieved them of a duty they
weren’t equipped to handle. I went down on all fours as if ready to pounce.
The shaman noticed my positioning and said, Leap forward! I opened my
eyes to find my vision had drastically changed. Everything was fuzzy and
resonating, but it was all extremely clear to me at the same time. Seeing
this way completely changed my perceived environment. She said again with

27
more encouragement, Leap forward! And I began to run on all fours feeling
freedom beyond belief while making loud animal growling noises. That shit
actually happened, but here’s the thing… The moment I put my hands to the
ground and started to propel myself forward as if having two front legs, it
felt familiar and like I already had the muscle memory to pull it off. I ran
around that ballroom on all fours in a way that seemed impossible to me at
the time. However, my memories of being in that state are strictly that of
being an animal getting to run and explore my new boundaries for the first
time. Pure instinctual impulses is all I can recall about that state of
consciousness, but I could feel something had definitely clicked. I had done
this already in my dreams many times before…

When I was seven years old my parents got divorced and this reoccurring
dream started happening periodically throughout the years and it didn’t stop
until I was seventeen years old. The dream started as me running from
something with the common setting being some place dark, empty, and
abandoned. The first dreams I can remember would never last long before
the darkness that was chasing me finally caught up to me and caused me to
wake up in a nightmarish fashion. During these dreams, my legs would
never work. I tried everything to get them to run, but I could never get any
forward momentum. At some point around 12 years old and out of total
desperation, I started to lean down and dig my hands into the ground to pull
myself forward before ultimately getting caught by the nightmarish entity
chasing me. This was when I started to last longer in these dreams. As I
moved on all fours launching myself forward with my arms, I was starting to
gain some serious momentum and I would make it farther and farther each
time. Some nights during my younger teenage years, I would find myself in
the dream trying to run with my legs again and I would feel stupid and be
like, Psshhh, what am I doing? I’m so much faster on all fours! The last
dream of this reoccurring series that I can remember, happened around
seventeen years old. At this point, the dreams were never about what was
chasing me because I had no issue outrunning it. This dream was all about
how fast I could move on all fours, and how high I could jump. I remember
leaping up the steps of this massive ancient ruins at a speed and rate that
felt supernatural. Fully recalling these dreams from when I was a kid never
happened until the moment I took off running on all fours at 30 years old
with a Shaman inside of a resort conference room. That’s some wild stuff, to
say the least.

The group unwinding turned into a blur as the Shaman’s turn to unwind
seemed to blend in to the same event. There were actually two more people
in our group. I don’t remember them the least bit. I just remember trying to
pull myself together after it had transitioned out of my turn. That wasn’t the

28
easiest process to shut down within the seminar framework. At one point
when we were down on the ground together, I put my fingers in the
Shaman’s mouth as she was trying to bring something up. She ended up
coughing stuff up into my hand and the session came to a close soon after.
My hand was glowing and resonating. I went to the bathroom and washed
my hand, but the feeling didn’t go away. I tried to shake it off, but that
wouldn’t work either. Something was heavy on my hand and it was a little
frustrating that I couldn’t get rid of it. The best idea I had at the time to get
rid of this was to go outside and put my hand on the bare earth. I ended up
going outside and as soon as I put my palm down on this flower bed, I felt
as if “it” was draining out of my arm and hand into the earth in a spiraling
manner. And then the feeling was gone! This entire experience was one of
the most fascinating things I’ve ever been involved in.

Since the group unwinding was the last session of the day, we bailed out not
fully understanding what had just taken place. We went to do some
unwinding in the resort pool when I was suddenly hit with a huge sense of
relief as I broke into tears poolside. We had dinner and tried to get to know
each other a little better. I wouldn’t say it was awkward, but we were
definitely trying our best to get to know each other in a “normal” way.
Whatever had taken place that day, we knew for sure that we would never
forget it and we were homies for life.

The next morning was the last day of the Myofascial Unwinding course. We
were all sitting at the front of the room and John opened up the class as
normal asking if there were any thoughts or questions that came up. The
Shaman shared her thoughts on our experience together with John and the
class. John cut her off with a joke that was aimed to make her feel silly for
how disruptive our experience was the night before. Fortunately, she was
unfazed by this and continued to open up about how she interpreted the
experience as well as talking about the Shamanic nature of it. John then
affirmed her feelings towards the experience and explained to the class that
since we were both in Channel 3/altered state that amazing healing was able
to happen. He then proceeded to talk shit about Shaman’s and how they
ultimately make you rely on them for healing and what it’s really all about
for them is money. He said “money” as he rubbed his fingers together with
contempt in this disempowering statement about Shamans.

This is funny to note because the MFR seminar structure that John has in
place is designed specifically the way he accused Shaman’s of operating
which can be true for any healing practitioner, but he said this as if MFR was
exempt. Therapist’s studying MFR are highly encouraged and sometimes
highly persuaded to rely on his multi-thousand dollar “Therapy for the

29
Therapist” (T4T) program consistently year after year for their healing as
well as continuing to return to the regular seminars to deepen their
understanding of “the work”. What this does is bring you back under their
control and back to being “YOU”. The “YOU” that they want you to achieve is
the “YOU” who never stops relying on them. One of the MFR Brochures from
2016 has the statement, “Remember, a good therapist knows that repeating
seminars is vital to deepening their understanding.” We are all selling
something, and just because there is universal spiritual principles being
peddled in MFR does not mean one should make the mistakes that the
organization operates the same way. Business is business, folks. But
anyways, back to the story…..

In moments like what I described between John and the Shaman, it’s a
common and deliberate move made by John to disempower and discourage
anyone from seeking healing outside of MFR. Witnessing this put me on
guard immediately and I felt this was no longer a safe environment to
continue my current process. The rest of the day was just getting by low key
until the seminar was over. I said some goodbyes to the new friends I had
made, and I packed for the drive back home.


30
 6

The Follow Up


Once I arrived back home in Northwest Florida, I immediately went into the
woods to finish what had been started. This turned into one of the most
powerful spiritual experiences of my life. My psyche had a huge split and I
was now able to view myself from a superior viewpoint objectively, and with
greater wisdom. In the new age world this is referred to as the higher self. I
saw it as strengthening my connection with the wisdom of God. Something I
always knew was there and haunted me when I tried to ignore it while
running wild as a kid. I now saw things and felt things I had never noticed
and my body was more toned, flexible, agile, and within my awareness than
I had ever experienced before. But even with these things being the case, I
still lacked balance inside myself. I hadn’t fully integrated. That struggle felt
like a subtle tug of war match inside me.

After. I pulled myself back together, I went to retrieve my daughters from

my wife’s place close by that she had moved to the previous summer during
our separation. She immediately dropped the news on me that thanks to our
little idea of doing Christmas together for the girl’s sake while drinking shit
loads of wine, we had broken the condom and she was officially pregnant.
Needless to say I was pretty detached from any sort of expectations for my
life at that point so, the news wasn’t that hard to receive. However, it still
wasn’t an easy going for us to come back together as a family. This meant
we had to work through our issues, and the quicker the better. This was
extremely difficult to accomplish, but thanks to the inner work I had just
previously done along with her having had plenty of time and space, we
worked through our issues very smoothly. That pregnancy saved our broken
marriage. We are now more in love and grounded in our relationship than
ever before. And still to this day, I underestimate the power of God to heal
broken things.

I was feeling done with the MFR seminars as a place for healing at this point.
I obviously had things to focus on and I didn’t see how there was any more
it could offer me being that things started to get shady down in South
Florida. I didn’t fully understand it nor was I interested in trying to. But
there was a part of me that was extremely curious and always thinking, If
that’s the kind of shit they would pull on me in beginner seminars, then
exactly what the fuck are they up to in his clinics in Sedona and Malvern?
And what about the advanced seminars? I wonder what happens to people

31
who show up to those seminars with their guard down in total surrender to
John and his crew? What would happen to me? Again, I didn’t put much
thought into those questions or what the potential answer might be. I had
shit to do, but if God ever pointed me that way again, I’d go, but with my
focus on the next seven months ahead preparing for our baby to arrive, I
didn’t worry much about it.

Suddenly, everything had changed. The other person involved I’ll keep
anonymous, but I will say that within a week of returning home, an entire
trip to Sedona including a T4T, airfare, lodging, and rental car was suddenly
offered to be completely paid for. For those who don’t know what the T4T
program is, It’s 15 hours of treatment spread over 5 days inside John’s
clinic. For patients and even for therapists, it can be extremely healing, or
extremely dangerous. This trip was suddenly paid for not by me and not
anyone I knew very well. Like out of nowhere. This is when I knew I was
being called up there. I just didn’t know why exactly. I thought I had
accomplished what I was supposed to. And I didn’t even think John would
allow me back into those seminars after all the shit that went down in South
Florida. I figured they would block my enrollment for a T4T based on the
“issues” they brought up in Captiva. So, I decided to write John a letter to
help ease any concerns by telling him my story and letting him know I was
in need of his help. This letter is where I’d say I was deceptive with John for
the first time. The letter was written from a very real place and included my
honest to God story and journey up to that point with the MFR seminars and
healing, but due to my split in consciousness, a bigger part of me knew I
was just trying to get him to drop his guard by stroking his Ego. And
hopefully by the end of the next chapter, you will see why you never want to
do that with people.

I still didn’t know what exactly I was going up there for. I knew I had to see
what was going on, but I also had concerns that if I did, I would become
fully compliant and bow down and become “one of them” which didn’t have
to be a bad thing necessarily being that I wasn’t sure if the same shit that
happened in Captiva would happen during my T4T. I just wouldn’t know until
I got there. That’s when I really had to weigh out the potential consequences
for going up there, because I knew if I went, I had to go in complete
surrender to the process. And what would that lead to? Me running around,
praising the name and work of some eighty-something year old guru of
sorts? I was obviously going regardless of the outcome. And through the
months leading up to this, I would say I regressed in my healing due the
tasks at hand. I justified it to myself like, I’ll catch up as soon as I get up
there and have the opportunity to let go again fully while having assistance
with gravity. That turned out to be a good lesson in what not to do in terms

32
of my healing as well not properly preparing for the resistance I was about
to face.


33
 7

Into the Vortex

(Sedona, Arizona —June, 2017 —T4T, Rebounding, Healing Seminar, and
Advanced Unwinding Courses)

Therapy On The Rocks (T4T)

I had the trip set up to where the T4T (15 hours of treatment by John and
his chosen ones spread over 5 days) with John came first and the advanced
seminar series followed the two weeks after. I stopped eating a few days
before I traveled to Sedona to help dissolve the boundaries that had
developed in the time that lapsed since Captiva, and to get me prepped for
submission. I knew one of two things could happen. John and his staff would
allow me to have my process, or they would have a process already
designed and try to fit me into it. Even knowing this, the only way I could
accomplish what I considered to be my mission, was to stay in total
surrender, detach from the outcome, and go as deep as possible.

As I approached the clinic on the first day, I said this simple prayer, God, I’m
going in, please stay close, And I walked in the door. While sitting down and
filling out the paperwork, a woman slowly walked by and did a light ever-so-
soft touch on my knee while saying, Hi Joel, I’m John’s Pet. (Real name
changed) This chick was definitely coming for me. It was a very slick
predatory move and she was very much wanting to be the one to get me to
break. She had the same energy and demeanor as the Scorpio down in
Captiva so instinctively my guard was up with her, but I’d give her a chance
if she played it well enough. I was flattered by her come-on in the same way
I’d be flattered by a girl flirting with me at a party when I was younger. It’s a
variation of the same behavior, but instead of my dick, she wanted my ego.

My first session was an initial evaluation/treatment with John’s Bitch Boy.

Bitch Boy comes rolling in with some SES participants (Independent
Therapists paying thousands of dollars to train in John’s clinic for a week)
and this guy obviously had a problem with me before walking through the
door alongside of an agenda. It was evident in his posture and his demeanor.
On top of that he was obviously annoyed by my lack of willingness to
properly complete the initial paperwork along with other things I couldn’t
quite put my finger on at the time. He asked if I was open to receiving
internal work (Internal work is when a licensed therapist legally sticks their
fingers in your ass and/or vagina to treat pelvic floor restrictions alongside

34
other potential tissue traumas. This is highly effective and serious work of
which Physical Therapists are allowed to perform with written consent in
most states) and I said, Bitch Boy, I didn’t come all this way NOT to get
some fingers in my ass. He tightened his lips in contempt for me as he
looked down at his clipboard and muttered, Well, we appreciate you coming
out. I was trying to get a feel for his sense of humor to see if I could lighten
him up. Nope. This is going to be interesting.

We then moved onto the treatment portion of the initial session. First, Bitch
Boy put extra effort into making sure that myself, and every SES participant
in the room was aware of how screwed up I was during his energetic and
physical assessment. Then he decided to go a head and immediately attempt
to exert his dominance over me within the first ten seconds. This was a little
disappointing and quite the shock to be getting this from a “pro”, but not
surprising to be getting it from this particular Bitch Boy. He actually kind of
apologized halfway through the session by saying, I know I’m being a little
rough on you but… He never finished that sentence and if it wasn’t for the
SES participants watching him do this, he never would have admitted it. But
I told him it was cool and to just go for it. It was a “do your worst” kind of
moment for me. So, he had his way with me which obviously derailed my
process and brought me into his. He later had his way with my butthole, but
we will get to that later on in the story. This was the first taste of the “tough
love” approach that John uses and teaches as a disguise for fear based
control. To put it simply, he was just doing what John had done to him. It’s a
subconscious thing from my perspective. To me, it’s similar to that of a
father bullying his son and then his son goes off to school to do the same
thing to weaker kids. Bitch Boy was just passing down what he had been
taught while having a temporary upper hand on me. Therapists in training
tend to view these methods as “next-level” or really “advanced”, but it is
absolutely and positively a dominance game that is 100% ego motivated.
However, I didn’t care at the time because I was there to take whatever it is
they were giving.

In any deep healing scenario, not asking yourself or anyone else the dreaded
question of “Why?” is necessary for healing in the realm of chaos by keeping
you out of the left hemisphere/rational part of your brain (Channel 5 in
John’s terms. This is so because it tends to shut down the healing process
which can block the answers to that potential question from coming up
intuitively. However, being in this state is dangerous around others because
you no longer have the ability to question the motives of the people who you
have given your power away to in that moment. John and his staff highly
encourage that you never ask the “Why?” question for the reasons I just
described about the left hemisphere conflicting with the right hemisphere for

35
healing. However, in the case of MFR, this also leads to you always viewing
yourself as the problem, and never the therapist/instructors/staff. They may
tell you to come back to your body, but what they’re really saying is, Come
back under my control. Maybe there’s a reason you left your body to begin
with. Maybe your instincts were smarter than you and got you the fuck out
of there. Maybe, maybe not, but I hope you’re able to see the danger of
allowing yourself to go in to this state while putting your trust in any kind of
professional anywhere, but especially in this fucked up scenario. You are in
an inferior power position in this kind of situation no matter where you are
or who you’re dealing with, but while in Channel 3/altered state, you are
much more susceptible to psychological manipulation. This is still true even
when that manipulation may be unintentional like it can sometimes be by
the instructors/therapists that I encountered while making my way through
MFR. Watch your fucking back! But anyways, back to the story…

I laid there and took it like a bitch from Bitch Boy because that’s what I was
there to do, it was really that simple for me at the time, like no problems at
all. And that shit continued while I desperately tried to find a route to get
some healing done in the limited space he was holding in that session. The
best chance I had was trying to relate it to a past experience, but there was
none. And that’s because I’ve never allowed anyone fuck with me like that
my whole life until that day.

My first session with John was next. There were some SES participants in
the room when John came in, and he allowed me to unwind freely which was
just as refreshing as it was a mind-fuck to experience the contrast between
him and his Bitch Boy. I didn’t realize at the time the extent to which John
outsources his dirty work to his mind slaves. During the session, he did a
version of the Slap Technique (a sloppy technique intended to bring trauma
to the surface) on my sacrum with his elbow. This didn’t transport me back
in time to the moment of impact as intended (I took some heavy falls on my
coccyx while growing up snowboarding), but I did unwind the energy of his
elbow making impact with my tailbone. However, the impression it gave the
SES participants was that the slap technique worked as it is taught and
performed by John in that moment. When in fact, the impact and set up for
that particular Slap Technique did nothing for me. It’s not like I wasn’t
completely open to being transported back in time because it certainly
sounded cool at the time. But when he set it up and his elbow made contact,
nothing happened so, I just played into the moment and that led to an
unwinding that authentically corrected/adjusted my lumbar spine. In other
words, I was just being a “good boy” for John. It was in that moment I
realized it was actually possible to “FAKE” a “REAL” unwinding just by playing
into it. (Think about the implications of that last sentence for a minute, or

36
maybe the rest of your life). After the session, I felt relieved and grateful
that John had authentically facilitated my process despite the silly technique
being tossed in. I’m still grateful for that session today.

The last session of the first day belonged to John’s Pet. Her dialogue, as
beautiful and sweet as it sounded, was nothing short of controlling,
mysterious, and downright confusing to experience. This was an intentional
move on her part, and it led to me genuinely confused as to what the fuck
was going on with ME. By confusing me in this manner while I was
unwinding, she is able to secure a seat in my mind as the most advanced
and this will hopefully lead to me continuing to look to her for the most
important answers to the questioning of myself, along with building a false
sense of trust. She had very subtly, stripped my personal power away with
an unofficial promise to return it later. John’s Pet was turning out to be quite
the little snake. I returned to my AirBnB to spend the rest of the night
wondering what the fuck was going on with ME.

The second day, I had an awesome session with John that was focused on
my structural needs and was incredibly accurate. I was very grateful for that
as well. Yet, I still couldn’t process at the time, why he treated one way and
his personally and heavily trained therapists treated a completely different
way. I understood that each therapist had their own gifts with the work, but
this was way off. As I mentioned before, John does not do his own dirty work
on newer people and people of a certain stature. This keeps the person
trusting John as the true master because you will feel safest with him during
this process, but make no mistake he will eventually come for anyone in the
same manner if it’s the right person in the right moment who gives him the
opportunity.

The rest of the day was filled with more of the same controlling and
confusing behavior alongside an awkward moment where one of the staff
members treating me was bullying the SES participant that she was
apparently training. It was the saddest example of advanced training I had
ever seen anywhere, in any type of training scenario. I felt awful for that girl
who was most likely, much more authentically advanced than the staff
member who was belittling her while teaching her how to be a bitch. That’s
some expensive training! However, I didn’t let that bother me because I was
more focused on the mission at hand and the fact that I was still like, What
the fuck? This state led to a very interesting deepening of my inner journey.

The third day started with going to John’s house for the titled “On The
Rocks” experience at his property. It was a cool little house on a hill with a
badass drum made out of a huge tree trunk in the living room. I went out

37
onto the rocks and into the dry river bed where I had a serious amount of
hallucinations and spiritually themed imagery going on behind my eyes
during an extremely powerful Sedona Vortex experience. This had a heavy
effect on my psyche and those vortexes are definitely not a joke. To those
that aren’t familiar with deep healing and reading this wondering, Is he on
drugs? The answer is no, surprisingly enough. Even to myself at the time.
This state of consciousness can be accomplished by natural means and
happens to us every night as we fall asleep, but when awake it tends to
come on heavy after your boundaries have been dissolved through emotional
expression or meditation.

We all went back inside John’s house where a group unwinding was to take
place with the group of intensive patients and SES therapists in training.
When it came time for my turn, I was all stirred up. When I let go, it was a
similar aggressive display to the main event in Captiva, except I no longer
needed an opponent. I growled and spun around in attempt to get everyone
to back off. John picked up on this and instructed everyone to stand back.
How refreshing that was! Besides, the only opponent I was dealing with was
within myself and we both knew it. It was a struggle with my own animal as
if I was doing whatever it took not to let it out again. As I popped and
twisted my way down to all fours John said, Ask yourself, what is it going to
take to give up the struggle? This was well timed dialogue by the master
himself. However, his spoken words in that moment threw me out of my
process because I was not in a place where I was looking for outside
influence. This should have been obvious by my aggressive display to BACK
OFF. This was something I always took into the woods at home, alone, and I
needed to conquer it on my own. John’s dialogue in that moment thwarted
my process further, but I understand where he was coming from. He was
going off of what he felt was right at the time. I assume this was based on
his decades of experience with people relying on him for facilitating dialogue,
or sometimes even worse, their personal savior. I ended up in tears of
frustration on the floor where I sensed that John had house cats, which I
later confirmed with Bitch Boy. I am incredibly allergic to cats which is
interesting enough, but especially considering what was symbolically taking
place during that unwinding. After that, I gratefully caught a ride in the Bitch
Boy Mobile back to the clinic for my remaining treatment sessions.

Arriving back at the clinic, I had some time to chill and go for a swim in Oak
Creek. This was followed by an uneventful session with a fill-in therapist who
didn’t quite earn a fun character name for this book. That session was
followed by some internal work with Bitch Boy who obviously won the rock-
paper-scissor match with John’s Pet. The winner was going to be the one
who got to dominate my asshole. Well played Bitch Boy. Just kidding, I

38
imagine it was more of a first come first serve thing. He licked his lips and
slid his fingers in my ass ever-so-gently. Okay maybe there wasn’t any lick
lipping. Well, who knows. Maybe he did. I wasn’t really looking to make eye
contact with him in that moment if you know what I mean. I was busy with
my eyes closed getting open and ready to receive a good fingering. It turned
out to be quite uneventful in there. It seems I’m not much of a tight-ass
believe it or not. There was no pain or discomfort, just really humbling to lay
there and take it for a half an hour. Yes, it went on for that long. This was no
hit it and quite it proctologist appointment, folks. Bitch Boy even made a
funny joke about going elbow deep in my ass for a minute. We were
apparently good pals all of the sudden. I enjoyed the humor because after
all, this was actually really ridiculous to experience. As he was leaving the
room and now feeling like he owned me he said, You know all those
movements you’re doing in your videos and all the people in the seminars
going like this? (He mimicked the typical movement of outstretched arms of
unwinding as he said this), They’re just learning, okay? He apparently felt
like he had me in a submissive enough place to deliver this “advanced”
insight into what it really means to unwind according to them. This is one of
the many stabs he made about my online content and I’ll explain more
about this… right now.

A few of John’s staff members were not fans of how I was representing
unwinding online. A big reason is childlike jealousy of the amount of
attention I was receiving laced with a who does this guy think he is? kind of
attitude. Bitch Boy made this clear while the others were a bit more passive.
My videos were also dangerous to them in a deeper sense. I was always
alone, and I was doing things by myself and without their help. With that
and other reasons they chose not to actively communicate, they just didn’t
like how I was representing unwinding. To put it more simply, they just
didn’t like ME.

Letting go and unwinding as it’s typically seen and experienced in the

seminars, is an extremely unstructured mode of being. Especially when it’s
the first time for people. It’s total chaos which is necessary for healing and it
feels incredible while producing serious therapeutic results. This is ideal to
get people hooked and coming back for more, but not ideal for very long
when the ultimate agenda is to get you under their control. John’s mind
slaves feel that what is best for you is to be in as controlled of a state as
John has them in. They see a power in it that they themselves want and
subconsciously pass the control down the line along with many other
behaviors that aren’t so good. However, they feel justified in getting you
under their control. When you are under their control while in Channel 3/
altered state, you are completely surrendered and your nervous system has

39
disengaged. This means you are wide open to having the tissues of your
body be released and manipulated by a therapist. This has high therapeutic
value, but at what cost? Healing chronic pain while deeply disturbing the
spirit? And is there a better way? I’m pretty fucking sure there is. It’s being
detached enough so they feel safe enough. People will get there on their own
if John’s crew would just detach and stop wanting it so badly. They don’t
want the healing to happen to you, and for you. They want the healing to
happen to you, for THEM! This changes things at the deepest level of
healing.

Besides all that, they are more concerned with the subtleties of unwinding
which would be the most advanced and will get you hooked harder and
quicker than anything else. That’s only if they can get you there. And I
believe it is advanced by definition because it is extremely difficult to
accomplish in our normal day to day lives and even in deep healing
scenarios. As the patient in this state of being, you can literally put your
awareness on anything inside your own body and start to unravel it with
your own mind through visualization/imagination. I found that it also works
simultaneously and you can manipulate an already present piece of imagery.
Which is the chicken and which is the egg? I don’t know, but all of this is
being done through the imagination and/or influenced by the collective, as
far as I can tell. A good example of this would be focusing on your tight knee
and a flower bud simultaneously appears behind your eyes. You then start to
make it bloom with your mind and the tissue begins to release and unwind in
that area of focus. It is difficult to accomplish, but for me it is very real and
has actually led to authentic tissue changes. This appears to be doable after
a good amount of unwinding, and for short periods of time. It can be time
consuming, but you won't notice because it’s a timeless dimension. This is
obviously not very practical for most people to accomplish in a reasonable
amount of time, but especially not in their busy daily lives. I’m sure there
are gifted people out there who can do this quickly and at any moment they
choose, but they will most likely be a schizophrenic living in the shadows.
And just like everybody else, they will ultimately get a disease and die. It
doesn’t appear to be anything special in the grand scheme of things. Sure is
cool, though.

When viewing a person experiencing this objectively, you can not tell that
anything significant is happening. They’re pretty much just lying there. With
these things, we are obviously operating well outside the typical patient-
therapist relationship. There is much more to their advanced unwinding then
just this though. I’ll describe this in a minute, but for now, back to the
story…

40
My next session was with John’s Pet. She was doing an occipital release and
the moment the tissue let go, I had a vision of thousands of scorpions
pouring out of a whole in the ground. I said out loud, Huh, scorpions. She
said, What does that mean to you? She actually said that! She had finally
given me an authentic piece of detached dialogue! Unfortunately, she
followed that up with her normal behavior and attempted to get me under
her control by, Come back to your body. Now, I’m not saying I wasn’t
leaving my body. I actually was. To me, this was an instinctive response to
avoid her control, not escape my own healing process. (Really think about
what I just said there if you’ve been in a similar situation) Getting seriously
outside of your body allows you to enter in to a symbolic realm which is
extremely valuable for the temporary avoidance of trauma, but also for
information retrieval alongside getting an objective view of what you’re
actually experiencing. She wouldn’t let me have that, not even for a second,
it was so annoying. But since the problem was ME I stayed there and got
worked over by my new Mommy.

I honestly can’t remember for the life of me who was the Therapist for this
next session I’m about to describe, but it was the only one I had with her
which makes me assume she was a fill-in. I was in the same room as the
session with John’s Pet prior and she had left the room, but I stayed waiting
for my next session with a different therapist that was scheduled soon after.
I had remained in a submissive state thanks to my new Mommy, so I was
wide open. At some point during cranial work where both of us were silent
and I had my eyes closed, I began to see a flickering light that I couldn’t
bring into focus. This wasn’t unfamiliar to me inside or outside of MFR
training/seminars, but it was a first during this T4T/attempted cult initiation.
Once I brought the light into focus, it turned into a tunnel of white light that
was coming towards me and flooding my awareness. I suddenly broke focus
and it returned back to a flicker of light. The therapist then said, No, no, go
back to the light. Can’t say I was stoked that she was in my head, but this
was a rare meditation come by so I accepted and went into the light. It’s a
pleasant experience, and I still experience it a couple times a week today
during meditation. It disengages the nervous system and you can fall into a
deep rest. It’s pretty fucking cool, but it doesn’t have a lot of power behind it
outside of that.

Here’s the issue I have with “the light” experiences in the presence of cults.
With a divine style experience like this, such as the one taking place in this
story inside of this clinic, comes subtle control methods to manipulate you
and get you into a submissive state. From there, they will claim to guide you
toward your own intuition just as long as your own intuition doesn’t conflict
with theirs and most importantly, just as long as your intuition doesn’t guide

41
you away from needing them. Hopefully from there, you start ignoring every
opinion, criticism, or guidance outside of John or the Guru’s wisdom. What
can happen to people with this experience is that they now have spiritual
superiority over everyone who has not experienced this phenomena. They
sometimes view it as contacting source/God and maybe it is to a small
extent, but being that this light experience has a divine quality to it and is
being used by someone with a self serving agenda…. You are not in the
presence of the divine. You are in the presence of absolute bullshit. This is
what I refer to as the Dark Arts. Back to the story..

The rest of that session got weird for sure, I just can’t remember it. I left the
clinic after that session in the most interesting state of mind ever. I was
simple minded and unable to process anything. All I had going on was this
peculiar feeling as if I was a little child who had just witnessed his brother do
something his father said never to do. Back at my Airbnb, I was looking in
the mirror with my hands to my cheeks not knowing what was going on, but
was feeling something like, oooooooohhh they are going to be in so much
troooouuuble… I didn’t know what this feeling meant nor did I fully
understand why I was having it, but I knew something was shockingly wrong
in a way I couldn’t even comprehend at the time. However, this was now a
problem, and I had to deal with it. I couldn’t return to these people the next
day looking and feeling like this. That would lead to me calling them out and
exposing the part of me that was aware of their agenda. I had to stay the
course if I was going to make it to the advanced seminars following my week
in the clinic. They would definitely be on to me now so, I prayed heavily and
went even deeper into a weekend state. It was a weird night.

The next morning we had a group session where all the patients including
myself and SES participants gathered for some sort of class with Bitch Boy.
He had us each share what we were personally going through with the
group. I was a mess and I shared what I was going through broadly, but
honestly. Bitch Boy could not have been more clear in the tone of his
response that he didn’t give a fuck about what I had going on. Fortunately, I
couldn’t have cared less, but still, what a little Bitch. This was followed by
some sort of guided meditation where we listened to him read a piece of
paper with the enthusiasm of a bored pre-teen who’s Daddy made him read
the same shit out loud over and over again for years. It was Bitch Boy-ness
at its best.

The Cat

There was an hour or so break before my main sessions of the day. I took a
short hike up a hill and made my way back down and into my treatment

42
room back at the clinic. While laying on the table down for whatever as
usual, a woman walks in. There was something different about her entire
presence. She seemed more pure to me as if she wasn’t yet corrupted. She
was obviously a new therapist and I hadn’t heard of or seen her before. It
was as if she was not yet aware of what was really going on in this clinic and
organization. I told her it was nice to see her and that I had something deep
that I would like to explore. She replied with total understanding, Sure.
Whatever you need. Finally! There was legitimate respect for my process.
With this, a small window was open to go deep in my own direction and I
jumped through it. Within a couple minutes I had alternated between joy,
laughter, and tears all the way down to the ground. I was so grateful for the
purity of space she was holding in those moments and I kept going deeper.
Once my physical body melted into the floor, I saw an eagle fly across my
vision and my consciousness immediately went airborne over Sedona. At the
time and still to this day, I believe I was getting an accurate aerial view of
Oak Creek Canyon and the surrounding landscape. While flying around and
in between red rock pillars, I looked directly below me and saw a head of a
bird. So, it’s not like I was the bird in this moment, but it was more like
riding on the back of it while having it’s vision. Say what? Pretty fucking
cool. On my approach of one of the bigger towers I decided to fly up over it.
As I was flying across the flat top I was excited, but then I came to the edge
and looked down. This was a big moment of hesitation. It was a mid-air stall
of sorts. At that moment of hesitation, the therapist in the room with me
who was doing nothing except laying gentle hands on me noticed the pause
in my body. She intuitively said, Go for it, it’s time. And so I did. I soared
down the edge of this cliff in a free fall and immediately landed back in my
body inside of the clinic, and guess who showed up behind my eye lids? Do
you remember that two-dimensional neon-blueish-purplish cat from my first
MFR seminar eighteen months prior? Well there it was again for the first time
since that day, bouncing all around my vision like it was playing with me. I
moved onto my hands and knees with my eyes closed and my head looking
around trying to catch the little fucker. I was starting to get aggravated that
I couldn’t bring it into my focus. I ended up shouting in command (in my
head) COME HERE! And just like that it was right up in my face more vibrant
in color and detail than ever before. It was up in my business like… What? I
was taken back a bit by its willingness to cooperate in that moment as I
said, Who the fuck are you? Before I had even finished asking that question,
it cut me off by saying, I AM….YOU! I laughed in response, but I was really
enjoying the little fucker so I accepted his claim by saying, Well okay then!
As I said that, the image of this cat in my face immediately rushed towards
me as it disappeared through me. Kind of like how one would envision a
ghost passing through them. I was immediately filled with what I can only
speculate was pure feline energy. It was very similar to when I went into the

43
all fours position with the Shaman in Captiva, but the difference was that I
was so unbelievably calm and centered. To me, it felt like a full embodiment
due to my acceptance of this strange creature/me. I was stretching my arms
out while clawing into the carpet. My whole body had entered into the most
satisfying state of stretching I had ever experienced. Every time my fingers,
or should I say claws, dug in to the carpet, it was borderline orgasmic as I
was like a kitty on catnip clawing a scratch post. It was easily one of the
most satisfying things I had ever experienced apart from sex. However,
there was zero sexual arousal, but the satisfaction was almost better. Maybe
that’s because it was different. What a beautifully crazy experience! It’s one
of my favorites to this day. To the therapist that was alone with me in John’s
office during this experience that afternoon… You know who you are. Thank
you, I love you, and I got your back anytime.

I had a ten minute break before my next session. Since I was all fucked up
on that cat juice, I decided to take the new wheels for a spin in the parking
lot upstairs. I had a whole new sprint and gait to explore along with some
new and certainly crazy ideas. With this came many joyful feelings, and I felt
for the first time that if I were to drink water at that moment, it would
actually absorb into my body instead of passing right through. I grabbed two
gallons of water from my car and went back into the clinic for my next
session. When I returned to my treatment room, John’s Pet decided to pop
her head in the room like the jealous girl at the party wanting to know what
happened between me and her friend while she was in the other room. She
had apparently heard the news. She did her best to pretend she was excited
for me instead of threatened by me. I was expressing my excitement to her
and she didn’t even attempt to shut it down or fuck with me. It was obvious
that I wasn’t going to be affected by her typical poopy-pants behavior in that
moment. I was lit up! We hugged it out and she left the room.

That next session was with a different therapist who was chill and we
focused solely on structural work. This was a good move on her part. She
ended up pulling my tongue out of the back of my throat where it had been
stuck for years. Awesome technique, and awesome awareness of the
therapist and SES participant involved. I was deep in channel 3/altered state
at this point. I got up off the table grabbing my schedule to see what session
was up next. It was a group class about self-care and self-unwinding with
John’s Pet. I thought to myself, Thanks, but no thanks. This party is going
outside. Whatever was happening in that moment I didn’t fully understand,
but there was a sense of urgency. I needed to keep the process going and
get the fuck away from their influence fast. I ran into the front desk girl on
my way out and let her know I was bailing out for the day. As I was walking
out the door she stopped me and said, Hey, you should go out onto the

44
rocks. I replied, Brilliant suggestion, I will do that! I got in my car only to
realize that I had left my water supply in the clinic somewhere. It turns out
it was in the room where the group session with John’s Pet had started and
where I was “supposed” to be. I walked in the room, grabbed my water,
said, Gotta go, love you guys. And off I went.

On The Rocks


This was no time to try and figure out where I was going and make a big
deal of it. I was pretty fucked up and I needed to get somewhere into nature
fast. Luckily, this is easy to come by with the pristine nature of Sedona,
Arizona. I drove about a half mile up the canyon from John’s clinic where on
the left is a pull over spot that sits at the base of a dry river bed coming
down from a large red rock pillar and two smaller peaks. I felt the need to
get my physical self to some sort of high ground. The sun was about an hour
from setting behind the mountains which gave me plenty of time before
dark. Barefoot, shirtless, and still in my underwear, I trekked up the dry
river bed to head up to a peak that overlooked Oak Creek Canyon. At the
top, there was a massive flat red rock overhanging the edge of the small
mountain. It had a Pride Rock from the movie “The Lion King” kind of feel to
it. I thought to myself, Perfect!

Once I made it to the top, I set my water down and walked out onto the
overhang. I closed my eyes as I dropped down onto my right knee, and the
moment my knee touched the ground I felt two hands lay gently on my back
while simultaneously hallucinating an endless line of people in a chain on
each side of me. They were all kneeling down with me as if to say, You’re not
alone. At the time, this experience was cool, but it didn’t have a lot of power
behind it for whatever reason. It was kind of like, Well, that’s neat. It’s as if
I was getting bored with the hallucinations at this point. I wanted to go
deeper so I flopped down onto my stomach while hugging the rock as I
started to melt. Exhale by exhale, deeper and deeper I went.

Moments after exhaling my last breath, a Tiger came across my vision from
the right and moving towards my left. This incredibly vibrant, sexy-ass Tiger
walked slowly and mysteriously while staring directly into my eyes. He was
walking in some sort of strut like he was just THE shit. He was carrying a
message that was just as powerful as it was downright hilarious. He wanted
ME to know, that HE knew without a doubt, that HE was fucking beautiful!
The interpretation I received in that moment was to accept how beautiful I
am. What!? That was an interesting way to deliver a message of self
acceptance, but hey, it worked! As the image of this Tiger moved off to my
far left and out of site, I felt a shift in my body. I could no longer tell the

45
difference between me and the rock that I was tripping balls on while
“sober”. Moments later, with my breath still fully exhaled and my body
melting, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of vulnerability and femininity. I
had apparently turned into a chick all of the sudden. There was a respiratory
type motion taking place within me, but it wasn’t within me at the same
time. I certainly wasn’t breathing, but this motion was me! I was her! There
was an extremely slow expansion and contraction. I would slowly raise up
and then gently come back down. This was a timeless space so it’s difficult
to tell, but I would say it mimicked the contraction-expansion phase of the
craniosacral rhythm. However, my body’s rhythms were long gone at this
point. This was somewhere and something else. However, it didn’t take long
before I knew what this was! Outside of being the most womb-like
experience to date, I had just synced my nervous system to the vibration of
the earth itself. To put it in a more new-age language, it was total Oneness
with Gaia herself! There was no longer a difference between “it” and “I”.

This was a hell of a thing to experience, but being an extremist of sorts, I

wanted more. I wanted to know where this was going and how far it could
be taken. So, I let go some more. I felt my heart beat three times real fast,
bump, bump, bump, as if my whole body was a shell off in the distance.
Then, I was gone. I wasn’t “here” or “there”, but I had full awareness of my
body separate from the earth and it felt totally safe and under my complete
control. It was as if I could choose to make my heart beat again and take a
breath at anytime, but there was no urgency about it. I was in-between
somehow. Total presence and nothingness like I’ve never experienced. There
was nothing to do, and nowhere to go! My whole life was spent DOING stuff,
but not in this place. It’s pure BEING, but something was missing. What was
missing was responsibility. It was the ultimate place to escape for a person
with the ultimate avoidance issues.

It was dark in this place, but it wasn’t the least bit scary. There was just
nothing to do, see or even FEEL! That was the most interesting part about it.
Of course, I kept letting go and I began to see something in the bottom left
of my vision, way off in the distance. It was a small vortex of colors coming
towards me and moving slightly to the right. As it got closer, I could see it
was the colors of the chakras swirled together and starting to separate as
they got closer. The whole thing started to form into a human figure sitting
in the double lotus position (common meditative pose used in buddhist style
meditation). And to my surprise at the time, this figure was being
represented as ME, or rather a potential version of me. I wasn’t surprised by
this because of the double lotus position that I can’t pull off, but more
because of its perceived superiority. It moved slowly away from my center
and started to go up and to the right as “I” was being put up on an altar of

46
sorts where I was to be worshiped. And the path to achieve this hyper-
enlightened and exalted reality was laid out clearly, Walk away from
everything you have ever known and retreat into meditation. As I was
looking at this image of me and understanding this message, it was
unbelievably tempting to accept this invitation because the space I was in
was so stellar along with this image. But even in this unbelievable realm of
spiritual visions and experiences, my rebellious instincts were still able to
pick up on the fact that a little snake had just subtly hijacked my
experience. It went from being oneness with everything to being all about
ME, ME, ME! Well, isn’t that a nice little path to self-righteousness? It is in
experiences like this that cult leaders and Guru’s are born. God is the bigger
picture, but the devil is in the details. Look the fuck out! This was a trap and
I knew it without even knowing it because fortunately, even though I was
way the fuck out there, I simply responded to this invitation by saying,
Bullshit, I’m going home, or who knows where I’d be today. I could have
taken this vision and ran any which way with it or believe I had just reached
the esoteric yogi version of a “Christ-like” state. Had that been the case, I
certainly wouldn’t be challenging and developing myself in the struggle of
being a good husband and father like I am today. I would instead be
meditating my life away in a hut in the woods running in circles with the
great mystery while my abandoned wife and kids struggled to understand
my “higher” calling. What good would I be to anyone at that point? A good
question to ask now is… did my spiritual belief system hold me back from
achieving something in that moment? Yes it did, and I am so grateful for
that.

I took my first calm inhale as I felt my heart beat gently. I opened my eyes
and looked around. The sun was exactly where it was just about to set below
the red rock tower to the west. This whole experience from when I went
down on that rock to when I finally opened my eyes had lasted maybe five
minutes at the most. I slowly moved to the standing position. Looking down
towards John’s clinic, I began formulating the craziest of plans for the rest of
my experience with John and his therapists inside the MFR seminars. My
mission remained, but there was an updated version now available. It was
like crazy idea 2-point-O. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide and I had to
make it through my last day at John’s Clinic. After that, I would have a break
before the advanced seminars began the following two weeks. I very quickly
and psychotically concluded that, the only way I can continue to get around
these people without getting kicked out is to be so damn unpredictable that
even I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. This wasn’t far off from the
reality I had been living, but this was some next level shit I was scheming.
The thought process was if I didn’t know what I was doing anymore, they
would stand zero chance of picking up on it, and that would drive them even

47
crazier. And then I’d have friends ;) This was a ridiculous leap to be made,
not knowing what would come of it. But it’s not like this was different from
what I had been doing with their games this entire time, I just became
aware of it enough to decide on it as my continued course of action. I did
question the deceptive nature of this, but I got around that by thinking, if
they are going to play mind games, I’ll play too.

Feeling good about things to come, I headed down the mountain. As I

reached the dry river bed that would lead me to my car, the weight of what I
had just been through was starting to leave me shell shocked as reality was
setting in. How in the fuck was I going to integrate this experience into my
daily life exactly? I had no clue whatsoever. I just kept letting it go as I
rolled on down the river bed eventually ending up at my car where I
chugged a gallon of water while taking the most satisfying piss of my life.
I’m really glad that I remembered that piss just now. The rest of that
evening was my first attempt at journaling my week so far, but I was in so
deep my eyes could only gaze forward.

I walked in for my last day of the Therapy for the Therapist Program to have
a couple of sessions that were with fill-in therapists who were no longer
attempting to dialogue with me. This kept distraction to a minimum and I
was grateful that my last day was going smoothly. Then, John’s Pet arrived
for my exit evaluation with an SES Therapist in tow. She came in, clipboard
in hands, with quite the little chip on her shoulder. She was clearly in bitch-
mode about me not feeling her session the day before was worthy of my
attendance, and she apparently had a bone to pick with me. I hadn’t seen
this version of John’s Pet before. She looked like a pissed off librarian coming
to collect some late return fees. I did my best to talk her down with some
light jokes, but it didn’t help. I even tried to share with her some of my
experience out on the rocks. As I was telling her about the sexy tiger and
other crazy stuff, she cut me off by waving her hands as she said, Forget all
that stuff! Everything your doing, you need to stop! She then got up in my
face and said, Joel, I’m saying this to you as a Mother, YOU need
boundaries! YOU walked in the CLOSED DOOR of a Physical Therapy Clinic
without having any consideration for the other people in that room! What
about everyone else Joel? She was referencing the day before when I felt
her class wasn’t worthy of my attendance. This didn’t sit well with her
obviously. She was trying to beat me down into submission with a well
executed guilt trip, that was noticeable right away. There was truth to what
she was saying. However, what she seemed to be forgetting is that she was
talking to a grown man who was somehow a Tiger that was balls deep in a
T4T experience, with John Barnes, and in Sedona! What exactly did she
think this was? I did need boundaries, but where she really fucked up was by

48
thinking it was her place to give them to me. Who was she even talking to?
What world was this chick living in? I’ll dissolve and create my own
boundaries thank you very much.

This was not the time for thinking like that. I had to put all of my energy into
playing it cool. Knowing that her status was higher than that of the Scorpio’s
down in Captiva and that she was much more important to John, challenging
her would get me booted for sure. So, I took it. And sitting there playing
“good boy” for this woman in that brief moment was one of the hardest
things I had to do that week, but I was surprisingly quick to let it go before
she had finished her rant. By the time she finished, I just laughed and said, I
love you John’s Pet. She replied with total annoyance, I love you too, but…
She was shaking her head as she decided not to finish that sentence. I
followed by saying, That was one of the most powerful experiences of my life
out on those rocks, and I was right where I was supposed to be. Now, are
you guys going to try and put a leash on my power animal? And she replied
in a hurry, No! And we would never try! I was thinking to myself, WRONG!
You just did and you’ve been trying this whole week you crazy bitch. But I
reluctantly kept my mouth shut. The rest of the session was dedicated to
structural work where she excessively dialogued with me through every,
single, release in her final desperate attempt to convince me that I needed
her.

I walked out on to the back deck of the clinic for one last swim in Oak Creek
to sort of cleanse myself of this experience and I ran into the SES Therapist
that was just in the room with myself and John’s Pet. She patted me on the
back as to offer me comfort from my previous session saying, Don’t worry,
you’ll get it someday. She was actually right about that statement. Just in
the wrong context. To her, not only was it perfectly okay what happened in
that session, she could only see me as the problem in it. That’s when I
realized how compromised some of these therapists in training had already
become. It’s for people just like her, that I’m writing this book.

Time Out

It was Friday afternoon. My T4T was over and I was back at my AirBnb. I
was missing my six month pregnant wife and daughters terribly and
fortunately they were set to arrive in a couple days to spend the remaining
two weeks with me. I received a message from a childhood friend I hadn’t
seen in over ten years who had seen an Instagram post of mine from when I
had first arrived in Sedona. He told me he was now living outside of Phoenix
and had a guest room I could stay in if I was able to make it out. Since I
was scheduled to pick up my family from Phoenix Airport by his house, I

49
decided to check out of my Airbnb early to spend the rest of the weekend
with an old friend. A quick vacation outside of the Vortex of Sedona, was
exactly what I needed. And to reunite with an old friend from my childhood
turned out to be a perfect experience for getting grounded in my roots. I
picked up all of my beautiful girls (minus a rabbit and a dog) from the
airport and we headed straight back to Sedona. We checked in to an Airbnb
cottage that sat right on Oak Creek and enjoyed the next few days exploring
and hiking Sedona, and even made it up to the Grand Canyon before the
seminar series started on Thursday.

At this time, I was feeling a buffer was needed between John and I before
heading in to the classes ahead. I decided the best move was to write a
review and highly endorse the T4T/cult initiation experience on John’s closed
Facebook group “MFR Insight” since I noticed all his “good girls and boys”
had done that. This review was deceitful in a way, but mostly very honest. I
just focused on the good quality’s of each therapist while leaving out my
concerns. I also praised the master accordingly to keep John believing that
my respect level for him was still on the rise as opposed to the opposite. My
hopes with this approach was to get him to instruct his troops to back off.
My motivations behind this was more strategy than honesty and I’m sorry if
my temporary endorsement led to anybody’s negative T4T experience, I
mean that! The T4T is a brilliant concept, and for patients and therapists in
chronic pain it can be a godsend. It just depends on the ultimate agenda of
the Therapists treating them and if that agenda can penetrate a patients
mind.

Myofascial Rebounding Course

This was a fun course. The John on stage was super relaxed and being his
usual wise, fun, and smart-ass self. There was a bunch of awesome new
therapists that I met. Bitch Boy was there. Fancy that. He was still coming
up to fuck with me and shut me down when I was unwinding. He kept up the
confusing dialogue, but I shook it off pretty quick each time. Anytime
someone started to unwind with me as the therapist, he was quick to come
take power over the situation. This kind of behavior is nothing new based on
what I’ve described in this book so far, but when it’s being done in a
seminar, it is being done because you genuinely need the help, or in my
case, it was being done to purposely stunt my growth and confidence as a
therapist. This is a subtle delivery of a message that says, “you’re not ready,
and you still need our help.” At one point while I was with a woman who was
unwinding, Bitch Boy came up, took his shoe off and stepped on her back.
Once he was finished, I whispered in his ear, Would you have taken your
shoe off if it was me? He looked at me from his peripheral with a slight smile

50
and said, Of course, as he walked away. We were now officially flirting. Your
move Bitch Boy ;)

Outside of this dude being all up in my business, it was going pretty well as
far as me blending in and still being able to get more information out.
However, I wasn’t the only one who was being shut down during unwinding.
It was pretty much everybody and it was very noticeable. I had a guy on the
table start to unwind and an instructor ran up right away and said, No, don’t
let him unwind, don’t let him unwind! He needs to stay with the technique!
This made sense if you were in any other seminar learning therapeutic
techniques, but this is a John Barnes seminar. What the fuck lady?

So, check this out. An interesting moment shortly after, was when John was
up on stage and his primary Bitch was in the back with the rest of the
instructors. She called out to John and said, Will you please let everybody
know not to unwind so they can stay with the technique longer and
experience it? At least there was an explanation for their behavior now. John
looked at her shaking his head as if she was fucking dumb for even asking.
He replied, And have them miss out on one of the most important
experiences of their lives? This was obviously a shady situation. These
instructors were obviously taught this by John, but here he was completely
contradicting their behavior in front of the class. He knows, even if they’re
incredibly confused by this, they will never dare question him about it. This
is how John keeps the trust with students while his staff does all his dirty
work. This is so the trust with John himself is never broken which hopefully
keeps you seeking him. However, the most peculiar part about his response
to her in that moment was that it was authentic and he actually believed
what he said to her! It was written all over his face. That was the first
moment when I woke up to the possibility that the John on stage was a well
developed Persona, but that was a little to much of a mind-fuck for me in
that moment so, I let it go. For the rest of the seminar, the instructors
backed off and we all had some freedom to unwind which had way more of
an overall therapeutic benefit than the potential education of “staying with
the technique”. Unwinding should be the priority and experiencing the
technique should be second in my opinion, but back to the story….

I walked up to Bitch Boy at the end of the Rebounding Seminar to ask him a
question. With the next seminar being the healing seminar (introductory
self-care seminar for patients & therapists that’s open to the public) and my
wife and kids getting a little restless, I asked him, Do you think it would be
alright with John if I skipped the first day and came the last two so I could
spend some time with my girls? He shrugged his shoulders as he said, I
don’t know, with a tone and look on his face that was challenging my

51
priorities. I replied, No problem! And I skipped the entire seminar without
notice. That’s what personal freedom looks like, Bitch Boy. Suck on that.

I went on some hikes for as long as my super sexy six month pregnant wife
could manage during a Sedona summer heat wave. We went to the store
and stocked the house with groceries to get us by until the end of the trip. I
got a text from one of the therapists I had met and he said a group of
therapists were heading down to Oak Creek in the evening for a swim and to
do some unwinding in the water. I was in and made the drive to meet up. It
was a good size group, but only myself and three other guys went into the
creek to do a group unwinding. I went first and did some heavy breathing to
get rolling. One guy in particular was very advanced when it comes to John
and his instructors methods. Being a good student of John’s, he was monkey
see, monkey do. The monkey was very quick to turn the whole thing into
something that resembled a frat boy hazing. My head was being dunked and
held under water pretty much constantly. I’m not saying this can’t be
beneficial when used with the intentions for helping someone overcome the
fear of death or resurfacing an old drowning experience/trauma, but it’s not
so good when the intentions of the therapist doing this is strictly to dominate
you and achieve an ego boner.

Somebody had been quite the little sponge of John’s ways. During this
experience and all the others in Sedona, I was in the mode of “experience
now, make sense of it later.” I came out of the water from this experience
shaking and traumatized while the therapists on shore clapped at my
fantastic ability to “Unwind” or as I like to refer to that moment; taking it
like a bitch. I didn’t know what happened, but I understood it like a game,
and I was looking for revenge. Unfortunately for that scheme, the Monkey
who tried to dominate me didn’t want to take a turn unwinding with the
group. He had apparently deemed himself as above having the need to
participate. So, I went after the next culprit and just about drown that
fucker. Just kidding. I just let him panic for a second. I hope that worked out
for you in some sort of magical subconscious way, man! Much love! Seriously
though, I’m not proud to have taken part in that unwinding or whatever the
hell you want to call that. But I still love everybody that was involved. Even
the Monkey.

Later, at dinner with the group, I attempted to communicate my concerns on

what my experience was like in the river to everyone because they had
asked. I just couldn’t articulate it at the time so, I just kept it to myself. To
all those people at the creek and dinner that evening, you know who you
are, I love you guys and I am grateful for the friendships that were formed
from chilling with you guys that night.

52
It was now the last day before Advanced Unwinding was set to begin, and I
needed some solo time on top of a mountain somewhere to set some
intentions and prepare. I hiked up another dry river bed until the mountain
went vertical in the classic Sedona red rock tower kind of way. Scaling
sideways at the base of a pillar, I was finding new ways to climb to the next
level. At one point during the climb and about halfway up the base of the
tower, I came across a small cougars den. I was pumped and genuinely
excited at the time of the possibility of meeting a cougar. No joke. I really
had that kind of mindset.

It was a small cave, but it had an awesome view. I liked this cat’s style. I set
up my phone inside the cave pointing outwards to record a video of my
cliffside shenanigans, and just in case a territorial dispute went down
between me and the rightful homeowner. Upon viewing the video later, I did
a screen shot of the moment I was setting my intentions (that picture is on
the cover of this book). I couldn’t hold back anymore. Not being able to let
go fully in a seminar like this was frustrating. And on top of that, I had a shit
load of information to process, but I knew it all had to wait. That fire in my
gut that I hadn’t felt since Captiva had returned and gotten unavoidable.
This was the last little hoorah in my MFR seminar journey and I knew it. It
was time to keep it real once again with no attachment to the outcome. I
planned on keeping it cool for the first day and waiting for the right
opportunity to let go at some point on the second or third day.

Advanced Unwinding

This seminar was the one I had been looking forward to and the one I’ve
been referring to in this story when I would say, “Advanced seminars.” I
walked in on the first day to a new group energy. I had rented a table from
John’s Clinic and John had Bitch Boy place it right in front of John’s desk in
the back. Just like my school teachers used to do. This was no different. He
obviously wanted to keep a close eye on me. I saw this as John’s way of
communicating that I was a trouble maker that needed to behave, obviously
while avoiding face to face confrontation. Absolutely ridiculous. I thought to
myself, Yeah, I’ll be doing whatever the hell I want. The little rebel bastard
in me was definitely starting to come out as John’s version of “tough love”
was starting to show its ugly fearful face. I spent the rest of the first day
working with people who had tables on the opposite side of the room. John
didn’t like that. Also, Bitch Boy made his usual appearance to step on my
toes as the therapist, and use confusing dialogue on me as the patient. I
was mostly forgiving at this point, but still slightly annoyed. The first day
had officially gone by.

53
On the second day, I continued my avoidance of the bad little boy table John
had set up for me. I started to notice John’s teachings were becoming
extremely specific to what he thought I needed to hear. This was no
coincidence and I knew it. To me this was really pathetic communication, as
it always is with John and his organization. It’s like dude, if you got a
problem with me, say it to me one on one while looking me in the eye. But
that’s not how John does things, and that’s unfortunate for him. Now, we get
to the official introduction of The Slap Technique.

John gave his demo and explanation of the uses for the slap technique. The
idea behind it is to use it as a way of taking the client back to the moment of
trauma in their mind and then recreating it with the use of force in the form
of a “slap” in a specific place on their body at a specific moment. This is the
only technique that I experienced John teaching that regardless of its
plausibility, is just downright dumb and way out of scope. It’s only purpose
in the seminar is to use it as a disguise for a control method. I don’t
recommend doing this to anyone ever. Even if it appears to have worked in
the past. Unless you have extensive experience in hypnosis and trauma
treatment, just don’t even fuck with it. Back to the story…

We all retreated to our tables and partnered up as usual. I was working with
a guy who was close to my age and a very sweet individual. When John gave
the class the signal, my partner gave me a slap on the side of the jaw and it
did nothing for me. But everyone was just playing along so, I took the
opportunity to do a focused unwinding on my jaw to help me blend in. John
spotted my lack of reaction to the slap. According to the guy I was working
with, this was the moment John did a B-line towards me from across the
room where he came up and slapped me extremely hard right on the center
of my chest. This also did nothing for me and instead pissed me off. What
the fuck was he trying to accomplish with that move? To target me in that
way? But hey, at least he was finally doing his own dirty work. We went to
the front of the room where John was now talking about “tough love” and
actually spoke these words at the end of his rant, MFR is tough love! I was
thinking to myself, No he didn’t. No he did not try to brand this behavior in
the name of any version of LOVE. To make matters worse for himself, he
thought it would be a good idea to dim the lights and have everybody close
their eyes while he sternly said the following in his “tough love” manner,
There were a couple of you that I came up and slapped. You were pseudo-
unwinding! You came here to let go, so if you are not going to let go, then
what are you even doing here?

54
His rant was meant to make me feel small, confused, guilty, eager to please
him and “do it right”. He was right about the fact that I had stopped fully
letting go, but that was strictly a result of his little Bitch Boy keeping me
from doing so. And as far as his claim about psuedo-unwinding goes, a
brilliant question was asked by the therapist I almost drowned at the creek
about what the difference between a focused unwinding and a psuedo-
unwinding was? John responded honestly and slightly confused saying, Good
point. And his statements that followed resembled that of a political dodge
that made it clear to me that he was unable to answer that question. That’s
probably because he has no idea. Nor does anybody else. But there is
another problem here. John gets to choose what’s a real unwinding and
what’s fake. He’s the judge. The way unwinding is expressed in these
seminars by people as a result of letting go, is the human spirit in motion. A
physical soul expression of that person. Whether they are questioning it
while doing it, struggling with it, trying too hard, or even trying to
intentionally fake it. NOBODY on earth should be judging it as real or fake,
EVER! Especially when nobody can actually define it! Nothing will make a
naive therapist question themselves at the deepest level than to be accused
of or to hear other people being accused of pseudo unwinding.

Fortunately, I knew what he was up to with this little speech he was giving
while having us close our eyes. He ended the speech by having the lights
come up and he said, Now, does anyone have anything to say? With a
creepy smile on my face I blurted out slowly, YOU SON OF A BITCH! And
John said nothing to me in response with a slightly confused look on his
face. The John on stage doesn’t trigger easily. The John on stage is the
“guru”. He went on to demonstrate the next technique. As we all retreated to
our treatment tables, I went straight up to John and said, Alright John, I
hear you. You want me to let go? Because if I do then the cat’s coming out
of the bag. Am I good? With a look like, Oh fuck, on his face, he turned
away from me avoiding eye contact as he said, Yeah, you’re good. Bitch Boy
would have to stand down for this one, and I knew it.

I went first on my table placed directly in front of John. I was resonating

heavily as the pissed off animal in me was starting to emerge. I had no idea
what was about to go down and this was feeling very similar to what
happened in Captiva, except I had much more control over it. I started to
unwind in the typical exorcism fashion that results in me on all fours. I was
staring directly down the alley right at John. He had purposely positioned
himself to be in my way. I was glaring at him with what must have been the
craziest look in my eyes, but I can only imagine. John then moved out of my
way. I leaped off the table down on to the ground and started to run
aggressively on all fours until I got to the end of the row. I turned around to

55
head back down, and there was my partner running towards me. I had
forgotten all about her. When I saw her I realized she was not up to this task
and besides, I was apparently looking to play with some animals. I
transitioned into the upright bipedal position as I called out to the room
yelling, IF ANYONE WANTS TO PLAY WITH A WILD ANIMAL, I’M RIGHT
HERE! And this was followed by me jumping on my table in front of John and
Bitch Boy. What ended up coming out of my mouth then was, NEVER TRY TO
PUT A LEASH ON A WILD ANIMAL! Followed by some sort of crazy Native
American war cry like, YIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYIYI! It was total
misbehavior at the primal level, which writing this now, it’s funny to see the
symbolic meaning of what ended up coming out of my mouth once I let go
and was completely unfiltered. All this was, was a massive symbolic acting
out of my rebellion that was triggered by John’s control methods that they
were using to “help” me. Their behavior represented a tremendous amount
of past child hood experiences. I ended up feeling so incredibly relieved as I
laid back across my table yelling, I don’t give a fuuuuuck! Good times.

Directly after my latest mis-behavior, John and his staff were all huddled up
and I sensed they were talking about what to do about me. So, I walked up
to them with a smile on my face and said, Whew, well that wasn’t as bad as
I thought it was going to be. And I walked out of the room.

We were now on break. Knowing I was potentially going to be pulled aside

upon walking back into the seminar, I felt that if I could just get a private
word with John to thank him for allowing my process, he would drop his
guard again and I’d be able to make it to the end of the seminar. As I
entered, all of John’s instructors had their backs to me facing John and John
locked eyes with me immediately as if he was waiting for me to enter the
room. I looked him dead in the eye and and patting my hand over my heart
I mouthed, Thank you to him. This was a genuine expression of gratitude
because I was grateful they didn’t try and mess with me on that one. I was
honestly feeling like I could now truly accomplish what I needed to heal. It
worked. He returned my gesture with an unspoken, You’re welcome, in the
form of a head nod with understanding.

Nobody messed with me for quite a few more rounds of techniques. I was
deeply centered and John was getting a front row seat to my growing
strength as a therapist facilitating other people’s healing. I was continuing to
soften and let go more and more as I went deeper. Then came the last
technique for the day. I was the patient and Bitch Boy once again showed up
to fuck with me and my process. John was apparently unfinished. And Bitch
Boy approached me at the end saying, So, your unwindings are much
different than what you’ve been posting online in your videos. What’s going

56
on? This wasn’t a bad question had it come from anyone else, but this was
Bitch Boy asking like a snarky little bitch. So, I gave him the following
response, This is obviously a different world Bitch Boy, but let me tell you
what my issue is. My issue is with my own light, because it’s such a crazy
light. I don’t think people can handle it. And with a satisfied look on his face,
he said, Okay. And I walked away. He still had no idea who he was fucking
with.

I was going to find a way to heal through their bullshit. This was going to be
reckless, this was going to be risky, and this was full blown radical. I take full
responsibility for this intention and all the behavior I exhibited when I let go
in these seminars. A good question to ask at this point is, should the
students/therapists be held responsible by John and his crew for their
behavior during unwinding? This is subconscious/unconscious material
becoming conscious expressions inside these seminars. And John says
himself that this is a sacred experience. Yet, they constantly hold people
responsible for their unconscious expressions and attempt to give them
consequences accordingly based on these healing moments. Not at first
mind you, this builds trust so you’ll be more compliant once the control
methods show up. But since a lot of this material expressed during
unwinding is that of the inner child, a better question to ask is, who’s the
ideal judge exactly? These raw expressions of the soul are open to
interpretation, sure. But is it anybody’s place except Gods to judge these
experiences? Maybe you’d say it is under the authority of the person in
charge of the seminar or group? I say no way. These are grown adults. And
anyone trying to create a hierarchy of rules and structures while claiming a
safe healing environment should not even be opening the door for such
things. Get your jive ass back to the basics if you want to pull shit like that.

Here are some more questions yourself: What exactly are you’re intentions?
Are you sure? And are you sure there isn’t a subconscious intention that’s
dominating your conscious mind? Who’s going to define your role as a
facilitator and draw the line if not yourself? Do you prefer John or someone
else to define it for you? At what point is your attempt at facilitating creating
the opposite affect? At what point do you allow yourself to be strictly a
witness? I don’t believe these to be trivial questions. I feel they should
constantly be thought about very deeply. But anyways, back to the story…

I came in on the last day like a rebel bastard child with my headphones on
dancing like a filthy animal. How are they going to handle someone who
gives zero fucks? I was looking to test this wannabe version of “tough love”
for all that it was claiming to be. I was looking for trouble, which meant I
was going to find it and I was perfectly okay with it. The idea was that I was

57
going to attempt to heal in the presence of its toxicity. Just like a child
pushes and tests the boundaries that are given to them, this was either
going to lead to authentic structure from a place of authentic love, or it
would lead to a more desperate attempt at control. These were the only two
options John had left with me at this point. So, what would have been the
right move for John now? It would have been to kick me out of the seminar
and admit to himself that he had nothing to offer me. He didn’t even need to
explain why and I would have left knowing the truth, no problem at all. I
was aware of the potential consequences and fully willing to except them.
Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen by me being truly
authentic to my experience. He should have kicked me out back in Captiva.
So, why didn’t he? Remember that he believes what is best for people is to
be under his control. Basically trying to take the role of what should be or
should have been your father and trade it in for himself. Except his approach
to fatherhood with his students/therapists is more in alignment with the
archetypal tyrannical father like King Triton from the movie “The Little
Mermaid”, but before he softens up and allows his daughter to have her
process at the conclusion of the film. And in some unfortunate peoples case,
John allows himself to be placed in their minds as their personal savior. This
is easily seen in the amount of worship of John demonstrated by his closest
followers. That level of worship doesn’t come strictly from people becoming
free of chronic pain through his approach. It comes from something much
deeper rooted in us than that.

To him, I was either going to be a powerful asset (if I could be controlled) or

his worst fucking nightmare (if I couldn’t be controlled). So, he wasn’t
wanting to let me go back home in that way. He knew I had no problem
sharing my experiences on my public facebook page. This is why he had
Bitch Boy trying to discourage it. Who knows what I would put out there
after this that would make me continue to gain popularity, or draw negative
attention to his organization. It would be best for him to get a handle on me
before this seminar ended. Now, not everybody is going to be approached
like this by John. If a therapist with an already established career and
professional reputation comes in to train, he knows (by facebook trolling and
watching them closely in seminars) that that person probably won’t drink his
Koolaid, and will best serve him by praising the John F. Barnes name/
approach in their private practice or by being a great example for new
students as an instructor in the early seminars. This helps his personal
credibility and to a point, rightfully so. But he will adapt his approach person
by person (Keep in mind this isn’t exclusive to John. I’m sure you’ve known
many people like this, and maybe this is YOU). John’s ideal however, is to
prey on the weak, which is why the weakest among the MFR therapists are
the ones closest to John even though they appear to exhibit the most “skills”

58
by subtly suggesting to you that they know things you don’t. I didn’t want to
believe this about John, and it took a long time and the stacking of evidence
before I reached that conclusion so, I do not say these things lightly. It’s
never fun or easy to wake up and realized you’ve been duped to a deeper
extent than you thought. And not by John necessarily, but by yourself! Are
you sure you don’t exhibit any of this behavior in your daily life? If so, how
do you justify it? Behavior like this tends to get amplified in the healing arts
once a dominance hierarchy has been established. It’s the same for the rest
of the world, but since the healing arts is operating in the realm of
symbology, it’s super sneaky. Look the fuck out! As far as MFR goes, it is
unbelievably healing or subtly dangerous as fuck. If you go in search of
releasing past trauma, you may find yourself healed of some past traumas
while stacking on a bunch of new ones. Or there is the possibility of healing
emotionally while being re traumatized over and over and you won’t even
notice because it is happening in the least likely of scenarios. Back to the
story….

We all had to gather at the front of the room as usual and I took my seat in
the back row like a naughty little boy. The three instructors including Bitch
Boy, and John’s Primary Bitch were all standing directly behind me. A girl
opened up the day by sharing a story of a deep spiritual experience that led
to an even more awesome spiritual understanding which transformed her
relationships with her family. John looking unimpressed and slightly bored
says in response, You know that everything we have been talking about for
the past few days could be total bullshit right? For someone who claims that
there are no truths (which is in itself, is a truth claim) I laughed out loud so
hard at this. First, it was honestly funny to me at the time despite the fact
that he just took a shit on this woman’s experience by saying that. Also,
because the statement demonstrated to me that he truly has no idea what
the fuck is going on, nor does anybody else. Even though he doesn’t act out
that belief accordingly with his fear based control methods, it was still nice
to see him admit it, even if it came from his on stage persona. No spiritual
teacher anywhere in the world knows what the fuck is going on, don’t expect
it from anyone. Just expect the guru to behave as though he does by his
attempts to control you. Back to the story….

As I finished laughing my ass off by myself, a woman was trying to slide by

my chair to get to her seat. I tickled her legs with my toes as she went by
since I was apparently seated with my feet in the air. She laughed being a
friend of mine as she took her seat next to me. At that moment, John’s
Primary Bitch scolded me like a mom scolds a child saying, JOEL! I turned
around slowly with a creepy look on my face and said, You better back up
with that leash and watch your mouth. She nor Bitch Boy said anything in

59
response. That was some psycho shit that just came out of my mouth. I
knew they would have to consult with their Master before approaching me
again.

Not surprisingly, they were all over my every move and all over my every
unwinding after that. I was truly attempting to heal in the midst of this. I
was beginning to feel them with my eyes closed and they were taking on
new forms as shadows whispering things in my ears and confusing my
experience, but this wasn’t normal reality anymore. To me at the time, this
was spiritual warfare. I paid no attention to what the instructors were doing
as themselves. Their behavior had been representing my entire childhood
and all of the resistance I faced. Bitch Boy had unfortunately become the
epitome of every douchebag I had ever met. The instructors were no longer
their persona’s. There was bigger things taking place within and around me
and it scared the fuck out of me.

During a break between techniques, a woman approached me who was

really wanting to work with me on the next one saying, My friend said you
did something amazing with her yesterday and I was hoping we could work
together. It was easy to see she had never really let go before and she was
looking for a safe place. If I was to have regrets about my experience in this
seminar, it would be agreeing to work with her in that moment. I was about
to face something inside myself that was extremely powerful. I wasn’t
feeling capable of holding the space this woman was needing held for her,
nor did I feel she was ready to be involved with the depths of what I was
facing. But I had to work with someone in that moment, and just like I had
always worked with the first person to approach me, I told her yes with the
agreement that I would need to go first.

The Moment

I laid on my table placed directly in front of John feeling more afraid going
into this unwinding than I had ever been in my life. It felt like I was about to
die, as if I needed to say my last words. The lights dimmed and John
encouraged everyone to let go. I couldn’t shake the fear that was getting
stronger as I tried to let go. Hyperventilation was the only way past it. The
moment I started to do this on my table in front of John, he said over the
speakers, Breath heavily, as if to encourage people to do the same. I only
needed to hyperventilate for ten to fifteen seconds before the chaos
emerged. I shook abruptly and violently as I fell into a really dark place. An
instructor moves in, urging me to stay with the technique. They wouldn’t
allow me to physically let go anymore, in fact, they weren’t allowing anyone
to let go anymore. What happened to John’s statement in response to his

60
instructor telling everybody to stay with the technique? What about denying
people the most powerful experiences of their life? A quiet darkness fell over
the room. It was Eery as fuck. My partner tried to continue the technique as
instructed and I shook her off every time. I would not comply. The instructor
said again, Joel, stay with the technique. I refused and continued going
deeper. I fell into a dark hole while my body was sliding off the table. There
was nothing to see here folks. Utter darkness, despair, and hopelessness.
Being that he wasn’t far away, Bitch Boy decided now was a good time to
move in to enforce, “the law”. He came up and put his hands on me gently
while saying firmly, Joel, stay with the technique. His presence was the
farthest thing from welcomed in that moment. I pushed his hands off of me
and shot up to go nose to nose with him as I screamed in his face, BACK UP
BITCH BOY, OR I’M GONNA SHOW YOU SOME DEMONS! At this moment
John yelled, DOWN! I respected that John came to the defense of his Bitch
Boy in response to my shadow. This was a reasonable correction on John’s
part, and even in this unreasonable place of experience, I gave him the
respect of backing off his Bitch Boy. However, I wasn’t finished and I went
right back in to myself despite the interruption. Bitch Boy insisted again that
I lay back down on the table. The resistance and shadows around me were
amplified as I had encountered my own. There was nowhere else to turn. I
kneeled down on the table and went in to prayer. I was praying to myself as
I softened back to my center when all of the sudden, I muttered the
following words of spiritual warfare out loud, Show yourselves in the name of
Jesus. John then shrieked like I have never heard him before, YOU KEEP
YOUR EXPERIENCE TO YOURSELF! His tone was identical to that of the
Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Now, am I subtly suggesting or claiming that I provoked some sort darkness

in John through some sort of spiritual warfare practice of speaking Jesus’
name out loud in that moment? No, it can only be clear that he was
triggered heavily by these spoken words. However, in that moment, and for
whatever reason, I was totally free! And that is probably because I
subconsciously believed I would be, and since I had nowhere else to turn in
that moment.

Whatever had happened in the woods on my 30th Birthday had created the
reality that, for whatever reason, was designed for that particular moment.
Whatever this was, it was fully in God’s hands. As crazy as this whole thing
was to me and sounds to you as the reader, I truly believed it. Falling
backwards in total peace and surrender to the moment, there wasn’t a
shadow in sight. I never felt so safe, and so protected in my entire life than
in that moment. I couldn’t be touched anymore. The light entering my
awareness was a bright gold as I fell backwards off the table. Bitch Boy was

61
even kind enough to catch me so I could fall backwards safely as he was
now gently demanding, Joel, get back on the table! Joel, get back on the
table! Joel, get back on the table, there is a technique going on! With what
felt like my last breath, I turned to him and said softly, Bitch Boy, I feel so
sorry for you. And I allowed him to assist me back on to the table where my
partner who was now in tears and extremely shaken (rightfully so)
attempted to continue with the technique. I was still in the presence of my
God. There was nothing that could bother me anymore. I felt a deep
forgiveness for myself and everyone, especially Bitch Boy. I paid no attention
to the technique my partner was attempting to do. My breath was fully
exhaled and I was now hallucinating the gold light with a cross in the center
of my awareness. I never felt more free from troubles in my whole life than I
did in that moment. This broke me down into tears while simultaneously
bringing my partner to tears. God only knows how she experienced this
whole thing. To that woman, wherever you are, I am so sorry and I hope
you’re okay!

When the lights came up, it was the usual BOOM back to reality that I had
grown accustomed to in these seminars being that you’re given ten minute
slots of time at the most to get down and dirty with yourself. John
encouraged a quick transition to get started with trading places for the
technique. I quickly went straight for Bitch Boy who was now standing over
by the product table with elevated shoulders fiddling with some CD’s
nonchalantly. Putting my hand gently on his back, I said, I’m sorry Bitch
Boy, it was nothing personal, are you alright? And he said under his breath
while still looking down, It’s okay, we are just trying to help you. It seemed
to me that he actually believed that, but was struggling with that belief in
that moment. He wasn’t feeling good about what had just happened for a
number of reasons, I’m sure. I just replied simply, I know. That was my last
interaction with Bitch Boy and I carry no hard feelings to this day. He is truly
a good person and I really love him. He just has to put up with his fun
nickname in this book for being a little bitch.

I ran back and prepared for my roll as the therapist at our table with my
poor partner who was gearing up with her fear and probably some fucked up
expectations for her treatment ahead. I was ready to go home, but it didn’t
feel right bailing on this woman mid trade. John set the tone for the
technique. Lights dropped low. Bitch Boy was nowhere to be seen, but an
instructor stepped up to stand next to me while I treated this woman. She
critiqued my every fucking move and was constantly intervening with
everything I did. I began to sternly growl at her every time she closed in.
She would not leave my side as my resonance grew stronger. The instructor
whispered in my partners ear, If it’s too much you can say stop anytime.

62
This was the right thing to say in that moment, because what I was
energetically imprinting on this woman was not cool. It was pure predatory
dominance. My partner most likely didn’t see it that way, but it was scary for
her to be taken to the edge so quickly. I had a lock on her ego and I was
officially hunting, but I wasn’t coming in peace for her sake. I wanted it for
my own glory, but I wasn’t aware of that fact at the time. It just felt like a
line had been crossed and I didn’t know where it was. However, I sensed I
was outside of myself so I backed off.

Well, how about that shit? In the tiniest of instances, I went from being
loaded with peace and forgiveness to subtly becoming the monster that I
had been despising in them the whole time. Who’s the asshole now, folks? I
don’t know about you, but I wasn’t expecting that. Not only did I have to
come to terms with the fact that I am capable of that behavior, I could
actually be much more dangerous than I ever imagined. But isn’t that just
the way it is? We see in others what exists in ourselves? And what we hate
and point the finger at is what we despise deep within our own being? Right?
For the woman on the tables sake, I think the least I can do is accept the
powerful lesson given in that moment. To that woman again, I am so sorry!

This is a hell of a thing to wake up to, and it really sucks knowing the evil
I’m capable of. However, once it is realized, forgiving even the worst of
people gets easier. I believe it is vital to do that shadow work even if it’s
strictly for the purpose of learning to forgive others quicker and easier. This
feels like a good place to take a break from the story and further discuss…

The Dark Arts

It’s a fine line. Have you ever crossed it? Do you know where the line is
drawn? Like we discussed earlier, it might not be the same place somebody
else has drawn it for you. You have to find it within yourself. The difference
between lightwork and the dark arts to me is simple. It’s damn near identical
work, except one person has a self serving agenda, and the other doesn’t.
And it’s not such an easy thing for people to spot, nor is it easy for a person
to admit to themselves that they have one, or even to discover that they do.
But once a self-serving agenda is formed, and the work has subtly shifted to
being about them and not about others, whether the person with the agenda
realizes they have one or not, a door is opened in this healing realm and
things have changed. People operating in this arena are some of the most
beautiful people you’ll ever come across. Their demeanor gives off the
appearance of safety and trust. These are wolves dressed in sheeps clothing,
and they are everywhere in the world. Regardless of your spiritual belief
systems as the reader, and regardless of how you view biblical scripture and

63
the people who typically represent it, you should still be capable of
pondering the meaning that the author was trying to convey in the following
scriptures whether they be perceived as symbolic, mythological, or
metaphorical in meaning. The scriptures below are obviously pulled out of
context because I believe they are relevant to the behavior I’ve been
discouraging, but I recommend reading them in their original context at
some point.

2nd Corinithians 11:14

“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”

Peter 5:8;
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a
roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Whether you view “Satan” or the “Devil” as an entity, or a vague energy, or

the source of all evil and darkness, these scriptures hold truth. Is it possible
that I can be negatively influenced by something I don’t understand? Of
course. But how can I resist what I don’t even acknowledge exists. Why this
predatory behavior from John and his disciples feels so violating to people is
because they are coming for your free will, and most of them don’t even
realize it. The ones who do realize it, just simply don’t believe the person
they’re targeting should have it anymore for reasons that will be specific to
their agenda. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how it’s justified, it’s still a
molestation of the spirit.

Real quick, let’s take a look at any major leader in history. Anyone who takes
a God-given gift (or wherever you believe gifts come from) especially in the
ways of charisma and personal power, and tries to use it for their own self-
serving purposes; either fails miserably, or temporarily succeeds and
ultimately destroys themselves while taking as many people down with them
as possible. Good luck with that shit.

I ended the session in somewhat of a shock. It was now break time for the
class and my time to leave was well overdue. I went immediately for John to
let him I know I was bailing out. As I approached him, his Primary Bitch and
another instructor got in front of him to protect him from me. I was standing
three feet from John who was staring down at his phone with his two
instructors in my face. I kept trying to lock eyes with John and get his
attention, but he wouldn’t look up from his phone. I redirected my gaze
towards these two goobers in my face as I said, So, you’re the gate
keepers? They both looked at me saying nothing while shrugging their
shoulders. I said, What does it feel like to be a gatekeeper? And one

64
instructor redirected by saying, Would you like a picture with John? She
knew damn well I didn’t want a picture with John. This was her way of
suggesting to me that I was not worthy of speaking directly to “the master”
all of the sudden. John was suddenly available for standard formalities only,
which is understandable sometimes, but not this time. He should have been
willing to face me. He was hearing all of this and keeping his head down. He
never would have dared look me in the eye in that moment, but I didn’t
need him to. I just let it go and walked away. I grabbed my bag and felt a
moment of hesitation before walking out the door. A lot had obviously
happened in the past 15 minutes, shit, the past three weeks! I started to
process old feelings of guilt and shame from dropping out of high school that
came up during this moment. As I was rewriting that old story in my head, a
fellow therapist passes by and says, Oooooh you got in trooouuuuble, just
like my classmates from school days used to do. I had no words for her, just
concern. However, the synchronicity of her remark was useful to me as I was
currently working through my old story in my head. This was followed up by
the Monkey from the river showing up to put his hand gently on my back as
he said, Oh Joel, what’s it going to take for you to give up the struggle?
Again, no words! He was in it so deep. I was never going to be able to
explain to him what he would eventually have to experience for himself
anyway. And I wasn’t really looking to say goodbye’s to anyone nor try to
explain why. It was just time to go. I smiled at the Monkey and he walked
away.

John was now heading towards the front, alone and unprotected by his
gatekeepers who were standing behind me in the back. John was so sad
looking to me in that moment, I decided to just leave him alone. As I was
sitting at the end of my table looking at John make his way on stage, John’s
Primary Bitch came up behind me and said, Joel, it’s time to go the front of
the class. I completely ignored her. She said again with more assertion, Joel,
go to the front of the class. I kept my back to her as I casually said, No.
Again she said as a command, Joel, go the front of the class, now! I got up
with a gentle smile on my face, looked at her and said, Look, I really had a
good time, but it’s time for me to go. And I walked over to the other
instructor because she seemed the most trustworthy to deliver a message to
John for me. I said to her, Please tell John that I love him, okay? And she
agreed while looking confused and slightly concerned. I turned around
heading for the door and she stopped me saying, Wait, what’s going on? I
didn’t know where to begin exactly, but since she was only a witness to the
most recent events I responded by saying, Shutting me down during my
experience back there was fucked up and you know it. And she said, But
there was a technique going on? She honestly couldn’t see beyond the lens
that John gave her to look through. I responded saying, Yes, but is there

65
nothing bigger, nothing greater? I decided to throw some of John’s own
teachings back at them, and the moment I started saying, You heard what
John said.. All of them, including Bitch Boy who was still nonchalant over in
the corner turned towards me like deer in headlights, or better yet, scared
little kids. This is when I saw the weakness in them that John was able to
exploit. This was also when John’s Primary Bitch interjected and said, Just
go, Joel! She didn’t want to hear it from me and she was wanting to have
the last word. I decided at the time that it was better to leave them quietly
confused than to cause a scene and leave them scared, angry, or crying
while disrupting the class up front. I just shook my head, put a crazy look on
my face as I smiled and said, Well I have to go now, because ya’ll have been
fucking with me since the 4th grade! And I walked out of the seminar
quietly. There has been many times in my life when immediately after a
conflict with others, I’d look back and be like, Oh man, I should’ve said this,
and I should’ve said that. This was not one of those times. That was a
hilarious exit. And I was quite satisfied with it at the time.

I cruised back to our little Airbnb cottage up Oak Creek where I grabbed all
of my girls and held them close while crying my heart out. I was so
unbelievably relieved it was over. We decided not to stay the extra night in
Sedona and picked up and left right there on the spot. We took off for a
hotel room in Phoenix which would put us closer to the airport the next day.
I wasn’t able to get on the same return flight as my girls, so during the
travel home, I was able to meditate on my experience. This was an
unbelievable amount of information gathered in three weeks time along with
tons of unconscious material and experiences to sort through. I knew the
integration would be rough and I’d be processing for a long time, but I
trusted God with it. It was a peaceful flight home.


66
 8

Aftermath

Coming home was not easy. We had a lot to do as a family to prepare for
another child and our first home water birth in ninety days. The information
from Sedona started to come up immediately for processing, especially at
night. The traumas were pouring out of me in a raw poetic kind of way.
Random thoughts, ideas, and expressions. As I prayed for wisdom, it slowly
started to organize overtime. I continued to share my inner experiences on
my personal Facebook page which I had been doing for a while so the
experiences of my journey could be documented and viewed without edit
from John. At some point during my first week home, I had three
consecutive dreams.

In the first dream, I was in a pine forest with a bow trying to find arrows. I
stumbled upon a bunch of freshly made wooden arrows leaning up against a
tree. I grabbed them and I woke up immediately. During the second dream,
I was scurrying through a medieval hall of sorts gathering up metal armor
and once I grabbed a sword, I woke up. In the third dream, I was sitting on
the back of a truck surrounded by modern day soldiers and I was one of
them. We were wearing modern camouflage gear, holding rifles, and sitting
in silence as we were seemingly heading towards a battle, and then I woke
up.

It was nice to have some reasonably organized and highly symbolic dreams
again. However, shortly after, things were getting to be so intense that when
I’d let go to fall asleep at night, I would actually be witnessing myself falling
down, down, down, and I would start to hear many voices in conflict with
each other. They all had the sound of my voice. I knew I could stay in
control of it, so I decided to explore further as I fell down, down, down, into
whatever depth this was. My voices faded away as if I was falling below
them, and that’s when the voices of what sounded like little squeaky elves
speaking another language showed up. I couldn’t understand what they
were saying, but I knew one thing for sure, they were definitely talking shit
about me! I suddenly felt that I was reaching the point of no return. The
point where finding sanity again would extremely difficult and potentially
impossible. But this pattern continued for a few more nights alongside
incomprehensible imagery while falling asleep. I was sleeping awake.

There’s a good reason why we don’t normally witness or remember what

happens during the R.E.M. cycle of sleep. It’s just as astonishing as it is

67
fucking confusing, and I don’t like the confusion game. At the time, I was
starting to become extremely bothered by everything I had just been
through and was currently experiencing. On the last night, just as I was
making my way down to the realm of the elves, a voice showed up. It was
extremely familiar and it started to make fun of everything. And it was
definitely picking on me, but from a surprisingly loving place. I started
bursting out laughing in the middle of the night while my wife was sleeping
next to me. This continued almost nightly as I fell asleep, and the hysteria
was too intense to keep it inside me. She was getting annoyed as you could
imagine since I couldn’t even explain myself in a way that could be
comprehended by anyone other than me. The funniest shit was coming into
my mind. It was starting to take shape into a satire of myself. This kept
eating me up to the point that I knew I had to develop this externally
somehow. The next day, I had the afternoon off and I made a satire video. I
could hardly keep a straight face while making the damn thing. I edited it
and watched it twenty times in a row until my stomach and face hurt from
laughing. That’s when I decided to post it on my facebook page “Renegade
Bodywork” and it got 2,000 views in 3 days along with an unexpected
amount of positive attention and post interaction from people in the MFR
community. A little TOO much attention for John…

It was business as usual enjoying my daughters birthday, preparing for

home birth, and enjoying all that comes with the Florida summers. And due
to the provocative nature of the videos I had been posting online, my
practice was drawing in some of the most interesting people. You could say
they were all “crazy” and working with these people helped me understand
what I was going through so much better. You attract what you throw out
there, so it seems. And the crazy content I was putting out in my videos had
attracted some serious screwballs. They were all huge gifts to me that
summer and I will always be grateful for their love and support as every
session was mutually beneficial. As they should be. If it wasn’t for my
“craziest” of clients, my ability to integrate my experiences would have taken
much longer. Much love to them!

One night while leaving work, I got a text from a friend that notified me that
John had posted something about me on his public facebook page, as well as
inside his closed facebook group.


68
This is obviously ridiculous. Even though there’s a name signed on this post
that is one of John’s staff members, this is 100% a post from John. All posts
of this nature from the organization are from him. Remember John doesn’t
do his own dirty work at the surface level. He will always have a staff
member take the hit. I was expecting some sort of attack, but definitely not
something as weak as this.

This post was many things all at once. John knew that controlling me was
out the door, but he could maintain the image to his following that he was
still capable of doing so by “coming down” on me in a public way. If this was
really a concern for me and my healing, they would have approached this
much differently. This public shaming and “calling out” works for him on

69
most people, and he was hoping it would shake me up and confuse me
enough to get me to stop putting out videos and drawing in attention. It was
also a poor attempt at what resembled a political smear campaign, except it
was more of a high school version. There was a reasonable concern in this
post being that I was associated with him and he didn’t want the public to
see that. I was putting way too much out there for his comfort level. It’s like
creating a monster and losing control of it. Desperate measures had to be
taken and this was the best he could come up with to cover as many angles
as possible. It did work for him to a point though. Tons of people who follow
John closely bought it without question even though this post contradicts
their master’s teachings. It was with this post that I realized the extent to
which John was threatened by me. Not a threat to his organization so much,
but to his ego. Even though my name wasn’t used, the people that he was
targeting would know who he was talking about and he knew it.

Also in this post, he referred to my videos as being posted on MFR insight. In

reality, I hadn’t posted videos on MFR insight for over six months at that
point. And my unwinding videos that were posted inside his closed Facebook
group were approved by John. He even had someone reach out to me on
one of them telling me to untag a person from the video, but never asked
me to take any of them down. He saw and approved every single one on my
18 month run through MFR. All the videos I was posting that he was
referring to in this attack were being done on my public facebook page, of
which he wanted to control. Like I said, this post really had nothing to do
with “helping me” so “authentic healing could occur.” This post was targeting
his followers as an attempt to discredit me and make me look as horrible as
possible. But most importantly, the subliminal message here was to let his
followers know that it was not okay to support me in anyway, and to divert
their gaze away from me and back to John. Nothing to see here, folks. He
needed his followers to know that I was fake, and everything I was doing
was not real. But in reality I was lifting the veil, and it was scaring him.

I don’t even know where to start with the bit on DANCING that he brought
up in this post. I won’t even go there, but you can just call me Mr. Footloose
for now. The last thing I’ll pick apart in this post is the purposeful assault
and injury to an instructor he claimed took place. That didn’t happen, but
what I assume they are referring to was the moment when I pushed Bitch
Boy’s hands off of me before I got in his face. No injury took place. Far from
it. And Bitch Boy would never be able to look me in the eye and say that
that’s the truth. John himself could never look me in the eye and make these
claims. I was recently made aware that the story that’s currently being told
about me inside the MFR organization is that they kicked me out because I
threatened an instructor. What happened to the assault accusation? But this

70
is is actually the most clever and simple lie they could use. Because with this
approach, very little explanation is required and most importantly, only three
people happen to know the truth about how I left and can verify it. And
those people happen to be his closest instructors who I encountered on my
way out the door of that last seminar. What they decided to tell John after I
left or what John decided to instruct them to say, I have no idea. John, those
three instructors, and all of his followers are welcome to reach out and
challenge me at anytime. They have my contact info, and I’ll gladly have an
adult discussion with John or any of his crew. I would prefer this currently
hypothetical discussion to be had while not hiding behind the keys of a
message board, but whatever suits them. To those three instructors that
were there when I walked out, I don’t care if you guys talk endless shit
about me, just please don’t spread lies about how I left. It will only cause
you guys more problems.

71
 9

Where I’m At
As I write this, it’s a little over one year since returning from Sedona. I hope
this book helps more people understand their experiences in MFR or
anywhere for that matter. At the least, I hope it helps people see where
things start to turn South while still appearing to be headed North.

John and myself are the same person in this story along with the rest of the
characters. I don’t see much separation at this point. I really did my best to
recall all these memories and it was like going through it all over again. If
you’ve never written any part of your life down from memory, I really
recommend it. I can honestly say there wasn’t even a need to exaggerate
the story, even a little bit. Being honest while writing this was difficult and
there were parts I would like to remember differently, but it just wasn’t true.
And to write it differently would be lying to myself. A story like this didn’t
even need to be beefed up anyway. It’s weird enough as is! Everything in
this story actually happened and I standby it as the truth. However, I am
open to anyone challenging my testimonies and motivations should they feel
what I claimed is untrue or done out of spite.

I don’t hold a bad taste in my mouth regarding any of this, especially after
writing it. I definitely could look at the whole experience as something that
happened to me and run around as a pissed off victim for years, but that
wouldn’t get me very far and besides, I went into their hands on my own
and I made the decision to lay down in the lions den. They were playing a
game, and I chose to play it right along with them. I had a choice the entire
time. Could they have done things differently and handled me better? I
honestly don’t know if they could have. But could I have done things
differently and handled myself better? Absolutely. I take full responsibility for
all of my decisions and actions, unconscious or conscious. However, I believe
it went the way it needed to for all parties involved believe it or not. I
learned some UNBELIEVABLY valuable lessons about many things. I hope
people are able to accomplish the same. I forgive John and his crew with
ease and I accomplish that by knowing that we aren’t any different at the
bottom of things. Like I said earlier, not only could I end up doing the things
they are doing, but I could do them extremely well. And not only that, I
could thoroughly enjoy it the entire time. Now that I have awareness of that
fact, I can see how absolutely crucial it is that I be as humble as I possibly
can be. Because If I don’t humble myself, God will. I’ve been down that road
many times and I’d prefer to drop to my knees voluntarily.

72
When it comes to Power Animals like John puts a lot of focus on, there are
huge therapeutic benefits to this due to the lack of rationality involved. In
my experience with awakening animal consciousness, I could see in the
moment how it can go way too far. The altered state and part of your brain
that you’re accessing is probably the highest form of intuition when it comes
to being in-tune to the therapeutic needs of your body. It’s a great state of
mind to hang out in and get some primal healing done. Accessing the animal
mind is one thing, but being able to master and contain it in the moment is
another. If you choose to give in and allow full access to your own animal,
you’re in the same state of mind as the rapist or those getting wild in satanic
orgies. If you want to aggressively fuck everything that moves, potentially
hurt or injure yourself and others, than this is a good state of mind to push
the limits of. I don’t really recommend giving your animal full control,
obviously. I recommend having a strong handle on yourself before seeking
to explore it’s depths. Again, a line will still have to be drawn! And I highly
recommend you steer clear of doing this in a group setting. The last thing
you want is influences from other people when exploring this state of mind
beyond primal stretching. With that being said, take caution or don’t even
fuck around with it.

I know I brought awareness to a lot of problems along with potential

solutions on a more broad scale, but maybe we can tackle a few real quick
at the Therapist level. There are Therapists who are extremely passionate
and concerned about the future of this work that was developed through
John. I don’t see any man as being the creator of anything, we can only
develop what is gifted or you can view it as a co-creation. So, I can only
move forward on that belief with the following potential solutions. First of all,
humility is number one. Accomplish it by whatever means you can and
hopefully you can find a place to draw a line. But a line does need to be
drawn if you plan on doing nothing but GOOD things for people. Second, it
doesn’t matter what label you give the modality, technique, or approach. Call
it whatever the hell you want. Once you start to perform an intuitive
approach that John calls MFR, it belongs to you completely and is your
responsibility because it’s a deep expression of yourself at that point. So,
brand yourself heavily if you want to continue the work. Give credit to where
it is due for sure, but focus on what it will take to spread the work as far as
possible.

Here’s some random thoughts on how I view MFR and its future— I see
multiple branches of MFR (people have labeled and will continue to label it
other things too) springing up from many different practitioners. It’s already
happened, and will certainly continue, especially after John has passed. His

73
organization will most likely tear itself apart once he’s gone since his closest
staff and followers seek to have the same kind of power over people that he
had over them. There are also countless independent therapists out there
who have already distanced themselves from the MFR organization and are
doing amazing things in their own practice or by starting their own seminars.
However, there are some who distance themselves so they can reign their
narcissistic terror on their own staff in their own clinics, without having to
answer directly to John even though the still worship him. They are out
there!

More and more people are going to step out and teach this approach the way
they see fit and more power to ‘em. The work needs to be open and taught
to everybody to perform on everybody. It’s intuitive, and to learn it requires
unlearning. Therefore, people who know nothing are already way ahead of
the therapist’s trying to learn. Try and stop giving a shit about scope of
practice and who should have the rights to perform this work. Most aren’t
doing this work as their professional title anyway. They are doing it as
themselves. This work belongs to everybody to help everybody. Also, keep in
mind that this work has been intuitively discovered and performed by many
people who have never even heard or experienced John’s teachings,
especially when it comes to the deeper Jungian style healing. Bodyworkers
everywhere are slowly finding their way back to this highly intuitive
approach on their own. And I’m sure there will be countless more who do. If
you choose to stay in the clinical realm, your reach will be limited, but at
least it will have a professional title and science behind it for credibility’s
sake. For each person out there practicing and teaching, it will reach more
people as long as the practitioner doesn’t care about having the work traced
back to them or any person for that matter. As long as your honest with
yourself, it’s good and honest work that will lead to good and honest healing.
Just let the work do the work! What’s good will last and what isn’t good will
dissolve on its own as if it were never real to begin with. As far as the
personal development side of deep healing in MFR or anywhere else goes,
what John is teaching is mostly good as far as I could tell. However, it’s more
of a do as he says and not as he does kind of thing.

When it comes to your instincts and intuition that John is claiming to teach
you how to get in touch with. Think about the instincts and intuitive
conclusions of the outside public who take a quick glance or hear a quick
description of John F. Barnes MFR and quickly conclude that it’s a cult
without ever giving it much thought. It just so happens that they’re right.
Who’s instincts were better at that point?

Here’s something else to think about..

74
You are oppressed right down to your DNA. No doubt about that. You’re not
alone in this and keep in mind we all are going to die someday, and some of
us will die horribly. Is being a victim of life helpful for you at this point?
Probably not, but there is some good news. You are your own Guru. How
long are you going to listen to someone else’s wisdom and intuition above
listening to your own? How long are you going to wallow away in the depths
of the inner child and ancestral/past lives shit before you wake up and
realize that it’s time to just pick up your shit and start carrying it forward?
Lightening the load to a tolerable weight is ideal of course, but have you
decided on at what point you’re going to be willing to pick your shit back up?
Or do you need one more healing session, one more encounter with a guru,
one more seminar, or one more book before moving on with your life? These
are good things to think about in my opinion. We all have to let go at the
moment of death anyway. Letting go along the way will probably smoothen
the transition, but the fact remains that you are definitely going to die, and
potentially in a really sudden and horrible way. So, it’s a good day to be
alive, folks.

What exactly do I think of myself after all these experiences?


Well, I’m obviously a sexy ass tiger:) But perhaps a bit more dangerous,
humbled and wise.

What do you think of me right now?

I really don’t know, but I am your friend. I just don’t recommend that you
ever try and fuck with me.


What am I going to do now?

Same. Whatever God wants. Probably while fighting with him about it the
whole time.

So, Where am I at today after all of this?

I’m right here….Where else would I be?

75
Check this out..

My stubborn rebellion was the source of so much pain and despair growing
up, and it later became the very thing that would save me from the death
grip of narcissism in the absence of logic. It saved me from myself. God
works in mysterious ways, indeed.

I am grateful today that I have a rock to kneel on. A solid foundation of

which to question and judge my intentions, actions and experiences with
others. And my rock has a tough love that is so relentless that it’s the only
thing I truly fear. It’s the real thing. It’s the reckless love of God. The only
love that I answer to. And if I could draw one conclusion from my experience
so far, it is that God’s love is the only love capable of taming the wild animal
in me.

76