Fascia Decompression – The Missing Link in Self-Care

Deanna Hansen 

Thank you so much. I am very excited to be here and sharing with this community.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so tell us about your journey. I didn’t do it justice. You were this great athlete growing up and then just talk us through kind of what happened and how you came to this new realization where you created block therapy.

Deanna Hansen

Yeah so as a young child, I was naturally athletic, naturally agile, then puberty struck. Everything kind of went sideways from there. I remember this one summer, I was late to bloom first of all. And then in one summer, I think I packed on about 20 pounds. Suddenly I had breasts and hips and my body wasn’t quite working the way that I wanted it to. So that initially started me off on some interesting negative behaviors, like eating disorders. I was an athlete and I was a provincial volleyball player. I was a provincial Highland dancer. So I mean, I was physically active but I was in one of those bodies that was kind of thick and hard. I was really strong and I was good at sports, but I wasn’t feminine. And I really longed to have that beautiful long willowy body. And I looked more like the tank. 

So again, that started me off on some negative behaviors in my teams as well as drinking was just part of my life, part of the social group that I was with, part of our family endeavors. And I of course, took things to a deeper edge like I do with most things. So by the time I graduated high school, that was when my life kind of turned sideways. I got caught for impaired driving and that was a really negative event in my life and how it was handled by everyone, including myself. And then I started spiraling very quickly into a very different version of myself. 

I continued drinking more heavily. The eating disorders, they weren’t keeping me sort of like in a state where I was happy. I was getting big and traumatized every step of the way. And of course that was affecting relationships and the whole thing. Now on the flip side, I was also able to still become an athletic therapist. I still got through my journey in university and I certified as an athletic therapist, but you know I’m dealing with athletes and my body was anything, but what I wanted it to be. I was 50 pounds overweight, really struggling with anxiety, depression, again addiction. And I made some serious changes at the age of 30, which really was the seed of everything to come. 

The first thing that happened was I actually quit drinking. Now at that time, I also had two failed marriages. I was in a very negative business partnership and drinking was the way that I masked the pain that I was feeling. So now I’m not masking. And I started having these incredible anxiety attacks. And this one anxiety attack was truly the seed of everything that has happened to me up until this point. Because in that moment, I was so frozen in terror that I literally thought I was gonna die. I couldn’t catch my breath. 

Now, up until that point for five years, as an athletic therapist, I did focus on deep tissue work. So I was very strong with my hands and I was a good therapist and I could locate scar tissue well, but I never really, put any attention or energy in that way into my own body. And I carried my 50 pounds of extra weight in my center. So I hated that area. I put a lot of self-loathing into my belly. So here I am in amidst this anxiety attack and for some reason I dive my hand deep into my abdomen. And the first thing that happens is I encounter pain, which really shocked me because I just kind of avoided it all the time. But the pain brought me out of that craziness and it brought me to the ground. So in that moment, I was like okay, I’m breathing. 

I’m still alive to live another day. But then what was so interesting was I just continued to intuitively explore with my hands in the area. And it was marbled with flow, it felt like scar tissue. Even though I hadn’t had any injury or surgery in that area. Just prior to this time, I had also started the practice of yoga. And I was very fortunate to have encountered a really lovely teacher who every 30 seconds or so would keep reminding us to breathe. And every time she would remind us to breathe, I recognized I wasn’t breathing. And I thought, well, if I’m not breathing likely, most people also aren’t breathing. So tying all of this works together. As I was working in my abdomen, I was feeling really calm. And I spent about 30 to 45 minutes just doing that, woke up the next day. And again, I was still feeling really calm. 

So I was excited to go home that night and continue working in the tissue in the same way. And after the second night of about the same amount of time, when I stood up, I felt taller. And I went and I looked at myself in the mirror and I immediately began to cry because my belly was flatter than it had looked in years. Now, I used to do 400 sit-ups a day. I was running. I was training to do a half marathon, Tae Bo, aerobics. I mean, I was doing the work, but my body was actually going in the opposite direction and I’d be in the gym working out with weights. And I’m seeing all these like really nicely cut built bodies and I’m just getting bigger and thicker. So as I’m so excited about this, this becomes ultimately my new addiction. 

I would come home every night from work and I would continue to just work in my body in this intuitive manner. And after two weeks, my chronic low back pain was going away that I’d had for years and years. So I started flipping my patients onto their backs and I had a really good practice. People trusted my hands and me. So I got into their belly to begin with. And I was having really fast results with people that have had chronic issues for a very long time. So I continued to do that for a couple of years. And I started attracting other therapists that wanted to learn what I was doing. And I remember there was this one moment when one of my patients said like, you need to be teaching this. 

And it was funny because I thought, you know, I’m just kinda going with the flow. Like I don’t even really know what I’m doing. I’m just following some unseen path. And I started researching. And what I really realized I tapped into was I was intuitively following the Fibonacci sequence and my hands were following that spiral pattern of everything in nature. And over the years, I did a lot of research around that and really understood that not only do we develop based on that patterning of numbers, we also age in that patterning of that same pattern. So to tap into that energy in the physical body was unzipping the seams of time very effectively and creating very fast results in people. And then, so I did start teaching therapists my technique, but my real passion was to teach people to self care. And I tried teaching people with their hands, but as I’ve learned over the years, fascia will to bone with a force of up to 2000 pounds per square inch. It is an incredibly impactful force that we need to deal with. 

So getting hands into the body for many people just wasn’t realistic. So it was about 10 or 11 years ago. That again, just through an organic process, I was actually because I was working eight to 10 hours a day on patients and then I was coming home and I was working on my own body with my hands. My hands were tired and every week I would do a restorative yoga class. And I had a lovely teacher that would come to my place. And I’d had a wooden yoga block from my iyengar yoga days beside me. So she gets me into the sideline twist on a bolster and she cautions me how deep that goes. So I’m kind of thinking, okay, so I get into this twist and I don’t even feel anything because I’m so used to driving my hands so deeply into my own body. And I said, I wanna lie on that block. And she’s like, no, you’re crazy. And I said, no, just give it to me. And as soon as I did, as soon as I put it near my ribs, I thought, oh my gosh, I don’t need to use my hands to move my hands into my body. I can move my body into the block. 

However, the block was rectangular with sharp edges. So it was a little bit limiting. So I actually had a therapist that was also a woodworker. And I said, I need to figure out a really comfortable size and shape for this tool so that we can drive through the layers of adhesion to get to the root of the issue, which is at the bone in a comfortable way. And that’s how this actual size and shape of what we call the block buddy was developed. And initially it was made from Cedar reason being a Cedar and bone are similar in density. So we need to use a medium that’s similar to bone to actually be able to melt through those layers, to get to the root of the issue. Now we make it from bamboo, which is a much better renewable resource. So that’s how this all began.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, the block is beautiful by the way. I love it.

Deanna Hansen

Thank you.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, it’s really, really cool.

Deanna Hansen

And then we’ve got a little one too called the block baby. So we got the block buddy and the block baby. Yes.

Tom McCarthy

That is awesome. That is awesome. So talk a little bit about, you said when you first reached in, you felt like what was scar tissue, but you hadn’t had an injury there. How does this happen? What’s your theory on how this happens? Why we have all this almost scar tissue like mass in our bodies, what’s going on?

Deanna Hansen

So really though what I’ve come to understand is because gravity is constantly pulling us down. We basically get shorter and wider as we age and we age in a forward rotational direction. So it’s kind of like we’re taking this sheet and we’re starting to wrinkle it along the way. And the thing is, fascia here is designed to keep us upright, supported and protected. 

So we have foundations in our body that are designed to support proper cellular alignment, but we haven’t been trained on these things. So if you notice how most people stand, they don’t stand with equal weight on both feet in proper alignment. Most people are either bearing weight over to one side or their feet are splayed out really far and their feet are turned out like a duck. 

If they’re like texting or you’re sitting in front of a computer all day. I mean, if you just notice most people, they have a head tilt that either way or the other. So typically we become shorter and wider. And it’s those adhesions that develop in the fascia. And it’s the fascia’s attempt that really keeping us from tipping over, which is really what cellulite is. It’s a really good visual to kind of really understand when you see the dimpling for example, in legs that because energy flows in waves and spirals, the fascia, literally spirals and grips onto bone to try to stop us from tipping over creating that appearance of cellulite. 

But more importantly, that’s also letting us know that there’s adhesions blocking blood and oxygen flow to cells on the other side, which really impacts cellular health. Ultimately, if cells are fed and cleaned, they’re doing their job for you and they’re not gonna complain. And it’s when cells don’t receive what they require that then they start giving us some signals.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and that’s really interesting. So a lot of the anxieties and stresses and pain is because we’ve got these issues with our fascia that’s not allowing blood to flow, not allowing oxygen to flow.

Deanna Hansen

Yes, exactly. And there’s cause sites to the pain. So that’s one of the things that we really focus on and target in block therapy, because I’ve really learned over, especially the last six years or so how impactful the calves and the feet are in holding the entire body out of alignment because the diaphragm is the engine ultimately that is supposed to be driving the heat and the blood flow through the body, through this powerful mechanism to get oxygen into the blood. In fact, when we breathe diaphragmatically we feed the body up to six times the oxygen. However, most people are breathing through the muscles of the upper chest. So the absorption of oxygen into the blood is really limited and where there’s no oxygen, the cells become deflated. And then we start to fall into that internal space. And then we balloon in other places. 

So we have compression and ballooning, which is really in my opinion, the bigger reason why people have issues with size and shape as we get older and even in young kids today. But it’s really about understanding how to release the adhesions in the whole body so that we can support that proper alignment and the calves and the feet are the furthest from the engine. So if you had a frozen shoulder and you didn’t actually release the calves and the feet, you might have a temporary improvement in that pain. But as soon as you start walking, that pattern of the fascia in the lower body is gonna pull you right back into that negative holding pattern and bring on those symptoms again.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I’m excited to try this myself because I’ve noticed over the years, I am about an inch shorter or maybe an inch and a half. So how does using the block therapy affect size and shape? Like can someone actually regained some of their size.

Deanna Hansen

Height, yes absolutely. And we hear that all the time in my community. People are sharing all the time that, oh, I just did this and I’m taller. Or people have gone to the doctor and they’ve lost height but then they regained height. So from the perspective of weight loss, the best way to describe it is the diaphragm is the foundation of the rib cage. So if we have not been conscious diaphragmatic breathers, there’s now this plate of muscle, this foundation becomes weak. And the weight of the rib cage, head, arms falls in. So we literally fall into that core space causing the belly to extend and people think it’s fat but it’s really displaced fascia. 

As we’ve take away internal space that has to go somewhere. And then we end up moving the organs around. 

So our flow internally with the systems isn’t as appropriate as it should be. And when we breathe diaphragmatically that plate of muscle is moving up and down in the core, giving the organs an internal massage. If we’re not working that muscle, the muscles of the upper chest are doing the work. So the core essentially becomes frozen. So we’re not digesting effectively, fatty liver diseases on the rise all the time. And if you think of fats like butter at room temperature, it’s a solid when you heat it, it becomes a liquid. 

So if we’re not giving those organs that active massage from the function of the diaphragm, that area becomes cold. So then the fats become cold and then they become hard and they can block flow of things. So basically we become toxic. We don’t digest well, we don’t eliminate well, we attract parasites. And then so basically I really see weight loss as more a function of compression and ballooning and then the resultant toxification as a result of the slowing of the systems.

Tom McCarthy

Wow, so when you lost the weight, did you change your eating dramatically or was it just the block therapy that allowed the weight to drop off?

Deanna Hansen

Actually the block therapy didn’t come into my world until about 10 years after this whole process began for me. And I did all the dieting when I was big. I dieted, I literally was starving myself at times. I mean, I was going through a whole bunch of negative ways of approaching that but I mean, my calorie intake versus my energy expenditure was dramatically where I should be very small and I was actually getting bigger. But what I did learn and I love this. 

In 2014, they did a study in Australia proving that 84% of weight loss comes through proper exhalation. So that really tied it all together for me because it was really when I started tapping in and unfreezing, melting the abdominal area and connecting to that breath. That’s when the change started happening. And then what’s really lovely over the years, I’ve absolutely changed my eating behaviors, but it wasn’t me saying, I need to cut this out of my life. 

It was, as I continued to dive into my body, my body learned what it didn’t like. And then suddenly it would just drop away. Like I don’t eat meat anymore because not for any other reason than I don’t digest it properly. So I get backed up with that. So you become more intuitive about what your body needs to thrive when you start tapping in and melting those adhesions so that you can care what those deeper cells are saying to you.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, this is fascinating. I know a lot of people are like, whoa, this is some really cool stuff I never thought of. So the body is this intricate so intelligent organism that if we free it up, it really does work with us to produce this amazing life, which you’ve been able to do for yourself and help so many more people do. What about trauma? Talk a little bit about trauma. And you mentioned anxiety, you had an anxiety attack, which was one of the triggers that allowed you to discover this, like by reaching into your stomach. What’s going on with trauma and stress and anxiety and how can it be released using your methodology?

Deanna Hansen

So regarding anxiety, which I’m very familiar with, and again, was the seed of this. What I’ve come to actually understand is I don’t have anxiety. I have cells that I haven’t looked after. So if I’m asking myself to work on my behalf and I love referring people to the life of a cell by David Berlinski. It shows what happens inside one of our trillions of cells, this intricate beautiful activity. 

That’s just infinite intelligence in there. It’s incredible. And if we are not giving the cell what it needs, it can’t perform on our behalf. So I mean, how many people do work and don’t breathe. I mean, we tend to injure ourselves. If we’re gonna lift something heavy and we hold our breath, we put our back out because we’re actually asking our body to do the work but we’re starving it. 

So I’ve come to understand that if I’m feeling anxiety, my cells are anxious because I’m putting my body through stress of some kind. Whether I’m not resting enough or hydrated enough, or I’m like whatever it is that I’m doing, my cells are responding to what I’m doing to my body. Whether it can also be negative thought patterns. And it can also be held in the fascia from trauma from the past. And that’s ultimately what happens because we are not taught how to remove trauma through the breath. And that’s partly what TRE does as well. 

It gets you to tap into that energy that’s been stuck so that we can actually release that trauma because it gets stuck in the folds of the fascia. And it’s all because of the breath. Because pain, fear and stress cause us to reactively hold the breath. So especially when stress is repeated or a negative stuff is repeated to the body, like if you’re living with an abusive person for example. Like there’s stress like that all the time or if you’ve witnessed an accident or you were in an accident, your body literally recoils into itself and we hold the breath and then our entire breathing pattern changes. 

So block therapy is all about opening up the body and allowing the breath to move that negative energy from the past out. And people have amazing healing opportunities. I like to call them instead of healing crises because they go through that release. And sometimes they can be pretty scary because you’re tapping into stuff and it can be physical. It can be emotional. Like for me, it used to come up through nightmares a lot. 

I used to have a lot of nightmares when I was like really messed up in my younger years. So now sometimes I’ll get one of those nightmares and I’ll recognize it. Oh, I’ve tapped into an area that I still hadn’t released yet. So now it’s coming to the surface and it’s letting go. But what I really loved and this is what Dr. Eric shared was that because we released the calves and the feet so effectively, we’re actually able to disseminate that energy more effectively so we can ground better. And then that energy can flow more appropriately through the body with block therapy.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s amazing. And when the body is flowing, when the energy is flowing through the body, more effectively, there’s less illness, less disease. I mean, just everything tends to work so much better. Hey, I should have asked you this question a little bit earlier. But for people that aren’t familiar with what fascia is, can you just describe that? What it actually is in our body?

Deanna Hansen

So the way that I have seen it, which I learned first with my hands was it really is basically an extension of every cell membrane connecting every other cell membrane. So it’s the matrix that we exist. And we are not a solid form. In fact, what I loved learning years ago when I was doing some research in quantum physics was there’s as much space between the atoms and the body as there are the planets in the universe. Which is just so interesting to comprehend. 

But we are basically a spacious body but we’ve become dense. And if you think of blowing up a balloon, you know, that balloon can almost defy gravity if it’s blown up. You take the air out. It becomes a little plastic rubber thing that falls to the ground. And that’s what our cells become if we aren’t properly breathing. And I would say that, I mean, this is just me throwing this number out, but I would say that the majority of people are really only oxygenating 20% of their body. 

They say we only use 10% of our brain. I think it’s because we’re not oxygenating the brain properly. And when we start tapping into the diaphragm, it’s at the base of the lungs where the majority of the alveoli reside. So for breathing through the muscles of the upper chest, we’re not even bringing the air deeply enough into the lungs for that bed of absorption. Which is why we’re also not controlling our size and shape effectively because we’re not exhaling from that place either. So our lungs are getting impacted with all this debris and garbage because gravity pulls everything also to the base. Which has an implication on the pandemic that we’re dealing with today as well. So when we can really start cleaning out the lungs, melting through those adhesions in the rib cage and getting back to that full diaphragmatic breath, it is an absolute game changer in our entire physiology.

Tom McCarthy

And so lots of adhesions tend to show up in the diaphragm area and the rib cage?

Deanna Hansen

Absolutely and that’s the first thing that we always teach is to do the core and the rib cage. It’s the first class that we always do. And it’s amazing because the first class is literally only 20 minutes long, just getting people used to the feeling of pressure in the body, connecting to pain, connecting to the breath and each position we stay in always for a minimum of three minutes because we are melting through adhesions and you can’t rush melting. And it’s the combination of connecting to the diaphragmatic breath, which is like turning on the internal furnace compared to say a space heater. If you wanna use that analogy with pressure over time on the external part of the body, and the two become very efficient at heating and melting through those adhesions. And it’s amazing because in my group, people will say, wow, I’m on only day three of the starter program. And already I’m breathing better. I feel taller. I feel calm or like it’s pretty profound how quickly it changes things.

Tom McCarthy

Nice, so it’s a program that people get started with. They start to feel results. Is it something that, I mean, you probably use it still every day? It’s something you use throughout your life because stresses are always coming at us. Little events that might create some trauma. So even though we freed up something, there may be something else that is being developed. If we stop the process.

Deanna Hansen

Well, gravity is constantly afflicting us as is stress. So, I mean, absolutely. But also we have a lifetime and possibly many lifetimes of adhesions and negative patterns in the body that we work through. So, I mean, I’m 21 years in, I’m 51 years old right now. And I am so excited because from where I was, when I started in my twenties, I have come so far. But I’m still so full of adhesions that I know I will continue to melt through and continue to bring more gifts into my life. And that’s the beautiful part of it. It really never ends. And you do it lying down. So it’s this very lovely restorative. Well, I do call it an exercise. It’s a therapy exercise and meditation really all built into one. 

And in our advanced classes, we add in a lot of isometric resistance to really bring healthful strengthening into the body so that we can pull those cells back to where they’re supposed to be, as opposed to repetitive concentric work which really pulls the body quickly out of alignment or other methods of exercise that I have personally found to be quite damaging to the body because people simply aren’t really aware of proper foundation and breathing. So the harder you train, the harder you work out in that negative way, you’re actually aging yourself a lot faster.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, what are some of the successes that you’ve had with different issues? I know there’s, you know, anxiety would be obviously something that this is very, very helpful with. What are some of the other things that people might need to be aware of that they go, oh, I’ve got that, this could be something that could be helpful for me. What types of issues generally are you helping people with?

Deanna Hansen

You know, that it’s such a broad, broad answer. And that’s why I always invite people into my private Facebook group Block Therapy Community. That’s where you really see the magic. There’s almost 5,000 members in there now that are blockers and there’s one member in particular, who I love to shout out to, because he’s just been so amazing, Gary Sharpe. He has a website called Out-Thinking Parkinson’s and he’s been doing block now for about, not quite a year and a half. He has made some absolutely phenomenal gains. And he ties a lot of research together to share why block therapy is so impactful. We do a ton of scoliosis. I have my block therapy academy for kids. 

I’ll be launching in October, but we do have a kids program. And I see a lot of kids with scoliosis. We have amazing results because scoliosis really isn’t an issue of the spine. It’s an issue of the limbs. And again, it comes down to those cause sites and being able to unlock the body from that negative patterning and pull it back into alignment. Weight issues, chronic pains of decades, whether it’s herniated discs or frozen shoulders or migraines, all of that stuff I mean, people come to it for anti-aging. 

It’s pretty much anything and everything because when it comes down to fascia, fascia is there to support cell health. So when we support the fascia health, we’re really supporting all of our cells to be able to thrive on our behalf. And as long as cells are fed and clean, they’re gonna do their job and they’re not gonna complain and nor should they go through the aging process really. And in fact, we can actually rejuvenate cells by melting those adhesions that have blocked blood and oxygen flow so that we can awaken cells previously blocked. And that’s one of the great things this book that we’re going to share, we’ve got about 14 or 15 amazing testimonials in there. And a lot of my instructors are women in their 60s and 70s. 

And the anti-aging benefits are absolutely phenomenal. Their hair is getting thicker and color’s coming back. Their varicose veins are going away. Chronic pains of decades, the energy, the way their face looks. I mean, it’s really all wrapped up in how that cell is positioned. And the goal is that we put every single one of our trillions of cells back in its rightful place, because they get pulled away from their home with gravity and unconscious living. And this work is all about bringing it all back to where it’s supposed to be.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and when you think about aging, obviously there’s the outward appearance, but the thing that’s most instrumental that I’ve noticed even with my in-laws who have lived with us is their inability to move. And I think like your health is really, a lot of it is dependent upon your ability to move. And when that starts to go away and you start, looking down and being very fearful of movement, which your block therapy I think helps people not have that fear because it’s nice open and free. 

But when that happens for people, I think their purpose is stronger. They’re more joyful in life. They wake up looking forward to the day and when we don’t have that, that’s when we tend to kind of get tipped over the edge. So I love your philosophy. I love what you’re doing. Hey, you mentioned scoliosis, which a lot of people think that’s something that, you need surgery or can’t be corrected. It just is the way it is or braces, things like that. You’ve got a different approach with it and you’ve had some great success. Talk a little bit about that please.

Deanna Hansen

Yes so again, I really see it as a function of the limbs. If you took one arm for example and you twisted it this way and the other arm and twisted it this way, like right away my spine is moving. So for example, I have one lovely young lady, she’s 18 years old. She’s actually gonna be heading our block therapy academy for kids. She started with me when she was 16 years old and she was a concert violinist. So the amount of time she spent in this position created a scoliosis. So it’s really looking at the whole body and understanding largely as well from the calves and the feet, how they are bound and twisted. And you can see if you look at a body, nobody stands with equal weight on both feet, feet straight ahead. 

Everybody’s got some kind of collapsed one way or the other, because we hyperextended the knees. And as soon as we do, we create a rotation. So if you look at both feet, there’s gonna be one that is likely gonna be more pronated or collapsed. And that acts like a flat tire. And then it starts pulling over time, everything into that system. And we start winding and winding. And then of course the fascia is going to respond by creating a counterbalance. So we keep going through these counterbalances in life, which basically turns us into this frozen body instead of having dynamic movement that we can control. We become very rigid and hard because the fascia is gripping onto bone and to anything it can pretty much grip on to for stability. And with that stability, we lose our mobility. 

So however we end up falling in and basically it’s what we do all the time that matters. And it can even start in the womb. I mean, I’m sure a lot of the young kids that I’m seeing as they’re coming out twisted. And in fact, when I look at the mothers today having babies because they’re of the generation that grew up in front of computers, their posture is very different than ours would be. And so now they’re having babies from a place of less space. So these babies are coming out with an effected diaphragm because their breathing pattern comes from the mother. 

And this world is far more stressful than it was 30 years ago. And so the kids are coming out twisted to start and not breathing properly to start. So I actually in my membership I teach mothers, fathers, people how to engage their babies proper diaphragmatic breath. Because in my generation that’s how babies breath. And then over time we lose it. I’m seeing babies now coming out and they’re not breathing through their diaphragm properly. So we teach parents how to get their baby to start that process properly.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and with all this counterbalances you called them, it’s chewing up energy, right? It’s this energy that we could be using to live and think, and create is getting locked up in our body. And then we’re like, I’m so tired. Why am I so tired? I haven’t done anything yet. No, your body is working its tail off already.

Deanna Hansen

Just to stay upright. And I mean like one of the approaches we wanna have is effortless effort. Everything takes effort, but for me to sit up straight all the time, it does like, this is my natural now. Most people are like this. And then now the muscles in the back of the body are going, wait a minute, I don’t wanna be there. And I remember years ago watching Dr. Oz and he was saying, your head weighs about 10 pounds falling out of balance. It puts up to 100 pound force on the muscles of the back of the neck and the shoulders. Now imagine, let’s talk about the low back when your diaphragm isn’t supporting the rib cage and we start to fall, in how much pressure intention does that put on the low back? So then you go for treatment and you get your back work done. It’s not taking away the force that’s actually causing the challenge in the first place.

Tom McCarthy

You’re hitting some sore spots for me already because actually with COVID and being on so many Zooms, like my back and just the posture of sitting so much I actually I’m standing now. But a lot of times I am seated versus before I was traveling around, which that has its own issues but I have been feeling a lot there. So I can’t wait to start doing this therapy on my neck and shoulders. And that’s amazing. I mean, I find myself sometimes like even my eyes, it’s harder for them to focus just because I’ve been in front of screens so much. And then I can feel this tension coming up here.

Deanna Hansen

I fully agree. And I even have a Virtual Intensive for Eye Health. I have a 21-day program in my membership. That’s 21-day head, neck and face. So we always start in the rib cage because that of course is the foundation for the head and the neck. And then we get into the scalp and the face and we get like all through here, all these adhesions that are blocking flow into whatever structure. And that’s why in the beginning, it was challenging for me because it sounded too good to be true because what doesn’t this benefit? I mean, ultimately when you melt adhesions and you start feeding cells that were not previously properly fed and cleaned, they improve no matter what tissue we’re talking about.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s awesome. So everybody listening to this or watching this, you can download the free gift, the book that and show the book again, Deanna if you don’t mind.

Deanna Hansen

“Fascia Decompression, The Missing Link In Self Care.”

Tom McCarthy

Awesome, so ebook for you. Now, where can people go to find out more about the memberships and the different kits and the blocks? Where can people go to find out more about that? 

Deanna Hansen

So my website blocktherapy.com. There’s lots of information there. Everybody starts in one place, but we just actually added something as well. So the starter program is where we have everybody start. That teaches you how to use the tool safely throughout your body. It in itself is nine classes that you keep for life. And if that’s all you ever do, already you’re gonna be making massive, massive gains because you can continue to cycle through. And you’re always tapping into deeper adhesions. 

So it’s not like you’re just going to the same place all the time because your body’s constantly lengthening. And then with that, you get a two week free trial into the membership to see what’s in there. And we have so many programs. I’m just almost finishing my 90-day challenge. We’re in week 12 now of the 90-day challenge, which is amazing. But I’ve got a 21-day women’s health program. I’ve got again, that head, neck and face. Shoulder, arms and hands, a core rib cage program, pelvis, legs and feet. So really targeting certain areas where I’ve ordered my classes in a very specific way for a very specific outcome. 

We also just launched our nine for nine. So for people that can’t afford to jump right in and pay the $129 for that program, my nephew and I who’s my partner in all of this work, we created nine videos for $9 using a rolled up towel. And that alone is quite amazing because of course, you’re not gonna get all the way to the root of the issue, but you still decompress the fascia with the way that we’ve presented it. And you’ll still get a very good sense. And that alone is gonna make a difference for people.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, awesome. So for $9.

Deanna Hansen

For $9.

Tom McCarthy

They can get started, yeah.

Deanna Hansen

Yes and we have a YouTube channel, a block therapy YouTube channel, which of course has so much education on it. Lots of discussions. In fact, Dr. Eric was in one of the discussions that’s on there.

Tom McCarthy

Okay cool.

Deanna Hansen

Yes, Yeah.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome. Yeah, this is really, really amazing. And I know so many people can benefit from it. Also I love the analogy you talked about, you know, you’re never gonna get everything out. It’s almost like the metaphor I use is it’s like back in college or the cafeteria, right? Or at high school where you would go and you’d pull a plate off and then guess what happened? Another plate pops back up and they just keep, but don’t be discouraged by that because that plate you pulled off that one area of your body you worked on, now you’re freer you’ve got more energy. There’s less disease that you’ll be susceptible to. But there’s always work as long as we’re breathing, there’s work that needs to be done. So this is a lifelong process that strategy that people can use to continually just evolve into that next level of who they can be, which I absolutely love.

Deanna Hansen

And what’s nice as well is, sorry to interrupt is you can do this on a bed. So we have people that are starting in the position where they actually can’t get on a floor because they might have whatever limitation. We have a lot of people with fibromyalgia. So that like that’s the beautiful thing. You can take it to whatever level. You can ramp it up. If you’re an athlete or you’re able to go into those deeper moves. You can ramp that up, but it’s all directed with your breath. Your breath is your guide with everything. And then that translates into life. So then we learn how to be less stressed or how to deal with stress more appropriately in life as well as pain. And that’s the really nice thing. It’s really about teaching you how to self care. And that’s the whole goal.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, somebody who’s already got fascia compression and tightness. They can’t handle stress the way that somebody that’s worked through it can, right? ‘Cause they’re already overloaded now this new thing coming on so.

Deanna Hansen

Well and it was in the power of now where Eckhart Tolle was mentioning that when we breathe diaphragmatically, we’re living in the moment, God only lives in the moment. And it also connects you to a relaxed brain pattern where when you breathe through the muscles of the upper chest, it connects you to a stressed brain pattern, which is connected to the past or future, which is where fear lives. So if that’s how you’re breathing, you can be in a completely relaxed space and your internal space can be hyper stressed. And conversely, you can be in a stressful situation but you can have very much control of what’s going on internally and be at peace within.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I love your work. I’m so happy that Dr. Eric Robbins suggested that we have you on, because this really is about unlocking energy that right now is trapped. And when you do that, you heal. You heal from mental situations that people are going through stress trauma, but also these physical things that we all go through. You mentioned fibromyalgia. That’s something that this is really helpful for?

Deanna Hansen

Yeah, we have a number of people in our community that have that and are using it to manage and improve their situation. So again, I invite anyone and everybody that would love to be in that community the Block Therapy Community on Facebook. And you can see the conversations and almost daily. There’s multiple, what people would think of are miraculous things happening but it’s really just understanding the fascia system and feeding it what it needs. And we don’t have to get so involved in the physiology of things to have the impact in our bodies. We simply need to support our fascia system and our body will support us if we do that.

Tom McCarthy

Beautiful, Deanna any final words you have for people listening, anything you’d like to leave them with before we end the interview?

Deanna Hansen

Our kids are in trouble today because they’re growing up in front of technology and they’re growing up with so many challenges that we didn’t have in our generation and it will impact their futures dramatically. And this is a solution. This is a tool that they can use to undo a lot of what’s going on. And it hurts my heart to see how twisted and how out of balance the kids are today, because I know what that translates to in time. I see patterns and it’s important now that they connect to their fascia in whatever means it’s really about fascia decompression. Whether the block is simply a tool for fascia decompression. And that’s what’s important is to get these kids opened up now because they are the future. And I see a dire future, unless we really get this word out to them.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, now I agree. I mean, everybody’s so locked in on that handheld right in front of them. So what beautiful work you do. Thank you so much for discovering it. Through your own pain, you discovered it. So you were guided to it, I’m sure. And you had to experience those tough times, just like anyone watching right now. Who’s experienced tough times. You’re guided to watch this interview right now with Deanna. So please take advantage of her download. Checkout blocktherapy.com. Deanna thank you so much for being a guest. We really do appreciate it. And like with all the guests, I’ve learned so much from being able to have this opportunity to talk with you. So thank you so much.

Deanna Hansen

Thank you so much, it’s been an honor to be here.