EP. 293 Fascial Counterstrain with Brian Tuckey, PT: The Science, the Research, and the Results

[Music] You're listening to the fully booked Fairfix with Heather Hamill. This is the business coaching show for hands-on Fairfix who are done under earning and ready to build a practice that pays them more than enough. Real conversations, real results, your real life. Let's get into it. [Music] Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode. Today I am joined with Brian Tucky. He is the creator of Fashal Counter-Strain. Brian, do you want to kind of introduce yourself and give us some of your background information? Sure. I'm a physical therapist, PT, OCS, Board Certified Specialist, and I'll be patient with pedics. I am one of only four physical therapists that the famous osteopathic physician, Dr. Lawrence Jones, certified to teach strain and counter-strain. This techniques predecessor, I was certified at about the age of 25, 26 in the mid 1990s. Now, makes me old. After Dr. Jones passed away in the late 1990s, I took over the reins of innovation and expanded the technique from 200 techniques that were just fine, the tender point, treated, and we didn't really know what we were doing. It is today over 1,000 techniques that has both a diagnostic process and a timeical correlation to what those tender points mean. That's amazing. What do you think gave you the audacity to go from being one of four people trained in this method to basically creating, I mean, you more than quadrupled the amount of treatment options available. What were you thinking at the time? So I would say of the four of us that were certified, I was by far the youngest, but I would say that they were really not at a point where they really were being inquisitive as to what exactly we were doing. I always had the mindset that this technique can't reach as potential if we don't understand the mechanism and we don't understand what we're actually treating. Now, in their defense, including Dr. Jones for sure, the amount of information on lymphatic science, pain science, facial science at that time was very limited. We had one article. It was the 1975 core article and it was proprioceptors in somatic dysfunction. That's what it was called. That was the only article that came out that said with chronic dysfunction, joint dysfunction, whatever you want to call it, my facial trigger points, there is something wrong with the proprioceptors. It wasn't a scar tissue thing, which was really the paradigm at that time. We got to pop the scar tissue and everything will line up. Dr. Jones grabbed that and he said this proprioceptive dysfunction is the only thing that can explain what he was doing. For those who don't know anything about strain counter-strain, Dr. Jones was a osteopathic physician, which again, he was functioning as a primary care doctor and Ontario organ, but he was trained in manipulation. When his patients would come in and they had various musculoskeletal complaints, he would use manipulation, but then he might also check your blood pressure and give you something for your cold. A guy came in who had seen two chiropractors previously for six weeks each and he had pretty significant flex to vertebra at L2. He was stuck bent forward. The osteopaths will call that so as I just, because there was a so aspasm as you guys would know, attaches to the L2 segment and he couldn't stand up straight and he was in severe pain. These chiropractors each did a manipulation course of about six weeks of peace and eventually just sent him to Dr. Jones. He was like, "Well, this guy knows some different stuff and he's the only other person that's in town that treats backs." Dr. Jones, when he would tell the story, he would say he did about five weeks of manipulation before he finally admitted that he wasn't helping the guy either. He came in and said to Dr. Jones, "I think I could respond if I could just find a position to sleep." At that point, Dr. Jones said, "Yeah, make sense." He started to experiment with positions of comfort and found bent up with his knees rotated off to one side. His pain stopped. Dr. Jones used pillows and propped them up in that position and he said, "Okay, we'll stay here a while so we can see if you could really sleep in this position." He took off, treated some more patients, came back about 20 minutes later, got him a thumbs up, said, "Field's great." He took all the pillows out and when the guy stood up, he stood up perfectly straight, which he had not done. They looked at each other and Dr. Jones said, "What's going on?" He goes, "I don't know. That sharp pain isn't there." He checked his range of motion and he even gained about 50% of his extension back. They're both dumbfounded and he's like, "Okay." When he came back, several days later, he walked in upright and he said to Dr. Jones, "I don't know what that, what we did there," he said. "I can live with the remaining pain." It's not much. Dr. Jones then assessed him and saw that that L2 restriction was gone. It was no longer flexed. He was a very intuitive guy. With that, he said, "Somehow, pain-free positioning fixed a dysfunction with a lasting effect without any force." That was one of the first non-force and direct manipulation. I should say, observations. Later, he started to correlate that there was tenderness to each one of these restrictions and he could position the person to where that tenderness went away. That's how the tender points were mapped out and ended up mapping out about 200 before he fast-away. That's incredible. When you took over and started developing facial counter-strain, what were you thinking? You said you were the youngest out of the four other therapists that were certified. I had been exposed to manotherapy before even when to PT school. I happened to volunteer for a bunch of different people. Initially, I wanted to be an orthopedist and my mom was a nurse and she had me interview with a couple of those guys and they did not like their jobs. I said, "Okay, I won't do that." Anyway, I happened to just try several different clinics and I ran into a guy. You can call it quincidence, God's Providence, whatever it was. That was a high-end osteopathic man-to-therapy scene. He was in my own hometown. When I watched him work, people were limping in and walking out and turning their necks. Everyone else was just there of hands and bikes and ultrasounds and STEM machines. They didn't do anything. Finally, I said to this particular guy, "I'm volunteering in a lot of places and no one's doing what you're doing." He's like, "Well, I'm not doing PT. It's actually osteopathic medicine." I said, "Well, I would love to do this." He's like, "Well, let's keep in touch. When you get through school, tell me and I'll point you in the right direction." I even in PT school, I was taking osteopathic classes at night on my own. When I got to my residency or my clinicals, I already knew muscle energy for the whole body. Anyway, I studied at Michigan State, studied Trevel, studied up ledger, all over the place. When I met Jones, again, it was just because one of my student people I met in training said, "You got to try this stuff." I was like, "What the heck?" I didn't go in with any major expectations, but his ability and Randy Kusanoci, who was one of the first guys certified. They were teaching that class. How fast they found dysfunctional tissue, the way they would change the body. They were going in direct, which was blowing my mind. My lab partner, I've always been an athlete and everywhere he found tender points, there were places that I had chronic pain. Interesting. Just the depressed rib dysfunctions, which I know today are cartilage of the Acoustic Contra cartilage. I had a one-two dysfunction. That gave me my shoulder flexion back because I was stuck, chyphotic. My tendonitis disappeared. Just when my lab partner did in the first lab. I was like, "I think I'm going to try this." I was doing several other things at the time. I was studying at Stanley Paras' curriculum. It was speed dating. I was like, "Who do you like?" I fell in love with Counter-Straight. I love that. That's such an interesting story. You fell in love with it. After Dr. Jones died, you decided to take it further. You have to really be bought into this method to, this is like, "Behound your life's work now." Did you say you developed over a thousand more points? I developed the entire diagnostic process we used today, including what's called the cranial scan, which is an embryological motion test of the cranium, which tells you, which systems, well, let me take a step back. This is a whole course of talk we're trying to do here. In the end, what tender points are, it's a sensory, secondary, cutaneous hyperalgesia presentation of a deeper problem. Okay, so they're diagnostic. So back in Jones Day, it would be like sternum 3, T5 posterior. So now I anatomically correlated every one of those two. It's source tissue. Wow. So, you want to treat the external Ileag vein. I can tell you what point on the surface is the external illegal vein. Wow. And then to take that another step, I developed a cranial motion test that allows you to, for example, the mastoid process, if you motion test the mastoid process, it tells you about the peritoneum and the plura, it tells you about the viscera. Wow. So if that's rigid, depending on where it's rigid, you know they have visceral, fascial dysfunction. And you know approximately where that tender point is before you start. Wow. Go through the whole way into the end of the curriculum. There's almost a hundred quick motion tests that we do. Okay. So it's got a full diagnostic process. So there is no guesswork. The body tells us where the primary problems are and we just follow the process. And the tender point will disappear, but it's also just an indicator that you fix the deeper structure. Okay. So so all of that I developed over all these years and it's, I'm still doing it. Right. You know, I still see patients to this day. But what I would say is a nut shell because I'm a loser, your listeners. If you look at the success that you're having doing myofascia release, you have to realize that myofascia is just one system or subsystem of the entire fascia continuum. Okay. So if you look under a microscope, myofascia and vascular fascia and neuro fascia and visceral fascia, ligaments tendons, they all have the same proprioceptors. They all have the same, you know, myofyperblast, contractile tissues. They all have neurons that connect into the spinal cord and it's a proprioceptive organ. So fascia counterstrain is multi system. Yeah. So we treat and the classes are broken down into this real class, you know, lymphatic and venous class or arterial class and you learn system by system. But ultimately they all affect each other. Yeah. All the way out to the cell at a level. Yeah. So in the end, what happens is that yes, you can treat pain and range of motion indirectly. It's pain free. You're just shortened. We'll talk about how it works. But you also the scope of your practice expands dramatically. Today, for example, I just got back from practicing. You know, I had some full body global pain patients, but almost everybody I saw was not a pain patient. They were coming in for visceral dysfunction, brain fog, balance, chronic fatigue syndrome, one little boy with development of delay. When you start to be able to work on, you know, blood flow in and out, like post-concussion syndrome. Okay. They're foggy. They have headaches. That's swelling in the drainage system of the brain and the glumphatic system. So really stoves drain that out, you know, things like photophobia, even anxiety, all these things change if you can take the inflammation of the brain. So the scope of the practice, it gets really big, which is a great thing. Everybody's got something going on and you can treat digestive stuff. So it's not just a pain practice at that point. Yeah, that's very interesting. As far as like the training goes, do most therapists go through several classes before they start treating patients? Or are they able to like after the first level or however you categorize these, get into treatment and start putting these into practice. Yeah, we recommend you go back and you start doing it and you 100% fall back on whatever your wheelhouse is. But if you want to integrate it, so in foundations, it's basically kind of a appetizer. So I'll go through the physiology behind it, which we can get into that, but there's very hardcore science behind this now. Sure. Why it works, how it works, you know, what's an indirect versus direct. Then we go into a bit of the diagnostic process, teach you some of the embryological cranial scans, and then for each assessment, we teach, we give you points that you can actually treat. So you'll come out of the first class with 40 different techniques from five different anatomical systems that you can go back and start practicing the skills. So for example, you'll learn how to turn off the pre-ganglionic sympathetics, the ascending ones from T12 that make up all the sympathetics to the entire head. Well, when they're dysfunctional, it causes vasoconstriction of all the vessels of the head and brain. So a gazillion techniques with one right left release, and you can open up all the drainage and improve blood flow. That's in beginner class, just an example of the nerve stuff we teach there. That's amazing. So even as a beginner, do you feel like therapists are able to make a difference and make headway with their patients, even without like maybe knowing how to do it perfectly? Yeah, because we want you to eventually get to the point where you are in my fascia, where your hand is there and you already know it's an out before they say out. So we wanted to become objective, but you have a diagnostic tender point and once you make that diagnosis, it's a cookbook. You've got the picture, you've got the flex them, turn them, you know, side bend left, rotate left, and you're going to check that tender point when it turns off, you start your hold and you for about 45 seconds. So it's yeah, you can do it right away. The more manual therapy, background and experience and how trained your hands are, the faster you pick it up, people who have my fascia experience are going to have a lot of the skills already. So they just need to understand the science behind it, the physiology versus like a doctor, you know, the physiology might be like I got it, you know, but then they may not have the hands. So you know, like anything, there's a bit of a learning curve, but the techniques, if you follow the diagnostic protocol, and the cranial scan and the tender points collectively when they match, it tells you that's a source inflammation and I'll get into the science a little bit, but there are some research articles that we'll talk about at the end that if you really want to, you know, hear the real science, don't listen to a podcast, just read the article. I published the method article, I call it. So what is special kind of strain? I published that in the International Journal of osteopathic medicine in December, okay, of last year. Congratulations. I mean, that's kind of a big deal to get published. Yeah, yeah. The only way you could get that published was because getting a manual therapy technique, a new technique, there's no category. Right. So that journal had what they call a master class category. So if you're a quote unquote master clinician, you can write the editor and say, my one research doctor friend, I said, well, how do I get in that? You said, well, you tell him what you want to write and you tell him why you're the person to write it. And if they agree, then they'll let you submit. Yeah. So anyway, they just say, okay, we'll read it. That doesn't mean they'll publish it. Right. Well, how much work goes into writing that research paper? Well, the one the one we'll talk about more is the one since this is effectively a inflammation drainage technique. So if you said, Brian, elevator talk, what is special chemistry? I would say it's a complex process that identifies and removes trapped inflammation from the body. And it is that trapped inflammation that drives the muscle garden reflexes, the tender points, it drives the whole thing. So I had to, and that's what we do, we decompress and hold, but that was not in the research. Okay. They did in 2007 did some interstitial sampling studies. And it was a guy by the name J. Shaw that he went at NIH. They developed a microbiologist needle. They went into active trigger points. And it was a tiny little needle that could draw out the interstitial fluid, not the blood, the clear stuff, right? The blister fluid. And check it for cytokines to see if there was inflammation compared to the other side that didn't have a trapeziate trigger point. Turned out, there were 23 different types of inflammation and catacoleumines and things in there. He got that idea because he was one of my patients. And I told him to do it. And he's now world famous Dr. J. P. Shaw if you go to fashion congresses. But anyway, so they sampled and proved it was in there. But nobody could say how did they get there and how does it maintain? Well, that article, the title is impaired lymphatic drainage and interstitial inflammatory stasis and chronic musculoskeletal and idiopathic pain syndromes. Okay. Exploring a novel mechanism. So we can get a link to this. But yeah, we'll have all the links in the show notes. So nobody can impaired lymphatic drainage. Tucky. It'll pop up and you can read it. But that article is 147 citations, 6,300 words to explain how it gets trapped. And that article was in frontiers of musculoskeletal pain in 2021. It is now the by far the number one most downloaded article in that journal all time by over it's got 60,000 downloads and number two's like 22,000. Wow. It has at least 35 citations and your average like PT journal, the average thing gets like 2.3 citations. And here's what's really cool this week, which just happened before I came online with you here. That impaired lymphatic shutdown stasis model. Yeah. There were some scientists in China that using all the latest technologies, you know, 3D imaging, we're talking sampling and dye studies, they tested it. And they just published in basically one of the nature journals, which is number one journal in the world. They just published their findings and they tested it on the TMJ and it was correct. So they actually said, basically they that this hypothesis was proven in the TMJ to actually happen. So it's no longer a theory. And they only place they tested it. It was true. And that was amazing. And I have that citation here, but when you think medical school will get caught up on teaching about fascia and like all of the differences that that yeah, it's a good question. It's kind of like why don't they really teach a lot of this stuff and the answer is they don't have anyone who can teach it. Well, and they're behind, right? And they're behind, right? They're using textbooks that are, you know, like 50 years behind. 50 years behind, you know, when I have been an osteopath. So this is like, I know what MFR is and I'm like, no, you don't actually. Yes. Yeah. No. And the osteopaths are they know the old Jones. They don't know this. Yeah. But yes. So like I literally even in my foundation class, I changed the lecture of it, you know, every year, all my class and I update them every year for the latest research. I think that's a really important, that's a really important work that you're doing and taking the time to do that. That's awesome. Yeah. The stasis paper. And again, I had Dr. Shaw and another very well-known researcher Dr. Serbel even Canada. He's a neurologist. They were on the paper. But we would do Zoom meetings. I would do the work, the writing, and then we would zoom on Saturdays. But that took me over 500 hours. Wow. And you don't get paid for it. No. Right. So like I said, you know, I just spent a lot of time at the end. You've got to pay to have the article published to make it a little bit worse. Yeah, sure. Of course. Yeah. So like I was paying 500 dollars in a nice bit, $3,000 that published. So we'll have it printed so that you guys can download it. Yeah. Wow. That's a lot of efforting to go into that. But I think people can be really thankful that it's available. And hopefully it will start to turn the course of, you know, medical care and treatments for patients that have chronic or unexplained pain. Right. If you want to, and this is kind of your original question, why did you get into the science and, you know, just not just do Jones? Yeah. You know, if you cannot describe the mechanism with published known physiology and you don't have a mechanism, then you'll never mainstream it. So first, first have a real mechanism that stands up to scrutiny. Then number two, start to do real research. So we've done case studies. We published one last year on PTSD, sympathy, nervous system. Yeah. We did one of my doctor friends just did one, she's a pediatrician who counterstrains she did one on on bed wedding, you know, and kids treating the spinal cord. So we're pumping them out. I did one on sciatic of this year. But that Chinese one was very cool because it said the whole theory appears to be correct. Okay. And so that really leaves back to why are we able to treat central sensitization because we can drain inflammation even out of the central nervous system. Wow. Do you follow me? Yeah. I mean, it sounds like something everybody needs to like just from being alive. Yeah. Yeah. You won't have a problem with with patients. Yeah. I mean, I saw that I looked on your podcast there and again, trying to help people become successful and get practices, which you know, it's a business, right? It's, you know, you know, patients and you can't do it. Yeah. But a lot of, you know, I'll just give you a quick, you know, case of a single mother massage therapist I met like two and a half years ago. And you know, she had the work done. She's like, I want to do this. I don't have a lot of money. She's like, what do you recommend? And I said, you know, she's like, should I go back to school and take a loan? I mean, no, don't do that. I'm like, you already have a license to touch. I said, you know, travel the whole course, everything. It's under a thousand bucks a course. I said, take $5,000. You need to get the borrow it. Master five classes. I said, and you go beyond that. You'll have a weightless. Why I caught up with her about six classes in. I don't teach all of them anymore. I people specialize, but I teach the beginning. I teach some in the middle. And then I teach a lot of the end stuff that the new stuff. But anyway, she has like a six month weightless. She's charged on like 150, 200 bucks an hour out of her house. I mean, don't go market. Just get skills and your patients will feel you well. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Or get the skills and then come to me. And I'll help you get fully ventaster. Yeah. Well, there you go. That's right. Let's let's let's teach you how to market your skills. But a lot of it, you're competing if you're just doing muskah scout the work. There's a lot of competition for that. Sure. But if you're like, hey, I can treat fiber of my outja, I can treat chronic constipation. I can treat your scope is so big. No one else has anything to offer those people. And also if you have the results to back it up, right? Because anyone can say, Hey, I treat these things. But I want to know what your results are. I want to know how successful your patient outcomes are, right? And leaning into that a little bit. How much confidence does it take like for that massage therapist to maybe specialize in facial counter strain versus identify as a massage therapist? Like do you feel like people walk away from your foundations, learning the techniques and they embody the therapist that you want to be out there with your name on their work? Does that make sense? Like how much confidence does it take to be able to recreate that? That's an excellent insight, excellent question. So I worry about these things being the person trying to put their names on it, right? My name's on it. So we don't even allow people on our counter strain search engine until they've taken at least four. Okay. And then we work as a community. So if somebody walks in one of these high-end, chronic pain, full body, central sensitization patient and you're like, Hey, I'm pretty good with muskah skeletal stuff, but I try what I did. It didn't do it. We don't say, Oh, well, you know, counter strain can't help you. You say, well, you know, there's a few people who have a bit more training. You may have to travel a little bit and then we work as a community. So like my entire case, because I wanted to finish the central nervous system people. So I'm pretty much I take patients by request email and they need to need me. You follow me or I'll say, No, you know, you got someone your own state go see them or come to my colleague. So I'm treating like Parkinson's and traumatic brain injuries. And you know, so that way a lot of them have already seen my students and they, Hey, that's the first thing it ever helped me, but I'm stuck here. Then the fly out for three days. I'll do a three day intensive and they stay in hotel. And then I'll send them back off and I just keep tabs with them. So I'm able to I'm immersed myself in some of the toughest cases in the country all day long to map out this end stuff to make sense. Yeah. Yeah. To continue your research right into exactly exactly. You know, I don't want to treat this brain dangle and you know, I know how that goes. Yeah. So anyway, we work that way and patient really appreciate that. And when I send it back, I'm like, All right, I hope I never see you again. So go back and let your local therapist clean up whatever shows up next. You know, I did a lot of the deep brain stuff and and then you know, they only send them back if needed. You know, so then the person doesn't say they'll say, well, my therapist helped me a lot, but he she thought I needed more advanced training. So I had to travel. And then as that person gets better, unless people need travel to somebody else because you're deep in the curriculum. Yeah. For people that are deep in the curriculum, is there an actual certification through your programs or how does that work? Yeah. So certifications are hard to do. Yeah. Manly. Mound wise. They are hard to do. Yeah. So, you know, I realized I didn't want people getting all the way up and treating the hard and the brain and the brain stem without knowing for sure that they're proficient in the assessment because quite frankly, it's not safe. Okay. These techniques, the good thing about it is they're wham change. But I think about it, you do it totally in the wrong order. You know, you could give somebody a flare up, but you're not going to kill them. But like, for example, you did deep brain work and you didn't know that they were tethered in their dura in the frame of magdom. You'll clog their brain stem as it tries to get out. Yeah. And they'll get nauseous. They could get vertigo. They could feel like crap for like three days because you didn't listen to the body. That makes sense. Though we do have a proficiency exam, which is about, there's five, six classes in that that we call, you know, a base level search or proficiency. That allows you to get into the end of the curriculum. Okay. So you can't even take those classes until you've got to show us your proficiency. You know, if you are doing it every day, you'll pass. Yeah. But the point is, I would too, I would too those patients that are the worst in the world to make sure anyone who treats them. Okay. It should be treating them. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's a bit more complete about it. It costs me money to tell you know, you can't take my class. I said it's about safety. It's about safety. Yeah. Well, and I think your name is on the work right like you want the varsity level, like people that are really taking the work serious and want to be proficient in it, right? Going further with it. Anyone can walk in and take foundations and you know, just like put it in their toolbox and maybe never think about it again or they pull it out on a Wednesday or whatever. You know, your concern is like getting the people that are really into it all the way through the program, but making sure that the basement level has been accomplished and they're ready to go forward with them. Yeah. And I've met a gazillion's of therapists that said to me, you know what, I don't want to treat those worst patients in the country. I will send them out. I took six eight. She took six eight classes. You know, he she they're able to treat back pain, neck pain, sports injuries, you know, computer stuff, overuse, carpal tunnel, whatever. But you come in and say, I have chronic fatigue syndrome and I had a traumatic brain injury. They're like, I'm going to refer you out and they don't even take those classes. They just don't even want to do it. Totally respect that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's better when you want to do it. It's kind of like, I don't want to go to a surgeon that doesn't want to do surgery, you know, right? Right. Right. The point. So that's okay to know what your limits are. Yeah. And you've been a therapist long enough that people who have full body syndrome is where you loosen, you know, they now complain of what you didn't get to, right? Yes. So, you know, there's reactions even when you do things right, you know, because they're like, oh, yeah, this loosen, but now I feel this and you can't be a person without confidence and knowledge. You can't panic in those situations. Yeah. Sometimes you do get worse or you feel worse before you get better, even though you are better, like you're just perception of your condition has changed. Yeah. Yeah. How many therapists right now are certified? Certified. I would say we just started the certification about the time I started rolling out the heart brain level stuff. Yeah. Brain one, you know, what we call CNS one was rolled out to the public this year. Oh, so that's fairly new. Yeah, but there were two other so We had certifications so that people would be ready to take it. So we started certifying people about My teaching assistants around the world and my teacher certified first and then we did I think three classes So it's probably 150 200 certified people, but there are you know I would say real serious counter strainers upwards of like a thousand around the world at the moment That's awesome and this growing our foundations classes have been you know We do two a year in five satellites Okay, it's called foundations of factual kind of strain and it's in five cities in the United States And they've been pretty much selling out lately. So you know Well eventually maybe go to a series of you know three five city ones Yeah, but you know there's twenty twenty five people in class in Frederick, Maryland where I'm talking from now I take you know twenty six and then I'm doing all the demos and the lectures from there and then let's say you go to San Diego You know you've got high-end Instructor TAs right there with you we go off camera after demos and then you practice with the TAs with your lab partner We come back on so we can do we do five cities at once. Oh, that's really cool So you're teaching everybody, but you can be in the satellite Yeah, yeah, with high-end TAs and instructors and get basically the same like your it's just over zoom or whatever Like the instruction part that's such a smart business model. Yeah I love that for you and I love that for your clients. That's so cool I even do in the middle of the night. I do lectures to the therapist in Australia That's really cool. So those guys can do the techniques, but they're not ready to lecture on on it So I'll literally do the lectures and then you know those who morph and lab and I'll take an app Do the do the next one. So we do it internationally. Yeah, that's really cool. I love how you are Training other people to teach it. So it's not just all in your brain. So yeah No, that's so scary when you know someone that is trained or is the leader in a method dies and there's no plan Oh, yeah, yeah, well Jones used to say to me we go at the lunch and things and you know he would say to me You got to make sure this this doesn't die with me. So you know He could tell was the beginning not an end Whereas the ask your past you know your husband can tell you they're like oh Jones died It was over he never felt that way he was like this has got a lot of potential and I'm a you too and can't do anymore Yeah, and I'm already looking for the next Brian, you know I'm looking for the that already found two or three people that are 30 that are hot shots and so I'm looking I always say my goal is to make myself irrelevant. That's my goal Right, which is so good. Okay, so I have this question of what do you see as your legacy? Yeah, I mean gosh, I would say that With all due humility there isn't any you know substitute for this work right now what it does is unique in medicine But hey if I also happened to explain you know through the research, you know how chronic pain exists That would be pretty cool thing that would be cool It's it's all really you know the technique led me to a conclusion But if you want a mainstream the technique you have to say this is the problem. This is the treatment and Put it together and you know I'm like I'm trying to get a movement off the ground and before I burn out or Get hit by cars. I think yes, right? I mean we never know what's gonna happen tomorrow I think that that's really cool though to hear you say the words like I'm getting a movement off the ground and I think That's kind of how I feel about what I do and who I help you know all the people that are trained in these modalities and these methods to make sure that they have a sustainable living and to make sure that they're not overworking Just to make just put bread on the table, you know That's really really important to me and I also love the fact that you can be the massage therapist that gets fully booked Doing this method and didn't have to go back to PT school didn't have to you know create $200,000 of debt to become a doctor Physical therapy in order to do it and you know as we were saying earlier what you're learning in those Schools, you know even the anatomy is last foundations class I have a slide that goes through Misconceptions about fashion that I learned in school and how it was all wrong and the guy came up to me after class He said I just graduated last year and they're still teaching that crap. Oh, yeah, and this was 1990 That I was like this is what they used to say about fashion go that's how I was taught and I'm like yeah, yeah They're 36 years behind in the lecture. Yeah, it's scary and then they're operating up You know right and you're paying $40,000 a year for that I had to have back surgery a couple years ago And I was like be really gentle on my fashion the guy's just kind of like what is wrong with you? Yeah, you're gonna break it up. Yeah The it's scary it really is and even the physicians, you know when you start to get into the world of the Multi-system dysfunction where that really comes from people who they literally have a litany of diagnoses So they may have you know irritable bowel they have anxiety they have chronic fatigue and all these different I have TMJ I have headaches. I have global pain and What they all have in common is actually the brainstem Mm-hmm. If you look at the medulla, okay, it has nuclei that are pain nuclei It has of course all your vagal nuclei It has your rostro-eventral medial Vegas, which is another part of the fight-of-flight system And also has connections into your to your reticative spinal tract, which is motor And then it connects into your cerebellum You follow me so you can have you know, I'm trying Yeah, well you would have a heart digestion because of agus you can have fight-of-flight you can have tightness You can have balanced disorder. That's just medulla swelling. Yeah So people and then go to the ponds and the midbrain and cerebellum and you get swelling in that area and your whole body is erect You're seeing 12 different doctors. Yeah, and you know, we go in and Treat you know a few hours of drainage and next thing you know, they don't need to see all these doctors and they've spent You know 60-70 thousand dollars in test and found nothing And you know who does look at the whole body As in and yet understand the anatomy of the whole body. Well no one might be right That's part of the legacy. We should be treating the human And you know, now it's it's a it's a lift to understand the anatomy physiology of every system So I'm not gonna lie this work isn't for everybody But you know the people who do it absolutely love it and then there's some people like wow That's a little much rain and I get that Can you also learn it and do it without having to have like All of those medical terms like do you have to know deeply everything about all of those Symptoms or can you know enough or those you go through the lymphatic Venus one and two which we recommend you take next And muskis skeletal stuff you already know those things like you'll be you'll be treating my a fascia I have all the my a fascia done the way the structural integrators do it with myers chains So I found a release for each entire Myochame so he calls them anatomy trains. I call my chains So lily one release gone done the whole thing So you know you can take Classes that do spinal ligaments in my a fascia and anatomy is not complex right If you want to go up and treat the brain and brainstem those are for the anatomy geeks like me Because then you really want the heady stuff and like you want to be able to regurgitate all of this information But you don't need to know that to do what most people could see in their their regional practice Sure, okay, and anyone who start out though and like some of these terms become more familiar and you get more I like to call it nerded out. Yeah, yeah into it You know, maybe you start to relax around some of these terms and some of the headiness of it And you start to believe that you're the kind of person that can do these things and can learn it even when it's When it seems difficult just because it's new right? It's like terminology that's new newly introduced is always gonna Give some people anxiety or they're gonna have to be perfect at it But you know you don't know you don't and your hands get you know or 90% of it Yeah, it comes down to if you followed the motion testing Find the tender point you could do great stuff you may not understand the wide person says wow when you did that That went away. You might okay. I don't know why but you did it because you followed your hands where we told you Do people have like emotional responses to these treatments in the same way like we You're taught like unwinding and my a fascia release like do people have those interesting responses 100% because when you start to look at Swelling it's called neuro inflammation and that is the medical term for inflammation in the central nervous system Okay, when it gets into the areas of the brain what physiologically happens is inflammation Around nerves it lowers the threshold of activation Meaning makes those things hyperactive it can lower it so much that they just fire on their own So look at the sympathetic nerves or the hypothalamus You know that anxiety state is basically your nerves are already you know 90% firing and they're like yeah walking around You know there are people who dilated so many drops of you know a pencil when they jump across the room Because their neurons are in flame so you know that affects your personality. Yeah Well, if you get it in the limbic system for example, you can have you know depression you get it into All of these areas of the brain swelling. That's why you can see kids with pandas Right that's like post-strips brain swelling Well, they become somewhat psychotic the kids are acting really really weird And we literally can drain it out with our hands and their personality I mean I had a guy in today he was a guy from Montana and you know beard and his you know hunting garb and severe PTSD and He came back for a second trip. He had a major car accident and some CCI. Yeah, it's a cervical cranny once stability and I told him I don't remember the conversation, but he was relating what I said to him He said he said you told me that I would be calmer because you saw all types of stuff in my fight-of-flight system and I told you that I had three panic attacks getting to see you last time, just through the airport stress. He had to go to the bathroom, he was sweating. - Sure. - And he said, "And when I flew back, he's like, I was completely chilled, like I had drank a beer." - Wow. - And he's like, it was that different. He's like, "The first thing I noticed was, you know, I wasn't in that state anymore." And we just published a PTSD study in military medicine. We took 13 people with PTSD laid on set, meaning military or first responder. - Yeah. - And we had a control. And we did three hours of facial counterstrain on the treatment group and followed them for up to six months. And it was three one hour sessions. At the end of that, 12 of the 13, through independent assessment tested negative and the CAHPS 5 assessment for PTSD. - Five. - Three hours of treatment, six months later, still tested negative. So that's crazy. - That's crazy. - That's crazy. So the idea that people could have personality changes with inflammation, you know, 100%. You know, because it's affecting the part of our brain that is our personality. - Yeah. I think my question was more on like, do people have emotional releases during treatment? - I personally, and it's my bias, and you know, I would respect anyone who doesn't agree with me, but I don't think it's in our scope to facilitate that. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - You know, as a PT, okay? So I have a little bit of problem with people saying, now would you think back? And because I don't feel we should be doing that. - Yeah. Or how does it mean like not like unguided, like, yes, in the body? - Yes, in the body. 100% seen it. I just work people through it, but like I know in some cases they're trying to make people in, you know, some end emotional release. - Yeah. - I think we're getting into it. - I'm not talking about that at all. I just mean like, in general, is that like part of the treat, it's not, it's obviously not part of the treatment. - No, it's not, it's not a goal. - Okay. - Yeah, it actually, I've had sexual abuse patients when I did a release in certain parts of the body, they had a flashback. I mean, the moment that tissue was releasing. And, you know, memories have some chemical, aspects to them. But, I mean, literally, one day I remember we were in a conversation and she was half laughing. And when I did a release around that Republic floor, she just grabbed the table and she had a full blown flashback and it just waited. So, yeah. - It's amazing kind of like what is held in the body and what is held in our tissues and our fascia and all of those things. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay, very interesting. What else would you like to cover? - Yeah. I mean, again, I think just the take home message here is first of all, it's an indirect technique. So, you find the tender point, we tell you based on the tender point in the process, what the release is, it's a shorting and you just hold it. So, it's very easy on your hands. It does not hurt. So, you can treat children and fragile and chronic pain. You do not have to cause any pain. It should be painless. - Wow. - Okay. So, it's indirect, which indirect is a drainage family. It's proprioceptive. It's not a, let me force through it family. So, all the treatments are backwards, but the reason they work and they have such great carryover is getting to that source trapped inflammation. And again, anyone who's like, I don't understand this trap thing, the nutshell of what happens is cytokines. So, like if you get a hip of the baseball, those fibroblasts and immune cells were released cytokines, like interleukin 1B and interleukin 6 TNF alpha, those cytokines make fibroblasts, you know, first you can shut down the lymphatic pump. That's the first thing it does. Then fibroblasts can differentiate once that pumps shut down, if there's a lot of swelling there, they'll change into myopyboblast, the contractile type. Then that, those fibroblasts start to excrete what's called TGF beta one, which makes themselves constrict. Well, when does that happen? Like wound closure. Mm-hmm. Just you pull together. But that also happens just around inflammation with the big three I call them cytokines. So anyway, when that tightening occurs, it can block the pre-limphatic channels and trap the inflammation, trap the cytokines. So now you have a positive feedback loop. So the trapped inflammation stimulates the pain receptors, they go into the cord, do all the stuff, like muscle guarding pain. So we have to find out where that inflammation is trapped, decompress the tissue to drain out those pre-limphatic channels, body pumps it out, breaks the cycle. I think I saw a YouTube video of you treating someone, I think it was like a class you were doing, but this woman, it was like her whole shoulder was bruised all the way down to her arm. Yeah, that's one of our before and after shots of a from lymphatic fast. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It was very interesting. And that picture, it was one session, actually Tim Hodges, who teaches my vain class, did that. That was his before and after picture. And he ran out of time at the elbow. Yeah. And if you look at the picture from the hand down, she still, yeah, she's still black and blue. Yeah. And so he didn't get passy. His next patient was doing, he's like, I gotta go, I gotta go. Yeah. I'm super proud of you, though, just to see how inflamed that was and how bruised and how, like you could literally see the clog. Yes. So her right lymphatic watershed was a mess. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was very good. Okay. Anyway, so that's how it works. It's, you're going to decompress and hold. It's painless. And the carryover, if you follow the diagnostic process, you don't just randomly poke and treat. Yeah. Because there are plenty of secondary tender points. Okay. So our process makes you find the, the general's not the private's find the leaders. Okay. Then they're one and done. You will not treat that dysfunction again unless that patient's completely injured again. So I, like that guy flew back, everything I did on him last year held. He just got to a plateau said, hey, I'm better, but I still can't hunt. I want to go even further. I said, come back if they need it, but I didn't do anything. I did last time one year ago. Wow. And that's the norm. So each release is a one and done, but we all talk about the onion. Some people are pretty big onions. Yeah. They get a lot of layers. Yeah. Okay. But that's, that's the beauty of it. That's what sold me on counter strain was that everything I was doing, I was doing again. And again, and again, and popping this up must want to do that. And the first time ever, so 100% carryover with the treatment was the first counter strain things I did. And that's why I'm like, this guy doesn't know totally what he's doing, but there's something to this approach. Because there were some one and done's even as a novice. I'm like, whoa, that thing come back. That was crazy. Yeah. Sometimes we're the best when we don't know what, don't know exactly. Yeah. Like we're not in our heads. So like, even a blind squirrel finds a nut as they say, right? Yeah. Exactly. Oh my gosh. Okay. Why don't you tell everyone who's listening where they can find the information on facial counter strain, where they can find a class, where they can find your articles, all of the good stuff. Yes. And I would say, first of all, you know, there's a gazillion things out there to train in. And what I'm trying to build here. Number one, when you do indirect over direct, you realize it is the superior way. And anyone who doesn't direct does not do direct unless they have to. Okay. So this is full body, all system indirect with a diagnostic process and research to back it up. Okay. That's what I'm trying to build. Okay. There's always something you're interested in, but it is the future of where everything's headed. Yeah. So like if you're young in your career or you're just like, Hey, you know, I'm second not having people get better. I'm frustrated. Don't quit. You know, jump into, you know, it's kind of like AI of the manipulation world. It's the next thing. And yeah, people, they kind of fight it, but you know, new technologies are always people fight it, but it's wherever had it. Okay. And then, you know, if you want to train, it's foundations of facial counter strain and you go to J.I. for Jones Institute. So the whole counter strain website was named after Dr. Jones, J.I. Counter strain.com. Okay. If you just Google my name, Brian Tucky and facial counter strain, I'm sure you would take you there somehow. Yeah. And then you want to take foundations of facial counter strain, which they call F one. Okay. Great. How many classes are available now? So again, there are, because some of some I've had to split into two. Uh-huh. And then, in fact, I convened, there was so many techniques I had to break into two classes. Obviously, Nerve wasn't one class. Yeah. And Bone, I even had to break periosteol bone treatment is the blood supply in and out of bone, which is bone is cool stuff to treat in direct. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I broke them into two. So I ended up being, there's like 13 classes right now. Wow. But as I said, like Celeste, you know, she had a full practice at four classes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And counter strain, you know, people that are caught up by saying the curriculum, they all kind of joke that it's eventually getting into that latest class coming out. They all have people that they're stuck on and they can't wait. And if I roll out a new class, they all joke it's like a spring steam concert. It sells out like one hour. They all go, I imagine. Yeah. Because they want the new stuff because, you know, no matter who you are, there's people that have you stumped. Yeah. Right. Okay. I have another question about like, what is the experience like for the therapist going to the classes? Are they held in hotels? Are they held in like, in class? Yeah. So I have, you know, some very generous practitioners who offer their clinics on a Friday. Like I shut down my clients on a Friday, but they shut down our Friday and we do Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Okay. So there are three days. There are three days. And then, you know, fly back and people will take two to three classes a year, usually although, you know, I've got a guy who came on to work with me, who's on my TAs. He's learning the brain and he's only been doing two and a half years and he's world class. Because he just said, this is what I'm doing. And he actually moved his whole family to one of my other instructors learned from her. Now he moved his whole family to work for me. He's just that dedicated of it. Wow. So, you know, but he did six or seven classes in one year. Mm-hmm. That's a heavy lift. And, you know, you better get out your thinking cap for that one. But I would say two to three a year is what most people is a great patient. So by time you start to say, okay, I got these, but I got people I still can't get where I want. You're learning something that you can have. Great. I went and actually got a treatment with a therapist that's local before this interview. And it was really interesting. I liked it a lot. I'll be getting more. But she showed me, you know, kind of like the workbooks. I was like, I'm just really interested and I don't want to go into this interview blind. I want to, you know, test it the water a little bit. But your instruction manuals are beautiful. Like just so thoughtfully put together, they're so clear. They're so clean. They're so concise. Yeah, I just wanted to point that out. I had a large appreciation for your instruction manual. Did she show you the 3D model? I was really just like skimming it so I didn't see. I don't remember. So I put on an interactive 3D model in this like a video game. You know, you can download your course for $9.9 onto your model. And all the tender points are on the model. You can zoom in, zoom out, peel the muscle, touch the tender point, the release pops up. And you can load all your classes onto your model. It's on your phone. Wow. So all the syllabus is virtual with you. Okay. 3Dcounterstring.com is something you can do. And so wherever you go, you take your iPad, whatever, and you can just show the patient. Okay, your lymphatic and it tells me arms. We're going to check these points. You touch the point, shows you the release, tells you what structure it is. And you can lay it up to see what's in that area. That's really incredible. And not show me that. I just saw the paper manual. You saw the syllabus. Yeah. But they say it's virtual. So you don't have to carry around your books to grandmas house. Yeah. That's really cool. I love that a lot. That's, I mean, very helpful. Like as a therapist, I just think about being able to have access to that bank of knowledge or when you're, you know, you're treating a patient and you feel stuck, you could just go and literally look at that and show the patient at the same time. Like, here's what we're doing. Exactly. Yeah. I use it for, now of course, people I'm seeing nowadays are already seeing a counterstring down, but like if you're a male working on a pelvic floor patient and you suspect it's a pedendal neuralgia, you literally can show the patient where the pedendal nerve point is and it's on the, you know, in fear of rings. Yeah. So I mean, it's external palpation, but it's on the range of the cuba bone. So yeah. And you basically can show the release where it is, you know, why you suspect it and it's like complete consent. Right. Yeah. So you can do internal work about external, like do you have any work that's important? I found a way through the refer tender points, even when we do the deep brain work, it's all external and everyone stays completely clothed. And again, yeah, no, I designed it that way. I don't want that to be an issue and getting people better. It's I found a way to do them all fully clothed external. Yeah. Very good. Very good. That's probably very helpful for some people that would never be able to tolerate the internal work to or just can't do it. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And then we have a lot of people who are working with combinations of use victims, you know, plus public floor and, you know, these are people that we might start working in the and the fight a flight system first to call them down. And you know, like I said, you follow what the body tells you, but you gain their confidence, they realize, wow, that person just checked my cranium. Newer was the point was before I told them. And they're like, they instantly understand it's medical. And my career say no or feel weird because it's so medical. Yeah. And I say to the guy that's like, you know, your mind should be on the anatomy and women know if your mind's on the anatomy, right? But it's just you're being creepy. So like I said, I've never had a problem because it's like, it's so precise that everyone's like, wow, you know, I trust you. I just love the idea of the cranial scan and how it is you can teach that to someone and it's repeatable for everyone. So like if I learn it and I do that on five people, like I'm going to get and then you do it as well, like your result will get the same answer. You were going to get the same answer. Yeah. Incredible. And you know, if you're doing it right because you find the point that it predicts. Yeah. Right. So it says, you know, it said I should have the visceral lymphatic row in your scan. You go down there and it's not tender there. You got to go back and say, oops, I screwed my scan up because those points weren't there. So you're able to teach yourself in the clinic once you have it until you're like, oh, I now match in the scan. I got it. Very cool. How long does it take for you to kind of pick up the cranial scan? Well, you learn, you know, the ones in the class, you pretty much have mastered before you leave the class. Okay. And we work on the feel of a positive cranial scan and foundations. So when you come to foundations, the skills and knowledge and a sample to practice with. That's all it is. But, you know, I, the guy was in this week as well who he was telling me how many success stories he had just with foundations. Like any just treat regular, you know, sports kids at friends of his daughter, nothing really chronic. But there's power in that class. But, you know, it's not designed to make you take over your practice. It's designed to give you some things to practice the skills. Yeah. But for example, if you want to be a basketball player, you got to practice passing, dribbling and shooting. That's what we do. And then you're really good at that. Then you can pick up the material so fast. Yeah. But we work on, okay, this is the scan for the epidural drainage of the cord. So you go through that and I want you to try and find one in that, you know, it's between the sagittal suture and the superior temporal line right here. Find me one of those rigid areas and we check you off. So you said, yeah, I think I got one here and then we'll come over and double check and be like, yes, that was it. If there isn't one, like I don't think I have one of my lab partner. We'll try and find one or maybe you're right. They didn't have that. So by time you leave foundations, you've already got a fuel for a positive cranial scan. And then you go back and you start practicing a real patience, okay, to feel some, not just mild winds like you would find in your lab partner. Very good. All right. Well, I thank you for your time today and thank you for all of the hours and hours that you're putting into creating new techniques and to publishing research. I think it's very much needed in this space and it is the future. So I mean, it's here now too. So we've got to like, do it now. I understand now why very few people do it on both ends, right? You have clinicians, you have researchers, but the best combination is someone who's doing both. But you know, it really is, you know, like I said, no one's paid to do both. Yeah. So you've got to do it in your own time, but I understand why so few people have done it. And yeah, thank my wife for putting up with me. Never been a man. Right. Yeah. She needs the credit. I got to make sure you're putting her in the research article. Yes, yes, yes, yes, like acknowledgement to my wife who didn't leave me. Yes, for sure. Yes, that is that is a good thing to have someone back in you up for sure. All right. Well, thanks again for joining us and for being such a willing participant on the podcast. Yeah. And let's say I'll say as a so probably the quickest thing to read and watch would be the method article. So, and that would be, like I said, if you're say, I might be interested, make sure I don't mess this one up either, but it is it's again, tucky bee, Brian tucky. And it's facial counter strain, a methodological advancement in indirect osteopathic manipulation. So a methodological advancement in indirect osteopathic manipulation. Now it's the general of osteopathic medicine, December 2025. And that was it. Do you want to drop the, do you have the link for that? If you want to put that in the chat for me, I'll make sure it's out. Yeah, I'll drop that for you. But that one was there's even a video case study of a CRPS patient, bilateral, chronic ritual pain syndrome, four surgeries. So everybody and I do the six sessions and I videotape or every session just to show the approach. But it goes through the stasis article. It talks about the problem, talks about how I basically developed the anatomical correlation, even talks about the cranial scan, the whole thing. So that that's the again, the what is it article? Yeah. It goes into the fizz and a summary that's not too deep. Okay, I love that. So for everybody listening, we will make sure that these links are in the show notes. So they're easily accessible for you all to jump in and just consider if you drop. Yeah, if it's something you want to do, but we need more of us. We haven't blown this up intentionally because there aren't enough practitioners. Mm-hmm. That's the truth. Okay. People say, why don't I know about this? I'm like, because we don't have enough of us. And they flew in to begin with. Right. Right. Yep, totally, totally. So I'm not looking to blow up the patient thing. I'm looking to make sure we have enough of us that we can take care of all people that need this work. Mm-hmm. Perfect. I love that. And I'm happy to help any of your practitioners. So if you know of any practitioners that are starting their businesses and they need help with that, I know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I will keep your podcast in mind. Awesome. They asked that question a lot. How did you get this to work? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. because if you say, "Wow, I saw all those people, and all I saw that person three times, and I'm better." So, I actually counted, case the question came up, and I thought of it, I counted, and we have four of us right now, full time, and my clinic, and I've had up to six or seven therapists, but people start to own practices, whatever, and it's not my goal to grow my practice, but we have four full-timers, and everyone is our one-of-a-half patients, and it's between 190 to $300 an hour is what we're charging. But again, people are 500 bucks they're done. - Yeah. - I mean, and we have a- - I have another brainer. - I counted yesterday, we have 112 new patients waiting. - Wow. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's incredible. - Which means we could up our prices, but we don't, because I always say the people who really need us, they're not even working. - Mm-hmm. - Right? It's not, but you can make a living enough money that you're okay, and then the goal is to enjoy what you do in trying to change lives, right? - Yeah, yeah, love that. Okay, drop me those links for everybody else. We'll see you on another episode of the podcast next week. (upbeat music) Thanks for spending this time with you today. If you're a hands-on therapist who is ready to get fully booked and build a practice that actually pays you, I wanna help you do that. Head over to Heatherahommel.com to find out how we can work together. And if you love this episode, please share it with someone who needs it. See you next week. (upbeat music)