Otherworld - Episode 181 - The Accident

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

While working at a summer camp Finn is in a freak accident that leaves him with a severe leg injury with lasting complications. Years later, while training to become a massage therapist, his teacher uses him as a volunteer to demonstrate a lesser known technique called myofascial release. Days after the demonstration, he has an mind-bending experience that leaves him stunned and altered.Check out our Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode comes from Finn, who is 34 years old and from Massachusetts. In 2016, while working his usual summer job at a warehouse, he found himself subject to a freak accident that left him with a severe leg injury. Even years after this incident, he still experienced pain and described the feeling as though his leg wasn't even a part of his body. Five years later, after receiving some really helpful care from a friend who was a massage therapist, Bin decided to pursue training himself by taking classes at a local massage therapy school.

It was here that his instructor briefly introduced the class to a specialized form of massage therapy, a form great for treating scar tissue called myo facial release or MFR. This teacher asked for two students to perform a demonstration on, and due to his extensive scar tissue, Finn made for a perfect volunteer. What happened to Finn a few days later is where this story gets really interesting. This episode is called The Accident, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is it Bobby? At its core, the science, you can't argue.

A story about all of a science. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm literally, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It's just looking. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.

My name is Finn. I'm 34. I live and grew up in Massachusetts, but I just moved back like a year ago after traveling a lot. And I lived in New Orleans, like on and off for like 10 years. That's where I lived when my story,

happened. I'm a little bit like woo-woo, but I like to think that I'm like different from other woo-woo people, like, that I'm like, more discerning. I guess I just, I feel like very skeptical of most people who like present themselves as experts on witchy or esoteric occult stuff. I'm, like, extremely picky about the sources that I like engage with and try to learn from. And it's mostly like kind of, I try to take it from a pretty like historical academic kind of perspective. I grew up on a farm in rural Massachusetts. It was a bison farm.

The beginning of my childhood was like really idyllic and beautiful. Like I loved living on the farm. And it was just like really, really cool. Both of my parents are alcoholics, and my dad was sober when I was born, and my mom hadn't had a problem. But then when I got older, when I was like seven or eight, they both started drinking, and that, like, went south, like, pretty quickly. So then from there, things were, like, pretty rough. My mom got sober when I was, like, 12 or 13 and really, like, leveled out and became, like, a really, really amazing mom again. my dad really struggled and we didn't have a very good relationship and he passed away in like 2016

from drinking so I just became I don't know I really liked like partying and getting drunk and doing drugs and stuff like that and then I kind of got into the punk scene and then was traveling kind of lived all over the place and yeah lived like a very chaotic life for a long time until a few years ago. And now I'm very settled and sober and, yeah, living a pretty good life. So I had this summer job that I did for about 10 years. And it was a summer camp luggage company that just ran from July to August.

And it was very grueling, like working 14, 18-hour days every day for, two or three weeks and then a week off and then back all summer. It's a really weird niche thing where there's a lot of huge summer camps along like the East Coast and we would pick up the luggage from their house and deliver it to the summer camp and at the end of the summer we would pick it up at the summer camp and bring it back to their house and we had a really quick turnaround. we would get the luggage back, like back and forth within two or three days, which was much faster and cheaper than FedEx or UPS, and just super, super rich families.

And the luggage was like crazy. It was these gigantic duffel bags that you could fit two medium-sized people inside of huge duffel bags. So it was like impossible sometimes or very inconvenient for the families to bring it to the summer. camp themselves. So yeah, that was that job. It was a lot of like heavy lifting. They would rent this gigantic warehouse for the summer and everyone would work like all day, every day for months. And then it was over. I didn't even know that this like class of people existed. I thought that

there was like the kids that I grew up with that were rich. In my opinion, they lived in like McMansion like developments. So in my mind, there was those people who were upper middle, middle class, and then celebrities. And I didn't know that there was like this class of people who were like super rich. Huge, huge houses and these summer camps cost like $10,000 to $20,000 per kid. And they would be sending multiple kids. I don't know what they did for work. And a lot of them lived on Long Island for the summer.

in summer homes, whatever. So I would be like totally like filthy and exhausted and staying in hotels like all over the northern east coast. We would also go to Florida and work there, but most of it was between Maine and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And getting so little sleep, driving constantly and lifting these bags that were on average, 50, pounds, sometimes more, showing up feeling completely feral and having to talk to people who were just that wealthy. It was so bizarre, especially being so exhausted and sleep deprived. We would go kind of crazy and it was its own little world. But it was fun also. And we would party at the hotel and stuff. Occasionally there'd be a pool. That would be fun. So,

I was working in the warehouse for this summer job, and we had these carts, electric carts, that were just a seat in the front and a flat bed in the back. And we would stack the luggage on there to drive it around the warehouse and sort it into these massive piles. And then stage them to go on the trucks and stuff. And I was picking up some, like, Dunkin' Donuts trash from the morning. they had bought us like coffee and donuts. And my friend, he was driving one of the carts, and he was delivering ice to the various coolers that were around the warehouse full of water

for everyone that was working. It really was a freak accident. He had two bags of ice on the seat next to him. And the parking break wasn't on on the cart, which we never did. was like you jump off, jump back on, keep it going. Very fast-paced environment. And so he picked up one bag of ice and the other one slid off the seat onto the accelerator pedal of the cart. And it just drove off across the warehouse by itself with nobody in it.

And he says that he was, he tried to like grab it, like just pull it back and stop it from driving like with his hands. And the front of it was like, bed. back a little bit because he was like holding on so tight like trying to stop it from going. But it just went. It was like pedal to the floor and drove across the warehouse. I had no idea. I was just picking up trash. And I remember I had like bent over to pick up something off the floor. And when I stood up, it was, I had a second of. realizing that it was heading towards me. I had no idea that nobody was in it.

And there was a table against the wall right next to me, and the cart hit me and pinned me against the table. I must have kind of tried to jump out of the way based on where the scar is, but it was stuck. So it was still like accelerating, pushing me against the edge of this table that was pressing into the side of my leg,

above the knee. And then people ran over, turned the cart off, backed it away from me, and kind of lifted me up and put me on the seat of the cart. My legs were on the steering wheel. And my leg was crushed in a way where it hadn't really broken the skin. It had crushed all the tissue under the skin. I thought that my femur was broken, like for sure. It wasn't, thank God, but somebody called an ambulance and they took me to the hospital. I remember having a panic attack in the hospital after the sort of adrenaline wore off. Because in the moment, I just was like very, okay, what do we have to do?

And then when I was just sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital with my friend and had calmed down a little bit, I just started like hyperventilating and like sobbing it all kind of like hit me. But they sent me home or back to my hotel room. I was done working for the season. And from there I went to, yeah, a bunch of kind of seemingly shady physical therapists and doctors in New York through the, workman's comp and I developed this huge hematoma which is like a collection of blood under the skin. Usually that can be just like it kind of looks like a bruise. But this was huge.

By the end it was like bigger than a break fruit, this huge thing on the side of my leg that was just full of like blood and dead tissue. And that eventually had to be cut open and drained. And actually the doctor that did. it. He was blown away by this hematoma because he's kind of specialized in that. And he was like, this is the biggest hematoma I've ever seen. And I wanted to film them draining it because I thought it was going to look crazy. And it did because they did film it. There's a video of it. And it's horrifying. It just like exploded. But then they stitched it up and it healed. And now they're sort of just this huge indent on my leg where a bunch of tissue is just gone from under the skin

and it looks like kind of a chunk was just taken out of my leg. And there's a lot of scar tissue, a big wad of scar tissue. And I did eventually get a small settlement, but it was not anything near what I should have gotten from being like permanently, you know, maimed and, like, disfigured from this accident. And after I got the surgery where they cut it open, drained everything out, and sewed me back up, I had to wear like a stocking, compression socking for like a month. And then it healed and it was kind of okay for like a few years. And then it happened really slowly where I started to, it just ached all the time.

And occasionally I would get like fleeting sharp pain. in the scar area, but it was all the skin, all the skin still to this day is numb. But I would have these deep, sharp pains that would come in, this persistent achiness in my leg that got worse and worse, and I would have sharp pain that would come and go where the scar tissue is. And I don't know if it was just like a dissociation where it was just so, scary and concerning and hurt so much all the time that I psychologically like distanced myself from it or what but I always said like my leg didn't feel like it was a part of my body or like it was alive like it felt I had a wooden leg or something I just felt completely mentally

disconnected from it it was really bizarre and uncomfortable I had a friend that I actually met at the summer camp luggage job that was a massage therapist and I started going to her. She's an amazing massage therapist and it was so profoundly helpful to me. I felt very drawn to massage therapy because of the work that I had gotten done by my friend and how much it had helped me. And it was the pandemic and there wasn't really anything to do and I didn't have a career path of any kind, just doing manual labor and driving jobs and was sick of that. So I decided to try massage therapy. And I signed up for classes at the community college. And I was pretty good at it from the start. And I loved it. It came really naturally to me. And I, like, I got straight A's. I was

never bothered by studying. I really, really enjoyed being in school. As far as I know, all massage therapy programs have a very similar curriculum. It's the basics. You kind of get introduced not to every modality of bodywork, but a lot. It's a two-year program. So in class, we learned about myofasher release. A lot of different things are called myofash release. A lot of different techniques kind of fall under that umbrella or referred to.

by that, but the instructor happened to be trained in a very specific type of myofasher release called the John Barnes method of myofasher release. It was invented by this guy John Barnes, who was a physical therapist, and he is just an eccentric guy. He actually has a training program where there's people that travel the country or are stationed and all over the country that teach his method, but he's kind of this burly, long-haired guy who wears a leather vest and loves to.

There's a lot of videos of him on YouTube working on people in a big auditorium with lots of people observing and sort of teaching his method and a lot of videos of him working on people like outside in Arizona, in this sort of beautiful Arizona landscape. He seems like, like a character.

We were talking about working on scar tissue and he said this technique that I'm trained in is really good for working on scar tissue. I can't certify you in this modality

but I can do a demonstration just because it's interesting and I volunteered and so did my classmate. He said I'll demonstrate on two people so we both volunteered because we both had scars that were pretty, I have mine, and then he had a scar from a spina bifida

surgery he had when he was an infant on his back. So it's a very brief, very gentle thing. It's eight minutes. You start off just truly like laying your hands on the person and then you slowly, slowly, slowly over the course of eight minutes, stretch the tissue in opposite directions. And for two minutes you slowly bring your hands back together. And your hands probably move an inch or two in that time. It's very, very, very slow and meticulous. And that's why, you know, we were not going to be trained in how to do that. So I laid on my side on the massage table. He explained that the technique takes about 10 minutes and that it was very very, very slow, very subtle, but very effective, very profound. And he started to work on me. He just put his two hands on my leg, sort of on either side of the scar. And I didn't feel much

when he was doing the technique. He had sort of said, this comes up a lot in massage. therapy. I actually haven't seen it happen that much myself, but that, you know, emotions can come up during this kind of work, whatever. So I was kind of prepared for that to happen and it didn't happen. Yeah, so it was a 10-minute kind of procedure and I felt a little bit better. My leg felt a little bit more, a little bit more open and comfortable, but not a huge, profound change. I was a little bit disappointed. And right at the end, when he was wrapping up, he said, oh, I forgot to mention before I started, I usually tell people before doing this work on them that this thing can happen called a healing crisis or that some people call a healing

crisis, that he described it as sometimes, you know, the pain or whatever the issue is can get worse before it gets better, but it could also manifest in this way where in a traumatic event, the experience, if it's too much for the brain to handle, the experience of the memory can get trapped in the tissues and the fascia. And when you do this work, sometimes that I think he called it a piece of consciousness or like the memory can be released from the tissue into the brain for the first time. So it's like your brain is actually experiencing it for the first time. And he was like, sorry, I usually say that before I do this work.

And I was like, okay, whatever. You know, he was a little bit woo-woo about massage. He was a very, very good massage therapist, but a little bit more woo-woo than I am. I'm not very woo-woo in that area. So I was like, okay, whatever, that's cool. didn't think much of it, didn't feel that different after the session. And then he worked on my classmate.

As far as I can remember, he had a similar experience. He didn't feel all that different after. And so I went home. I didn't really think about it again. I was like, yeah, it didn't do much, but that's fine. I thought that if, like, what he was describing was going to occur, it would happen during the session or it would happen shortly after,

you know, like that day or something. So I really, like, it was pretty out of my mind. I wasn't thinking about it really at all after that day. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Thinking about my finances used to leave me completely overwhelmed, especially when it came to tracking my finances,

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card theft just to go to Dunkin' Donuts and spend $15 over and over again. I guess that is besides the point. Either way, I am so happy that I noticed it on Rocket Money, called my bank, got that credit card, shut down, reported it's stolen. I got a new card and we are back in business, folks. Those Dunkin' Donuts charges have been reimbursed into my account. Maybe those thieves enjoyed some donuts and hot coffee to celebrate the brief moments they had my credit card in their possession. though, so I hope they enjoyed it. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower bills so that you could grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com

slash Otherworld. That's rocketmoney.com slash otherworld. My leg felt a little bit better. It felt a little bit less tight, a little bit less pressure. But it was so bad that it was still definitely an issue. I wasn't remotely like, oh, this has been resolved. Great. But I do think it was a little bit better, which was cool. I went about my life. I didn't have class for a couple days.

And then one afternoon, the day before I went back, to school, I had therapy online with my regular therapist. We were doing this inner work where there was a lot of imagery coming up for me. It's like parts work internal family system. So I was seeing in my mind and all my different parts like interacting and feeling a lot in my body, sort of like breathing into these different places in my body and having, you know, these different like emotions come up and talking about that. And at the end, she says, okay, take a couple of deep breaths and then slowly open your eyes. And when I did, I normally would feel maybe relaxed after a session like this, like comfortable, calm, relaxed. That was normally

how I felt after a therapy session. But I felt really weird. I felt very lightheaded, which is not normal for me. I don't really ever feel that way. Almost like I was going to pass out. I've never passed out like that before. I've never fainted. It's a very weird sensation for me. And I told my therapist because I thought that it might be because of the work that we had been doing. maybe that is like a normal thing. I don't know. But I felt really weird. I told my therapist I'm feeling really lightheaded.

Like I was feeling lightheaded enough that I felt the need to tell her. It was really strange. And she suggested that I lay down and drink some water. And so I did. I went to my room. I laid down on my back, was looking at my ceiling. I lived alone at the time. So just laying alone in my bed and feeling really faint and off.

I started to have little tingees of like sharp pain in my scar, which would happen pretty regularly. But then the pain started to sort of like drift around my leg. It would always just be typically right where I have the scar tissue, especially at like this one point in the middle where everything is really, really tightened up. But it started to get more intense. It got really intense. And then I started to have the pain started to light up in different parts of my leg,

which had never happened before. And I was confused. I was like, I don't understand what that is. But then it started to glide around. And the way that I remember it or the way that it felt was that it was almost this little ball of light that was like floating around and would like, but it was like sharp pain that would like come up in different places floating and gliding around inside my leg. And I don't know. I was I was laying there. I was really lightheaded and feeling really faint.

And that was not a normal feeling for me at all. And then I just started crying, which was not normal either. I had like pain all the time. I was a landscaper. So on top of my leg, being maimed, I also just my back hurt all the time, my neck and my arms hurt all the time. Like everything was always kind of achy. And it was normal for me. So when I started crying, it was not, I didn't understand what was going on.

and it was intense and it was like this flood opened up and I was just sobbing like sobbing so hard so loud like wailing the next thing I know I was in the warehouse and I was seeing through my eyes that day of my accident in the warehouse the moment before I was seeing through my eyes that day of my accident in the warehouse the moment before I got hit. I was like completely there. You know, I had just done this like therapy session where you do this like inner work with like your unconscious mind and like these images come up for me.

And it's not like I intentionally like I imagine this like part of me is whatever coming up. And this was not what that was. I was like I was in my body the day of the acts. and I was looking through my eyes the day of the accident and I couldn't I couldn't leave. I was experiencing that day in my body completely in high definition in in sharp detail and also aware of what was happening. It was like another part of me was observing what was happening and aware that I'm laying in my bed right now,

crying in pain, and also in this place, watching the accident and reliving this day, this accident, and I can't leave. Like, I can't stop it from happening. I can't pull myself out of it the way that I would be able to if I was thinking about it. I was stuck there. And I lived the whole thing.

and over and over again. It would sort of repeat different moments. So I could, you know, the day that it happened, or at least in my memory, my, you know, regular memory and the story that I told other people, I didn't hear my friend yelling, like, trying to warn me, trying to tell me to get out of the way. But I heard it when I was back there,

when I was reliving it. I heard him yell. It was gutteral. He was screaming. He was so, so scared. I think that this day was as traumatic for me as it was for him. It was really, really horrible. He had tried to stop the cart with his bare hands from driving away and he just couldn't. And then the moment where I become aware that the cart is right there, like comes into my peripheral vision. And there's a part of me that's still like in this reality where like I know what's going to be. happen. But I feel the panic that I felt in that moment when I didn't know it was going to happen. And it would kind of stop there and play that over and over. And so when I was reliving it and I was in my body and seeing through those eyes, like I was going through the same motions, but it was in slow motion. What I remembered of the day was that it was all happened in a split second of I was aware that the cart was coming at me, like the moment that it was there, like right next to me.

It was like a split second. I did not have time to move at all. And then being pinned. And I don't even know how long I was stuck there for. But when I was reliving it, it was like in slow motion, I turned my head and I see the cart coming at me and feel the panic spike. And, it hit me fully aware of like making contact with the edge of this wooden table and being pressed into it and then being stuck there. It was probably a few seconds because there was a lot of people around that came like rescued me but I relived it in this slow motion of being stuck there pinned and like feeling and hearing the cart running and pushing me and just like pushing me harder and harder and harder and harder into this table and being stuck and not being able

to move. And my friend running up and turning off the cart, he arrived at the same time as this other person, this woman Laura, arrived. And they turned off the cart and they, somebody came up behind me and like put their arms under my arms and they pulled the cart back. And two people on either side of me, um, lifted me up and put me on the seat of the cart, like just lifted me over the front of the cart and sat me on the seat and both of my legs were up on the steering wheel. And when I was reliving the accident, I saw everyone's face with so much detail. I like looked into the eyes of every single person that was there. And I saw in their faces, how worried they were about me

and how much they cared about me, which was not a part of my memory of that situation. And I remembered that the guy who had been driving the car, when it happened, I was so like, okay, what do we have to do? I was not, like, emotional. I was afraid, but I was like, okay, what are, like, the practical steps that we have to do? I was the one who was like, somebody call 911, I need an ambulance.

And like that, not, not frantic or emotional. And the guy who had been driving the cart came up to me and was like, what do you need? And I said, I need a cigarette, which is hilarious. I was like, I need a cigarette. And he took the cigarette out of his own mouth and put it in my mouth. And I didn't remember that happening. And it might sound like gross or weird or stupid to some people. But like the way that it hit me in this, when I was like reliving this accident, like in slow motion,

reliving this day in slow motion, how much he just wanted to help me. And like almost this like selflessness of literally taking the cigarette out of his own mouth and like giving it to me. And I also saw which I didn't remember at all. The way that I told the story to other people so many times and the way that I had remembered it, I didn't remember that my friend Jesse was there as well. They did that job with me for one summer. And I saw them see me from another corner of the warehouse and like run over. And I saw all of the love and concern that they had.

I just really felt the fact that I was so surrounded by people that loved and cared about me, which I wasn't aware of when it happened or after it happened. But I saw that, like, in the eye, I remember the eyes. Like, I remember, like, really, because it was so slow, like, really seeing the eyes of, like, every single person and how worried about me they were and how much they cared about me. And I sort of relived particularly like that part over and over again. And while that was happening, I was aware, some other like part of me or aspect of my like consciousness was aware that it was happening, aware of how crazy it was and knew that I like couldn't stop it and that it was fully out of my control and feeling kind of like, I don't know what. what's happening. I just have to sort of stay calm and ride it out. And I was also, it's like part of me that

was sort of observing like and aware of the whole thing also was like watching me and aware of, I don't know if it was like, it felt like it was like I was experiencing like three different realities at the same time. This like reliving the accident and like watching everything happened. and also that I was like laying in my bed and at that point I was sobbing like really really hard sobbing convulsing uncontrollably and the pain was like going around and I was feeling the pain I felt everything I felt being crushed I felt that all of this tissue of my body was broken and and died and was just like there. And the pain of it is so acutely. And in my bed laying there, crying and feeling the pain, like all of the pain of the moment when it happened,

and I was yelling out for help and saying like, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, please help me over and over and over again, which I didn't do at the time. Like I said, I was so practical and matter of fact and put all of the pain of that experience aside and was like, I'm okay. I think that my femur might be broken. I'm not sure. Somebody has to call an ambulance. Someone please call 911.

And of course, somebody did and an ambulance came. And the medics, like, tested my foot to make sure they had me press my foot into their hand to see if my femur was broken and it wasn't. But yeah, I was so practical and detached when it happened. And when I was reliving it, my body that was like laying in my bed was screaming out for help and screaming that I was in so much pain. And that I had like no control over either. Like I couldn't have stopped if I wanted to. And then this other part of me just like observing both realities, that was almost like this calm. grounding thing. It's like grounding presence or like feeling. And then it just started to slow down.

Eventually I like started breathing better and I wasn't screaming for help anymore and not crying anymore. And it was the part of me that was like living that day over and over and experiencing re-experiencing. the accident, it just slowly faded away. And then I was back in my room and I still had this feeling of like pain but also light like floating around my leg as it had been up and down and like around in this sort of weird pattern. But other than that, my leg like it felt like it was a part of my body again. It felt essentially like completely normal. normal. And I had like none of the normal pain and discomfort and like tightness. Like my whole leg always felt so tight. And it just felt normal. And it hadn't felt normal in like years.

I don't know. I was like, I don't know what the fuck just happened. I don't really know what to do now. The sun had started to set, which makes me think that it lasted for a couple hours. And eventually, I laid in bed for a long time just breathing and being like what just happened to me. And eventually I got up and I ate some food. I think I even went to the gas station and got some ice cream because I really was like, I don't know what to do with myself right now. And I tried to like watch some TV, but I was really, I was like totally altered from this. I felt completely dumbfounded.

I have no clue what just happened, and it's so bizarre and unexplainable that I'm not even, like, going to try to understand. Like, that's why I was like, I just have to, like, I guess go get some ice cream and, like, try to watch TV. But I couldn't. I was just speechless and kind of stunned.

I felt really, like, present in a way that I don't normally and really, really calm. I was also exhausted. And I sort of hung out and tried to watch a little bit of TV and eat. And I still had this little feeling floating around my leg that got less and less painful and was just sort of the sensation, like floating around. And eventually I went to bed.

And, yeah, I woke up feeling, kind of normal and in my normal mind, but I had no pain at all in my body, which I was aware of immediately. I hadn't not been in pain for years at that point. The even weirder thing was that I had like this lightness inside me, like in my spirit or in my mood. Like, I felt unburdened emotionally or mentally. I had this lightness about me that I felt totally calm. I felt like totally grounded and at peace. And I had no pain.

And I had a lot of joy. Once this like started to set in, I was just filled with like joy and happiness. I felt like so good. It was towards the end of my massage program, so I knew a lot about massage at that point, and nothing remotely close to this had ever been talked about or crossed my mind at all. This was not a normal response to massage therapy or bodywork that I was aware of remotely. So I just felt totally so at peace, so calm. And that was not my normal either.

You know, like I was, I had a really difficult childhood. My dad died when I was pretty young. I struggled with a lot of like mental health issues and depression and anxiety, like constantly since I was a teenager and that was gone. Like I didn't know what it felt like to not be anxious and depressed. And so it was like every, it was also like foreign to me. So I went to school and I was excited to tell the instructor like what had happened and be like, what was that? Like, is that normal?

And tell him all about it. And when I got to school, I parked in the parking garage and I got in the elevator to go up. And then my classmate who had also gotten the treatment. got in the elevator and we looked at each other and instantly I knew that he, something crazy had happened to him too just by looking at him. And we were both, we just looked at each other and I think he said, how was it for you? I just started laughing and I was like, it was fucking crazy. And I started to tell him about it and that I had.

relived the accident and that I was like crying and sobbing and like screaming for help and like doing all these things that I like hadn't been able to do like when the accident happened and that and that like all the like pain was gone. I mean I said all of it like very briefly I don't but he he said yeah mine happened when I was a baby so I don't like have. any memories of it. But I just spent two days crying in the fetal position. And it was really interesting that he said that because it was clear the way that he said it, the way that he said, how was it for you? And the way that he started with, I don't have any memories of mine. It made it clear to me that even though he didn't have memories and maybe he didn't relive

something in the way that I did, because he didn't say that he had. it was clear to me that he knew that he was on some level experiencing that event from when he was a baby. We went to class and it was the same instructor and I went up to him and I was so excited and I was like, oh my God, the craziest thing happened. And before I could even start talking about it, he kind of brushed me. off. He was like, yeah, it can be really crazy. And then just kind of like went over to his computer. It was like he didn't want to talk to me about it. He went over to his computer and just started doing his teacher stuff. And it was like, I felt rejected. It was so strange. I was like, I really, like I really wanted to talk about it. And I just could tell, by the way that he

responded that he did not and he never asked me about it. I was like, okay, he doesn't. I don't know if he didn't want to talk about it like in front of my classmates or whatever. Like class hadn't started yet. I don't know what that was about and I've never asked, but I know that he knows that this happens. And for some reason, he didn't want to talk about it. I don't know why. When I was in the session with my instructor and he said the thing of like a piece of consciousness can get stuck in the tissues and then released into the brain for the first time like I didn't even know what he meant by that you know it was like okay weird woo-woo stuff like he was he was really into rakey and i i've received rakey a couple times it's never done anything for me people have really

crazy beliefs about rakey and i don't like doubt them because now i I've had a really bizarre and unexplainable experience that other people would probably brush off and be like, okay, whatever. But I don't know. I assume that that was some kind of exaggeration or metaphor or something, but it felt like exactly what he said. And I've never heard anybody else talk about this. I've never looked online to see if other people have had this experience or what. what it's been like for them. But the fact that my classmate had a really similar experience

made it clear to me that I wasn't making anything up that this is like a real thing that happens. And the thing is like it definitely doesn't happen every time either. And I think that that's probably why it's not talked about because it's not a reliable outcome at all. It seems to just happen. Even in interviews that I've watched with John Barnes, who originated this technique, he talks about the fascia and how it is like an overlooked part of the body and people, the medical community has kind of just seen it as kind of just nothing, like the thing that you have to cut through to get to other things. but that it is a continuous system that runs through your whole body

that in and around every little structure in your body and that when there's restrictions in the fascia, it can apply an incredible amount of pressure on that one point and how it can affect the rest of the body and it pulls on all these different structures. But he never mentioned anything about this healing crisis thing. and he certainly knows that it happens. You know, my instructor knew it happened,

but I haven't seen him mention it in any of his interviews. Not that I've done a ton of research, but I've never heard him mention it in an interview or something, which makes me think that, I don't know, it seems like a very elusive thing that nobody has real full control over the ability to, like, certainly produce in anybody, but it happens.

I try to do it on myself all the time with no results. I haven't gotten it done again because I feel like, I mean, I kind of tried one time, but it didn't work. I kind of have this belief that like if I was anticipating it happening or wanting it to happen trying to make it happen, that it wouldn't. You know what I mean? Because it's such a like unconscious thing.

And I'll also say that like I had a lot of doubt. about writing in about this because, I mean, I guess I, like, even still doubt myself. Like, I have felt self-conscious talking about it because not to, you know, friends and family or whatever, but in this interview because it would be so easy to be like, you were just thinking about it. And I just can't stress enough that that is not what was happening. and that I was like my full presence was in that day, reliving it in immaculate detail, and that I had like no control or real like participation in that.

It was like happening to me. Like I didn't do anything to make it happen. And there was nothing I could have done to make it stop. I graduated from massage school. I worked as a massage therapist for a while in New Orleans. and then I moved to Massachusetts and I haven't gotten my license here so I haven't been practicing

except for friends and family but I am actually planning on moving back to New Orleans where I'll be like starting my practice up again which I'm very excited about and it's still my goal I'm not a person that has had many goals or aspirations in my life and body work in general has given me this sort of hope and motivation to create a future for myself. And my ultimate goal is definitely to get trained in this and do other kinds of bodywork as well.

But it changed my life so profoundly and was truly like the most beautiful and amazing experience I've ever had that I feel like it's necessary for me to try to pass that on. There's a lot of talk about, you know, there was that book, The Body Keeps the Score, and there's a lot of talk about somatic stuff and how like our emotions like live in our body maybe as much as they do in our brain. But I think that the separation between mind and body is way thinner than we've ever thought it is. And I think that eventually, like, science will continue to prove that more and more. this time goes on is what I think. But there's certainly like no explanation for this outside of sort of, I think,

what people who have experienced it like make of it. Okay, thank you so much to Finn for sharing your story. This one was so interesting to me. For further context, phasia has historically been a very overlooked part of the human body that has only recently been gaining more attention. The fascia is a network of fibrous connective tissue with no beginning or end that surrounds every structure of your body and provides continuous support not only to your organs, muscles, and bones, but also your nerves, joints, tendons, ligaments, and tissues.

In the past, we have always conceptualized the mind and the body as being two separate things that have their own separate domain over our human function, but maybe that's not the case. the idea that our tissue can store memory and then be unlocked through massage, it's an idea that opens up a lot of questions and has a lot of implications, especially when you consider some of the other episodes from this show even that have a lot of similarities to Finns. I keep thinking about how Finn's teacher explained that a piece of consciousness can get stuck in the body if it's too much for the mind to handle. Finn's experience felt like a perfect example of how the mind and body are not just interrelated, but perhaps even emerge from consciousness rather than the other way around. This is one of those episodes that gives me hope that as we continue to understand our perceptual experience, will we consider now to be paranormal, will later be explicitly understood,

and maybe even just be considered normal. This episode was called The Accident, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaefer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Wiccafe's Springs Eternal, Juice Jackal, and North Americans. Our artwork is by Coldassack Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing,

leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you could become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, Leah Reese Dennis,

Mora Curran, Josephina Francis, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us your stories at Stories at otherworldpod.com.