Good evening. I get it and understand your need. I am going to ask @jenniferhunter, another mentor with significant experience to step in and explain to you why MFR may be right for you. She will also direct you to the discussion on Connect.
Chris

@carlyschneider if there is a physical treatment that can make you feel alive again, it is MFR. Other things are important too like eating to reduce inflammation and eating foods that help your body detox. You have to get everything in balance. What happens with injuries, illness, stress or bad postural habits is our bodies can get stuck and stop moving properly. Muscles create waste products too after exercise and need to be stretched to re-establish circulation of fluids and carry those waste products away. Sometimes it is too easy to just believe a diagnosis that tells you there is no hope of returning to what was your normal. I see that as a challenge to figure out why and hope I can try to make things better for myself.

I was introduced to MFR therapy 11 years ago for treatment of thoracic outlet syndrome which is an entrapment of nerves and blood vessels between the collar bone and rib cage. There are several places where nerves can get compressed between overly tight muscles or muscles that develop scar tissue because of an injury. It does seem crazy, but imagine yourself in a stretchy suit of elastic strings, and that those strings also grow internally in your body and connect everything. That is the role of fascia and it can shift between being a semisolid to a liquid and reshape itself. It allows the fluid exchange of lymph which carries away waste products and also conducts electricity. Injuries and surgery create scar tissue in the fascia that makes knots, and then it doesn't move and glide. The body gets stuck causing pain and inflammation. What if we can unstick this problem? Yes there is hope because that is what myofascial release does when a therapist applies a shearing force which starts the fascia stretching and gliding again. It can't promise a cure for a disease, but if there is a physical part of the problem, it can help. It does get stuck, dehydrated tissue re-hydrated again.

Working with a PT who could feel my tight spots, educated me about the physical issues that I have, and I can feel where it is tight and when it releases which makes it tingle slightly. Sometimes if something is seriously stuck, it may be a bit uncomfortable when sh works on it. This understanding also helps me figure out how to stretch things on my own which helps my PT get farther ahead during our sessions. I have also been through cervical spine surgery and ankle surgery for a fracture, and MFR has been a part of all of that recovery.

Here is our MFR discussion. The first pages have the most information in links which I started to catalog the topic. This isn't invasive; it's just physical therapy, and if this helps you improve without medication... wonderful. I also am a patient of functional medicine which tries to prevent problems by addressing the source of the problem and correcting biochemistry without drugs to treat symptoms. Does MFR sound like something you would want to explore?
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/